[B-Greek] I need help with an adverbial/participle clause
Christopher Shelton
christophershelt at bellsouth.net
Tue Nov 28 23:57:14 EST 2006
To B-Greek--
I am a non-matriculated student of Attic Greek who has a question
about the translation of an exercise question assigned by my on line
professor, Dora Pozzi Ph.D., of the University of Houston. The question
is about the translation of a circumstantial adverbial clause with a
personal pronoun and participle in the dative. If this is not correct
protocol I am sorry. It reads as follow:
*EMOI AITOUNTI hO FILOS MOU PANTA hA EICE HNEGKE.*
After working on this with a friend we arrived at the translation:
*(When) I asked, my friend brought all that he had.
*
My question is: how am I to decipher the adverbial/participial clause
EMOI AITOUNTI? The personal pronoun in the dative singular I
translated as "to/with/from me," and my friend assured me that adverbial
participles have, in English, the sense of beginning with the words,
"while/when/as/since." I would usually think "asking," when seeing
AITOUNTI. But, I have trouble translating participles. My friend
suggested that the participle modifies the personal pronoun, which
sounds strange, creating an expression like: "to/for me...asking." Then
she said I should try to translate this into comprehensible English,
arriving at: "When I asked...." What I want to know is how do I go
from "When/While/Since/As...to/for/with me asking," or, "When...to me
(me asking)," to "When I asked...?" What exactly can I visualize in
this personal pronoun and participle that allows me to change "When...to
me asking" to "When I asked?"
Any help will be appreciated. Participles are giving me a lot of
trouble and I have a hard time making cognitive jumps when I encounter
them. Thank you.
--
Christopher Shelton
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S.A.
christophershelt at bellsouth.net
tel. (954) 463-9624
The stuff of which the future society will be made is Man himself and you cannot build a marble temple with a mixture of mud and manure. -- Eugene O'Neill
I may be dead from the neck up, but I'll be damned if I'm going to publish a novel by a writer who spends 30 pages describing how he turned in bed. -- Letter to Proust from a prospective publisher returning the manuscript of Swann's Way.
All is true! -- Balzac
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