[B-Greek] the Knowledge of Ancient Greek
CWestf5155 at aol.com
CWestf5155 at aol.com
Mon Feb 20 20:22:41 EST 2006
In a message dated 2/20/2006 5:21:17 PM Mountain Standard Time,
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il writes:
>Hi friends,
I have a rather simple question on the history of ancient greek. How do
modern scholars "know" today that the grammar rules that we hold to for
koine greek are the correct ones? This might sound like a foolish question,
but did they discover ancient greek grammar papyrii for children?? Or..
what? Did they simply decipher the greek rules from looking at thousands of
manuscripts?
Hehe.. thanks for answering my silly question. Just curious I suppose.. God
bless you!
Seth>
Answer: Both. We have ancient Greek writings by greeks about their own
language and we have millions of words of the language in context. Not to
mention translation into other languages.
However, [*!*] not knowing what rules you or anyone might hold to, and
knowing that there are differences in the way people would describe any
language, then my comment above may not apply at all.
Blessings
Randall Buth
Seth,
I'll tag on to Randall's reply. There are ancient Greek grammars and
traditional grammars on ancient Greek, which may be what you mean. Among other
things, translation issues have raised questions that ancient Greek grammars
would never have dreamed of addressing, and perhaps it has driven our grammars
and our discussion of grammar.
There are first year Greek grammars which tend to be written along
traditional lines, but which must be nuanced considerably in any intermediate and
advanced Greek.
There are more recent studies based on linguistics which challenge
traditional grammars and categories based on a combination of theory, examination of
texts in context, and computerized study of the ancient Greek corpus. In
addition, it is held that native speakers' intuitive grasp of their own grammar
does not often "add up" with the linguistic patterns that occur in the actual
use of the language.
Cindy Westfall
McMaster University
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list