[B-Greek] re: Lemmatization Using the Aorist in Danker Festschrift
R Yochanan Bitan Buth
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Wed Oct 6 04:26:23 EDT 2004
Carlson egrapsen
>>Sorry to dredge up a discussion back from May 11, but I found the
>>second of Carl's points here on lemmatizing Greek verbs with aorist-
>>stem headwords to be absolutely intriguing and I can't let go of it.
>>Unfortunately, the subsequent discussion on B-Greek did not touch on
>>this at all.
>>
>>What does this proposal mean? How would it work? At first, I thought
>>it was ridiculous because almost every verb would start with epsilon E-,
>>but then I realized that the aorist infinitive does not have the augment
>>and gives a plausible looking lemma. Can anyone explain this further?
>>I've got the book on order, but one can read small extracts anywhere in
>>the book using the "search inside the book" feature at amazon.com.
>>Randy Buth's contribution to the Festschrift touches on this as well.
>
>Randall will have something more to say about this, I'm sure. What I think
>I'd do would be to take the aorist STEM as derived from analysis of the
>traditional third principal part, e.g. LUSA-, STEILA- including the
>first-aorist stem-vowel, IDE-, QANE- including the second-aorist thematic
>vowel, GNW-, BH- (and of course there's also a first aorist BHSA-) and
>"passives" (really third-aorists) FANH-, LHMFQH- using the long-vowel form
>of these stems. But one could indeed just as well use the infinitives:
>LUSAI, STEILAI, IDEIN, QANEIN, GNWNAI, BHNAI (BHSAI), FANHNAI,
>LHMFQHNAI--and that might be more appropriate since that's actually a form
>that appears in usage as an unaugmented stem does not.
>--
>Carl W. Conrad
I suppose as one arguing 'aorist lemmatization' in the book I can give some
comment from my perspective. The main idea behind my article was
natural/real access to Greek vocabulary and how this affects (hinders or
helps) student orientation.
The main point is that a Greek learner needs to use real Greek words in
their head if they ever want to be fluent. No language user consciously uses
a 'formula' when speaking a language. We can assume that a Greek child in
the Koine era knew the words TO AGAPH~SAI and TO AGAPA~N, TO POIH~SAI and
TO POIEI~N. They would conceptually relate to such words and move directly
to correct finite forms like AGAPW and POIW. It would be difficult to
conceive a child thinking "let's see POI-E'-W, contract, coalesces into
POIW==ergo==POIW~." (NB: contraction as the natural state of the language,
for learning and for children, is an Attic/Hellenistic/Koine phenomenon.
Homer, Herodotus and (pseudo)-Lucian when writing Herodotian Ionic use many
an uncontracted 'e'.) However, by presenting our beginning students with
vocabulary like OIKODOM-E-W 'to build' [instead of the real 'to build'
OIKODOMHSAI, also OIKODOMEIN] we mis-wire them from the beginning and force
them to only think with formulae.
Now it would be possible for dictionary users to use a formula and not be
mislead by it if they were already fluently using the language. Something
similar happens with Hebrew and Arabic dictionaries. People use real words
when they speak but they have developed a dictionary tradition of listing
verbs by etymological root. Like if in English we listed DEDUCE, PRODUCE,
INDUCE, REDUCE under the DUCE lemma. [Before anyone thinks that would be a
nice idea for pedagogy, consider teaching English to foreigners: "we have a
great verb DUCE 'to lead'." Then students start to RE-DUCE the horse to the
corral, and DE-DUCE the sheep from the hill." This may sound ridiculous but
is what a lot of Hebrew pedagogy feels like. A word to the wise.]
Back to Greek: for most verbs the central, most basic idea of a verb is
expressed by the aorist infinitive. If so, then why shouldn't students
relate to aorist infinitives as "the word"? Thus, if you ask a student for
the Greek word for "to hear" they would respond AKOUSAI. They would not
normally say AKOUEIN because that carries an extra connotation "to be
hearing". When I repeat a verb to myself I typically repeat the aorist
infinitive twice and then summarize with the continuative infinitive once:
AKOUSAI AKOUSAI AKOUEIN. [to hear, to hear, to be hearing] A student needs
to hear the conintuative infinitive because the continuative forms
unambiguously preserve the pattern vowels. E.g. AGAPAN is "a", POIEIN is
"e", and DHLOUN is "o". The aorist infinitives in -HSAI mask the 'a' class
and 'e' class. Incidently, the Hatch-Redpath LXX concordance, the
Morgenthaler Statistik, and the small UBS NT concordance use continuative
infinitves as lemma.
For a better explanation of why students should practice 'thinking' with
aorist infinitives, you might want to see the article. "Verb Perception and
Aspect: Greek Lexicography and Grammar-Helping Students to Think in Greek"
Danker Festschrift, 2004: 177-198. [there are a couple of typos, p 180
should be "i+1" and page 182 CRHSQAI, and the appendices were truncated for
space consideration.]
ERRWSQE
Randall Buth, PhD
Director, Biblical Language Center
www.biblicalulpan.org
and Director, Biblical Studies in Israel
Hebrew University, Rothberg International School
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
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