[B-Greek] DEIKNUMI: 2S endings variation

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Apr 1 16:17:55 EDT 2008


On Apr 1, 2008, at 4:03 PM, Carl Conrad wrote:

>
> On Apr 1, 2008, at 2:59 PM, Stephen Baldwin wrote:
>> Ladies and Gentlemen:
>> Thank you all for your responses.
>> Dr. Winbery: I'm curious about morphology [as I suspect this list is
>> despairingly aware...]. I own a MBG which is generally excellent but
>> has "holes" [as all grammar / grammar-type books seem to have]. I've
>> noted your own publication. If you'd be interested [off-list!] to
>> describe it in contrast to MBG, well, I've not bought a book for at
>> least 2 hours now... ;-)
>>
>> But to the matter in hand, I'd really like to confirm that when
>> Mounce, conjugating DEIKNUMI [as opposed to DEIKNUW], in the P-A-I
>> for 2S, DEIKNUEIS, it is wrong. If one of your students presented
>> that to you, you would...
>>
>> As a novice++, I am keen not to waste time learning inaccuracies. I
>> am looking to scribble a correction in my BBG if necessary.
>
> To be perfectly frank, I don't know what the truth is about Mounce's
> accounting for the form EPIDEIKNUS. I'm not sure that I ever had a
> personal copy of BBG -- it's not a textbook that I ever admired -- and
> if I did have a copy, it's not one of the textbooks that I've bothered
> to retain in my reference library which had to be pruned out
> considerably when I closed up my office at retirement. BUT, I would
> say this:
>
> For my part I would not consider DEIKNUW as a different verb from
> DEIKNUMI; rather I would consider omega-verb conjugational forms as
> variants of the present system of DEIKNUMI; after all, whichever form
> is used for the present tense, the future active is regularly DEIXW,
> the aorist active is regularly EDEIXA, the perfect active is regularly
> DEDEICA, the perfect middle-passive regularly DEDEIGMAI. BDAG notes in
> the very opening listing of tense-aspect-voice morphology that  
> present-
> system forms in DEIKNUW for this verb are as old as Herodotus --
> that's Ionic dialect and it is 5th century BCE! It is really not as if
> we were dealing with two different verbs here, any more than we are
> dealing with a different verb in the seven instances of the middle
> APEKRINAMHN as opposed to the 213 forms of the "passive" APEKRIQHN. So
> in English, some have "dreamed" while others have "dreamed" but it is

If the above line seems unintelligible, it's because I meant to write:
	"some have "dreamt" while others have "dreamed"
>
> "dreaming" that both those who say the one and those who say the other
> are talking about.
>
> I would NOT look to elementary textbooks of Greek for the
> "unquestionable facts" about ancient Greek verb morphology. Nor would
> I rely with any special confidence upon the Perseus parsing tool or
> upon a parsing guide such as Perschbacher or the Friberg AGNT or
> ANLEX. I have found much more reason to be confident of Smyth's
> paradigms and notes regarding Homeric and dialectic forms on the
> paradigms for verbs. An unabridged lexicon (LSJ-G, BDAG) ordinarily
> lists the variant forms of paradigms that have been found in extant
> ancient Greek texts, and I think that's a better reference to consult
> -- better by far than any Greek primer textbook!
>
>
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>>
>>> Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 08:48:49 -0600
>>> To: cwconrad2 at mac.com
>>> From: winberycl at earthlink.net
>>> CC: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
>>> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] DEIKNUMI: 2S endings variation
>>>
>>>> In Acts 19:28 it certainly is a present active participle, but the
>>>> form given in the question was not identified and unaccented; the
>> form
>>>> could certainly be either a present active participle (nom. sg.)
>> or a
>>>> present indicative active. The other forms of EPIDEIKNUMI in the
>> GNT
>>>> are all first aorists.
>>>>
>>>> On Apr 1, 2008, at 7:29 AM, Kokkee Ng wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Isn't EPIDEIKNUS a pres ptc form rather the 2 sg P-A-I?
>>>>>
>>>>> Kokkee Ng
>>>>> Bible College of Malaysia
>>>>>
>>>>> Carl Conrad wrote:
>>>>>> On Mar 31, 2008, at 11:07 PM, Carlton Winbery wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, both EPIDEIKNUS and APODEIKNUS appear in the NT as participles.
>>> Jim Brooks and I listed DEIKNUS as a possible 2nd sing but we put it
>>> in brackets showing that the form did not appear in our
>> literature. I
>>> forgot about the brackets. We also gave it as an example the present
>>> participle of a class IV.M verb without brackets. P. 359 A
>> Morphology
>>> of NT Greek. We gave forms in brackets so that students would have
>>> complete conjugations but would not necessarily need to memorize
>>> them. I memorized the indicative form and forgot about the
>>> participle. I should not type out of my head any more.
>>> Carlton Winbery
>
>
>
> ---
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Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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