[B-Greek] The personal pronoun for he, she and it

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Feb 3 19:48:34 EST 2007


On Feb 3, 2007, at 4:40 PM, Dr. Don Wilkins wrote:

> I thought that would get a rise out of you, Carl. Seriously, though,
> my question would be whether there are any NT instances of the
> nominative's being used simply because something neutral is needed.
> And the issue (for me, anyway) would not be whether translating it as
> an ordinary 3p pronoun sounds okay, but whether even a weak intensive
> sense has to be ruled out. E.g. I can imagine the possibility of
> someone asking a group of people who the tallest of them is, and
> somebody pointing to a guy and saying, "AUTOS." You could claim that
> as a neutral use, I suppose, but even then it could be argued that
> the speaker has some reason to say "He himself."

No, I'm not going to play that game with you. Your AUTOS would  
convert to an English "Him" as an answer to "Who's tallest?" Is "him"  
a "weak intensive" or an "intensive" 3rd singular pronoun. In Attic  
comedy one character can address another with hOUTOS SU meaning  
something like "Hey you!" Is hOUTOS weakened or SU strengthened? In  
Homer hO/hH/TO is a "weak demonstrative" -- in the 6th century it  
becomes a "definite" article while it still remains a third-person  
pronoun, hO D' EFH ... (as it still remains in the Koine).

In sum, I'm not quite sure what a "weak intensive" sense is supposed  
to be; it strikes me as something of an oxymoron.  Can a word be  
"intensive" and "weak" at the same time? In our colloquial English  
"very good" need not be much good at all -- it may just barely be  
"okay."

> He could have just
> pointed and said, "ESTIN," or "EKEINOS/hOUTOS." I don't have
> Caragounis' book, so on that point you have me at a disadvantage.
> Granted, there are indications of flux. Certainly much that is
> arguably consistent with the rules of classical prose, and hints of
> later Greek. We also have to account for the fact that some features
> of NT Greek reflect the differences between literary and common
> ("vulgar") Greek, rather than language flux. But as far as AUTOS is
> concerned, practically speaking, if we say that it is sometimes
> neutral as a result of flux, how do we objectively determine when?
> (Please correct me if I am misunderstanding you.) Can you think of
> some good examples, one or two where the neutral sense is
> indisputable? My memory is taking a timeout, and maybe when you
> mention one, I'll only be able to say, "Duh!"
>
> Don Wilkins
>
> On Feb 2, 2007, at 4:14 PM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>
>>
>> On Feb 2, 2007, at 2:12 PM, Dr. Don Wilkins wrote:
>>
>>> IMO AUTOS is not really satisfactory as an ordinary 3rd person
>>> pronoun in the NT, either. It is intensive there as well, though the
>>> intensity is not always sufficient to affect the translation (a
>>> subjective choice by the translator), which might lead one to assume
>>> that AUTOS serves as an ordinary pronoun.
>>
>> You're surely not trying to say, are you, Don, that AUTOS functions
>> ONLY as an intensive pronoun in the Koine of the GNT? Certainly
>> it's intensive in many instances and it's used with the article in
>> the sense "the same" several times; but you wouldn't be denying
>> that it's sometimes used as a third person pronoun in the
>> nominative, would you?
>>
>> For my part, I think we do well to be cognizant of the fact that
>> the Koine of the GNT represents a language in flux. Usages and
>> constructions and morphological patterns from older and later eras
>> co-exist within it -- as is made abundantly clear in Caragounis'
>> recent volume, which I'm finally enjoying reading, now that it's in
>> the Baker paperback edition.
>>
>> Carl W. Conrad
>> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>> 1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
>> cwconrad2 at mac.com
>> WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
>>
>>
>
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
> B-Greek mailing list
> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/





More information about the B-Greek mailing list