Category for participles, infinitives, finite verbs

Jonathan Robie
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Category for participles, infinitives, finite verbs

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Micheal Palmer has convinced me that participles and infinitives aren't really moods, and that it would be cleaner to reserve 'mood' for the moods of finite verbs: indicative, subjunctive, optative, and imperative.

In this scheme, there's a new category: a verb can be finite, infinitive, or participle. Micheal didn't have a good name for that category, does anyone know one?

Does anyone want to argue for or against this approach to classifying verbs?
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
cwconrad
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Re: Category for participles, infinitives, finite verbs

Post by cwconrad »

Jonathan Robie wrote:Micheal Palmer has convinced me that participles and infinitives aren't really moods, and that it would be cleaner to reserve 'mood' for the moods of finite verbs: indicative, subjunctive, optative, and imperative.

In this scheme, there's a new category: a verb can be finite, infinitive, or participle. Micheal didn't have a good name for that category, does anyone know one?

Does anyone want to argue for or against this approach to classifying verbs?
I've always taken it for granted that lumping infinitive and participle with the "moods" was a convenience rather than a matter of their "belonging" with the "moods." Removing them from "moods" is just as surely an inconvenience.

A terminological distinction between "finite verb" and "infinitive" is not altogether appropriate, inasmuch as infinitives are tense-delimited and thus are not quite "infinite". What really distinguishes the infinitive is its nominal usage while the participle, by the same token, is distinguished by adjectival usage. Perhaps a threefold classification of verbs as having "verbal", "nominal", "and "adjectival" forms would serve.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Category for participles, infinitives, finite verbs

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Jonathan Robie wrote:Micheal Palmer has convinced me that participles and infinitives aren't really moods, and that it would be cleaner to reserve 'mood' for the moods of finite verbs: indicative, subjunctive, optative, and imperative.

In this scheme, there's a new category: a verb can be finite, infinitive, or participle. Micheal didn't have a good name for that category, does anyone know one?

Does anyone want to argue for or against this approach to classifying verbs?
I'm not sure what the purpose or benefit of classifying verbs in this way. It could be related to finiteness, which has nothing to do with aspect or even tense but with having personal endings.

But, as Carl said, it's just a matter of convenience* to lump in the non-finite infinitive and participle as separate moods.

* For example, the practice simplifies the morphological tag parsing template.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Barry Hofstetter
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Re: Category for participles, infinitives, finite verbs

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:Micheal Palmer has convinced me that participles and infinitives aren't really moods, and that it would be cleaner to reserve 'mood' for the moods of finite verbs: indicative, subjunctive, optative, and imperative.

In this scheme, there's a new category: a verb can be finite, infinitive, or participle. Micheal didn't have a good name for that category, does anyone know one?

Does anyone want to argue for or against this approach to classifying verbs?
I'm not sure what the purpose or benefit of classifying verbs in this way. It could be related to finiteness, which has nothing to do with aspect or even tense but with having personal endings.

But, as Carl said, it's just a matter of convenience* to lump in the non-finite infinitive and participle as separate moods.

* For example, the practice simplifies the morphological tag parsing template.
I am not going to redo my parsing sheets. I just explain to students that they aren't really moods, but they've got to go somewhere.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
MAubrey
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Re: Category for participles, infinitives, finite verbs

Post by MAubrey »

I'm not sure I understand why they need "to go somewhere." Can't they just be "infinitives" and "participles"? Why would they need another metacategory other than "verb"?
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Category for participles, infinitives, finite verbs

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Jonathan Robie wrote:In this scheme, there's a new category: a verb can be finite, infinitive, or participle. Micheal didn't have a good name for that category, does anyone know one?
Know one (for both)? No. I could suggest a few. The commonality that they have is that mood is not marked in those forms, so something expressing that feature...

Unopinionated (not pushing a point of interpretaion), free of interpretation or suggestion, mirrored mood (look at the verbs around me to see my mood), extrinsic modality (mood from context - opp. self-expressed intrinsic modality), mood borrowers, unexplicated mood.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
RandallButh
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Re: Category for participles, infinitives, finite verbs

Post by RandallButh »

Correct, infinitives and participles do not have mood, they are
nominals.

Technically, the infinitive is the noun and the participle is the adjective, and they are both nominals.
Barry Hofstetter
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Re: Category for participles, infinitives, finite verbs

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

MAubrey wrote:I'm not sure I understand why they need "to go somewhere." Can't they just be "infinitives" and "participles"? Why would they need another metacategory other than "verb"?
I was attempting a bit of humor (as they say, if you have to explain a joke...). When students are taught to parse, it's always something like "person, number tense, voice mood," 3rd person singular aorist active indicative." A lot of Greek teachers simply say to throw infinitives and participles as a category under "mood" even though they are not moods. Aside from the utility of using parsing sheets in general, why not simply add a column marked P/I and leave it at that? :roll:
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Category for participles, infinitives, finite verbs

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Barry Hofstetter wrote:
MAubrey wrote:I'm not sure I understand why they need "to go somewhere." Can't they just be "infinitives" and "participles"? Why would they need another metacategory other than "verb"?
I was attempting a bit of humor (as they say, if you have to explain a joke...). When students are taught to parse, it's always something like "person, number tense, voice mood," 3rd person singular aorist active indicative." A lot of Greek teachers simply say to throw infinitives and participles as a category under "mood" even though they are not moods. Aside from the utility of using parsing sheets in general, why not simply add a column marked P/I and leave it at that? :roll:
Participles and infinitives don't have person either.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Category for participles, infinitives, finite verbs

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
Barry Hofstetter wrote:
MAubrey wrote:I'm not sure I understand why they need "to go somewhere." Can't they just be "infinitives" and "participles"? Why would they need another metacategory other than "verb"?
I was attempting a bit of humor (as they say, if you have to explain a joke..mother en students are taught to parse, it's always something like "person, number tense, voice mood," 3rd person singular aorist active indicative." A lot of Greek teachers simply say to throw infinitives and participles as a category under "mood" even though they are not moods. Aside from the utility of using parsing sheets in general, why not simply add a column marked P/I and leave it at that? :roll:
Participles and infinitives don't have person either.
Why do you say "don't have", rather than "aren't marked for". In a given passage we know which person the participles are referring to, even though marking the person out isn't a feature of Greek. The infinitives do fairly often have the person marked for either subject and / or object, by the use of personal pronouns (or another nominal).
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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