[B-Greek] (B-Greek) Two in one bed
CWestf5155 at aol.com
CWestf5155 at aol.com
Mon Jul 24 16:00:51 EDT 2006
Daniel,
I think that we are in basic agreement here.
I'd only have a couple of minor quibbles. At any rate, we appear to agree
that we would want to avoid in translation or interpretation gender
exclusivity, which the use of the feminine would entail in Greek.
Therefore, I would say that the gender "cannot be feminine" not that the
referrents cannot be a woman or two women in the case of the use of the default
or even with gnomic/proverbial uses of ANHR.
And by that token, I'm shying away from any implication that this kind of
use of the masculine article has the same exclusivity as the use of the
feminine (with which I know we agree).
I did interact with the question about the feminine default in an earlier
post, and though I avoided mentioning things like universal oppressive
dominance, I believe that I agree with you on that too. The interesting thing about
gender in broader studies is how it is not always polarized by masculine and
feminine, but rather the choices may include animate and inanimate or other
categories that may surprise.
Cindy Westfall
Assistant Professor
McMaster Divinity College
In a message dated 7/24/2006 11:27:49 AM Pacific Standard Time,
dlc at multnomah.edu writes:
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
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