From: Edward Hobbs (EHOBBS@wellesley.edu)
Date: Mon Jan 22 1996 - 10:15:56 EST
From: LUCY::EHOBBS "Edward Hobbs" 22-JAN-1996 10:13:49.95
To: IN%"kenneth@sybase.com"
CC: EHOBBS
Subj: RE: Identifying grammatical meaning of cases
Ken Litwak's inquiry: Identifying grammatical meaning of cases
" I've been prepping for my doctoral Greek exam, which includes
questions like "What kind of genitive appears in the construction?",
or so I'm told. In reading through grammars I have, I'm confronted with
multiple, disparrate systems of identification, and I'm unsure as to which
one to use, i.e., which one is more likely to be recognized as
"standard" or at least known to most NT scholars. On the one hand,,
there's a pretty minimalist set of choices discussed in Porter's Idiom
book. In the middle I think is Dana and Mantey, which I first leraned
this stuff from, and then on the other end it seems, though I've only
owned it about a day, is Brooks and Winbery which seems to mzke many fine
distinctions about what a given case grammaticalizes. I'm certainly not
trying to critique the latter. I did after all buy it on purpose.
Still, I don't know which of these systems or perhaps that of BDF or whoemever
to use. I'd hate to miss a question by referring to a dative of advantage if the
examiner has never heard of that. "
My advice on this is the same as it has always been on these
questions: ASK YOUR EXAMINERS! Candidates who do not talk -- frequently -
with their teachers and advisors and examiners deserve any problems they
run into as a result. You are paying tuition to get tuition; so ask for it
or you won't get what you are paying for.
Additionally, since for 19 years I was chief Greek examiner at the
GTU (albeit that ended when I came to Harvard and Wellesley 15 years ago),
I can say that we never asked that type of question, which is more of a
quiz on what textbook you used than anything else. If they DO ask
questions like that now, either (a) they have some system in mind, which
they will be happy to tell you, or (b) they don't, in which case they will
surely understand whatever system you are using. (If they don't, they
shouldn't be examining in Greek.)
Edward Hobbs
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