[B-Greek] (B-Greek) Two in one bed
Daniel L Christiansen
dlc at multnomah.edu
Mon Jul 24 14:26:58 EDT 2006
In response specifically to Cindy Westfall and George Somsel, regarding
default gender grammatical expectations:
Agreed... My statement was about the ³grammatical identification² of the
persons; perhaps it would have been more clear for me to term this as a
³referential limitation.² The fulfilment of the prediction could involve
dozens, hundreds, thousands of generically unspecified persons in situations
not related to beds or grain-grinding; such an application does not deal
with, and is not limited by or to, the referent of the passage. The reason I
say two women cannot be the referent of the passage, is that a Greek speaker
(and or a Hebrew/Aramaic speaker, for that matter) would use the feminine
forms to indicate such a referent.
For a translation into the hypothetical ³feminine-default² language, I think
we are in agreement that we could not automatically use feminine, here. As
you infer, the question to ask the passage, is whether the masculine is here
used as default, or as a specific indicator of male referents. If we
understand it as default, then the target language should also use default
forms; if it is determined that the masculine is used to indicate male
subjects, then the target language should also do so. I don¹t think we can
determine which is the case, here; however, neither of the options seem to
allow for specified female subjects.
On a side note, are you aware of any feminine-default languages? I have
looked for one over the years, with no success; while I don¹t expect to ever
find one, given the universally oppresive social dominance of the male, it
would be great to see what kind of circumstances follow with such a language
structure.
Daniel
_________________
Daniel L Christiansen
Professor, Bible/Theology, Biblical Languages
Multnomah Bible College & Biblical Seminary
8435 NE Glisan Street
Portland, OR 97220
(503) 251-6436
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