Absolute genitive: here is what my Gramcord says...

From: Jonathan Robie (jwrobie@mindspring.com)
Date: Fri Nov 01 1996 - 20:27:11 EST

Hi, Carl,

I wanted to try out your heuristic, so I tried a couple of Gramcord
searches. In each case, I tried for genitive particibles in conjunction with
their subject. I'm not sure if the search I'm using is any good, but they
don't require a driver's license to use Gramcord, so here's what I came up with

1. Genitive Particible followed by genitive pronoun or noun within the same
clause, with agreement in case, number, and gender: 335 hits

Most of these looked like real genitive absolutes.

2. The same with the particible *after* the subject: 300 hits

Here are some examples of the second case. Are these absolute genitives?
Some of them seem to be, but there are lots of things that don't. I've
marked the relevant clauses with "**":

Matt 1:20 (GNT) ** tauta de autou enqumhqentos ** idou aggelos kuriou kat
onar efanh autw legwn: Iwshf uios Dauid, mh fobhqhs paralabein Marian thn
gunaika sou: to gar en auth gennhqen ek pneumatos estin agiou. <-- I think
this is genitive absolute, right? It does seem to occur both ways.

Matt 3:3 (GNT) outos gar estin o rhqeis ** dia Hsaiou tou profhtou legontos
**: fwnh bowntos en th erhmw: etoimasate thn odon kuriou, euqeias poieite
tas tribous autou. <-- I don't think this is genitive absolute, is it? I
think Hsaiou is genitive because of dia.

A fair number of the examples for this search seemed to be of the form "dia
X ... legontos" or similar forms. There were other forms which seem to have
nothing to do with genitive absolute, e.g.

Matt 26:63 (GNT) o de Ihsous esiwpa. kai o arciereus eipen autw: exorkizw se
** kata tou qeou tou zwntos ** ina hmin eiphs ei su ei o cristos o uios tou

Matt 13:19 (GNT) ** pantos akouontos ton logon ths basileias kai mh
sunientos ** ercetai o ponhros kai arpazei to esparmenon en th kardia autou,
outos estin o para thn odon spareis. <-- looks like a genitive absolute, right?

This is fun! I think that using Gramcord together with the intermediate
grammars may help me to learn to identify these forms.


Jonathan Robie
POET Software, 3207 Gibson Road, Durham, N.C.
Ph: 919.598.5728 Fax: 919.598.6728
email: jwrobie@mindspring.com, jonathan@poet.com
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