[B-Greek] Greek Grammar in terms of Descriptive Linguistics?

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Sat Aug 27 17:22:26 EDT 2005


On Aug 27, 2005, at 4:43 PM, Elizabeth Kline wrote:
>
> On Aug 27, 2005, at 9:31 AM, R Yochanan Bitan Buth wrote:
>
>>  Descriptive linguistics' are metalanguages, that is they use  
>> language to talk
>> about a language. They are certainly not a starting point for
>> internalizing a language. The confusion on this point is endemic to
>> the field.
>>
>
> Dr. Buth,
>
> No doubt you would agree that the so called traditional grammar
> approach has its own metalanguage. No-one (outside of Jerusalem)
> studies NT greek without learning a metalanguage. Most of the
> discussion of this Wallace fellow I have read in the b-greek archives
> is fussing about his metalanguage. I will pick up the book this
> afternoon and come back with some glaring examples of the use and
> abuse of metalanguage among the traditionalists.

I have found this entire discussion disturbing, primarily because it  
has been cast in terms of the relative merits of traditional  
approaches to Greek grammar as opposed to grammar taught from a  
perspective of descriptive linguistics. As yet no response has been  
offered to the question whether Koine Greek primers can be named that  
may be said to be written from a perspective of descriptive  
linguistics. I don't know whether others would agree with me in so  
describing it, but the only textbook I know of that really IS written  
from that perspective is Robert Funk's _Beginning-Intermediate  
Grammar of Hellenistic Greek_. I do wish we could bring to fruition  
the evidently-at-a-standstill project to produce an e-text of that 3- 
volume set that could be made publicly accessible on the Internet and  
even, perhaps, be a source for demand reprints. I have taught  
Classical Attic with some degree of success using the JACT "Reading  
Greek" program, but I had to supplement that with considerable  
additional material that I created.

In the meantime, I really cannot see the point of turning this forum  
into a platform for bashing the grammars that we don't like. I have  
my own list of them and those who have used more than one will rush  
to defend some and find fault with others.

It is unquestionable true that  traditional grammar doesn't  
adequately deal with many fundamental questions that should be raised  
about how Biblical Greek works. Much of the grammatical terminology  
is almost if not altogether worthless; some matters that need to be  
better understood are verbal aspect, the tense system, voice, the  
case system -- some of these are being worked on, although I don't  
think the dust has settled upon any one of these matters enough to  
permit the writing of a fundamentally improved beginning Greek  
textbook (I still think that Funk's is the most successful ever  
written thus far). And linguistic approaches to Biblical Greek have  
clarified some matters but fall so far short of being "scientific" in  
any meaningful sense that reading what they have to say about Greek  
may very well bring more confusion to the reader than enlightenment:  
they differ from each other often in fundamental assumptions, they  
use terminology that doesn't equate with terminology used by others  
talking about the same matters, etc., etc. In sum, our understanding  
of ancient Greek (and by "our" I mean the understanding of all of us  
who are teaching and learning ancient Greek) is very imperfect. It is  
far from helpless and hopeless, but I think that those of us who can  
read (and write?) ancient Greek well are still not very good at  
articulating HOW what we read and write WORKS. Our grammatical rules  
explain only so much, and our descriptive-linguistic categories don't  
explain as much as their users claim. Understanding the workings of  
language has to be deemed "an art wanting to be and sometimes falsely  
claiming to be a science."

It may be that precisely what we have no consensus -- not even the  
beginnings of a consensus -- about is what metalinguistic principles  
OUGHT to be employed in describing the way ancient Greek generally  
and Biblical Greek in particular work.

I would suggest that it might be a much more useful and mutually  
enlightening discussion if we might sketch out what elements properly  
BELONG to a "descriptive-linguistic" account of ancient Greek or  
Biblical Greek language.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




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