Smyth's grammar

Trevor Peterson 06PETERSON at cua.edu
Wed Aug 21 14:03:42 EDT 2002


>===== Original Message From waldo slusher <waldoslusher at yahoo.com> =====
>If one can have a better understanding of the GNT by
>first studying Attic/Classical Greek, would it follow
>that one can best learn Modern English today be first
>learning Shakespearean English?

A couple of thoughts on this. First, it seems like there's an apples/oranges 
comparison going on here:

"better understanding"
"best learn"

I do happen to think that most diachronic studies tend to stand or fall on the 
same sorts of arguments, so that a good case for learning Attic Greek to 
improve one's knowledge of Koine would imply a similar case for learning 
earlier stages of English. But once we're talking about the best way to learn 
something, now there are other factors to consider. It might be possible, for 
instance, that the best way to learn NT Greek is by focusing on the language 
of the GNT only, then adding to that knowledge a further study of Attic Greek. 
(I'm not saying that is the case--only saying that it would be a plausible 
scenario.) If so, a better understanding of NT Greek could still be available 
to the person who has already learned Attic Greek before ever looking at 
Koine.

Another issue is that of living vs. dead language learning. I think that if a 
person's objective is to understand Modern English, the best option is to 
start by studying Modern English. One important issue to keep in mind in this 
regard is that Modern English, like any other living language, has for all 
intents and purposes an infinite corpus. Because it is always possible to 
engage in new conversation with a native speaker, new linguistic data can 
always be accessed. The only way to produce a linguistic scenario for which no 
Modern English data can be obtained is to produce an impossible scenario, or 
at least a scenario that is unattainable by any standard today. (Dr. Dan 
Streetmentioner's 1001 Tense Formations for Time Travel comes to mind.) Any 
realistic scenario, even if it has never existed until this point, can be 
treated in terms of real Modern English data, because a native English speaker 
can be placed in the scenario. The problem with dead languages is that we can 
work only with the evidence that has been preserved from the past. So there 
are plenty of scenarios where we have to say we're just not sure how they 
would have said something.

What's the point? Simply this: If the goal is to learn a living language, 
studying that living language itself is a good deal more helpful than studying 
any earlier form of the language. But when the goal is to learn (or learn 
about) a dead language, now the question is one of managing restricted data. 
I'm not going to try to argue that it's better to go from Attic to Koine. 
(What do I know--I don't know much about Attic myself.) My point is simply to 
say that I think it's a different issue when the goal is to learn a dead 
language.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics




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