[B-Greek] Semantic Space (was Charts of Forms should be real words)

Mark Lightman lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Sat Sep 26 12:30:27 EDT 2009


Randall egrapse:
 
<For me, the main concern is to cover 'central semantic space' in a
language and then to branch out into special areas. I listed the
above because I think that a basic reader of 1st century Greek NT
needs to have these words in their 'semantic space' in their brains
and to be able to network with them (i.e. to use the items in
communication so that it is a language that is sitting in the brain.)
then we can read the GNT with understanding and feeling like when
we read any piece of literature in any language.>
 
Our Dialogos e-mailing-in-Greek forum, which is still  in its infancy
(if not prenatal) illustrates you can never predict what words will
wind up in ones central semantic space.  When you use Greek to
communicate, you find that you tend to use the same words over and over
again, ANAGIGNWSW perhaps predictably, but I've been surprised how
often we use XAIRW and XRAOMAI.  Whether these words are common
in the NT, or what forms are found and what are not, quicky 


Mark L


FWSFOROS MARKOS

--- On Fri, 9/25/09, Randall Buth <randallbuth at gmail.com> wrote:


From: Randall Buth <randallbuth at gmail.com>
Subject: [B-Greek] Charts of Forms should be real words
To: "B Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Friday, September 25, 2009, 2:58 AM


Thank you for the question. I think it may help clarify some issues.

Eddie egrapse (and we can see him smiling between the lines)
>
Yea, . . .
>Real B-Greek words like...
>
>κατεπηδήσαμεν
>
>ἡ ἡμῶν ἄμαξα ἐπάγη ἐν βορβόρῳ
>τό μου ἄρμα ἐπάγη ἐν βορβόρῳ
>
>πτησόμεθα εις Τελ Αβιβ αὔριον

Well, let's look at the pedigree of these fine words:

PETESQAI 'to be flying' is even in the NT.
Don't we want to know the whole word? A word is more than
participles and subjunctives.

and
PHKSAI 'to fix something in place' is in the NT
Don't we want to know the whole word, PHGNYMI and all,
at least as much as is in idiomatic, common use?

and
AMAKSA 'wagon, cart [modern Greek amaksi is one word for 'car']'
is 27xx in LXX, not to mention Josephus, et al.
So let's include it.
[And you will note my great restraint in not using
DITROXON δίτροχον 'two-wheeler' as 'bicycle',
though I wouldn't be against it]

and
BORBOROS is in the NT.

and
KATAPHDAN 'to be jumping down' has PHDAN 'to jump, leap' in the NT
and KATAPHDAN in the Apocryphal Gospels.

So everything is card-carrying b-Greek.

If we were going to teach someone '20th century biblical English'
wouldn't the students expect to know forms that didn't happen to
occur in the Bible, wouldn't they expect to be able to think with forms
outside the particular Bible version? And wouldn't they still think
of the whole resulting network as the same language?

That is one of the problems with many NT morphologies, Mounce
included. They take 1/4 of a language and then present 'swiss
cheese' out of the remains (only attested forms in GNT +/- ApFath).
(my copy of Mounce Morphology is in storage boxes, and I would
like to be able to re-check what is written in it.   Howard
[Moulton Howard, v 2] was more reliable with the papyri and actual
language. But it too is limited by the canon, not common language
use.)

And more importantly, if someone were really going to understand the
English Bible, wouldn't they need to know the common synonyms of
attested words, that is, the common words that were NOT chosen,
in order to more precisely know where the attested words and
structures and idioms fit into the semantic space of the language?

For me, the main concern is to cover 'central semantic space' in a
language and then to branch out into special areas. I listed the
above because I think that a basic reader of 1st century Greek NT
needs to have these words in their 'semantic space' in their brains
and to be able to network with them (i.e. to use the items in
communication so that it is a language that is sitting in the brain.)
then we can read the GNT with understanding and feeling like when
we read any piece of literature in any language.

Yes, there are languages where this is impossible because the
remains of the language are too fragmentary, like Phoenician and
Ugaritic, even 'biblical Hebrew' on the vocabulary side, but 1st
century Greek is well-enough attested to provide ample excecise
space for those wanting to develop the cognitive network (i.e., learn
the language fluently). If we let the window open up a bit, say
attested texts 2BCE to 2CE, then I think we're looking at a total
vocab of 50,000+ entries. I would think that students specializing
in the language would want to control 15,000 of these in order to
feel comfortable as a specialist. We can always leave a few words
for 'fuzzy fog', just like we do when reading in any other language
that we know well.

And we should start with covering basic, concrete words that a 5 year
old would be expected to know. My list covered words that I expect
someone to know with only a five-year old's control of the language.
Yes, we want more, too, but one should start at the center and branch
out.

E.g., a word like KATHFEIA ''gloom and despair' needs to be included
in order to cover the NT, and thus would probably be in the first 7000
items learned, but I wouldn't list it at the core, nor expect a 5yr old to
know it.

Hopefully, this little glimpse shows how a language 'turns inside out'
when one tries to use it and develop fluency, and then the existing
'tools' for students become viewed in a different light, something
like seeing a set for a TV western that lacks dimensions.

ERRWSO
Randall





-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth at gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
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