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

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Nov 9 11:31:37 EST 2010


On Nov 9, 2010, at 11:18 AM, George F Somsel wrote:
> 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.

Then a five-year-old who hasn't been to school and doesn't even know what
grammar is cannot formulate a sentence like "Bill bit the cat" or understand
what that sentence means when he hears it?

My point is that there are indeed norms of usage for a time and place, but that
a grammatical accounting of that usage is a theoretical construct that is
secondary to the actual usage of speakers and writers, listeners and readers.
I would not equate the norms of usage with "grammar." I think that any
grammar is an endeavor to describe and explain the norms of usage.

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

> 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)







More information about the B-Greek mailing list