GREEK RULES AND LINGUISTIC PRINCIPLES

B. Ward Powers bwpowers at optusnet.com.au
Mon Aug 13 01:35:51 EDT 2001


At 08:18 AM 010812 -0400, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>Just a quibble here regarding Ward's explanation of a supposed "elision" of
>A in what he calls an "allomorph" -SA- in formation of the ("first") aorist
>in Greek. As I've noted before, I don't really think elision (in the sense
>of suppression of a vowel originally present in favor of a preceding vowel)
>is at all what is involved in


There is a possibility that Carl and I may have different working 
definitions of what is mean by "elision" as it applies in koine Greek. When 
a preposition ending in a vowel (other than PRO or PERI) is prefixed to a 
verb which commences with a vowel, that last vowel of the preposition 
elides before the first vowel of the verb to which it is now attached. And 
that is elision. (Are we in agreement thus far, Carl?)

Now what I observe with the neutral morph (the -O- or -E- of ELUOMEN and 
ELUETE), and the -SA- punctiliar morph of the aorist active and middle, and 
the -KA- perfective morph of the present perfect active, is that they 
behave in exactly the same way.  That is, in these "aspect morphs", their 
vowel remains when they are "form final" (as in LELUKA) or followed by a 
consonant, but when they are followed by a vowel in the contiguous next 
morph, then that first vowel vanishes from sight. (Compare LELUKA with 
LELUKEN.) I therefore describe the observed behaviour of these phonemes as 
"elision": when followed by another vowel, these vowels elide.

The alternative explanations often offered involve taking -KE- in LELUKEN 
as an alternative morph in this verb form to -KA- in the other verb forms, 
which is a deficient explanation because it does not account for the change 
of vowel, and also because if the -E- is taken as part of this morph, then 
all you have left for the pronoun morph is a movable nu. This is 
linguistically unsound as an explanation.

This is how linguistic analysis works: The moment you recognize that the 
pronoun ending for the third singular in imperfect, aorist and perfect 
tenses is epsilon (with or without movable nu, i.e. you have the 
allomorphic forms -E and -EN), then you see that the perfective morph can 
be either -KA- or -K-, and similarly the punctiliar morph can be -SA- or 
-S-: and the next thing you do is seek to identify the environment in which 
it can be the one or the other. And you see that it simply depends upon 
whether the next phoneme is a vowel or not. So you suspect this is an 
instance of elision. Next you test this "theory" in other environments 
(i.e., other tenses of LUW, other paradigms). You see (as I showed in my 
previous post) that this explanation holds up in all cases. Finally you 
formalize it in the form of a "rule".


>At 5:23 PM +1000 8/12/01, B. Ward Powers wrote:

[SNIP]

> >Recognizing this allows us to formulate a second rule:
> >2. The -A- of the punctiliar morph -SA- elides before a following vowel.

[Carl responds:]


>When Ward brought up this explanation (cited directly, I think, from his
>textbook)


Actually, no, Carl. It is indeed true, of course, that in my textbook 
"Learn to Read the Greek NT" I present the same conclusions from my 
research into linguistics and NT Greek, but what I posted to the b-greek 
list was newly written for this purpose. I had in mind to lay out this 
explanation before the list to see what helpful comments I could elicit. 
(Thank you for yours.) It is my hope, down the track a little, to put 
together some of the fruits of my research into the question of linguistics 
and Greek (including the question of the -SA- morph) and seek separate 
publication for them.


>  back in 1979, I protested on historical grounds against this
>explanation. I will grant quite readily that it is the sort of explanation
>which works well enough as a pedagogical device even if it isn't an
>accurate account of how the historical forms came into existence.


I do not claim to be an expert in the historical development of the Greek 
language, having just a modest contact with its history while studying 
Classical Greek as a subject major in my undergraduate years. I am aware 
how much greater than mine is Carl's knowledge in this historical arena.

But for most purposes a reference to the history of the language is not 
necessary in teaching or understanding koine Greek. This is not to say that 
it can or should be totally ignored: for example, in my Grammar I have 
quite a bit to say about the ancient letter digamma and the words it was 
in, but this is because knowing this will help us understand the behaviour 
of the used-to-be digamma words when we meet them in koine.

For the most part, however, it suffices well if we take a synchronistic 
view ("as things are now", i.e., in NT times) rather than needing a 
diachronistic approach ("through time", looking at historical development) 
for koine Greek. It may possibly be that Carl and I have a different 
viewpoint about this point.


> >But even when teaching the aorist in Biblical Greek, one must come to
> >terms sooner or later with the fact that the language does not fit quite
> >so neatly into the slots as one might wish.
> >As the rabbit told Alice, those verbs are "an ornery lot" and one must
> >really struggle with them to master them.


As Carl says (and all of us who work with the language know well how true 
it is!), verbs do not always fit neatly into our grammatical slots. And 
indeed at times we really do struggle to master them. But there are many 
patterns - dozens and dozens of them - which can be discerned by applying 
the principles of linguistic analysis to koine Greek.

Up to a point, linguistic analysis involves discerning such patterns, and 
then seeking to attach meanings to them in the language. And when I discern 
these patterns, I am grateful they are there, and I take advantage of them 
for the sake of my own understanding of what is "going on" in the language 
- and also for the benefits they can bring to students following behind us, 
and also struggling with the language.

Regards,

Ward


                                http://www.netspace.net.au/~bwpowers
Rev Dr B. Ward Powers        Phone (International): 61-2-8714-7255
259A Trafalgar Street          Phone (Australia): (02) 8714-7255
PETERSHAM  NSW  2049      email: bwpowers at optusnet.com.au
AUSTRALIA.                         Director, Tyndale College




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