[B-Greek] Constructio ad sensum...

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Jun 21 07:46:14 EDT 2004


At 7:28 AM -0400 6/21/04, Barry Hofstetter wrote:
>For ancient Greek literature in general, or for any specified time period
>therein, is anyone aware of any study which examines the relative frequency of
>ad sensum constructions with regard to personal neuter nouns, i.e., how often
>the grammatical neuter is used in reference to such nouns vs. how often the ad
>sensum is used?  Or does anyone have any comments on this?  My impression is
>that the ad sensum constructions are relatively infrequent...

One might raise the question, "What is a personal neuter pronoun?" I
suppose you're referring to AUTO in Greek and "it" in English, such as
might be used to represent TEKNON or KORASION--although I think one might
readily find a masculine or feminine pronoun used in a particular instance
with TEKNON, a feminine pronoun with KORASION.

Seems to me that the "ad sensum" construction, almost by definition, is an
instance-by-instance matter respecting which the author is cognizant of
some sort of inconcinnity between the gender of a pronoun or adjective in
relationship to the noun with which it implicitly or explitly construes. I
wonder whether one can tally such instance-by-instance cases in any
statistically meaningful way. Such a study, if there ever is or was one,
might be somewhat interesting, but it strikes me rather as looking for
four-leaf clover in a meadow: you'll find some, but they're more
aberrations than instances of some rule.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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