[b-greek] Re: Grammatical categories and Luke 6:12b

From: Jonathan Robie (Jonathan.Robie@SoftwareAG-USA.com)
Date: Fri Jul 27 2001 - 10:04:10 EDT


<x-flowed>
At 08:44 PM 7/26/2001 -0600, Wayne Leman wrote:
> > > > Dear B-greekers,
> > > >
> > > > On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:56:45 -0400 Jonathan Robie writes:
> > > > > Here's a traditional example from Chomsky:
> > > > >
> > > > > Time flies like an arrow.
> > > > > Fruit flies like a banana.
> > >
> >
> > > > The first sentence of course means that those sorts of flies which
> > > > feed on time also favor arrows because, like time, they are swift.
> > > > The second one means this: All fruits navigate the air in pretty
> > > > much the same way. So naturally fruit in general will navigate the
> > > > air in much the same way as any particular fruit, say a banana.
> > > >
> > > > Did I get it right? ;-)
> > >
> > Not quite, but this only shows that writing is not an entirely
> > satisfactory representation of speech. You evidently heard them
> > mentally with the wrong tunes. [ ;-0 ]
> >
> >
> > Barbara D. Colt, mailto:babc@ix.netcom.com
> > St John the Evangelist, San Francisco
>
>But, but, Barbara, we all know we can sing the same hymn to more than one
>tune, or maybe that's precisely your point. Actually, Paul's explanation of
>the meaning of those two sentences was rather clever, and I suspect by your
>"Not quite" that you thought so, too. It sure wasn't the way I learned to
>interpret those sentences in my linguistics classes, but then we weren't
>always as clever as Paul! (If anyone objects that this message is not about
>Greek, you can take "Paul" to be an unclear referent!)

Actually, Paul's explanation of the meaning of those sentences is not only
clever, it would be considered brilliant hermeneutics by many if these were
passages out of the Greek New Testament. His message reminds me of several
sermons I have heard.


Jonathan Robie
jwrobie@mindspring.com

"I'm no authority on biblical languages, but I run some authoritative
mailing lists..."
B-Greek (http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek)
B-Hebrew (http://metalab.unc.edu/bhebrew)
Little Greek (http://metalab.unc.edu/koine)
Little Greek 101 (http://metalab.unc.edu/koine/greek/lessons)


---
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


</x-flowed>



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:02 EDT