[B-Greek] Any "dual" verbs in the GNT?
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Aug 27 07:48:15 EDT 2003
At 11:54 AM +0100 8/27/03, Maurice A. O'Sullivan wrote:
>At 02:50 27/08/2003, Kenneth Litwak wrote:
>
>>If, however, dual person verb
>>inflections were not used after, say, 100 B.C., then
>>there's no point in the search. To the extent that
>>the GNT reflects Koine usage, I would guess this would
>>be one of the ways in which Koine simplified Attic
>>Greek.
>
>Ken:
>Indeed there's no point, since >> the dual died out in the living speech of
>Attica by 300 B.C. Aeolic has no dual, and Ionic lost it very early
><< s.999 Smyth's Greek Grammar
Fundamentally, I'd agree; I think Smyth is right to say that the dual
vanished from the living speech of Attica by 300 B.C., and I think it is
pretty clearly not to be found in the GNT. On the other hand, one should
not forget that Attic grammar and vocabulary were revived in the Attic
revival of the late first and second centuries. Lucian of Samosata in
northern Syria wrote very good Attic and used the dual. I haven't read much
in Clement of Alexandria, but I wouldn't be surprised to find the dual used
occasionally there. It never really was all that common in classical Attic
although it's quite common in Homer. One does well to remember that in
almost every period of the Greek language there's been a considerable
difference between the language commonly spoken and the language of
governmental administration and literature.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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