[B-Greek] Object of verbs

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed Aug 30 07:24:39 EDT 2006


 
On Wednesday, August 30, 2006, at 05:59AM, George F Somsel <gfsomsel at yahoo.com> wrote:

>I rather hesitate to tell someone to rely on English in order to understand what is going on in Greek, but in this case it frequently works.  
>   
>  In a number of Greek verbs which take a dative object there is some relationship involved (note that these are simplistic definitions):
>   
>  PROSKARTEREW -- to be faithful TO someone
>  PREPW -- to be pleasing or suitable TO someone
>  ECESTIN -- it is authorized or proper FOR someone
>  PROSERXOMAI -- to move TOWARDS someone, something
>  And, as Yul Brynner continually said in "The King and I" "Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera."
>   
>  Other than that, all I can say is "Look it up in the dictionary."

Do more than "look it up" -- LEARN the verbs and their idiosyncracies as you would endeavor to pay close attention to and store in memory the distinctive features of a person you expect to see again and want to recognize. Another image I've found useful in the past is getting to know -- becoming intimately familiar with -- a terrain that one expects to be traversing again and again. Even just perusing a lexicon's entry on a word (and you certainly must do than scan a definition in search of the gloss that fits the text that brought you to the lexicon in the first place) is not enough: when you go through the lexical data presented, you should take note of how the variety of meanings may relate to each other stemmatically, and of who uses the word -- at what period in the literary history of Greek -- whether in verse or in prose -- and (most importantly) in what contexts. This is why one needs a good, full lexicon and not just a glossary. A glossary may help you get through reading (translating?) a sentence, but you don't really come to understand a word through a glossary.
>  ____________
>  
>
>Marion Fox <mrfox1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>  How do we know when the object of a verb is in a case other than the
>accusative case? For example, some verbs take their objects in the dative
>case, some in the genitive case.
>
>
>
>-- 
>Marion Fox
>
>http://www.fivefpublishing.com
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>
>george
>gfsomsel
>_________
> 		
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Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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