[B-Greek] Semantic Range of Prepositions

Richard Lindeman oblchurch at msn.com
Wed Mar 24 08:58:55 EDT 2010


Tim:

Rather than the narrow definition given below, I think I would be inclined to state a more general rule for prepositions something like this:  

Context is king for prepositions even more so than in English.  The MEANING of any given preposition is determined by three contexts in particular:  1.  The case of the noun it intersects with, 2. The active or stative nature of the verb it modifies, and 3. The semantics involved with both noun and verb.

Rich Lindeman    



From: Timothy Lawson 
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 1:21 PM
    I notice that in both of your examples EN is the preposition. Wallace's comments are primarily focused on PROS and EIS which are clear of examples of prepositions with a transitive force. It's not as clear to me that EN is equal in transitive force as PROS and EIS.
Scotty





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Richard Lindeman <oblchurch at msn.com>
To: Timothy Lawson <tslawson1 at yahoo.com>
Cc: B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Tue, March 23, 2010 10:56:14 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Semantic Range of Prepositions


Actually, I am not so sure that the rule quoted below is quite correctly stated.  One of the real problems for English readers of Greek is when prepositions seem to be used in an unnatural way.  When we see that Greek has a full complement of prepositions as we do in English, but then Greek uses EN at places where "on" seems clearly more appropriate to the English reader.  Or when Greek uses EIS when "in" seems clearly more appropriate to the English reader, etc.  In other words, when prepositions are in effect translated as different prepositions in situations where it makes no sense to the English reader.  After all, if the writer wanted to say "in" then why didn't you use the word "in"? etc. 

The rule stated below concerning stative verbs certainly helps, but I don't think the rule is stated quite correctly.
Matt 5:25 hEWS hOTOU EI MET AUTOU EN TH hODW "while you are still with him on the way"
Matt 6:5 EN TAIS GWNIASIS TWN PLATEIWN...  hESTWTES  "standing on the streetcorners"

In both of the above examples I suspect a stative verb may be involved in changing the meaning of "in" to "on".  But I don't think it has anything to do with "transivity" of the preposition. 

Rich Lindeman 





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