Re: CHAT Stambul (was: A new version of Genesis)

On Wednesday, June 16, 2004, at 01:59 , John Cowan wrote:

> Ray Brown scripsit:
>
>>> I don't question the "City" part of the story, I question the
>>> preposition "in".  I could easily see "The City" becoming analyzed as a
>>> name, but the incorporation of a preposition seems a bit far-fetched to
>>> me.
>
> Is it not in fact "[in]to the City"?  I have no Greek, but "polein"
> looks accusative to me.
No. We're talking about colloquial Greek of the Byzantine period, not
ancient Greek of Athens in the 5th cent BCE. By the time the Turks bumped
into (and conquered) the Greeks, the dative case had gone except in
liturgical language and the artificial Atticizing Greek of the Byzantine
bureaucracy. _All_ prepositions take the accusative case, whether they
indicate motion or not. In modern Greek 'stin poli' (standard: [stim'boli]
  northern [stm=bol] may mean either 'to the city' or 'in the city'
according to context.

*polein BTW ain't Greek. The accusative in Attic (when |i| and |ei| had
different sounds) was _polin_; other accusative forms attested in ancient
dialects are _ptolin_ and _pole:a_. The modern accusative is _poli_ (or
_polin_ in Katherevousa).

Ray
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