What is a "Genitive of Location"?

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Stephen Hughes
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Re: What is a "Genitive of Location"?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:Or is that just a quibble?
"Quibbling" is what the dull-witted call the inquiries of a keen and cultivated mind, expressive in its variegation.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
cwconrad
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Re: What is a "Genitive of Location"?

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
cwconrad wrote:Or is that just a quibble?
"Quibbling" is what the dull-witted call the inquiries of a keen and cultivated mind, expressive in its variegation.
Stephen Carlson spoke of "splitters" and "lumpers." I have leaned in both directions; Aristotle asserts that the μεσότης is relative to each individual; I've often been fearful that my attempts at Horatian aurea mediocritas have been mediocre rather than golden.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stirling Bartholomew
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Re: What is a "Genitive of Location"?

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

A few days ago I was reading Bentley Layton's description of direct object and "possessive" marking in Sahidic Coptic. He described the "possessive" as indicating some vague undefined relationship between the constituents involved. This reminded me of Carl's comments about the abdominal genitive. This isn't the same as lumping semantic roles. It is a different approach.

Bentley Layton, Coptic 20 Lessons, page #29 page 20, page 60, note 12.
C. Stirling Bartholomew
cwconrad
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Re: What is a "Genitive of Location"?

Post by cwconrad »

Stirling Bartholomew wrote:A few days ago I was reading Bentley Layton's description of direct object and "possessive" marking in Sahidic Coptic. He described the "possessive" as indicating some vague undefined relationship between the constituents involved. This reminded me of Carl's comments about the abdominal genitive. This isn't the same as lumping semantic roles. It is a different approach.

Bentley Layton, Coptic 20 Lessons, page #29 page 20, page 60, note 12.
I will have to check back, but I honestly thought I had referred to the "adnominal" genitive rather than to the "abdominal" genitive. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the new designation. Now in addition to GGBB's "aporetic" genitive (a.k.a. "the genitive of the unresolved question") we now have also the "abdominal genitive" (a.k.a. "the genitive about which one has a gut feeling").

To be perfectly honest, however, my guess is that Stirling actually typed "adnominal" and the automatic spell-checker "corrected" the mistaken adjective and altered it to "abdominal." We must be grateful to "the ghost in the machine."
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stirling Bartholomew
Posts: 1141
Joined: August 9th, 2012, 4:19 pm

Re: What is a "Genitive of Location"?

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

Re: Syntactical categories and meaning
Postby Bob Nyberg » August 23rd, 2011, 10:08 am

The school at which I teach offers a course in linguistics. Those in the linguistics department often refer to two types of linguists: 1) splitters and 2) lumpers.

I see Wallace as being "a splitter."

I guess from a linguistic standpoint having a gazillion categories on different parts of speech might be helpful. But I really wonder if people are actually thinking in terms of those categories when they speak/write. :D

Bob
Lumper: S. E. Porter. Splitter: D. Wallace. D. A. Carson somewhere in the middle.

A different approach:
The adnominal genitive merely predicates that there is a meaningful relation between the (pro)noun in the genitive and the head nominal. It is up to the addressee to infer the nature of that relation in the context of the utterance. When New Testament writers want to increase the level of explication, they may choose and indeed do choose more specific morphosyntactic devices. Compare the more explicit tēn ek theou dikaiōsunēn,“the righteousness from God” in Philippians 3:9a containing the source preposition ek with the more implicit adnominal genitive in Romans1:17, dikaiōsunē theou, “righteousness of God.”[1]
RE:Sahidic Coptic ownership/possession marking: In my previous post I cited Bently Layton in support of this approach. Meanwhile I found more detailed discussion of ownership/possession marking in Sahidic Coptic[2]. The treatment is focused primarily on syntax not semantics.

[1] Biblical Scholars, Translators and Bible Translations, Lourens de Vries, S&I 2, no. 2 (2008): 141-159

[2] Haspelmath, Martin. 2014. The three adnominal possessive constructions in Egyptian-
Coptic: Three degrees of grammaticalization. https://www.academia.edu/4956267/The_th ... _in_Coptic
See the bibliography for a multitude of articles on possessive constructions.
C. Stirling Bartholomew
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