[B-Greek] Metalanguage(s) (was "Agent in JOHN 6:19b")

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Mar 4 08:37:39 EST 2007


On Mar 3, 2007, at 8:23 PM, Barry wrote:

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Elizabeth Kline" <kline_dekooning at earthlink.net>
> To: "greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2007 4:40 PM
> Subject: [B-Greek] Agent in JOHN 6:19b
>
>
>> Iver Larsen wrote
>>
>> "GINOMAI does not allow an Agent, and the subject is never the Agent,
>> but if there is an Agent involved, it  can usually be derived from
>> the context."
>>
>> JOHN 6:19 ELHLAKOTES OUN hWS STADIOUS EIKOSI PENTE H TRIAKONTA
>> QEWROUSIN TON IHSOUN PERIPATOUNTA EPI THS QALASSHS KAI EGGUS TOU
>> PLOIOU GINOMENON, KAI EFOBHQHSAN.
>>
>> Would it be fair to say that IHSOUN is the agent of PERIPATOUNTA EPI
>> THS QALASSHS? I would be tempted to say that IHSOUN is also the agent
>> of EGGUS TOU PLOIOU GINOMENON, i.e., that IHSOUN is an explict agent
>> for both participles. The disciples were watching Jesus (an agent)
>> walking on the sea and Jesus (an agent) drawing near to the boat.
>
> Agency is the wrong category altogether.  You have an accusative  
> direct
> object of the verb modified by two participles, PERIPATOUNTA,  
> "walking," and
> GINOMENON, "being."  If these participles were turned into finite  
> verbs of
> some sort, the *subject* would be IHSOUS.

Sure, but this is precisely what John Sanders	was talking about  
yesterday ([B-Greek] Nouns, Verbs, and such stuff, March 3, 2007  
7:00:09 AM EST): you and Iver are using different "systems" to  
describe the grammatical structure here. We can each of us insist  
that only our own "system" adequately accounts for what we seem able,  
all of us, to read and understand, despite the fact that we choose a  
different "metalanguage" to analyze the relationships between the  
elements of the Greek formulation. For my part, I'm happy to see  
Iver's additional accounting for how GINOMAI works in 2 Thess 2:6-7  
and here in John 6:19b, although when he speaks of GINOMAI sometimes  
taking a single nominative as BOTH "patient" and "agent," I begin to  
wonder whether this particular (semantic) descriptive metalanguage is  
adequate to deal with Greek middle-voice usage or the varieties of  
reflexive-verb usage in several modern European languages. I'm not  
saying that it is NOT adequate -- I obviously don't know enough about  
it, but it seems to me that Greek middle-voice usage doesn't  
distinguish between voluntary and involuntary processes indicated by  
a verb-form. And I will readily confess that conventional Greek  
grammatical categories don't deal adequately with the Greek middle- 
passive forms and usage.

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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