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

George F Somsel gfsomsel at yahoo.com
Tue Nov 9 11:18:53 EST 2010


I don't think we fundamentally disagree, but I think Mounce is correct in saying 
that grammar is both descriptive and prescriptive.  It is descriptive in that it 
accounts for usage in a particular period under particular circumstances, but it 
also prescribes in that, during the period and in the circumstances in which the 
convention described by grammar is operative, it must be followed if one is to 
convey or understand the meaning of any particular statement.  


In the sentence "Bill bit the cat" we understand that Bill is the one who is 
engaging in the act described by the verb and that "cat" is the object of the 
action.  This is because our inherited (and prescriptive) rules for English 
grammar at this time follows a SVO pattern.  If, however, the convention were to 
change so that we began to follow an OVS pattern then Bill could be the object 
and "cat" could be the subject.  One need only look at the change in the meaning 
of words in order to observe this phenomenon.  If I were to say "Bill is 
gay" the hearer today would most likely understand that I was referencing Bill's 
sexual preferences.  If we were to retroject ourselves into a previous 
understanding of the word "gay" then it might be understood that Bill is happy.  
If we were to retroject ourselves even further back into the history of the 
word, we might then understand that Bill was wearing brightly colored clothing.  
It all depends upon time and circumstance, but during a particular time and 
under particular circumstances grammar is prescriptive if we wish to be 
correctly understood.

 george
gfsomsel 


… search for truth, hear truth, 
learn truth, love truth, speak the truth, hold the truth, 
defend the truth till death.


- Jan Hus
_________ 




________________________________
From: Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
To: George F Somsel <gfsomsel at yahoo.com>
Cc: B-Greek <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tue, November 9, 2010 9:03:45 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Matthew 8:23 EMBANTI AUTWi ... HKOLOUQHSAN AUTWi and What 
Grammar Is/Isn't

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
>9
> 
> 
> 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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