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Re: EN + dative in Eph 5:18



Placet! Students often forget--including this writer--that the taxonomy
of linguistic pheomena is imposed by shcolars. But language does not
fit so neatly into our categories.


I have learned much about English from international students and the
questions they ask:


What is the difference between drinking something up and drinking it
down [since up and down are are opposites]?


Why is English so impolite? The sign says "Park," giving an order. But
I don't want to park.


I find the taxonomy of adverbial participles in ancient Greek a good
example of this. "Attendant circumstance" really is a wastebasket for
all uses of the participle that cannot be otherwise accounted for.
[Rcall that Winston Churchill is supposed to have said that the rule
never to end a sentence with a preposition was "a silly rule, with with
which he would not put."]


Oh well. Incipient Old Age may make onw a curmudgeon, also in
<italic>res grammaticae</italic>.


>How about theory vs. practice?  While grammar can be taken to very

>strict limits with rules an theories, often its implementation at the

>user level is less accurately implemented than what we learn from our

>text books.  I have encountered this many times as military field

>linguist.  For those who are students and professors of Greek,
continue

>the good job with these discussions, but don't forget that human

>language is not rigid, but flexible.  We do not with absolutes all
the

>time, but probablies, and possiblies, etc.

>

>Larry A. Hartman

>Defense Language Institute Alumnus

>Department of Arabic Studies



Edgar Krentz, Prof. of New Testament

Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

1100 EAST 55TH STREET

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Tel: [773] 256-0752; (H) [773] 947-8105 


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