Why are there 6 principal parts instead of only 5?

MAubrey
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Re: Why are there 6 principal parts instead of only 5?

Post by MAubrey »

My mistake, Stephen, I wrote my post about an hour after I had initially read the thread and mixed up what the initial discussion was.
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: Why are there 6 principal parts instead of only 5?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

MAubrey wrote:My mistake, Stephen, I wrote my post about an hour after I had initially read the thread and mixed up what the initial discussion was.
As you can tell, I got mixed up too.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: Why are there 6 principal parts instead of only 5?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I've been poking around into the history of principal parts, and I am wishing for a good monograph on the topic. At the moment, it appears to me that their use in Greek pedagogy goes back to the Renaissance (though with more than our 6) and seem to be modeled on the role of principal parts in Latin.

The ancient grammarians did have a notion of conjugation, which is still used in Latin pedagogy today, but not so much with Greek any longer, as least in my experience. I wonder why that is so.
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RandallButh
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Re: Why are there 6 principal parts instead of only 5?

Post by RandallButh »

The ancient grammarians did have a notion of conjugation, which is still used in Latin pedagogy today, but not so much with Greek any longer, as least in my experience. I wonder why that is so.
I'm not sure I understand you here, what are you saying?
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Re: Why are there 6 principal parts instead of only 5?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

RandallButh wrote:
The ancient grammarians did have a notion of conjugation, which is still used in Latin pedagogy today, but not so much with Greek any longer, as least in my experience. I wonder why that is so.
I'm not sure I understand you here, what are you saying?
See Dionysius Thrax §§ 16-18:

§ 16 There are six barytone conjugations, for λείβω, λέγω, ᾄδω, φράζω, πάλλω, ϊππεύω, respectively, and perhaps a seventh for ἀλέξω.

§ 17 There are three circumflexed conjugations, for νοεῖ, βοᾷ, χρυσοῖ, respectively.

§ 18 There are four μι conjugations, for τίθημι, ἵστημι, δίδωμι, πήγνυμι, respectively.

Maybe having 13 or 14 different conjugations was too much for students?

Latin has four conjugations: I for -are, II for long -ere, III for short -ere, and IV for -ire. Principal parts are mostly needed for the III conjugation.
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cwconrad
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Re: Why are there 6 principal parts instead of only 5?

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Carlson wrote:Latin has four conjugations: I for -are, II for long -ere, III for short -ere, and IV for -ire. Principal parts are mostly needed for the III conjugation.
Latin conjugations are categorized in terms of the forms of infinitives. As Stephen notes, the principal parts are mostly needed for the third conjugation. But the third conjugation includes two kinds of verbs that have the short-e infinitive for different reasons. On the one hand there are the thematic verbs like duco/ducere and cedo/cedere, where the -e- is the thematic linking vowel; on the other there are the short-i verbs like capio/capere and pario/parere.,where the -e- is the short -i- changing to -e- before the -r-. So one needs to know both of the first two principal parts of a third-conjugation verb to form the present or future indicative.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
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Alan Bunning
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Re: Good enough (and a game for learning principal parts)

Post by Alan Bunning »

Wes Wood wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:But what will you be teaching?
This is a good question, though forgive me for being off topic. Alan, I am also curious about what you are intending/wanting/thinking about doing and what your motives are for desiring to do so. You seem to have no qualms denigrating a system that has at the very least been up to the task of leading others to proficiency, so I suppose that is a partial reason.
Yes, I was also taught that same system and am thankful for it, but have also come to realize its many deficiencies by reading this very forum. For example, I learned from Randall Buth that the educational establishment is not teaching the correct pronunciation of the original Greek language, and that was just one of many things I have learned here. So instead of perpetuating flawed systems of Middle Ages Greek, I am willing to move forward. Most of these things have been beaten to death before, so I am not trying to open a new can of worms here, nor do I expect the educational establishment to change.

To answer your question about what I am doing, I have gone ahead and posted information about my project under the Projects category and a link to a pdf file of the overview is available in that post. For now, I have released a beta version of a website which contains transcriptions of all extant Greek manuscripts containing portions of the New Testament up to the terminus ad quem of 400 AD. Right now, I am producing a New Testament Greek Reference Guide and preparing to parse all of those texts, and as part of that I am working on a program as described in a post below.
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Re: Why are there 6 principal parts instead of only 5?

Post by Alan Bunning »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
Alan Bunning wrote:Who said anything about getting rid of principal parts? I am just wondering if I can get by with 5 instead of 6.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by "get by." If you want to compose Greek and generate any conjugated forms, you're probably going to need all six and then be aware for the exceptions. If it's just reading Greek, then it might be possible to "get away" with just 1, 3, and 6, as long as you're willing to look up strange futures and perfects if you can't discern the root.
Well actually, I have written a computer program that does generate all conjugated forms. The program has been taught the normal rules of augmentation, reduplication, lengthening, and contractions and then is given a list of all principal parts that are irregular. I used this program to check if the parsings assigned to the words were correct and to flag any resulting word that does not match. It was only after the program was working quite well, that I noticed that the 5th principal part seemed to be redundant which thus led to this discussion. However, it only uses the words that exist in the New Testament, which is why I have asked for other examples.

Alan Bunning
RandallButh
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Re: Why are there 6 principal parts instead of only 5?

Post by RandallButh »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
The ancient grammarians did have a notion of conjugation, which is still used in Latin pedagogy today, but not so much with Greek any longer, as least in my experience. I wonder why that is so.
See Dionysius Thrax §§ 16-18:

§ 16 There are six barytone conjugations, for λείβω, λέγω, ᾄδω, φράζω, πάλλω, ϊππεύω, respectively, and perhaps a seventh for ἀλέξω.

§ 17 There are three circumflexed conjugations, for νοεῖ, βοᾷ, χρυσοῖ, respectively.

§ 18 There are four μι conjugations, for τίθημι, ἵστημι, δίδωμι, πήγνυμι, respectively.

Maybe having 13 or 14 different conjugations was too much for students?

Latin has four conjugations: I for -are, II for long -ere, III for short -ere, and IV for -ire. Principal parts are mostly needed for the III conjugation.
Small world. That's pretty much how we teach them. Three CIRCUMFLEX conjugations, just like the ancients said. ῥήματα περισπώμενα. συζυγίαι ῥημάτων περισπωμένων. Good name. Accurate, to the point. And we like to provide the aorist and continuative infinitives with a new verb so that one sees if the "νοεῖ"-type belongs to -έσαι (καλέσαι) or -ῆσαι (ποιῆσαι), and then whether βοᾷ-type belongs to -άσαι (γελάσαι) or -ῆσαι (ἀγαπῆσαι).. So that actually gives 5 CIRCUMFLEX conjugations.
And then many other conjugations must be drilled and internalized, all by using real words in communicative and comprehensible contexts. THere are more like 30 conjugations that a student needs. Don't forget δύναμαι, δύνασαι, δύναται related to, but different from κεῖμαι, κεῖσαι, κεῖται, not to mention χέω, χεῖς, χεῖ. STudents eventually learn to love the common simple verbs because they need to use them so much.

Bottom line is that language users work with words.
Shirley Rollinson
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Re: Why are there 6 principal parts instead of only 5?

Post by Shirley Rollinson »

RandallButh wrote:
stephen Carlson egrapsen:
Actually had a French teacher like this.... All learned from her was how to spell.
C'est domage [sic]. Hopefully, this was accomplished without creating an "Erasmian French".

FTR, I had a highschool German teacher with the same problem. It seemed normal at the time because my Latin teacher couldn't speak Latin, but she actually took us to hear tapes in a language lab. "bibite Cocam Colam, etc.," which no one liked.
Shades of Chaucer - "And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly, After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe"
I had a Latin teacher with a speech impediment and a marked nasal twang.
She would greet us "Thalwaytay puellae"
to which we would reply "Thalway magistwar"
and now I too teach Latin occasionally :-)
Shirley R.
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