From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun Feb 21 1999 - 09:53:59 EST
At 8:11 AM -0600 2/21/99, Moon-Ryul Jung wrote:
>On 02/21/99, ""Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu>" wrote:
>> This is not quite an indirect question, but a sort of conflation of
>> indirect question and deliberative, I think. I've been tempted hitherto to
>> consider this a Latinism, inasmuch as it is a common Latin species of
>> purpose clause. Compare:
>>
>> Mt 8:20 = Lk 9:58 hAI ALWPEKES FWLEOUS ECOUSIN KAI TA PETEINA TOU OURANOU
>> KATASKHNWSEIS, hO DE hUIOS TOU ANQRWPOU OUC ECEI POU THN KEFALHN KLINHi.
>>
>> Lk 12:17 KAI DIELOGIZETO EN hEAUTWi LEGWN: TI POIHSW, hOTI OUK ECW POU
>> SUNAXW TOUS KARPOUS MOU.
>>
>> In Latin, these clauses may be introduced by an indefinite, an
>> interrogative word, or even a pronoun, and have verbs in the subjunctive.
>> They might have originated as independent deliberative subjunctives with
>> interrogatives, but they appear to be constructions wherein the antecedent
>> of a relative/interrogative functioning as an object in the main verb is
>> suppressed or understood. Cf. English: "I don't know where to go" = "I
>> don't know where I should go."
>But this conclusion explains better the two examples cited above than
>my example, which can be translated to "they do not have what they
>should eat". "I do not have where I should go" may be the same as
>"I do not have any place where I should go". But my example
>"they do not have what they should eat" cannot be changed to
>"they do not have anything what they should eat", which is not a
>legal sentence either in English or in Greek. So, then, the above
>conclusion makes sense only partially.
>
>Could we say, then, that both in "I do not have where I should go" and in
>"I do not have what I should eat" (I have in mind the Greek equivalents),
>"where" and "what" play the roles of the antecedents of relative clauses
> "I should go" and "I should eat", respectively? Or might we say
>that "where" and "what" are conflations of the relative pronouns and the
>antecedents??? I like the second explanation.
Yes: this latter is what I would say: "They do not have that which they
should/can eat." That will certainly do as an account of the Greek
construction. But we have to realize that our target language may have a
radically different way of expressing the same notion, so that reproducing
the original Greek expression in the target language may be misleading. In
this instance the more normal English is: "They do not have anything to
eat."--and comparably, "... has no place to; lay his head," "... have no
place to gather my crops." This is to say: it functions as a relative
purpose clause, and purpose notions come across in English best normally as
infinitives.
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/
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