[B-Greek] Justin and objective genitives

Alastair Haines afhaines at tpg.com.au
Tue Mar 8 12:43:32 EST 2011


From: "Carl Conrad"
> A great deal of our communication takes place outside of the words we 
> speak and write.
> If that were not so, the world might just possibly be a more peaceful 
> place.

He he he, quite possibly so indeed.

Some optimistic linguists, however, do marvel at how successful we often are 
at communicating, despite our language underdetermining our meaning.

I appreciated Professor Conrad's examples of how a Greek writer might have 
made her words more explicit in that language.

I was tempted to think, given that "a great deal of our communication takes 
place outside of the words we speak and write", perhaps there might be an 
inverse correlation between the amount of work a writer does to make her 
words unambiguous, and the amount of work she expects her readers to do from 
context or other assumed background.

Were that the case, then Justin might have left ambiguous what he expected 
his contemporaries to be able to supply for themselves. Unfortunately, he 
wasn't writing for us.

Also unfortunately, I'm pretty sure my correlation "rule" doesn't work. I 
suspect I am fairly frequently ambiguous with no mitigating circumstances 
whatsoever. ;)

Thanks again to Professor Conrad for reminding us that grammar is but one 
handmaid of interpretation, not the mistress!

alastair


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carl Conrad" <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
To: "Rob Richardson" <rob.richardson40 at gmail.com>
Cc: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 4:06 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Justin and objective genitives


>
> On Mar 8, 2011, at 11:43 AM, Rob Richardson wrote:
>
>>> From: Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
>>> I would not think so. On the other hand, I am rather dubious of the 
>>> distinction
>>> made between "subjective" and "objective" genitives on the basis of 
>>> whether the
>>> head noun is a noun of action. I think that any genitive of this sort 
>>> attached
>>> to a noun like APOMNHMONEUMATA could mean either "notations of (made by) 
>>> X" or
>>> "notations of (concerning) X." Of course, had the author taken pains to 
>>> make a
>>> differentiation clear, s/he might have written APOMNHMONEUMATA 
>>> GEGRAMMENA hUPO +
>>> gen. or APOMNHMONEUMATA PERI TOU/TWN ... But I really don't think 
>>> there's any
>>> grammatical rule that will resolve the question whether he intended 
>>> these memos
>>> to be "composed by him" or to be "concerning him." I just don't think 
>>> the
>>> question can be resolved on a grammatical basis. Sorry.
>>
>> Carl,
>> May I ask for a bit of clarification as to your view on this?   If the
>> head noun is a verbal noun and there is no ambiguity as to whether it
>> is subjective or objective, then is the exegete on firm ground to
>> consider that the genitive noun  is either the subject or object of a
>> verb that is "extracted" from the verbal noun?
>
> Either/Or? I would rather put it that it COULD mean that. I still
> think we're talking about how we translate the Greek into English
> (or another target language) rather than about what the Greek
> unambiguously indicates. "Love stories" could mean stories
> about love or it could mean lies told by lovers. All that any
> Greek genitive case attached to a Greek noun tells you is that
> the former noun is related in some way to the latter. Only your
> context can enable you to narrow the possibilities of relationship.
> If the head noun is a verbal noun, certain possibilities are
> suggested, such as that the genitive noun is the performer or
> the object of the verbal noun.
>
> I  think we go round and round on this matter. There are some
> who want to feel confident that some rule of grammar will
> always cough up an unambiguous indication about a text. In
> fact, I think, most speakers and writers use language much more
> loosely than that and do not specify precisely which of one or
> more possible meanings of the expression they use is
> intended. A great deal of our communication takes place
> outside of the words we speak and write. If that were not so,
> the world might just possibly be a more peaceful place.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>
>
> ---
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>
> 




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