[B-Greek] Linguistics and the Greek Verb
John Wilking
jcwilking at yahoo.com
Fri Jan 11 10:29:13 EST 2008
Hugh,
I think Roman Jackobsen said "All grammars leak." The same is true of linguistic systems, whether explanatory or descriptive, pace Noam Chomsky.
John C. Wilking
Randall Buth <randallbuth at gmail.com> wrote:
Hugh egrapse
>
I was doing a critical re-read of Caragounis' "The
Development of Greek and the New Testament". In his
refutation of Porter (and to a lesser degree Fanning
and McKay) on verbal aspect, it was quite obvious that
he possessed the empirical high ground. Porter
utilized much of contemporary linguistic literature in
creating his untenable model of the Greek verb. This
prompted the following statement by Caragounis on pg.
335. "Not only through other studies, but also
throughout his [Porter's]own book it becomes evident
that the linguistic teachings abroad today are
multifarious, and because the discipline, or shall I
say disciplines- since there are many different
systems or approaches- are still in a state of
fermentation, development, and constant modification.
Perhaps linguistics- which admittedly has given some
interesting insights to the study of language- is not
yet ready to supply the definitive model for
explaining the Greek verb, one that can supercede the
classical model." I've noticed there are several
persons on this forum with at least one foot in
linguistics. I wished the statement could be weighed
by those who possess the scales to do so.>
Caragounis is a philologist and a good one.
However, list members should know that philology
and linguistics are sometimes pictured as antithetical.
Linguistics asks 'why is human language the way it is',
while philology asks 'what was/is a particular language'.
To a linguist, a philologist is suspected of potentially missing
a generality or of not seeing the system.
To a philologist, linguists are suspected of imposing systems
without controlling all of the data.
One can see both of these issues in Caragounis'
work.
Caragounis controls the ancient Greek and points out where
Porter's view does not do justice to the Greek verb. While I
would agree that 'aspect-only' is untenable, nor is it required by
"linguistics", this is an area where Caragounis is writing as a
philologist. He seems suspicious of linguistics because of seeing
violence done to the language in the name of linguistics.
On another issue, Caragounis does not systematize his lengthy
discussions on the development of Greek phonology, so that
he ends up presenting an 'all or none' approach to modern
Greek phonology without explaining how, why, and when the
ancient system changed. A linguist wants to recognize change
and to explain why it changed.
I highly recommend Caragounis' book, by the way. He discusses
an impressive collection of pertinent data and has many engaging
observations even if he is not a linguist working within a theoretical
framework. Caragounis' view of the Greek verb is sound and his
control of the whole history of the language is reassuring. He also
reaffirms Dionysios Thrax' grouping of aorist and future together in
terms of aspect. I like that.
(If one wants a second opinion on the verb aspect-time question
I would recommend Rijksbaron, Syntax and Semantics of the Verb
in Classical Greek, 3 ed., who would be in basic agreement with
Caragounis and treats the tense question as a non-issue.
Caragounis would agree that this is a non-issue.)
(And to the inevitable question that may
arise, -- the 'classical' verb and the 'Koine' verb are the same
language and same general verb system.)
ERRWSQE
Randall Buth
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
ÏάÏÎ¹Ï á½Î¼á¿Î½ καὶ εἰÏήνη ÏληθÏ
νθείη
ש××× ××× ××ר××ת
randallbuth at gmail.com
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