Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Adjectival and Adverbial Prepositional Phrases in Biblical Greek.

James Tauber jtauber at jtauber.com
Thu May 12 14:10:43 EDT 2005


Whether a particular prepositional phrase is adverbial or adjectival is,
I suspect, almost always something that has to be inferred from the
context rather than there being any syntactic rules.

Consider the English sentence:

'I saw the man with my binoculars.'

The prepositional phrase is ambiguous in that it may be modifying the
verb 'saw' (I had the binoculars) or qualifying the noun phrase 'the
man' (he had the binoculars).

I don't see how issues of governance really enters into dealing with
this type of ambiguity in Greek.

A hypothesis such as "META with the genitive is always adjectival and
META with the accusative is always adverbial" may have merit on semantic
grounds but I don't see it as being "because of case". A genitive
prepositional phrase in general can be either adjectival or adverbial.

James Tauber

On Thu, 12 May 2005 13:45:07 -0400, "JAMES DAVIS"
<jamesdavis at focusonthescriptures.com> said:
> 
> Reply To: Carl W. Conrad 
> 
> Thank you for your reply to my question regarding "META with 
> the genitive."
> 
> Wallace said: Older NT grammars generally denied that 
> prepositions govern their cases.
> 
> Would it not be correct to say that META with the genitive 
> can be an adverbial phrase ONLY if it is found in a context 
> where that prepositional phrase can ONLY be said to 
> characterize a verb.  
> 
> I have understood that META with the genitive is adjectival 
> because of case. I have also understood that META with the 
> accusative is adverbial because of case.  
> 
> My next question is: In Biblical Greek is the prepositional 
> phrase META with the accusative ever adjectival or is it 
> always adverbial?
-- 
  James Tauber               http://jtauber.com/
  journeyman of some    http://jtauber.com/blog/




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