[B-Greek] Antecedents of pronouns: ambiguity

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed May 2 19:28:23 EDT 2007


We've just had a couple threads on problems of identifying antecedents
of TOUTWN in 2 Pet 1:4 and AUTWi in 1 John 3:3. This is probably
obvious to those participating in these threads but perhaps it's worth
calling attention to: For all the talk of what a marvelous instrument  
for
clear and precise communication ancient Greek was, the problem of
identifying the referents of demonstrative and relative pronouns is by
no means an uncommon one. Anyone who has worked through a
treatise of Aristotle will reaadily recall the dismay felt when  
encountering
a hO\ or a TOUTO (it's the neuters that are the most troublesome) and
realizing that there are several candidates for the antecedent of the
pronoun. Of course, context has to be the "decider" but context is
itself not always so clearly indicative.

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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