[B-Greek] Dative participial clauses

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Jul 10 06:59:24 EDT 2007


On Jul 9, 2007, at 12:37 PM, Steve Runge wrote:

> Carl,
>
> You raised a point that I wanted address:
>
> "It certainly seems to be the case; that these dative participial  
> clauses at the beginning of a sentence function very much like the  
> so-called genitive "absolute" constructions. I don't know whether  
> this would be useful or not, but I'm now wondering whether even  
> nominative participial phrases in agreement with the subject of  
> main clauses don't generally display these same characteristics."
>
> I think that you are dead on in your inclination to look for a  
> common function of preverbal participles.  As a starting point, it  
> is worth asking what difference it would have made if each of these  
> participial actions had been conveyed using indicative verbs.  In  
> other words, based on the context what difference is there between  
> use of the participle versus a main clause mood such as the  
> indicative.  I would contend that use of an indicative mood would  
> place the 'participial' action on the same par with the main clause  
> action.  All would have similar weight, from a morphological point  
> of view.  If this is true, then what is the effect of using a  
> participle?  Levinsohn (2000:181-190) has argued that it has the  
> effect of 'backgrounding' the participial action with respect to  
> the main verb.
>
> What do I mean by backgrounding?  It would be like having a line of  
> soldiers at attention and having some of them take a step back.   
> Those who step back are pushed into the background somewhat  
> compared to those in their original position.  At the same time,  
> those that have not moved end up in a slightly more prominent  
> position than those backgrounded, even though they have not moved.   
> The text I have used to illustrate this is Mark 5:25-27, where the  
> writer uses 7 separate participial clauses to establish the needed  
> circumstantial information for the reader to understand the main  
> clause action: the woman touching Jesus.  English does not use  
> participles like this, and thus many of them are rendered as main  
> verbs in translation.
>
> Had the writer used indicative verbs for some or most of the seven  
> participial actions (as most English translations do), the  
> 'touching' would not have stood out nearly as blatantly.  The woman  
> 'touching' Jesus ends up being the thing that Jesus specifically  
> responds to in v. 30: TIS MOU hHYATO TWN hIMATIWN;
>
> If you are looking for a unifying explanation to describe the  
> function of pre-verbal participles in the gospels and Acts, I would  
> suggest starting with the idea of 'backgrounding' as a hypothesis  
> and testing it.  I have found this explanation also covers a good  
> many of the pre-verbal participles in the Epistles as well.
>
> Making the main clause action 'stand out' does not make it  
> emphatic.  If you go back to the 'line of soldiers' the line of  
> those who did not move is the normal position.  Having some step  
> back 'backgrounds' them.  Having some of them step forward  
> 'emphasizes' them by making the stand out from the normal position.
>
> Hope this helps advance the discussion,
>
> Steve
>
> Note:  Some folks, like Robert Longacre and Alvierro Niccacci, have  
> described narrative in terms of mainline and offline, foreground  
> and background.  I am not arguing that use of a participle makes  
> the action 'background information'.  Instead, the action is  
> backgroundED with respect to the main clause action, making the  
> main action stand out more than the participial action, compared to  
> if all indicative verbs had been used.

Thanks for these suggestions, Steve. Your appended note unfortunately  
illustrates the problem of terminology and jargon that drives me up  
the wall when I try to read Linguists. I continue to think I'll  
survive it and perhaps even learn something from what I read of it,  
but ...

After a thrid reading, I find myself reacting ambivalently toward  
what you say about nominative participial clauses:

(1) On the one hand, the preposition of aorist participial phrases/ 
clauses is such a standard feature of ancient Greek narrative prose  
that anyone who has read much ancient Greek will not find it  
especially new or enlightening that the action indicated by such  
preposed participial phrases/clauses is backgrounded with respect to  
the action of the main clause -- the reader of ancient Greek  
narrative takes that in without thinking about it; students who have  
done any serious work in Greek prose composition are even taught the  
principle in a standard composition primer like North and Hilliard.

(2) On the other hand, I doubt whether this usage or preposed  
participial phrases/clauses is as common a feature of non-narrative  
Greek prose -- oratory, philosophical discourse and essays such as  
those of Xenophon and Plutarch. I haven't tested this guess that the  
usage differs between narrative and non-narrative prose genres, but I  
think it's pretty likely. I think that some kinds of finite-mood  
circumstantial clauses preceding main clauses may very well be  
"backgrounded" -- but that's just a hunch. I do think that genre  
matters in this regard.

(3) I very much appreciate your calling attention to the structure of  
Mark 5;25-27. It's worth spelling out:

Mark 5:25 	Καὶ γυνὴ οὖσα ἐν ῥύσει  
αἵματος δώδεκα ἔτη  26 καὶ πολλὰ  
παθοῦσα ὑπὸ πολλῶν ἰατρῶν καὶ  
δαπανήσασα τὰ παρ᾿ αὐτῆς πάντα  
καὶ μηδὲν ὠφεληθεῖσα ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον  
εἰς τὸ χεῖρον ἐλθοῦσα,  27 ἀκούσασα  
περὶ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ, ἐλθοῦσα ἐν τῷ  
ὄχλῳ ὄπισθεν ἥψατο τοῦ ἱματίου  
αὐτοῦ·

KAI GUNH OUSA EN hRUSEI hAIMATOS DWDEKA ETH KAI POLLA PAQOUSA hUPO  
POLLWN IATRWN KAI DAPANHSASA TA PAR' AUTHS PANTA KAI MHDEN WFELHQEISA  
ALLA MALLON EIS TO CEIRON ELQOUSA, AKOUSASA PERI TOU IHSOU, ELQOUSA  
EN TWi OCLWi hHYATO TOU hIMATIOU AUTOU.

I don't think an Attic prose master could have formulated this more  
eloquently. That's one reason I find it hard to take seriously any  
suggestion that Mark's gospel was originally composed in Aramaic.  
There was a time when I thought Mark's Greek was very rough, but upon  
careful study and at the suggestion of Edward Hobbs, I came to  
believe that the rough places in Mark's gospel narrative more likely  
come from his received tradition, whereas the sequences more likely  
to have been composed by the evangelist himself are in quite  
acceptable Greek and even with some rhetorical flair and heavy irony.

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/





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