[B-Greek] Greek Semi-Colon? [WAS: testing my new tool]

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Dec 31 11:02:21 EST 2007


More likely than either would be "canis virum mordet" (SOV is the somewhat more prevalent word-order), but that or "virum mordet canis" or "canis mordet virum" are all equivalent in meaning, inasmuch as the case-endings rather than word-order indicate the syntactic functions in Latin (as in Greek).

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (ret)
 
On Monday, December 31, 2007, at 10:51AM, "Eric Inman" <eric.inman at wescorpflex.com> wrote:
>Wouldn't it be 'virum mordet canis'? -Eric Inman
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of frjsilver at optonline.net
>Sent: Monday, December 31, 2007 9:08 AM
>To: Jeffrey T. Requadt
>Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
>Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Greek Semi-Colon? [WAS: testing my new tool]
>
>Christ is born, glorify Him!
>
>Dear Friends --
>
>Like most languages, Modern Greek texts (and modern printed editions of all older styles of the language) make use of punctuation, whose conventions even now are far from universal.
>
>But we need to bear in mind, especially regarding the Greek texts of the Bible and the New Testament, that these systems are an interpretive apparatus only slightly different from a gloss or HERMENEIA, but maybe much more subtly prejudicial because they appear within the text itself and so guide the reader's understanding.
>
>Ancient manuscript texts, and even some early incunabula, did without punctuation or even spacing between letters, paragraphs, etc.  Numerical versification wasn't much in vogue until the 1500's, and even the, I've heard that it was purely a convenience for typesetters so they didn't unintentionally omit entire lines.  In orthodox liturgical books, although we've just recently taken to including verse numbers these last three centuries or so, we still identify each section or PERIKOPH by number within each title of the books of the scriptures;  these numbers appear in the outer margins, but that's about as much of a reference as there ever was prior to the invention of movable type.
>
>In a highly inflected language such as Greek (Latin, too), it's sufficiently clear from grammar which words are related to which other words.  This is most unlike English, e.g., in which meaning must be gleaned almost entirely from syntactic structure expressed by word sequence:  there are simply not enough inflections to make sense of it otherwise.
>
>I well remember from first year Latin: 'dog bites man' does not equal 'man bites dog' -- same words, same minimal inflection, different word sequence, and  a completely different meaning, contrasted with 'canis mordet virum' and 'vir mordet canem' -- same words, extensive inflections, different word sequence, yet exactly the same meaning.
>
>Latin and Greek don't need punctuation, but we're used to it (and spacing, too), but it's important for us to keep aware of the interpretive influence and editorial bias with which such systems necessarily burden the bare text.
>
>I hope this Christmas is going well and wonderfully for you, and that your New Year will be better than that!
>
>Peace and blessings to all.
>
>Father James
>
>Monk James Silver
>Orthodox Church in America
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Jeffrey T. Requadt" 
>Date: Sunday, December 30, 2007 6:52 pm
>Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Greek Semi-Colon? [WAS: testing my new tool]
>To: 'Anita Clerke' 
>Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
>
>> As far as I know, a ?raised period? (what is the actual term for 
>> that punctuation?) could be ?roughly? equivalent to an English 
>> colon OR semicolon, depending on the clauses and phrases which 
>> it is separating. I do not have the book to which you refer, 
>> although I do have Mounce?s BBG, and he does indeed say that it 
>> is equivalent to the semi-colon, and does not refer to the 
>> colon. I did not use Mounce to begin learning Greek. I used 
>> Kaufmann, which I don?t have anymore, and I also used Eugene Van 
>> Ness Goetchius? The Language of the New Testament, and I know 
>> that Goetchius says that it could be both. I have made it a 
>> colon in my tool simply because it would be obviously impossible 
>> to know when it should be an English colon or semi-colon; and 
>> also because I?m not trying to say how it should be interpreted 
>> in English, simply that there is a punctuation mark there in the 
>> Greek text (edited, obviously) that is not a period or question 
>> mark. I think my experience, which is very limited even within 
>> the realm of the New Testament and a reading in the church 
>> fathers every now and then, is that the raised period more often 
>> serves the purpose that an English colon does: namely, to 
>> precede a list, quotation, or explanation. Actually I?m a little 
>> surprised that Mounce does not refer to its use as such. Am I 
>> off my rocker here? I guess this is a pretty trivial question, 
>> but I think it could bear on the meaning of the text at some 
>> miniscule level. I'm sure someone knows the answer to all this.
>> Jeff Requadt
>> 
>> ________________________________________
>> From: Anita Clerke [mailto:clerke at humanperformance.cc] 
>> Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2007 6:12 AM
>> To: Jeffrey T. Requadt
>> Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
>> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] testing my new tool
>> 
>> I'm running Mac OS 10.4.11, on a PowerPC G5, using Mail 2.1.2.
>> Your program seems to be flawless except:
>> Where the Greek text has a period above the line, this is 
>> converted to a colon in B-Greek. I gather from page 15 of Greek 
>> for the Rest of Us (2003) by WD Mounce that a period above the 
>> line should be a semicolon in English. However perhaps the 
>> convention for B-Greek is different.
>> 
>> 2) The Greek text line beginning with |1 ??? has a comma 
>> followed by a 1 ???????. In the B-Greek translation, the numeral 
>> 1 is ignored. The other numbers, namely 2 and 3 are present though.
>> 
>> Well done.
>> Jonathan Clerke
>> clerke at humanperformance.cc
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 30/12/2007, at 3:57 AM, Jeffrey T. Requadt wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> I'm trying to test my new conversion tool. I'm sending the first 
>> part of 1 Clement in both Unicode and B-Greek, without having 
>> typed a single letter of it. Any feedback would be appreciated.
>> 
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