[B-Greek] Wallace or Porter?
Ben & Mandy Pehrson
ben-mandy_pehrson at sil.org
Sat Aug 27 22:15:07 EDT 2005
Cindy and Michael,
I was not trying to criticize Porter's Idioms. I was just trying to provide
some of the distinctives of Wallace's grammar, especially after it was said
there was no comparison between the two grammars in another post, with the
implication that Wallace is much inferior. By all means, get four Greek
grammars or more, if that is your level of interest. But I guess I would
first recommend Wallace, BDF, Robertson, and then maybe Levinsohn's
Discourse Features of New Testament Greek.
Another great feature of Wallace's grammar that I didn't mention before is
that he usually gives "clear examples" from the NT to illustrate a given
construction and then he also gives "debatable examples." This, I feel, is
a great way to help students decide for themselves, learn to think
critically about the issues, and even to evaluate Wallace's own position at
these points.
I know that Wallace is sometimes criticized for his proliferation of
categories and over-definition. I don't mind the multitude of categories
because it helps me do my own thinking about how these different uses (an
etic approach) relate to more general notions of a specific construction (my
best attempt at an emic understanding--or how native speakers might
understand a wide variety of uses in the same general way).
As far as over-definition, I would be interested to hear some examples from
his grammar that you think are over-defined. If you're referring to his
insistence on structural priority when describing semantic categories, I
think Wallace does a great job in many places of illustrating how previous
grammatical analyses suffered from under-definition. Too often
generalizations have been made in the past about a specific grammatical
feature without differentiating between other contributing factors. Any
science aims at isolating the variables, and Wallace does a fine job of
doing this. And then he insists on developing an argument from clear
examples.
As far as discourse analysis is concerned, I was merely summarizing
Wallace's own list of the distinctives of his grammar for the benefit of
those who don't have it in front of them. Personally, discourse analysis is
my favorite sub-discipline of linguistics. I was introduced to it with
enthusiasm in three of Scott Hafemann's intermediate and advanced level
Greek courses when he taught at Wheaton College. We did discourse analysis
for every class, tracing the logical relations between propositions with the
goal of finding the main points in each text. We used a simple set of about
14 or 15 logical relations. I was introduced to many more facets of
discourse analysis in a graduate level course on the subject at SIL's school
in Dallas, the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics. This did not
pertain to Greek texts, except for a few assignments. The main textbook was
Robert Longacre's Grammar of Discourse, 1996. This approach weighs surface
level features above semantics, while Levinsohn's approach probably gives
more weight to semantic paragraph units in a text. I think both are valid,
and one should probably not be followed to the exclusion of the other. I
would not agree with an approach that traces the so-called "deep structure"
of a text--it's underlying semantic arguments--to the exclusion of a proper
consideration of the text's surface level discourse markers.
I had not thought of this before you made your point, Cindy, but I think you
are probably right about the need to introduce discourse analysis earlier in
a Greek study program. Wallace's grammar would probably be improved if he
covered discourse analysis even in a "token" fashion, perhaps covering a set
of basic logical relations and relating these to the kinds of conjunctions
and particles (the other category of syntax that he purposely leaves
primarily to other sources) that would typically indicate such relations.
Nonetheless, I think his point is well taken that discourse analysis is such
a changing, debated, and intricate topic, that it is better handled in a
separate treatment. Stephen Levinsohn's Discourse Features of New Testament
Greek is the separate treatment that would be well worth the effort to work
one's way through for the intermediate Greek student.
And now I must put something nice--and perhaps somewhat unique if I'm an
American--to indicate in this discourse that it is quickly coming to a
close.
Until all have heard,
Benjamin Pehrson
Aitape West Translation Project
SIL PNG
Wycliffe Bible Translators
-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of CWestf5155 at aol.com
Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2005 12:53 PM
To: B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Wallace or Porter?
Michael and Ben,
I'm intimately acquainted with both works, and Porter recommends that his
intermediate students also own Wallace, Robertson and BDF as well as a few
other "classics". Although I haven't actually asked Dan, I'm sure he
recommends
that his serious students own Idioms. My advice is to buy both.
Some of the differences between Wallace and Porter are format. Porter is
easy to read through and follow, and is more comparable to Young's
intermediate
Greek in format. Wallace is more encyclopedic in format and more useful as
a reference tool--he's easier to read when you have specific questions you
want answered.
But much of what Ben observes below is a difference in theory. Dan Wallace
is acquainted with linguistics, and fits what he knows or accepts into his
traditional theoretical framework--in part accounting for a proliferation
of
categories and over-definition.
Stan Porter has an intimate knowlege of Greek (though he does not subscribe
to the importance of fluency in speech), a thorough understanding of
linguistics in general, and a commitment to systemic functional linguistics
(or
English linguistics/Hallidayan). His grammatical works reformat the
grammar in a
way that reflects the explosion of our understanding of language (due to
the
ability to record speech and analyze written and oral language with
advanced
technology).
Whether Ben is reflecting Dan's view or his own about discourse analysis,
it's going in the wrong direction. Greek students should be introduced to
understanding words and phrases in the context of the discourse from the
first--words and grammar have meaning in context. Sure beginning and
intermediate
explanations can be described as "token". Everyone's got to start
somewhere.
You can move from "token" to more sophisticated reading and theory when
you're ready. In Biblical studies, discourse analysis can seem confusing,
partly
because you have people out there who are claiming to do it who really
haven't throughly read the linguistic literature and/or don't have a
consistent
theoretical commitment.
Cindy Westfall
McMaster Divinity College
In a message dated 8/27/2005 12:54:11 AM Mountain Standard Time,
ben-mandy_pehrson at sil.org writes:
Michael,
There is no comparison. Wallace is very useful and user friendly in many
ways that Porter is not. Porter also seems a bit scant in places. Wallace
is rightly considered an intermediate level grammar, but his approach and
interaction with recent research means that his grammar sometimes contains
insights not covered in the older advanced grammars.
Here is what Wallace describes as the distinctives of his grammar, most of
which I really appreciate: (1) exegetically significant examples, (2)
consideration of semantics and "semantic situation," (3) clear,
user-friendly definitions, (4) plenty of examples, (5) grammatical
statistics and noting which constructions are "rare," (6) charts, tables,
and graphs, (7) multitude of syntactical categories, taking into
consideration both the unaffected meaning and the affected meaning in a
given context, (8) no discussion of discourse analysis (because its methods
are still developing and it is too important to receive merely a token
treatment, (9) structural priority over semantic considerations (IMHO very
important!), (10) minimal material on lexico-syntactic categories (IOW it
doesn't duplicate the extensive treatment of things like prepositions,
pronouns and conjunctions that you have in your BDAG lexicon, (11)
user-friendly layout (examples given in Greek and English; 3 levels of
discussion: summaries, normal type, and smaller type including substantial
footnotes; scripture index)
Some people critique Wallace for his 7th distinctive above, saying he is a
"splitter" of semantic categories. But overall, I think this is very
helpful for the student to learn to analyze the sense of the category under
question in relation to the multitude of specific contexts it may occur in.
If you stick with it, you will want to get the advanced grammars by
Blass-Debrunner-Funk as well as Robertson.
By all means, give this grammar a look and compare it to anything else. I
think you'll find it amazingly helpful.
With any reference type book like this that is not organized
alphabetically,
label the chapters on the fore-edge of the book so you will always be able
to quickly turn to the relevant section when you're doing your research.
Hope that's helpful,
Benjamin Pehrson
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