[B-Greek] Adverbial Preposition
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Jun 28 09:53:59 EDT 2005
On Jun 28, 2005, at 8:38 AM, Mitch Larramore wrote:
> Can someone provide me with a good definition of
> Adverbial Preposition (in such a way as to distinguish
> it from a "non-adverbial" preposition)?
>
> Is there another category: Adjectival Preposition?
>
> What is the relation of the "object" in the Adverbial
> Prepositional phrase to the "object" it modifies?
>
> If DIA plus its object functioned adverbially, would
> we consider DIA an Adverbial Preposition?
I think that there are two important things to be aware of here:
(1) Originally the prepositions were indeed adverbs, used like
adverbs generally to qualify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs;
when used with case-forms of nouns they were not really constituent
parts of prepositional phrases but rather clarifying adverbs helping
to show how a meaning implicit in the usage of the case-ending itself
was to be understood: e.g. ENIAUTWN, gen. pl. of the Homeric noun
ENIAUTOS ("year") may have a partitive sense "from year to year" or
"within years"; but that simple independent ENIAUTWN may be made
clearer by addition of the adverb DIA ("through," "from one end to
the other"), so that DI' ENIAUTWN will yield the compounded sense
"years: from one end of them to the other" = "in the course of years."
Moreover, when these ADVERBS were used with verbs they were NOT
prefixes but adverbial qualifiers, so that if MENEI means "abides"
and DIA means "throughout", then the combination DIA MENEI will mean
"abides persistently" or "persists." In the course of the linguistic
development of Greek over the years (i.e. DI' ENIAUTWN), established
combinations of adverb and verb in fixed patterns ultimately led to
the usage of those adverbs as prefixes consistently used with verbs,
so that, instead of DIA MENEI Greek speakers/writers used DIAMENEI.
One indication that this is how these verbal prefixes originated may
be recognized in the fact that when such verbs go into an indicative
past tense, the augment regularly comes BETWEEN the prefix and the
verb-stem: we do not ever see E-DIAMEINE as imperfect of DIAMENEI;
rather we see DI-E-MEINE; the same is true of more complex compound
verbs, e.g. APOKATALEIPOMEN in the imperfect is APOKAT-E-LEIPOMEN.
You may find a more adequate and fuller statement of what I've just
stated in Smyth §1636ff.
(2) In Koine Greek generally or NT Koine Greek specifically, we
would NOT speak of an "adverbial preposition" nor of an "adjectival
preposition" -- but we will speak of adverbial prepositional phrases
and of adjectival prepositional phrases. So, be clear on this point:
when we're talking about functions of prepositions in Koine Greek and
speaking of adjectival or adverbial usage, we are NOT talking about
the prepositions themselves but about the phrases constituted by the
prepositions and case-forms of nouns.
As for your questions:
> What is the relation of the "object" in the Adverbial
> Prepositional phrase to the "object" it modifies?
I'm trying to think of a helpful illustrative sentence or phrase:
FORON TELOUSIN hOUTOI hOI POROI KAT' ENIAUTON "These funds pay
interest annually (by-year)". Here ENIAUTON is object of the
preposition KATA, the whole phrase being adverbial and modifying the
predicate of the sentence (FORON TELOUSIN). I don't think we'd want
to say that the adverbial prepositional phrase KAT' ENIAUTON
qualifies the object FORON (an adverb doesn't modify a noun) but
rather either the verb TELOUSIN ("pay annually") or the the entire
predicate FORON TELOUSIN ("pay interest annually").
> If DIA plus its object functioned adverbially, would
> we consider DIA an Adverbial Preposition?
No; in that case it would be the entire phrase (DIA + object, e.g.
DI' ENIAUTWN) that would be functioning adverbially, NOT the
preposition by itself.
I hope that helps some; I think that looking at the account in Smyth
is likely to be more helpful than what I've written here.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at ioa.com or cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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