21st Century Greek -- gerundives plus?

So you can call this post “gerundives plus or not.” From the 2019 grammar of Greek, it turns out that what used to be called the genitive absolute is just another one of those labels that covers up thinking in Grenglish.

For centuries, students of Greek have been taught that participles in Greek work like participles in English (or whatever the native language is) and, if they are in a phrase or clause, they should have a reference to their antecedent in the phrase or clause, or they should match it in case as well as number and gender. Cases where this doesn’t happen get a new label, “absolute”. That is the essence of teaching Grenglish. English does not have case markers; case is periphrastic and uses prepositions most of the time. Greek does have cases and uses them as it will. You simply cannot tell an educated author writing in his own first language “you can’t do that” just because that’s not how you do things in your language (which didn’t exist at the time he wrote).

So for genitive absolute, the book’s example is Xenophon Hellenica 7.5.20 BUT IT IS EXCERPTED. Here is the full section.

καὶ γὰρ ὅτε τὸ τελευταῖον παρήγγειλεν αὐτοῖς παρασκευάζεσθαι ὡς μάχης ἐσομένης, προθύμως μὲν ἐλευκοῦντο οἱ ἱππεῖς τὰ κράνη κελεύοντος ἐκείνου, ἐπεγράφοντο δὲ καὶ οἱ τῶν Ἀρκάδων ὁπλῖται ῥόπαλα, ὡς Θηβαῖοι ὄντες, πάντες δὲ ἠκονῶντο καὶ λόγχας καὶ μαχαίρας καὶ ἐλαμπρύνοντο τὰς ἀσπίδας.

This is not a genuine absolute. It has a pronoun, ekeinou. The antecedent of ekeinou is the commander; the personal gerundive keleuontos is the verb for the clause. You have to go back to 5.19 to find out who the commander is. What does this remind you of, class? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? Yes, the fact that verb conjugation does not incorporate timing, you have to find it periphrastically expressed in the surrounding context, which means you may have to go outside subsection 20 to find it. Likewise in Greek antecedents of personal gerundives may have to be understood from the surrounding context.

Now let’s go back to our old standby, Thucydides 1.1.1:

Θουκυδίδης Ἀθηναῖος ξυνέγραψε τὸν πόλεμον τῶν Πελοποννησίων καὶ Ἀθηναίων, ὡς ἐπολέμησαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ἀρξάμενος εὐθὺς καθισταμένου καὶ ἐλπίσας μέγαν τε ἔσεσθαι καὶ ἀξιολογώτατον τῶν προγεγενημένων, τεκμαιρόμενος ὅτι ἀκμάζοντές τε ᾖσαν ἐς αὐτὸν ἀμφότεροι παρασκευῇ τῇ πάσῃ καὶ τὸ ἄλλο Ἑλληνικὸν ὁρῶν ξυνιστάμενον πρὸς ἑκατέρους, τὸ μὲν εὐθύς, τὸ δὲ καὶ διανοούμενον.

What is the antecedent of kathistamenou, which is in the “genitive”? it isn’t named in that phrase, is it? And kathistamenou is not the same case as ton polemon, its antecedent. That should make this a genitive absolute. But it’s actually more like an ablative, “from the establishment” of the war. So is the phrase in Xenophon: “from his order.”

This is what Wegener calls the instrumental/ablative case in Hurrian: “out of some cause”. Smyth already tells us that there is a genitive of cause. But just because participles do it, they have to be dressed up in a new label. We aren’t going there. It’s like a ring in mathematics: we don’t change the name “ring” just because one example of a ring has real or imaginary numbers, while another has terms of polynomials, derivatives or integrals, or matrices.

Personal gerundives operate as adjectives or substantives, and whatever applies to case with adjectives or substantives, applies to personal gerundives being used in those ways. Discuss the case and you have discussed everything that can take that case. Making up new labels and expecting learners to memorize them is a waste of the learners’ time.

So now let’s look at the accusative absolute. Smyth and the 2019 book both say that an accusative participle is used with impersonal verbal expressions. Russian does this with the dative: mnye kholodno, “I’m cold.” (If you said ya kholod you are equating yourself with the abstract noun cold.)

A little trip into linguistic evolution. There once was a little case called the allative, for motion to or toward something. In some languages, it no longer has its own morphology; it morphs like the dative. As in Russian. But in others, it morphs like the accusative. And indeed I found more than one source that equates the accusative and allative.

So we don’t have an accusative absolute. We have a personal gerundive in the -ous case, in a language that no longer has an allative, used with an impersonal verbal expression.

Neither Smyth nor the 2019 book discuss dative absolute, but some older works believe it’s a thing. If you see a personal gerundive in the -ois case without a nearby antecedent, don’t call it an absolute. Look up the normal uses of the -ois case, including agency of an inanimate object.

And that gets rid of like 10 pages in Smyth that try to pretend personal gerundives work differently than the adjectives or substantives they function like.

So there still is no grammar book on Classical Greek that does not teach Grenglish, or that takes other languages into consideration. Not in all the 800 years since English became the language of officialdom in the UK. Not in the 100 years since Smyth. Greek scholars are still wearing blinders.

And this really is my last post on this thread. If it’s new to you, go to pajheil/blogspot. If you use your mobile, go to the bottom of the page for the website version. I’ve been blogging since the middle of 2013 and there’s tons of stuff out there. Knock yourself out.