[B-Greek] postpositions

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon May 24 16:57:05 EDT 2004


At 4:01 PM -0400 5/24/04, Norman Goos wrote:
>It seems that the 1 John reference is pre-position.
>
>(I can think of one other preposition that may be considered postpositive, in
>that its object often precedes it.
>
>CARIN (acc. of CARIS), used as a preposition (Lk. 7:47; Gal. 3:19; Eph. 3:1,
>14; 1 Tim. 5:14; Tit. 1:5, 11; 1 Jn. 3:12; Jude 1:16).)

Yes; I suppose that the linguistic history involved here is that CARIN
which was orginally an adverbial accusative associated with a genitive noun
more often than not preceding it was used just like hENEKA (and like Latin
GRATIA and CAUSA--as in EXEMPLI GRATIA, 'for the sake of example"--i.e.
'e.g.')--that CARIN and hENEKA both came progressively to be perceived as
prepositions construed with the genitive case. This is quite different from
the earlier usage in Attic (especially poetry) of disylabic prepositions
appearing at line-ends and governing oblique-case-forms of nouns preceding
them: APO, EPI, hUPER, hUPO, etc., regularly with accent shifted back to
the penult and technically termed instances of "anastrophe"--'reversed
position.'
-- 

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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