[B-Greek] Lemmatization (was "Inaccurate electronic versions")
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Thu Jan 25 19:24:58 EST 2007
Personally, without historical research on this specific matter, I suspect
that the 1-person lemma forms became fixed because modern Greek doesn't have
an infinitive. The spoken language of the last 1000 years has not oriented
itself to infinitives.
I propose infinitve lemma because they are abstract, real, useful, and
central. I actually think that both the aorist and 'continuative' infinitive
need to be presented 'up front', at the beginning of a dictionary entry. The
aorist is the most central semantically (for 90+% of verbs) and is a natural
reference point. However, the aorist infinitive does not reveal the
morphological class of a verb. For that one needs the "PARATATIKH"
continuative/extending infinitive. E.g., both AGAPHSAI and POIHSAI show
-HSAI in the infinitive form, while AGAPA~N and POIEI~N are unambiguous as
to their morphological class. AGAPAN clearly show -A- and POIEIN clearly
shows -E-. But the PARATATIKH is semantically complex, with an additive. So
I would list words under aorist, and put the PARATATIKH second. Whenever I
mumble a verb to myself, I typically say the aorist APAREMFATOS twice and
then the PARATATIKH once.
"to do, to do, to be doing", as it were.
I am against forms like *AGAPAW and *DHLOW because they are not real words
and force the user out of a language-using mode and into an analytical mode
before they even start. We don't need to encourage second-language users
into analysis, we need to encourage them to use the language from within.
[[PS: this is not 'arbitrary': imagine if we taught English verbs by
pronouncing something like "HAYER" [I am writing with traditional spelling
rather than IPA] and then taught students a Great English Vowel shift rule
that this is to be pronounced today as "HEAR" ['HERE', IPA: hir]. Do you
think that that would speed up learning, success, and internalization? Not
on this planet.]]
ERRWSQE
Randall Buth
(incidently ERRWSQE is technically PARAKEIMENOS 'perfect', though when
indicative it is typically a functional 'present' like ESTHKA 'I am
standing' [from an etymological 'I have taken my stand']. That is, the
ENESTWS 'present' is rarely used for these specific verbs. For ERRWSQE, I
would list it's lemma as
ERRWSQAI 'to be well', and perhaps add ERRWMAI ERRWSAI ERRWTAI inside any
entry. Those are the forms that Greeks were using.)
On 1/25/07, Carl W. Conrad <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu> wrote:
>
>
> On Jan 25, 2007, at 10:59 AM, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>
> > Carl W. Conrad wrote:
> >> It's customary, for instance, to list contract verbs in the
> >> uncontracted form of the present indicative 1 sg. -- despite the fact
> >> that one doesn't ever see the uncontracted forms (outside of old
> >> Ionic). The rationale for this is that knowing the stem vowel is -A-,
> >> -E-, or -O- assists one consulting the lexicon to recognize
> >> contracted forms of the verb (provided that one really knows the
> >> contractions, of course).
> >> Two changes in standard lemmatization of verbs have been suggested:
> >> (1) Infinitives, rather than 1 sg. indicative forms, might better
> >> characterize the verb, e.g. LEGEIN instead of LEGW, POIEIN instead of
> >> POIEW. POREUESQAI instead of POREUOMAI.
> >> (2) Randall Buth (and perhaps some others) has suggested that the
> >> aorist-tense form should be used as a lemma instead of a present-
> >> tense form, in which case we'd have ELEXA (or better LEXAI,
> >> especially since the infinitive is unaugmented) for LEGW, EPOIHSA (or
> >> POIHSAI) for POIEW, EPOREUSAMHN (or better POREUSAI) for POREUOMAI. I
> >> personally think that using the aorist infinitive instead of the
> >> present-tense indicative 1st sg. would be a more useful
> >> lemmatization.
> >>
> >
> > What are the advantages of this? I'm completely naive here, why isn't
> > this mostly an arbitrary choice?
>
> I'm cc'ing this to Randall Buth, who was one of the first to suggest
> it. I think he can offer fuller rationalization for moving in that
> direction.
>
> (1) The aorist is generally more frequently used than the present
> tense for most verbs, certainly in narrative. I THINK that's true.
> MANQANW appears 25x in the GNT: 18x in the aorist, 6x in the present,
> 1x in the perfect; ERCOMAI appears 632x in the GNT: 354x in the
> aorist, 21x in the perfect, 7x in the pluperfect, 217x in the
> present, etc. This really depends more on the particular verb (and
> its Aktionsart, I believe).
> (2) Even if we take contract verbs, the 1st sg. present indicative
> active AGAPAW never appears, but the infinitive AGAPAN does or the
> infinitive AGAPHSAI, so also POIEIN and POIHSAI.
> (3) The aorist more commonly displays the simple root of a verb,
> whereas a present-stem is usually expanded (MAQ- is the aorist stem,
> MANQAN-, the present stem has a nasal infix and a tense-formative
> suffix -AN-; if we take the aorist infinitive MAQEIN we can readily
> see the simplest form MAQ- whereas the indicative 1 sg. would have an
> augment EMAQON. Another: PASCW but aorist inf. PAQEIN; another PIPTW
> but aorist inf. PESEIN.
> (4) Of course this wouldn't work with EIMI: we could use EINAI, but
> there is no aorist of this verb.
>
> Actually, I think that use of the present indicative 1 sg. (active)
> is arbitrary, although it certainly is conventional.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
> 1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
> cwconrad2 at mac.com
> WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/ <http://www.ioa.com/%7Ecwconrad/>
>
>
>
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη πληθυνθείη
שלום לכם וברכות
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
randallbuth at gmail.com
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη πληθυνθείη
שלום לכם וברכות
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
randallbuth at gmail.com
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