[B-Greek] Ellipsis
Mark Lightman
lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Sun Mar 28 15:40:49 EDT 2010
Richard Lindeman wrote:
<Is there a definitive study that has been done
on the subject of ellipsis?>
In his wonderfully fossilized text book, J. Gresham Machen
provides a comprehensive treatment of the subject
of ellipsis by leaving it out.
Get it? "Ellipsis" is what you leave out. Ha, Ha. MARKOS
GELOIOS ESTIN!
Actually, Richard raises a good point, because on
a practical level, ellipses make reading Greek very
tough. It's one of the things that drove (drives) me
crazy about 2 Corinthians. You have to know that
in 8:23 ειτε υπερ Τιτου (EITE hUPER TITOU) "...if
about Titus" means "...if [there is a question] about
Titus..." I'm reading Plato's Symposium right now,
where you find this gem in 173b4: ου μεντοι αλλα
και (OU MENTOI ALLA KAI) "not indeed however but"
which makes NO sense until you read Steadman's
note which fills in the ellipsis ("(I had) not (been present)
however, but..."
I'm not sure if I would ever be able to figure out these
ellipses not matter how much reading in Greek I had done
or no matter how much stuff in English I would read
ABOUT ellipsis. This is what commentaries are for,
I guess. Ellipsis is just one of the Top Ten Things that
Makes Reading Ancient Greek so Darn Hard.
Ellipsis can also make verbs hard because sometimes
an object of the verb is left out but nobody tells you,
e.g. προσεχω (PROSECW) can mean "I hold my MIND (νουν NOUN)
towards something." This is really maddening when the left out
noun changes the verb from transitive to intransitive, again
without anyone telling you.
"Ellipsis" is one of the few grammatical terms that Randall
Buth would like, since it is at least a GREEK term.
On the other hand, NT Greek Linguists may not like the term
because it is so easy to understand and it does not
really account for what is going on in the Cantonese. :)
Mark L
FWSFOROS
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