[B-Greek] Ancient Greek-Grammar war?
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Feb 28 21:29:36 EST 2006
On Feb 28, 2006, at 7:43 PM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
> I'm not referring to a listener deciphering what he or she knows is
> improper grammatical usage. If you haven't heard "I done that
> yesterday" or "I seen him last week," then your regional or social
> intercourse has been restricted somewhat narrowly." I don't know
> the history of this; it may be simply a matter of dialectal
> omission of an auxiliary with a participle, but I think I've
> encountered something like that in colloquial German too.
> Upper middle-class white parents may coax their children to say "I
> am" but there have been and still are English dialects where "I be"
> is not at all exceptional. While I may not talk or write that
> myself, I don't think I have any business looking down my nose at
> those who do.
I regret letting myself react thus to the question of prescriptive
vs. descriptive grammar, but perhaps it IS worth noting that
grammatical standards do reflect prevalent social class standards.
One of the discoveries of those who have learned NT Koine and then
endeavor to read the Church Fathers is that some of them don't write
quite the same language. "Atticism," a reversion to classical Attic
grammatical and lexical standards, is something that set in toward
the end of the first century CE and heavily influenced the schools
and teaching of grammatical usage thereupon. One literary "monument"
of this shift is a second-century writer Phrynicus; here are some
sample comments intended to help with proper Greek diction so that
inappropriate Koine expressions are avoided and proper Attic used
instead:
... “EUCARISTEIN”: OUDEIS TWN DOKIMWN EIPEN, ALL CARIN EIDENAI “No
respectable persons says EUCARISTEIN, but rather “CARIN OIDA”
... “AKMHN” ANTI TOU “ETI”; XENOFWNTA LEGOUSIN hAPAX AUTWi KECRHSQAI,
LEGE DE “ETI” “AKMHN’ for “ETI”:They say that Xenophon used it once,
but you should say “ETI.”
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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