[B-Greek] adverbial participles - Culy
R Yochanan Bitan Buth
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Mon Sep 5 15:18:48 EDT 2005
Egrapsen Mitch
> Acts 22:17 contains
EGENETO DE MOI hUPOSTREYANTI EIS IEROUSALHM KAI
PROSEUCOMENOU MOU EN TWi hIERWi GENESQAI ME EN
EKESTASEI
<snip> What point is there to insisting upon
oblique case participles functioning adjectivally but
may or should be at times translated adverbially? Is
there general agreement that adverbial participles
(with above noted exceptions) MUST be in the
nominative case.
Mitch Larramore
Sugar Land, Texas>
Mitch, you are doing fine. An example to the next generation.
Again, I present Dionysios Thrax from 2100 years ago, in three lines,
Greek, (you may need to paste into a word processor to see unicode)
b-greek,
English. You should be able to self study.
π ε ρ ὶ μ ε τ ο χ ῆ ς.
PERI` METOXH~S
Concerning participles
μετοχή ἐστι λέξις
METOXH’ ESTI LE’KSIS
A participle is a word
μετέχουσα τῆς τῶν ῥημάτων
METE’XOUSA TH~S TW~N RHMA’TWN ...
Sharing (participating) in the [individuality] of verbs ...
[please note, the METEXOUSA is an adjective to ‘word’ but fits
with ‘participle is’ too.]
καὶ τῆς τῶν ὀνομάτων ἰδιότητος.
KAI` TH~S TW~N ONOMA’TWN IDIO’THTOS.
...and in the individuality of nouns.
Even the so-called ‘adverbial’ participles can be considered ‘adjectives’ of an implied subject.
Or the ‘adjectival’ participles can be considered ‘adverbial’ of an implied ‘be’ verb.
I do not recommend splitting hairs that Greek would not split.
So--
Participles have case, they ARE adjectival,
they have aspect, they ARE adverbial.
What should a self-learner do?
Relax.
Keep reading. Greek.
(Reading/writing/speaking English does not count as time spent on Greek.)
Build your vocabulary to about 5,000-10,000 words through extensive reading and talking with friends. This might take 3,000 hours. The experience gained in doing this will do wonders for your grammar. Relax.
(When people learn German or Arabic, they may not spend much time asking such questions. Multilanguage learners learn which questions are worthwhile for investing time and which ones they can let 'slide'. When in doubt let it slide, and read some more of the language itself. "It" will come back often enough, so you will see it if you really need it.)
ERRWSO ‘be well’
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
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list