Accusative of respect?

Greek Learning Greek
1

M 25.I.10

…των δε δυο υεων εκατερος εκατερον πολλα κακα λεγει…
The answer key gives …each of his two sons says bad things about the other…
Q: is εκατερον the accusative of respect being translated as “about”, or how did “about”, well… come about? :slight_smile:

M page 142 d. ..“the accusative of respect is used to express the thing in respect to which , a verb phrase denoting a state is applicable”. “πολλα κακα λεγει” doesn’t look to me as a verb phrase denoting a state, or is it?

Thanks to all.

2

The construction is κακὰ λέγειν + acc.=to speak ill about someone.

LSJ has:

“λέγειν τινά τι say something of another, esp. κακὰ λ. τινά speak ill of him, revile him, Hdt. 8.61; ἀγαθὰ λ. τινάς Ar. Ec. 435; τὰ ἔσχατα, τὰ ἀπόρρητα λ. ἀλλήλους, X. Mem. 2.2.9, D. 18.123; also εὖ or κακῶς λ. τινά, A. Ag. 445 (lyr.), S. El. 524, cf. 1028; εὖ λ. τὸν εὖ λέγοντα X. Mem. 2.3.8.”


http://discourse.textkit.com/t/trouble-with-one-word-in-a-passage/17515/1

3

πολλα κακα is an “internal” accusative (the many bad things are contained within the verb itself), εκατερον is an “external” accusative aka the direct object—the person who is directly affected by the action of the verb.
The examples in LSJ illustrate the usage.
Again, you can’t go by a translation, you have to come to terms with the syntax of the Greek.

4
5

I am not sure I understand what you mean but if you read the previous thread you will see that as usual Greek and English express the same idea in different ways. You have to get out of the habit of trying to literally read across from one language to another.

6

Yes, you and others (including mwh) are trying to drum that in my head. I’m trying hard!

But that’s difficult: at this stage of my study. I have no way of getting an idea of what the Greek means other than by first “translating” mentally to myself each word separately and its case, gender, number, tense, voice, etc. Most of the times that works quite well, but in many cases, understanding something different from such “translation” I think requires a lot more knowledge than what I have acquired so far.

Anyway, please don’t give up on me… :slight_smile:

7

It’s good practice (essential) to identify the grammatical form of the words in a sentence you are reading. Your mistake is to translate them. After identifying the grammatical forms try to understand the constructions that are being used. Do all of this without translating anything.The problem with translating in your head as you go is that inevitably you want to fit the Greek to your mental picture of what you think it means in English. The rush to translate is the cause of most of the problems you are facing. (And you are not alone!).

Translation into English is the last step to be taken and only when you have understood the Greek. :smiley:

8

OK, but how can I understand the Greek without first knowing what the Greek words mean in English? It’s Greek to me! :slight_smile:
No matter what, when I don’t know what a word means, I have to look it up in some Greek to English lexicon. Once I know that I can try to figure out what the Greek sentence really means and express it in meaningful English. But for example, I would not know where to look to find that “κακὰ λέγειν + acc.=to speak ill about someone.” I certainly can’t find that in M.

Thanks again for your patience.

9

I think Seneca is saying to go through and mark things as verb, subject, accusative, participle, infinitive, indirect speech, etc. As one who also is struggling with Greek, it is not easy, but his process helps.

10

Yes you should be able to follow the syntax without knowing the meaning of a single word of Greek!