[B-Greek] Analytic versus Natural Reading; the case of ANOIGW

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Apr 27 06:38:09 EDT 2009


On Apr 26, 2009, at 7:26 PM, Mark Lightman wrote:

> My title makes it sounds like this is going to be a long, boring,
> scholarly post.  Don't worry; I'll make sure it's not scholarly.

Well, scholarly it's not.

As best as I can figure out, you instinctively recognize what forms of  
ANOIGW/ANOIGNUMI at sight without any need to analyze them. That's  
very good. On the other hand, you have to do a double-take and  
intensive analysis whenever you come to a form of hISTAMAI, hISTHMI,  
to the extent that you have to know whether ESTHN is a "second aorist"  
in order to understand that it means "I stood" or "I came to a halt,"  
and distinct from the first aorist ESTHSA meaning "I caused to stand"  
or "I made come to a halt." My judgment is that you really don't  
understand the verb hISTAMAI/hISTHMI and its morphology as having any  
logically-interrelated semantic pattern; rather the forms of this verb  
are like entries in a telephone directory to you. To be sure, ANOIGW/ 
ANOIGNUMI is a common enough verb, but hISTAMAI/hISTHMI is an  
important and recurrent everyday verb, which means that not knowing it  
is a real stumbling block to reading and understanding ancient Greek.

You've got to know verbs the way you know people or a terrain with  
distinctive but recognizable features and traits of character. I think  
that Humpty Dumpty had it right when he told Alice in "Through the  
Looking Glass," "“They've a temper, some of them -- particularly  
verbs:  they're the proudest — adjectives you can do anything with,  
but verbs — ;  however, I can manage the whole lot of them!   
Impenetrability! That's what I say!”

>
> You have your analytic Greek readers.  They have to know not
> only what every word means, but what its form is, and why it has that
> form.  Then you have your natural readers, who are content
> with understanding the essence of a passage, and don't care
> much for parsing or morphology or grammar.
>
> I am an extreme analytic reader.  I have to understand
> every letter and breathing mark of every word. If there
> USED to be a digamma there, I want to know about it
> One of the reasons I have been enjoying Homer so much
> is, he has all sorts of forms, some of which are MORE
> regular than koine, and some of which are so bizarre
> that there is a special word for them--heteroclitic.
> A heteroclitic word is a word that is so weird that
> even an analytic reader has nothing to say about
> it. But natural readers just read heteroclitic
> words without even knowing that they are heteroclitic.
>
> Now, for some reason I am an analytic reader with every
> Greek word except for ANOIGW.  I can tell you, I HAVE
> to tell you, the root and the stem and parsing info for
> every word in the Greek NT.  But I didn't know, and I
> don't know, the root of ANOIGW.  I don't know if the AN
> is a preposition or part of the root. I don't know, and I
> don't care, what the principle parts of ANOIGW are.
> I don't know if it is a MI verb or not, or if it's transitive.
> When I read the word, I don't think about whether it
> is aorist or middle or has one or two or no augments.
> I just READ the word.  I know what it means and I
> move on and start analyzing every other Greek word.
>
> Why am I a natural reader with just this word?  I think
> it's because while ANOIGW is quite complicated in
> form, in meaning it never causes me any trouble.  It is
> a common word, both in the NT and elsewhere, but
> it seems like it always has an easy subject or object
> nearby.  Only a few things "open," doors, eyes, books,
> and it is always easy to figure it out.  I've never looked
> up ANOIGW in a lexicon because I've never had to.
> I don't know, and I don't care, if a given form is active
> or passive or transitive or instransitive because I
> don't think it ever matters in meanings.  Doors can
> open or be opened and the aspect doesn't seem to matter.
> I think one sees STOMA or QURA nearby and one just
> jumps over the form of ANOIGW and gets to its meaning.
> In a word, natural reading.  Now, you can't do this with most
> Greek words.  If you don't know whether ESTHN is a
> first or second aorist you are going to get in trouble
> with meaning.  This is why I know so much about
> the morphology of hISTHMI, and say PEIQW (which
> I always have to analyze; does it mean  "trust"
> in the perfect and "obey" in the passive or is it the
> other way around?) because I have to.
>
> What I wonder about is, is this just me?  Is ANOIGW
> an objectively easy word to naturally read or am I
> just a savante about this and an idiot about everything
> else?  Can a natural reader just as easily naturally read
> iSTHMI and PEIQW?
>
> Mark L.
>
>
>
> ---
> 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




More information about the B-Greek mailing list