[B-Greek] Semantic Range of Prepositions
Richard Lindeman
oblchurch at msn.com
Wed Mar 24 11:47:55 EDT 2010
Perhaps a fourth context involved in governing the meaning of prepositions is found in the root meaning of the preposition itself. In is normally "in". On is normally "on". Over is normally "over", etc. In English the root meaning of a given preposition seems to be the strongest influence of all. But in Greek that doesn't seem to be quite as true as it is in English. The "fuzziness" of interpreting Greek prepositions seems to be that all four of these contexts seem to be strong influences upon the meaning of the preposition itself. It might be interesting to explore their relative strengths of influence and their interplay with each other.
Rich Lindeman
From: Richard Lindeman
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 7:58 AM
To: Timothy Lawson
Cc: B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Semantic Range of Prepositions
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
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