[b-greek] Re: Grammatical categories and Luke 6:12b

From: Mike Sangrey (msangrey@BlueFeltHat.org)
Date: Tue Jul 24 2001 - 14:51:01 EDT



Grammatical categories, as taught, are presented as a laundry list
of possibilities. One thing wrong, IMO, is the assumption that the
list is perfectly discrete or scalar. There's been some cases for me
where that just doesn't seem quite right. Another is that the student
is lulled into a sort-of best-fit mentality. "Ummmmm...let's see now.
This ending here is a dingwhat and that gives me these 7 choices.
Well, yep, it's gotta be dis here one." Well, I suppose that has been
insultingly over stated, but I think the gist of it is pretty close to
reality.

I wish, if grammars are going to give me a laundry list, then they
would also give me the process which partitions a document using
those catagories. And that's the problem, isn't it?

Being a fluent English speaker, I can take the following sentence
and make sense of how the infinitive `to go' is functioning.

   I got to go to the bedroom.

And, again, being a fluent English speaker, I can take the following
sentence, too. And it makes sense.

   I got to go to the bathroom.

It's a little different, isn't it? Why did the room change the meaning
of `to go'? Some will suggest I've used a poor example; but I've chosen
it since it illustrates the subtle interplay between the form--an
infinitive--lexical semantics, context, and the extra-linguistic
context.

The use does not spring from the form; the form only provides the
potential. Other factors select and refine the use. I need to
understand better how that selection process works in Greek. Grammars
don't seem to help here.

And it seems we are lulled into thinking they do.
--
Mike Sangrey
msangrey@BlueFeltHat.org
Landisburg, Pa.
                        "The first one last wins."
            "A net of highly cohesive details reveals the truth."



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