Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 27/08/2004 07:25, C. Stirling Bartholomew wrote:

> Waltke/O'Connor seem a little embarrassed about proceeding to level of
> semantic classification for the Genitive which they call "a traditional
> classification of species" (Waltke/O'Connor BH Syntax 9.4.b p141). But they
> go ahead and do it even though you get the feeling that they know better.
>
> The move from syntax categories like adnominal genitives to semantic
> categories like genitive of authorship (9.5.1.c) is precisely the kind of
> move that has in the last decade produced several Greek grammars of dubious
> merit.
>
> D.Blakemore* at the end of her chapter on "Enrichment" raises the issue of
> the semantic properties of the genitive in a way which suggests that what
> Waltke/O'Connor call "a traditional classification of species" is in fact
> something to be embarrassed about.
>  

Genitive as a syntactic and especially morphological category is clearly 
defined, at least in Greek and many other languages. There doesn't seem 
to be a true morphological genitive in biblical Hebrew (although there 
may have been in earlier stages of the language), but the construct 
relationship is syntactically analogous to a genitive relationship 
between noun phrases, as are the English possessive constructions with 
's and of.

The embarrassment comes when people try to treat the genitive as a 
semantic category. This simply doesn't work, especially 
cross-linguistically. There are many different semantic relationships 
which can be expressed by a syntactic genitive (or construct or 
possessive) relationship, but there is no consistency from language to 
language on exactly what can be expressed in this way.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/