So I'm minding my business and I get this phone call from a friend and fellow literature student. A good friend of mine, she tells me she's having some trouble with Ancient Greek. Her problem is that some professor mentioned the genitive absolute just in passing. She was afraid it would come up in the next test and she had no idea how it worked. I tried to explain her as best as I could what it was about, comparing with the ablative absolute in Latin. To me it appears clear from examples:
τῶν ἀνδρῶν πολεμούντων, αἱ γυναῖκες μόναι οἴκοι εἰσίν
While the men are waging war, the women are at home by themselves.
It implies two actions that are done simultaneously. It seems greeks didn't like to use coordinating words, so they came up with this kind of constructions. This is even present in such examples as the aorist participle in the words of Leonidas: Μολὼν λαβέ, "having come, take", for a simpler "Come and take them".
The thing is... how do you recognize said genitive? Well at first glance when a sentence begins with a genitive, but this is not so. The best way I could think of recognizing it is when you see an independent genitive with a participle. That to me is the best way to look at it.
But hey, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, plus eventually this didn't even come in the exam.
Bummer!
Good Lord, my whole long Post just got lost! I will restrict to being anonymous. Amateur linguist/grammarian seeing what I would have been up against had I gone into education and career in linguistics. Language background (1963-69) was Latin in junior high and German in high school (taught very well and got filled in on Latin things that weren't well-described) and summer visits to Germany. Yes, one year of Russian wherein I learned to read the alphabet and write Cyrillic cursive. Thanks for the bit on the Greek absolute constructions, having gotten here from following Ablative Absolutes from following the accusative case. (search engines are great research tools/timewasters!) I wonder what is going on in the brain of a Greek speaker that explains why it is a GENITIVE absolute rather than an ABLATIVE absolute; further research is needed to determine whether English really has a Nominative Absolute or an Objective Absolute. Lastly, I note the links to people who create/construct languages; most seem under the spell of Tolkein (I gave up on The Hobbit after 53 pages 50 years ago) and GoT (I miss because I don't watch TV, doing radio and going to concerts, plays, & opera instead); I wonder if any of them put any thought into what is actually going on in the brain. OK, I'll try to post now.
ReplyDeleteNick do you study the Greek New Testament?
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed!
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