From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Jul 23 2001 - 06:27:08 EDT
You can be whatever you want to be, Ken, but I don't think you've
understood the point that Iver and I have both been making in fact: that
the categories--the parent category of "objective genitive" as well as the
sub-category which he facetiously coined ("indirect objective
genitive"--which term he recommended ONLY for those people who "cannot
sleep before they get a name for this") are really pretty phony to begin
with. Such categories have been invented NOT to explain the Greek
construction but to help translators into modern languages adapt their
understanding of the Greek to the target language's supposed grammatical
categories. In the Greek text in question QEOU is simply an adnominal
genitive: a genitive-case-form dependent upon the noun PROSEUCH. The proper
Englishing of that phrase is "prayer to God."
At 10:47 PM -0700 7/22/01, Kenneth Litwak wrote:
> I don't wish to be disingenuous, Carl, but I'm
>going to push this a little further, and especially
>disagree with Iver's "indirect objective genitive."
>He's doing essentially what Wallace seems to be doing:
> the rules don't fit so I'll call it an exceptional
>case because I can't otherwise explain it. So Iver
>wants to invent a new category of objective genitive
>to cover this exception. In calling a case that does
>not follow the rules of objective genitives an
>"objective genitive," indirect, direct or whatever,
>does that not dilute the value of having a category
>called the "objective genitive"? The whole point of
>being able to call something, say, a dative of means,
>is to provide a lable for a known phenomenon that
>follows certain rules, e.g., dative case noun/subst.
>adj which seems to specify the means by which an
>action is done. I'm not in favor of inventing
>categories just to cover exceptions, but it is not
>valid IMHO to force a construct which violates the
>rules for a known category into that category. This
>suggests to me that we have not in fact understood the
>original writer corectly and perhaps our view of the
>genitive case is defective.
>
> If I may use an analogy, I teach computer
>programming, and under certain conditions, students
>regularly receive what appears to be a security error.
> That is in fact not what it is and I explain that to
>them. If they leave the class thinking that they got
>a security exception because the wording of the eror
>message seems to suggest that, they are wrong. It's
>not a special kind of security error. it is not a
>security error at all but an error in the software
>that causes an anomolous condition that has nothing to
>do with security. They should not call it a security
>error if itis in fact not that, and it would not be
>valid to try to force it under that heading for want
>of a convenient category for such anomolous
>conditions. Thanks.
>
>
>Ken Litwak
>
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--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad@ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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