[B-Greek] Caragounis' book

R Yochanan Bitan Buth ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Sat Nov 27 17:27:35 EST 2004


EGRAPSE Wilkins

>Then we could argue that this hINA construction eventually crystalized into
NA + verb as the infinitive in modern Greek.  

>... whereas the modern Greek reader is used to thinking of NA + verb as the
formal infinitive, just as we do with "to" and the verb in English. And I
would assume that modern Greek includes the idea of an infinitive of
purpose, just as in English, thereby ignoring the nuances of the
construction. Of course I invite corrections if I am misunderstanding the
modern Greek constructions.>

 

A minor quibble, NA + verb is not an infinitive in Modern Greek. The verb is
inflected, which is why the structure should be back-translated into English
as 'that + subjunctive finite verb' e.g. "I want that I would see" QELW  NA
DW, if one wants to show the Modern Greek structure.  Modern Greek has
dropped the infinitive along with the dative. Incidently, this is not so
strange for languages. Arabic, a totally unrelated language, does the same
thing:  ouriid an adhab "I want that I go" => (approximately in English) "I
want to go."

 

ERRWSO

Randall Buth 

 

Randall Buth, PhD

Director, Biblical Language Center

www.biblicalulpan.org

and Director, Biblical Studies in Israel

Hebrew University, Rothberg International School

ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il

 




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