[B-Greek] AUTOS
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Oct 27 10:47:43 EST 2003
At 11:13 AM -0400 10/27/03, Brent Hudson wrote:
>When using Mounce's textbook to teach first year Greek, do the teachers on
>this list augment Mounce's treatment of nominative AUTOS as the subject of
>verbs (chapter 12)? Mounce leaves the use of AUTOS with verbs somewhat
>ambiguous, but his answer key (for the workbook) indicates that AUTOS
>should be understood as a simple pronoun. This is opposite of how I have
>understood this. I have seen nominative AUTOS with a verb as intensive
>and as not limited to 3rd person, but for 1 & 2 person as well (cf., AUTOI
>GAR HKOUSAMEN - Lk 22:71). My basic concern is why use nominative AUTOS
>with a verb if not to emphasize/intensify the subject? After all, a
>writer can use the definite article to specify the gender or number for
>the implied subject.
>
>I'm not saying that Mounce is wrong since there are places where AUTOS
>with a verb is probably best understood in English as a 3rd person pronoun
>(so Moule with Lk 5.1 - AUTOS HN ESTWS), but is this the primary category
>1st year students should consider? How do the teachers (who have used
>Mounce) deal with his treatment of AUTOS (and his departure with
>traditional grammars on this point)?
My perspective on this is perhaps not very useful for those who teach Koine
Greek only; I taught primarily classical Attic Greek, and at Washington
University we insisted that students of Koine do one full year of classical
Attic BEFORE taking up reading of Koine texts; consequently there have only
been a couple times that I ever taught Koine using Mounce. Even then I
emphasized as I always did in doing Attic that AUTOS functions in three
different ways: as a third-person pronoun; as an intensive pronoun
emphasizing the person indicated; and as a pronoun indicating identity. It
was, of course, easy to distinguish these to students who'd had any Latin
by referring to them as AUTOS IS/EA/ID (subject pronoun), AUTOS IPSE
(intensive), and AUTOS IDEM (identifying). While the student of Koine
should be told that the simple pronominal function is the most common in
Koine, he/she should also be made aware of the other uses and of the
occasional ambiguity of a phrase such as AUTOS EFH, which could mean
simply, "He said so" but came to be proverbial in its sense as used by
Pythagoreans and Epicureans, "He HIMSELF said so" ("Ipse dixit").
This relates to a pedagogical matter of no little importance. How much of
what one teaches in a primer or first-year course should have to be
qualified or unlearned later. I've always felt that beginning students
should be made aware at the outset that the elements they are learning are
more complex than what they are being taught in the first exposure: one
should be made aware at the outset that AUTOS may bear a different sense
when it's hO AUTOS or when its AUTOS hO; one should be made aware words and
constructions do not represent exact counterparts in another language. At
the least, when one is introduced to a new construction in terms of its
simplest or most common usage, one should be made aware that there is more
in this matter than can be absorbed at once.
--
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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