[B-Greek] Semantic Range of Prepositions

Michael Aubrey mga318 at yahoo.com
Wed Mar 24 12:41:06 EDT 2010


It's more like prepositions were adverbs originally, which then developed in two directions: as prepositions on the one hand and as preverbs/prefixes on the other. But this isn't terribly different than English (its an Indo-European phenomena). In English, the adverbs attached themselves to the ends of verbs rather than the beginning: stand/stand up, take/take off, give/give up, and so on.

A. T. Robertson talks about this in his grammar in the first couple sections on the verb and then also again a bit in the preposition section as well. Extended reading of Robertson is always encouraged. It may not be well organized, but Robertson's knowledge of the language is unsurpassed.

Mike




________________________________
From: Richard Lindeman <oblchurch at msn.com>
To: Timothy Lawson <tslawson1 at yahoo.com>
Cc: B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Wed, March 24, 2010 9:13:03 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Semantic Range of Prepositions

It may also be that the reason for the marked difference between English and Greek with regard to meaning for prepositions is that in Greek, prepositions originated as prefixes to verb forms long before they became separate entities in the historical development of the language. BTW... someone please stop my rambling thoughts if I am in error and making a fool of myself. I clearly do not have the experience with Greek as some others on this list and so I would prefer to be corrected earlier rather than later.

Thanks!

Rich Lindeman 


From: Richard Lindeman 
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 10:47 AM
To: Timothy Lawson 
Cc: B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org 
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Semantic Range of Prepositions


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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