I realise that this is obscure, but anyway, here is a question for anyone fielding at deep fine leg.
How is the locative of persons used in other IE languages?
The basic information I have on locatives at present is Moule Idiom chapter VI . This is a specific question not directly related to NT usage, but might serve as a comparision to claims made about the usability of datives of persons as locatives, seeing that considerable doctrinal claims are based on such an assumption.
I tinkered with Baltic and Slavonic language for a while before doing a little Sanskrit. I remember the locative, but I can't remember ever seeing a locative of a person in that time except in declension tables.
It is logical, to me, that the locative be used of a place that people would readily assume things are in such as
'The children are reading at home." However, to me, it is linguistically illogical to talk about the locative with a person in the same sense.
The first-thought answer that I expect to get to this question is that it either does exist and is used in something like; "Where is the steak? It is in the dog." But here the sense means that it is in the dog's stomach, which (stomach) of course is a receptacle capable of having things in it. My second thought is that the person is the locus around which things happen, and the actions are such that they do not move far from the locus of action, such as what the ablative (in an earlier time and ablative genitive in the NT era) would express, or move to such as what the accusative would might express.
Has anyone read about such an investigation into the dative with persons?
The locative in other languages
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The locative in other languages
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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Re: The locative in other languages
There is something in Greek that some grammarians call a "dative of sphere," which is sort of like a person's sphere of interest or influence, sitting somewhere between a locative dative and a dative of interest. Perhaps the best way to deal with cases and prepositions is to draw up a semantic map of the various functions. I think that Silvia Luraghi may have done something like this; it's been a little while since I've read it.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne, Australia