[B-Greek] preposition vs case endings (was Job 3:24)

bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca
Sat Dec 13 13:28:23 EST 2003


> >> >   (Albert Pietersma)  
> > ..... One needs to remember, of course, that
> >> prepositions are first and foremost structure words, with a very wide
> >> range of meaning.....

         (Bert de Haan)
> > 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.
 
          (Albert Pietersma)      
> 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
  
Thank you for your reply.
This reminds me of one of the first questions I asked as list-member.  
This is the question;
"Is there a significant difference between PISTEUW with the dative and PISTEUW 
with the preposition EIS? Compare PISTEUSWMEV TWi ONOMATI .... in 1 John 
3:23 with TOIS PISTEUOUSIN EIS TON ONOMA...."

I can't find the reply in the archives so it must have been of-list. I think Carlton Winberry was the one who replied and if memory serves me right, the gist of it was something like -Just using the dative case endings could have more possible meanings than using the preposition-.

Assuming that my recollection is correct, this seems to be at odds with what you said about prepositions have a greater semantic content than case-endings.
(Maybe I misunderstood you)
If you don't mind, I would like to hear your comments on this.

Thank you 
Bert de Haan




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