[B-Greek] Semantic Range of Prepositions

Richard Lindeman oblchurch at msn.com
Sun Mar 21 09:33:40 EDT 2010


Thanks Carl. This is very helpful. I will study the reference material.

Rich Lindeman

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From: "Carl Conrad" <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2010 7:49 AM
To: "Richard Lindeman" <oblchurch at msn.com>
Cc: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Semantic Range of Prepositions

> On Mar 20, 2010, at 5:10 PM, Richard Lindeman wrote:
>> Although I agree that context is key, I am not sure that it is always
>> entirely a matter of immediate context.
>> I recall reading somewhere of a historical relationship existing between
>> early noun case usage and
>> the later introduction of prepositions.  I suppose I will need to do some
>> reading of classical Greek in order to get a better feel for what is
>> happening later in the Koine.
>
> Well, I think one does need to take into account the spatial vector 
> signals;
> one must also note the functional semantics of the cases owing to their
> historical emergence: the genitive's ablatival ("away from") and partitive
> ("inclusive of") senses, the dative's locative ("in/on/at")  and 
> instrumental-
> sociative ("with/by-means-of") senses and the accusative's limiting
> ("to/toward/into/up-to/bearing-upon") sense. Certainly it's worth studying
> a good listing of prepositional usages such as Smyth (§1636ff.) -- very
> much worth a careful reading, I think; BDF (§§203-40), and then there's
> Wallace GGBB (pp. 356-389). One should pay careful attention to how
> case meanings are reflected in the distinctive senses of those 
> prepositions
> that are used with more than one case. Some of them are somewhat
> tricky: PARA means something like "facing"; with genitive it's "from
> the presence of", with dative "facing", and with accusative "to the
> presence of" or even "opposite to"); KATA means "down"; with
> genitive it's "down from", with acc. "down along/following").
> DIA is tricky; with genitive it's "inclusive of/from one-end-to-other
> of", with accusative it's "by way of." One must be aware that EN,
> although most commonly used with a locative dative to indicate
> place or time, is quite commonly used in NT Koine with an
> instrumental dative in the sense, "with/by-means-of."
>
> These are useful things to learn about the prepositions, but ultimately
> one really learns them by reading or listening voluminously and seeing
> and hearing them over and over as they do their own things in spoken
> or written usage.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>
>
> 



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