Partitive constructions with ἐκ and ἀπό fall into two general types: entity partitives and set partitives.
Types of ἐκ and ἀπό constructions: Partitive
Types of ἐκ and ἀπό constructions: Origin
Yesterday, we examined SOURCE expressions with ἐκ and ἀπό . Today, we are examining ORIGINS. The Greek Prepositions Workshop is next week. Following Luraghi (2003), we take origins as being an abstraction of the source. Prototypically, origins still involve a physical landmark and a physical trajector. There is no motion, however, only an “abstract notion of providence”... Continue Reading →
Types of ἐκ and ἀπό constructions: Source
These are the usages most closely tied to our embodied experience in physical space. Prototypically source constructions also express motion, but this is not a requirement for the schema. καὶ ἀπῆρεν ἀπὸ Ἀντιοχίας, ἀπὸ πόλεως βασιλείας αὐτοῦ And he departed from Antioch, from the capital of his kingdom (1 Macc 11:49). Σπεῦσον καὶ ἔξελθε ἐν... Continue Reading →
Genitives and 2nd position adjectives
This is another question that was asked online (this time New Testament Greek Club) that would be difficult to answer without treebanks. Can a phrase with an adjective in second attributive position be broken up by a genitive? Luke 23:35 reads: εἰ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ χριστὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ὁ ἐκλεκτός. Can this be, "if he is... Continue Reading →
Typology, perfects, telicity, and definiteness
Dahl (1985, 138; 2000, 9-10) describes to a hierarchy of usage for perfects across languages. The hierarchy lays out how a perfect is used in terms of its progress along the path of grammaticalization to being a simple past perfective form. An indefinite* time-point in the past < A time-point located by an overtly marked temporal... Continue Reading →
Prepositional phrases with indefinite NP’s
The question was asked on Facebook about what principles might motivate the occurrence of indefinite noun phrases to take prepositional phrases. It's a good question. Prepositions phrases tend be restrictive when they occur in noun phrases just like other NP modifiers. But they certainly can still be descriptive, too. I ran a quick and dirty... Continue Reading →
ἐκ and ἀπό notes: types of sources
Both the Source (material) & Source (reflexive) senses involve an an element of identification of the TR with the LM.
There is a lot of significant work on Ancient Greek that came out in the 19th century. Some of it was by native Greek speakers. The challenge is that during that period, the politics of language in Greece was a source of constant debate and argument. Many times the ancient language was used as a... Continue Reading →
Langacker on learning the meaning of words.
"For illustrative purposes, let us sketch a plausible (though simplistic) scenario for the evolution of a complex category. Consider a child in the process of learning the various senses (conventional usages) of the word tree, and suppose the term is first applied, in his early experience, to such ordinary specimens as oaks, maples, and elms.... Continue Reading →
