Lemmatizing Greek Verbs

Biblical Greek morphology and syntax, aspect, linguistics, discourse analysis, and related topics
cwconrad
Posts: 2112
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:52 pm
Location: Burnsville, NC 28714
Contact:

Re: Lemmatizing Greek Verbs

Post by cwconrad »

Jonathan Robie wrote:If we lemmatize based on the infinitive, I assume we need the present and aorist infinitive for most verbs, and the perfect or future infinitive for a smaller number of weirder verbs? I also assume that some of the infinitive forms we need in order to demonstrate indicative forms that do occur may not actually occur as infinitives in the corpus. Should that bother me or not?
Is "the corpus" restricted to the Greek Bible? It's always seemed to me that it's too narrow a range of usage. That, of course, is another question, but not an insignificant one when you raise the issue of infinitive forms "not found in the corpus." 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!
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Jonathan Robie
Posts: 4165
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:34 pm
Location: Durham, NC
Contact:

Re: Lemmatizing Greek Verbs

Post by Jonathan Robie »

If I'm using the infinitives as a basis for understanding the morphology of the verb, I don't know that I care whether it actually ocurs if I know that it accurately portrays the morphology of the verb forms that do occur.

As for "the corpus", my ideal corpus would include a lot more than the Greek New Testament, but in practice I have different levels of information for different works. For the Greek New Testament, I have complete morphology and syntax. For the Septuagint, I have only morphological tagging and boundaries indicated by punctuation. For a lot of the Hellenstic corpus, I do not have even hand corrected morphology, though I do have what Morpheus gives me. I have to settle for what I have.

As the open corpus grows, I will have more. That is the goal, we need to grow the open corpus. Right now, i'm still learning what I can do with the smaller corpus that I have.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Stephen Carlson
Posts: 3351
Joined: May 11th, 2011, 10:51 am
Location: Melbourne
Contact:

Re: Lemmatizing Greek Verbs

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Jonathan Robie wrote:If we lemmatize based on the infinitive, I assume we need the present and aorist infinitive for most verbs, and the perfect or future infinitive for a smaller number of weirder verbs? I also assume that some of the infinitive forms we need in order to demonstrate indicative forms that do occur may not actually occur as infinitives in the corpus. Should that bother me or not?
What do you plan to do with the lemmatizations? If it's (just) to provide a citation form, then just the present active infinitive should generally suffice. If you are writing a dictionary, you may want more.

If you're hoping to memorize one form from which you can predict the rest of the paradigm, well, a single form isn't going to do the trick.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
mwpalmer
Posts: 62
Joined: May 22nd, 2011, 8:53 pm
Location: Chapel Hill, NC
Contact:

Re: Lemmatizing Greek Verbs

Post by mwpalmer »

I think future lexical resources should lemmatize based on the infinitive. As we move to more and more online resources we are at a time when the transition can be supported easily, and I am convinced that it will make learning the language easier.

The kinds of exercises that Jonathan describes above can be developed to not only avoid the use of English translation but also to support a more successful approach to teaching reading. By forcing students to produce contextually appropriate forms (of verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc.) both receptive and productive language processing are activated at the same time. This should increase retention.
Micheal W. Palmer
cwconrad
Posts: 2112
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:52 pm
Location: Burnsville, NC 28714
Contact:

Re: Lemmatizing Greek Verbs

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:If we lemmatize based on the infinitive, I assume we need the present and aorist infinitive for most verbs, and the perfect or future infinitive for a smaller number of weirder verbs? I also assume that some of the infinitive forms we need in order to demonstrate indicative forms that do occur may not actually occur as infinitives in the corpus. Should that bother me or not?
What do you plan to do with the lemmatizations? If it's (just) to provide a citation form, then just the present active infinitive should generally suffice. If you are writing a dictionary, you may want more.

If you're hoping to memorize one form from which you can predict the rest of the paradigm, well, a single form isn't going to do the trick.
For the sake of illustration of what's possible, here's my proposed revised entry for one verb in the Friberg ANLEX (Analytical Lexicon of the GNT):
ἐγείρειν/ἐγείρεσθαι fut. ἐγερεῖν; 1aor. ἀγεῖραι; pf. mid. ἐγήγερσθαι; 1aor. pass. ἐγερθῆναι; 1fut. pass. ἐγερθήσεσθαι; (1) transitively and literally, of a sleeping person; (a) active wake, rouse (MT 8.25); (b) middle with an intransitive meaning wake up, awaken (MT 1.24); figuratively, of a state of watchfulness or readiness become aware, think carefully, pay attention (EP 5.14); (2) transitively and literally, of persons sitting or lying down; (a) active raise up, help to rise, lift up (AC 3.7); (b) middle with an intransitive meaning rise, get up (MT 9.19); (c) as an imperatival formula get up! stand up! (MK 2.9); (d) figuratively, as healing the sick raise up, restore to health (JA 5.15); (e) figuratively, as bringing back from death raise, cause to rise (MT 10.8); of the resurrection of Jesus (AC 5.30); (3) transitively; (a) active, as causing a person to appear in history raise up, bring into being (MT 3.9); (b) middle with an intransitive meaning appear, rise (MT 11.11); (4) transitively, middle with an intransitive meaning, of nations fighting each other ἐγείρεσθαι ἐπί rise up against (MT 24.7); (5) transitively, of buildings erect, restore (JN 2.20); metaphorically, of the body as a dwelling place belonging to God make alive again, resurrect (JN 2.19)
I might add that I don't know if the form ἐγήγερσθαι appears in extant texts, but I'd use it here. The point is to list infinitives that show what all the tense-stems are for the verb in question.
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 Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Lemmatizing Greek Verbs

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Jonathan Robie wrote:
cwconrad wrote:I've never seen that form λέλυον and I wonder where it's come from.
The table's in the paper you referenced in the OP. I know nothing more.
Let me be the clown fool-hardy enough to state the obvious probably cause for what seemed to have happened here.

It looks to me like a cut-and-paste "neologism", adding the imperative part of λῦσον, viz. -ον to the stative root λέλυ-, faliciously giving λέλυον as the stative imperative.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
cwconrad
Posts: 2112
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:52 pm
Location: Burnsville, NC 28714
Contact:

Re: Lemmatizing Greek Verbs

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:
cwconrad wrote:I've never seen that form λέλυον and I wonder where it's come from.
The table's in the paper you referenced in the OP. I know nothing more.
Let me be the clown fool-hardy enough to state the obvious probably cause for what seemed to have happened here.

It looks to me like a cut-and-paste "neologism", adding the imperative part of λῦσον, viz. -ον to the stative root λέλυ-, faliciously giving λέλυον as the stative imperative.
That occurred to me too, but one would expect, I think, a sigma there, something like λέλυσον for an active perfect imperative -- but it's not found, so far as I know. We do have the perfect middle imperative ἕρρωσο from the verb ῥώννυσθαι (it ordinarily is lemmatized as ῥώννυμι but it really is fundamentally a middle verb.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
S. M. Kraeger
Posts: 2
Joined: December 24th, 2014, 9:41 pm

Re: Lemmatizing Greek Verbs

Post by S. M. Kraeger »

Thank you all for your reflections on my research. If I may, I would like to respond to some of your questions/concerns:
Eeli Kaikkonen: I presently don't use SLA categories for my pedagogy. Part of the problem with SLA for our present discussion is that there are no native speakers of the language. I would be interested in seeing how those who apply SLA research to Greek would approach this subject. I suspect, though, that using the infinitive as a basic form would only lend itself more naturally to SLA pegagogy. My research was trying (in part) to situate the verb within the verbal system both pedagogically and lexicographically. One must have a taxonomy of some sort, and my suggestions (I attempted to demonstrate at the end) are, I think, better than the alternative λόγος based model.
Jonathan Robie: The list was taken from the BibleMesh Greek Project (www.biblemesh.com/languages). It was not meant to suggest that a trinary aspectual approach (leaving out the future tense) is the way I would necessarily taxonomize the verb. How does one fit the future tense into any discussion of verbal aspect? I was trying to leave this question open. As far as your concerns about irregular verbs, this is of course a problem for those verbs whose stems differ between the aorist and future tenses. I think one's taxonomy (include the future tense as an alternate form or not) will probably depend on how helpful it really is to insist upon another tense-form for that discussion of irregular verbs. Finally, your thoughts about using prompts is instructive, and a way that I never actually considered using the infinitive pedagogically. Thank you!
Carl Conrad: I had the same struggle with that imperative form. I inserted it because that was how BibleMesh had it in their grammar. I left that issue alone, but I think a good footnote might have begun to address the issue. Is there a form that better represents an imperative in the perfect tense? Would that I had an answer! But I feel compelled to say that the chart was meant to illustrate a possible way (one that is actually used) to approach the issue. If I had to recreate this for my own grammar, I would probably do some revising (for example, why the 1st person plural form, and why the non-standard participial forms?), though I would probably also keep the same taxonomy.
Stephen Carlson: I appreciate your comments on my work. As far as aspectual terminology, I'm actually at a loss as to what sort of terminology to use for verbal aspect. I think Porter's timeless model is not quite right. But I appreciate the terminology because it keeps me from using, e.g., "Present Tense" or some such thing, where "Present" is not very helpful for discussing the tense in general, much less in the infinitive. I still need to think this over and I'm open to suggestions on aspectual terminology. As far as failing to consider the benefit of principal parts in the first-person form, perhaps you are right. Can we see the principal parts in terms of stems and work our way through the principal parts by way of the infinitive? Add an augment here, add a person-number suffix there, and it wouldn't be too hard, I think, to mentally transfer from infinitive forms or stem forms to the various finite endings. But I might also be responding like this because my focus is to draw attention away from such a model in favor of an alternative. But as a pedagogical feature, I might actually be favorable to using principal parts in their finite forms. Your critique is well taken.
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Lemmatizing Greek Verbs

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:... I also assume that some of the infinitive forms we need in order to demonstrate indicative forms that do occur may not actually occur as infinitives in the corpus. Should that bother me or not?
Is "the corpus" restricted to the Greek Bible? It's always seemed to me that it's too narrow a range of usage. That, of course, is another question, but not an insignificant one when you raise the issue of infinitive forms "not found in the corpus."
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 "idimatic" and syntactic information to associate with particular verbs and verb-forms.
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!
Could you reassert that last statement or circumlocute it please.

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.
Last edited by Stephen Hughes on December 24th, 2014, 11:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Lemmatizing Greek Verbs

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote: The table's in the paper you referenced in the OP. I know nothing more.
Let me be the clown fool-hardy enough to state the obvious probably cause for what seemed to have happened here.

It looks to me like a cut-and-paste "neologism", adding the imperative part of λῦσον, viz. -ον to the stative root λέλυ-, faliciously giving λέλυον as the stative imperative.
That occurred to me too, but one would expect, I think, a sigma there, something like λέλυσον for an active perfect imperative -- but it's not found, so far as I know. We do have the perfect middle imperative ἕρρωσο from the verb ῥώννυσθαι (it ordinarily is lemmatized as ῥώννυμι but it really is fundamentally a middle verb.
I thought of that too, but took the sigma omicron of ἕρρωσο (λέλυσο, cf. λύου < λύοσο with the loss of the sigma between the thematic vowel and the ending) as being added as an morphological element in the μ-σ-τ pattern, but the sigma of λῦσον adjacent to the root as an indication of the aorist aspect.

BTW... Does Latin (or the Doric dialects) display rhoticism in this form?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Post Reply

Return to “Greek Language and Linguistics”