[B-Greek] Matthew 8:23 EMBANTI AUTWi ... HKOLOUQHSAN AUTWi and What Grammar Is/Isn't

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Nov 9 11:03:45 EST 2010


On Nov 9, 2010, at 10:49 AM, George F Somsel wrote:
> It seems to me that Carl's statement contains what can only be understood as an 
> inate contradiction.  "We don't need to learn grammar to understand, but we 
> 'inherit' an understanding of the rules."  It would seem to me that whether we 
> learn them formally in a class or simply by encountering them in our daily life, 
> we do follow a certain grammar.  I may be, and indeed is the case, that grammar 
> does change (and can therefore be described as descriptive rather than 
> prescriptive), it is nevertheless somewhat prescriptive for a certain time and 
> circumstance.

Let me "parse" what I wrote, lest it be misunderstood/misinterpreted:

" I don't think that we learn to talk and to read by understanding 
grammatical rules; rather, I think that we attempt to explain our
understanding of what we hear and read through our inherited
(learned) or newly-formulated (learned) grammatical 'rules.'"

"through our inherited  ... 'rules'" is to be construed with "we
attempt to explain our understanding of what we hear and read" --

i.e. I think that we use our "inherited ... rules" as a MEANS of
EXPLAINING our understanding of what we hear and read.


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

> From: Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
> To: B-Greek <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Tue, November 9, 2010 8:36:35 AM
> Subject: [B-Greek] Matthew 8:23 EMBANTI AUTWi ... HKOLOUQHSAN AUTWi and What 
> Grammar Is/Isn't
> 
> 
> 
> Matt. 8:23     Καὶ ἐμβάντι αὐτῷ εἰς τὸ πλοῖον ἠκολούθησαν αὐτῷ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ.
> [KAI EMBANTI AUTWi EIS TO PLOION HKOLOUQHSAN AUTWi hOI MAQHTAI AUTOU.]
> 
> This passage has been discussed frequently on B-Greek, e.g.
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2010-March/052924.html
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/1999-August/006757.html
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2004-March/028646.html
> 
> The July 2007 discussion seems to me one of the more helpful ones.
> Here's Iver's response to one of mine in that thread, but some who
> are disturbed by the phrasing of Matt 8:23 might want to read through
> the whole thread:
> 
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2007-July/043520.html
> 
> Yesterday' blog entry by Bill Mounce on the Koinonia web site is
> a discussion of this same somewhat problematic passage:
> http://www.koinoniablog.net/2010/11/dative-absolute.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FpQHu+%28Koinonia%29
> 
> 
> Apart from the acknowledgement that the usage in this verse is
> rather puzzling, what I found somewhat intriguing was the
> remarks concerning grammar, including the common distinction
> drawn between "prescriptive" and "descriptive" grammar:
> 
> "Regardless of the specific reason for the dative, it does bring up 
> an interesting point. Is grammar descriptive or prescriptive? 
> The answer is, 'Both.'
> "Grammar is prescriptive in that it contains the rules for how words 
> are put together so there is meaning. Without following grammar, 
> there is no way to know the meaning of the sentence, 'Bill bit 
> the cat.' Without grammar, it could be me headed for a tetanus 
> shot.
> "But grammar is also descriptive. It tells us how a language group 
> uses words. This is why grammar changes. ... "
> 
> I think I would rather avoid this distinction between "prescriptive"
> and "descriptive" altogether. Languages seems always to be in 
> flux: older standard usage yields before neologisms. I think that
> grammar is our means of presenting the norms of usage observed
> by most speakers and writers of a language in a given era and 
> locale. Teachers and editors may endeavor to enforce a particular
> set of norms: they intend to be "prescriptive" but they are engaged
> in an ultimately losing battle.
> 
> I find myself at odds, however, with Professor Mounce's statement,
> "Without following grammar, there is no way to know the meaning 
> of the sentence, 'Bill bit the cat.' Without grammar, it could be me 
> headed for a tetanus shot."
> 
> I don't think that we know the meaning of the sentence in question
> because we know grammar. We have expectations about sequential
> word-order that can be described by a grammar, but we do not have
> to LEARN grammatical rules in order to understand other speakers
> and writers of our language.
> 
> I believe that  we really have no difficulty whatsoever when it comes
> to understanding what Matthew 8:23 means. Our difficulty comes in
> EXPLAINING the fact that the participial phrase EMBANTI AUTWi
> is in the dative case. Is it a "dative absolute"? Is it proleptic ahead
> of AUTWi, itself the dative complement to HKOLOUQHSAN? Or
> is the AUTWi which follows HKOLOUQHSAN redundantly 
> repetitive of the AUTWi in the initial participial phrase/clause?
> Is the author guilty of bad grammar? Or are our grammatical "rules"
> inadequate to provide an accounting for this construction which will
> satisfy us all?
> 
> My inclination is to think that "grammar" is all theoretical, whether
> it is what we have learned from the age-old traditions of dead
> grammarians or what we are being told by academic linguists who
> often enough are able to give us more satisfying accounts of what
> we understand an ancient Greek text to be saying. At any rate, I 
> don't think that we learn to talk and to read by understanding 
> grammatical rules; rather, I think that we attempt to explain our
> understanding of what we hear and read through our inherited
> (learned) or newly-formulated (learned) grammatical "rules."
> 
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)







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