[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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