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

frjsilver at optonline.net frjsilver at optonline.net
Mon Dec 31 11:27:33 EST 2007


That was precisely my point, but I used English-language-style word order in Latin to illustrate it for both languages, and -- by extension -- for Greek.

Father James

----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl W. Conrad" 
Date: Monday, December 31, 2007 11:02 am
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Greek Semi-Colon? [WAS: testing my new tool]
To: Eric Inman 
Cc: frjsilver at optonline.net, "'Jeffrey T. Requadt'" , b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org

> 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" 
> 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.
> >> 
> >> ---
> >> B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
> >> B-Greek mailing list
> >> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> >> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
> >> 
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> >
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> >
> 



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