[B-Greek] Job 3:24
Albert Pietersma
albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Fri Dec 12 21:29:55 EST 2003
Dear Bert,
Perhaps the easiest way is to think of case-endings. As case-endings
establish a syntactic/structural relationship between constituents of
phrase/clause/sentence, so do prepositions. With that in mind it is not
surprising to see that in the history of Greek case-endings tended to
give way to prepositions. E.g. EIPEN AUTW > EIPEN PROS AUTON.
The DIFFERENCE is that prepositions have greater semantic content than
do case-endings. Yet in distinction from full lexemes (content words
like GUNH) they are often referred to as bleached lexemes (relatively
empty, fluid words whose primary role it is to mark relationships)
As an aside, note that in Greek certain prepositions nuance their
semantic content by taking different cases. E.g. DIA + accusative means
roughly "on account of" while DIA + genitive means roughly "through."
Thus qua prepositions they are even more fluid than the rest.
In sum, case-endings and prepositions are on a continuum.
Cf. Handouts 6 (Cases) and 14(Preposition) on my website (below).
Al
On Friday, December 12, 2003, at 08:16 PM, <bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca>
wrote:
>
> Albert Pietersma wrote;
> ..... One needs to remember, of course, that
>> prepositions are first and foremost structure words, with a very wide
>> range of meaning.....
>
> I have come to realize that prepositions have a very wide range of
> meaning.
> I was wondering if you could explain what you meant by prepositions
> being first and foremost stucture words.
> Thank you.
> Bert de Haan.
>
>
>
—
Albert Pietersma
Professor of Septuagint and Hellenistic Greek
Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
University of Toronto
Home: 21 Cross Street,
Weston ON Canada M9N 2B8
Email: albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Homepage: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~pietersm
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