[B-Greek] Analytical Greek Lexicon

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Sat Jan 28 08:59:24 EST 2006


On Jan 28, 2006, at 8:05 AM, Bert de Haan wrote:

> On  Wed Jan 18 16:18:06 EST 2006 George Somsel wrote;  "I might  
> note that I
> did own a reprint of Bagster's analytical when I was in school.  
> Fortunately,
> I had the will-power to only use it on the
> rarest of occasions.  It's OK to own an analytical -- so long as you
> don't use it."
>
> On Wed Jan 18 06:42:51 EST 2006 Carl W. Conrad wrote;
> "...an analytical lexicon such as published by the Fribergs is more or
> less a crutch that hinders rather than helps one attempting to learn
> Greek: one really must learn to recognize the inflected forms
> instantaneously and to be able to make quick intelligent guesses at
> the lemma."
>
> I don't quite understand this.  One must learn to recognize the  
> inflected
> forms
> instantaneously but how can someone do that without starting to  
> read BEFORE
> (s)he knows all the forms?  Right now I am not really going through  
> any
> grammar but I am just reading Greek. I do encounter forms that I don't
> recognize  instantaneously. Yesterday I came across a word that I  
> should
> have know but just couldn't recall. It was ELQWN.  (Seeing that I  
> lacked the
> will power) I looked it up. Now I'll recognize that form, including
> different cases of it, in the future.
> Often we are encouraged to use a good lexicon  like BDAG.  How is  
> this not a
> crutch in a way that an analytical lexicon is? After all, we could  
> make
> quick intelligent quesses at the lemma.

There is no royal road to geometry, said Euclid, -- no, nor to Greek  
either. Acquiring it calls for something akin to "immersion therapy."  
READ, READ, READ! As you read, make as many intelligent guesses as  
possible on the basis of context at what you don't recognize, but if  
you haven't a clue, by all means LOOK IT UP in a dictionary/lexicon.  
It's not a matter of not using a lexicon, but I think one really has  
to have solid mastery over the inflected forms and a habit of  
accretional grasp of contextual associations of frequently used words.

ELQWN is a word which I think one who has finished first-year Greek  
ought to know, if for no other reason than that one should have  
learned the principal parts of ERCOMAI (ERCOMAI, ELEUSOMAI, HLQON,  
ELHLUQA; HLQON is aor. 1 sg. indic. (act.) of ERCOMAI; if one knows  
HLQON, one should know that the aorist stem is ELQ- and that ELQWN is  
an aor. ptc. (act.) nom. sg. m.

One needs to know the principal parts of 50-60 irregular verbs; most  
of these are irregular in only one or two of the six forms, usually  
because those forms are built on a different root. One needs to know  
how to relate finite verb forms to verb-stems and verb-roots -- and  
so also, of course, for nouns and adjectives and some adverbs even.  
Of course one needs to know all the inflectional endings and have  
instantaneous recognition of them -- NOT so as to be able to say  
HLQES is 2 sg. indic. act. aor but to say HLQES means "you came."

The Greek noun is easy -- almost effortless to learn, in contrast to  
the verb. The Greek verb requires an intense and immense investment  
of effort at mastering it. But until one has successfully mastered  
it, one will limp along in Greek like a cripple trying to run a  
Marathon race.

I've told this story before on this list; perhaps it's worth  
repeating here.

I really learned to read Greek in my first month at graduate school.  
I had assigned myself the task of knocking off the doctoral reading- 
list requirement in Homer and that involved reading twelve books of  
the Iliad and twelve books of the Odyssey -- in one month. I worked  
with an Oxford Classical text of Homer and the "Middle Liddell"  
lexicon and worked through the pages for about five hours a night,  
writing down in a notebook the form and the lemma and a gloss of  
every word -- mostly verbs -- that I encountered in my reading. Of  
course there were lots of words that I copied down umpteen times (at  
least three times) before I recognized them at once the next time I  
saw them. I had two or three pages of notes for the first page of OCT  
Greek text and that continued for a while, but I found that by the  
time I got to Book III of the Iliad I was only noting down about 10  
words for an OCT page. And I was reading and enjoying the reading  
immensely. I felt like a kid suddenly taking off on a bicycle with no  
more training wheels or parent walking along holding the bike upright.

It's not a matter of not consulting a lexicon, but considerably a  
matter of competence at recognizing word-forms -- inflectional  
endings -- so as to guess intelligently at the lemma for roots of  
words not recognized.

And once one has acquired some degree of "fluidity," one starts using  
the lexicon in a different way: STUDYING a word-entry to see how the  
lexicographer has analyzed the usage in terms of more fundamental and  
then the ramified meanings and usages. As I've said before, this  
comes to be a matter much like learning a terrain by walking over it  
repeatedly in order to become intimately familiar with it so as to  
recognize where one wakes up and get one's orientation right away or  
quickly -- and not to be lost!

I don't know whether this is very helpful at all, but it's an attempt  
to explain what some of us mean when we say that ongoing reliance  
upon an analytical Greek lexicon such as Perschbacher's or Friberg's  
is more likely to hinder or delay indefinitely the industrious effort  
that is necessary if one really wants to learn to read Greek rather  
than solve cryptograms written in Greek characters.

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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