In response to several questions raised by Stephen Hughes in his post of December 24th, 2014, 11:33 pm:
1. Lemmatizing by verb-forms that do not appear in extant ancient texts: one complaint has been that contract verbs in -εω, αω, and οω are not found in Greek texts; they are used as a convenient way to indicate that these are contract-verbs of one of these three types (what about ηω verbs?). Jonathan raised the issue about whether some of the infinitives suggested as alternative listings for the contract verbs (ποιεῖν, τιμᾶν, δηλοῦν) may perhaps not appear in extant texts either — in “our corpus” (but I think we agree that “our corpus” should extend well beyond the Greek biblical text of GNT and LXX into Hellenistic Greek literature).
I'd respond: Let’s put it this way: how often do you find uncontracted verb-forms of alpha-, epsilon-, or omicron-contract verbs in your reading in the GNT or Hellenistic literature. Herodotus has things like δοκέων and ἑπιδέεται. Do you read Heraclitus’ fragments frequently? What about Pseudo-Lucian’s Syrian Goddess? It may well be that some of these infinitives aren’t found, but (a) we’re only using the first one as a lemma for a verb, and (b) as principal parts, it’s as easy to derive a tense-stem from an infinitive as from a first-singular, considering the fact that tense-stems don’t carry an augment: compare
δηλοῦν, δηλώσειν, δηλῶσαι, δεδηλωκέναι, δεδήλωσθαι, δηλωθῆναι
δηλόω, δηλώσω, ἐδήλωσα, δεδήλωκα, δεδήλωμαι, ἐδηλώθην
2. A somewhat different question is, if I read him aright, what sort of lexical information does a user of the lexical reference work want or need?
Stephen Hughes wrote:I think it depends whether you are creating a work about the language or the texts - a grammar or an index. Different information in the grammar has different value, but most of it is unmarked. I don't think it should worry you, per se, but you may like to be aware of it. My Greek is not great, but over the past 4 or 5 years, my thinking / processing needs have changed. Initially, I struggled to form or identify forms of verbs, then I was confident and reached 95+% skill in associating forms with particular verbs. Now lately in processing Greek, I'm looking for information that blanket terms based on the form like infinitive - can't give me. I want information like, that verb is used as an infinitive of purpose in such and so a construction, or with a certain verb. After the learning forms is complete, the level of desire to learn is still there, just I'm looking for "idiomatic" and syntactic information to associate with particular verbs and verb-forms.
The original topic was lemmatization: should we refer to a verb and look it up in a lexicon by the first-person singular present indicative active (or middle) — or by the present active (or middle) infinitive.
It seems to me that what Stephen is discussing is what kind of information about a verb (or other word) and how much ought to be included in a lexical entry. That’s a different question. I think that the best lexical entries are those that indicate, in one way or another, all the tense-stems and variant forms found in our literature, and that catalogue as intelligently as possible and illustrate with examples all observed usages of a verb (or other word)
3. Is it true that the contract-verbs never appear in uncontracted form?
cwconrad wrote:Of course, it never bothered us for one moment that uncontracted contract-verbs do not occur in or beyond "the corpus." We all learned ἀγαπάω and φιλέω and δηλόω -- forms that never appear!
Stephen Hughes wrote:
Could you reassert that last statement or circumlocute it please.
Well, let me just say that I learned these verbs in those first-person-singular present indicative active forms, and my guess is that most B-Greekers learned them that way. I said these were “forms that never appear” — my question would be: where have you encountered these forms apart from lemmas, lexical entries and paradigms or as reference-forms? Where have you encountered these forms in the literature you’ve read?
Stephen Hughes wrote:[I can't remember in which authours, but I think I remember encountering uncontracted forms during my (few brief) years reading classical Greek, and also short vowel omega verbs conjugated as -μι verbs in a couple of the dialects. Am I mixing up grammar books and actual texts in my memory.{/quote]
Ionic dialect uses uncontracted forms; those of us who’ve read Herodotus have seen them there — or in Heraclitus or in Ionic inscriptions. In Homer what we see is not uncontracted forms but something called “diectasis” where, for metrical reasons, a verb-form that is contracted in regular speech is re-opened or stretched out into two syllables, e.g. ὁροωσι from ὁρῶσι from an uncontracted ὁρά-ουσι. And yes, there are dialectal variants to be encountered, e.g. Ionic contraction of -εο- into -ευ- as in ποιεῦντι, or Lesbian Aeolic ποιημμι for Attic ποιέω.]
4. the form of the perfect active imperative:
Smyth §466 c. wrote:λῦσ-ον aor. act, and λῦσ-αι aor. mid. are obscure in origin.
The -σον of the sigmatic aorist active imperative seems unrelated to the -σο 2 sg. middle imperative ending (which looks, in fact, more like the secondary 2 sg. middle ending.
It looks like the “stative” imperative form cited from BibleMesh’s chart in Kraeger’s article is an artificial composition based upon perfect stem λελυ- and the aorist active imperatival ending -ον.