[B-Greek] Analytical Greek Lexicon
George F Somsel
gfsomsel at juno.com
Sat Jan 28 13:18:29 EST 2006
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.
Bert de Haan.
______________
Carl has already responded to you regarding some of this, but I would
like to answer from a different perspective.When you look up an inflected
form in an analytical lexicon, you find out the lemma, the parsing (of a
verb) and a gloss. What you do not find out is how to detect for yourself
why that particular instance is parsed as the analytical parses it. For
this you need to study an *** elementary *** Greek grammar. It will
introduce you to those elements which distinguish the various forms. You
will learn things such as the following. In Charles' ICC commentary on
Revelation he has the quotation ?ap?a? ?? t. de?t??? ???? ???e? ?t?
??????? ? ?e?????? ?a? ????ß?? ? ?de?f?? a?t?? ?p? ???da??? ???????sa?
PAPIAS EN T. DEUTERWi LOGWi LEGEI hOTI IWANNHS hO QEOLOGOS KAI IAKWBOS hO
ADELFOS AUTOU hUPO IOUDAIWN ANHiREQHSAN Let us look at just one verb in
this -- ANHiREQHSANThe first thing that will probably be noticed if you
have studied the formation of the various tenses is the - QH -. This
signifies the aorist passive and the ending - SAN - is the 3 pl of the
aorist passive. If this is to be an indicative, we would expect to see
an augment. AN -, however, doesn't look like an augment. What it does
look like is the form of the preposition ANA used in composition. This
then makes us look at the vowel - Hi -. The - i - would indicate that
the unaugmented vowel is actually a diphthong. This proves to be correct
since the verb is AIREW with the combining form of the preposition ANA.
This is therefore a 3 pl aor passive of ANAIREW. This is how the process
works. First, however, you must learn the principles of verb formation
and study the paradigms.
george
gfsomsel
___________
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