I teach Greek in a language which does not have the type of similarity with Greek that exists between Greek and English which you are finding is sufficient enough to allow analogous phrasal verb structures to "speak for themselves", so to speak.Barry Hofstetter wrote:So when learning vocabulary, it's best to start with what the word actually means when it's used.
When a native language lacks similarity to Greek, the Greek has to learnt in itself, without using pedagogical aid of "that's just like in English", which seems to be the basis of the minimalism that you are suggesting.
I am finding that learners need to have syntactical structures explained in a way that I had never needed to do for native English speakers. Perhaps I will not exactly answer your questions, but perhaps let you see things from a different perspective.
The first thing that I notice, is that you are talking about the meaning of Greek words. The dictionary has many breakdowns for the meaning. I'm sure you're familiar with polysemy. You might consider incorporating that into your model.
If we take what Barry mentioned about words being used in given situations then the one word one meaning principle doesn't even exist in Greek if you look at it a bit closely. Let's look at παραθεῖναι in a couple of its meanings;
- "to serve some type of food to someone" and
- "to entrust something to someone for them to take care of it", and
- "to entrust somebody to somebody else's care"
What you have probably noticed is that there are a lot of variables there - the stuff I've italicised.
Where the language of the learners is similar to Greek, it is a little more obvious How the other elements in the sentence relate to the verb. I find that I have to spell it out. That is to say that I have to teach how the language is used to a far greater degree than for English speakers.
To present the word παραθεῖναι in the way that it will be found when it is used
- "to serve some type of food (accusative of word for food) to someone (dative of person)" and
- "to entrust something (accusative of something valuable) to someone (dative of person) for them to take care of it", and
- "to entrust somebody (accusative of person) to somebody else (dative of person)'s care"
- Where would I begin in teaching this word?
-With the serving of food, because it relates to daily activities. - Next?
-Even though it's an LXX example, with the accusative of something valuable, because in the New Testament, the noun παραθήκη "a deposit" is correspondingly the closest to that in meaning, dealing with deposits is part of adult life.
It is difficult to illustrate it in digital form, but I present the Greek in an interrelated way. On paper, I've prepared all the interrelations graphically, but in a digital format, after the text has been suitably xml-ised I would want just one to display at a time.
Some examples just using underlining to mark the relevant syntactic elements:
Mark 6:41 wrote:Καὶ λαβὼν τοὺς πέντε ἄρτους καὶ τοὺς δύο ἰχθύας, ἀναβλέψας εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν, εὐλόγησεν, καὶ κατέκλασεν τοὺς ἄρτους (accusative of a type of food), καὶ ἐδίδου τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὐτοῦἵνα παραθῶσιν αὐτοῖς (dative of person)· καὶ τοὺς δύο ἰχθύας ἐμέρισεν πᾶσιν.
Luke 11:6 wrote:ἐπειδὴ φίλος παρεγένετο ἐξ ὁδοῦ πρός με, καὶ οὐκ ἔχω ὃ (accusative of a type of food) παραθεῖναιπαραθήσω αὐτῷ (dative of person)·
Tobias BA 1:14 wrote:καὶ ἐπορευόμην εἰς τὴν Μηδίαν καὶ παρεθέμην Γαβαήλῳ τῷ ἀδελφῷ Γαβρια (dative of person) ἐν Ραγοις τῆς Μηδίας ἀργυρίου τάλαντα δέκα (accusative of something valuable)