From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Jul 23 2001 - 17:33:05 EDT
I am forwarding this message to the list on behalf of Chet Creider:
>> > In Luke 612b, how ought we to understand the genitive
>> > TOU QEOU?
>> >
>> > KAI HN DIANUKTEREUWN EN TH PROSEUCH TOU QEOU
>> > This doesn't really fit any category I've learned,
>> > unless Luke is making a very lofty christological
>> > statement here that the prayer of Jesus is the "prayer
>> > of God."
>> >
>> > Ken Litwak
>>
>
>I think it is a mistake to look for the kind of genitive this is because
>what is involved is essentially a nearly-pure grammatical process: the
>association of the arguments of a verb with a noun when the verb has been
>nominalised. Many languages use the genitive case to make this association,
>and one often finds the kind of potential for ambiguity that one sees here
>(if one were dealing with a verb, PROSECOMAI, would TOU QEOU be the subject
>or the object or the indirect object?). The most extreme example of this
>kind of ambiguity that I am familiar occurs in Quechua, in which relative
>clauses are formed by nominalisation. For example,
>(1) hamu-sqa-yki runa-ta riqsi-ni
> come-nom-2s man-acc know-1s (nom=nominalising suffix, acc=accusative)
>which can mean (at least): I know the man who you came with, I know the man
>on whose account you came, I know the man from whom you came, I know the man
>to whom you came.
>
>(None of this ambiguity is present when the relative clause is a full
>sentence:
>(2) qam runa-wan hamu-nki you are coming with the man
> you man-with come-2s
>
>(3) qam runa-paq hamu-nki you are coming on behalf of the man
>(4) qam runa-manta hamu-nki you are coming from the man
>(5) qam runa-man hamu-nki you are coming to the man)
>
>We can now see _why_ this loss of information occurs: the suffixal position
>that in (2)-(5) is used to express the variety of case relations seen is
>taken up by the accusative case suffix -ta in (1). Similarly in the Greek
>example, the dative that would normally occur with the participant prayed
>to, cannot occur because the genitive case occurs in its stead.
>
>The solution for the translator, as Iver has shown, is to "denominalise"
>the nominal phrase and in the context of the result verbal expression
>note the kind of semantic relation found between the verb and the
>participant. Then try to find the appropriate English (or other target
>language) translation to express this relation. In this case, "to God"
>does the job.
>
>Chet Creider
---
B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [jwrobie@mindspring.com]
To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu
To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:02 EDT