[B-Greek] 2Cor. 11:5 LOGIZOMAI w/inf w/o acc

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Thu Dec 17 05:37:27 EST 2009


On Wednesday, December 16, 2009, at 10:51PM, "Elizabeth Kline" <kline_dekooning at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>On Dec 16, 2009, at 2:41 PM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>
>> This may not be enough to satisfy you in terms of your linguistic  
>> framework,
>> but (a) I'm not convinced that writers/speakers are perfectly  
>> consistent in
>> usage in all their writing/speaking, and (b) perhaps more to the  
>> point, there's
>> a heavy emphasis on the first person in Phil 3:13; I think that the  
>> EGW and
>> EMAUTON make an emphatic point about Paul's personal sense of where
>> he is in contradistinction from where others may suppose they stand.
>
>Thank you Carl,
>
>The answer certainly doesn't need to be stated in terms of any  
>particular framework. At this point I don't have the foggiest idea  
>what I am looking for, just suspect that the difference in Paul's  
>attitude toward his addressees might have something to do with it. My  
>first impression of 2Cor. 11:5 was that it was kind of cryptic but  
>that is to judge the Greek by English standards which is always a  
>mistake. I guess one question which might be worth asking is what is  
>the unmarked (i.e. normal) level of person encoding in a construction  
>like this? Or to put it in other words, does EGW and EMAUTON attract  
>our attention because the are not required? Or on the other hand does  
>that lack of EMAUTON in 2Cor. 11:5 catch our attention because we  
>would expect it?

It's not just EDMAUTON lacking in 2 Cor 11:5 but of EGW also; quite
clearly the first-person pronoun is underscored in Phil 3:13.

What I'm wondering about and would need to do a search with tools
not currently handy for me to ascertain, is whether Hellenistic usage
of verbs such as LOGIZOMAI involves nominative adjectives and
pronouns such as AUTOS when the subject of the infinitive is the
same as the subject of the head verb -- as in Classical Attic -- or
whether it's simply a matter of ordinary omission of the accusative
"subject" of the infinitive when that "subject" is identical with that of
the head verb.

I might say that with regard to this construction as also with regard
to the hOUTWS ... hWSTE construction (if that is what it is, as I
continue to think) in John 3:16, I am somewhat wary of a
readiness to look at Koine usage in a purely synchronic perspective
and also of a readiness to limit one's database of Koine usage to
the GNT or even the whole Biblical Greek corpus.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (ret)



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