Re: Is there an intelligible Doctrine of the Koine Subjunctive?

Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Wed, 15 Oct 1997 11:05:51 -0500

At 12:48 PM -0500 10/15/97, Eric Weiss wrote:
>For what it's worth. I happened to have this typed already from a letter
>to a friend, so I didn't go to a lot of trouble to do this. Hopefully it
>doesn't just muddy the waters or give you superfluous information. It's
>from a grammar few people have, so it may be useful:
>
>The following is from Vine's "You can learn New Testament Greek":

I have read it but won't RE-cite it (I will note that excessive citation of
earlier posts in responses and threads was one of the major peeves noted on
the surveys).

I think it is a generally fair statement of some major subjunctive uses.
However, I didn't see mentioned anywhere there the by-no-means uncommon
category of noun clauses constituted by hINA + subjunctive, and it also
appeared to me that this was more like a laundry catalogue of ways in which
the subjunctive is used rather than what I'm calling a "Doctrine" of the
subjunctive that would somehow relate to each other the various usages.
Perhaps it is futile to talk about a "doctrine" of the subjunctive, but I
really would like to have something more than a laundry list of subjunctive
uses. I mean no disrespect here--for me it is a very serious question
(chalk it up to a Teutonic passion for Grundsaetzen and the like).

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/