[B-Greek] Lexicography and Deponency

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Nov 1 16:40:43 EDT 2010


On Nov 1, 2010, at 1:45 PM, Stephen Carlson wrote:
> I've been contemplating the role of Greek lexicography with teaching,
> so here are some inchoate thoughts for discussion.

I would suppose there's a distinct advantage of a perspective grounded
in the study and practice of law and in years of study of Greek now
accompanied by the teaching of it -- a distinct advantage, I say, when
considering these questions of how best to make accessible to students
and scholars the idiosyncracies of ancient Greek verbs. And I do think
that idiosyncracies is about the only wholly apt word descriptive of
the eccentric and unforeseeable and downright ornery behavior of
Greek verbs especially. I doubt that any single system can adequately
display the entire range of forms and usages into which the Greek
irregular verbs may fall.

Ultimately there is no substitute for "intimate familiarity" with the
behavior and usage of the standard irregular verbs and their compounds.
A good lexicon should enable the student to recognize the forms
and usages of standard irregulars with the same richness of detail
as one learns to associate with the prosopography of Periclean
Athens, of Ptolemaic Alexandria, or the first-and-second-century 
Roman-Hellenistic world.

I think that one very profitable step forward that could be made
in ancient Greek pedagogy would be re-thinking and re-formulating
a truly practical sequence of "principal parts." Traditionally the
principal parts permit the student to discern the tense-stems of all
the tense-systems in which the particular verb appears in the
relevant Greek literature. This might be worth a separate discussion
in its own right, but it is closely associated with these lexicographical
questions. I'm not sure what order the items would be best presented,
but I'd suggest that the infinitives of each major tense system should
be included and that all voice forms should be included for each verb.

For example: 

Present: ἀγαπᾶν/ἀγαπᾶσθαι; φιλεῖν/φιλεῖσθαι; σταυροῦν/σταυροῦσθαι
Aorist: ἀγαπῆσαι/ἀγαπήσασθαι/ἀγαπηθῆναι; φιλῆσαι/φιλήσασθαι/φιληθῆναι; σταυρῶσαι/σταυρώσασθαι/σταυρωθῆναι
Future: ἀγαπήσειν/ᾶγαπήσεσθαι/ἀγαπηθήσεσθαι; φιλήσειν/φιλήσεσθαι/φιληθήσεσθαι; σταυρώσειν/σταυρώσεσθαι/σταυρωθήσεσθαι
Perfect: ἀγαπηκέναι/ἀγάπησθαι; πεφιληκέναι/πεφίλησθαι; ἐσταυρωκέναι/ἐσταυρωσθαι

Or for an irregular verb:

Present: φέρειν/φέρεσθαι
Aorist: ἐνεγκαι (ἐνεγκεῖν)/ἐνέγκασθαι/ἐνεχθῆναι
Future: οἴσειν/οἴσεσθαι/ἐνεχθήσεσθαι
Perfect: ἐνηνοχέναι/ἐνηνέχθαι

Present: μανθάνειν/μανθάνεσθαι
Aorist: μαθεῖν
Future: μαθήσεσθαι
Perfect: μεμαθηκέναι

That's just for starters. But it seems to me that a new standard for principal parts would need
to be part of the resolution of the problem of Lexical lemmas/lemmata.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)

> 
> Currently, deponent verbs are lexicalized under the first person
> present middle indicative.  This means that when a student sees a
> middle voice verb in a text, the student has to figure out whether the
> verb is deponent and has to be looked up under the first person
> present middle, or, if there is an active counterpart, under a first
> person present active form.  Thus, the student has to figure more out
> about a verb than its morphology: the student also has to know its
> usage *even to find the right lexical form*.
> 
> As many of you know, the concept of deponency has recently been
> questioned in scholarship (there will be, in fact, an SBL session on
> it even), but it seems to me that even if we move away from discussing
> deponent verb but calling them middle verbs, say, the concept of
> deponency is still ingrained in the lexicons.  Ironically, it is only
> the non-deponent middles that have the problem, but the deponents are
> already lexicalized under the middle form, which they should be.
> 
> As a result, I've been exploring how a lexicon should handle the new
> perspective on voice.  One idea is to lexicalize all middle verbs
> under a middle lexical form, regardless of whether the verb has an
> active counterpart.  (And if the middle verb has an active
> counterpart, which many do, then it should be lexicalized separately.)
> For example, in addition to the active LUW λύω ("I loose, release,
> untie"), there would also be a middle LUOMAI λύομαι ("I ransom").
> 
> Another issue is whether to lexicalize verbs under the first person
> singular.  One disadvantage with it is that all the contract verbs in
> the first person singular all end with a circumflexed omega, so a
> lexicon would need to supplement the lexical form with information to
> indicate whether the verb is an alpha contract, an epsilon contract,
> or an omicron contract.  The standard way of doing this has been to
> use uncontracted lexical forms, e.g. AGAPAW ἀγαπάω, even though only
> AGAPW= ἀγαπῶ is found in our literature.  The use of an artificial
> form in a lexicon, however, should be avoided.
> 
> The present active infinitive, on the other hand, nicely distinguishes
> the various contract verbs.  Non-contract present active infinitives
> end in -EIN -ειν, A-contracts in -A=N -ᾶν, E-contracts in -EI=N -εῖν,
> and O-contracts in -OU=N -οῦν.  The perispomenon present active
> infinitives show clearly that a verb is a contract verb and which with
> vowel.  Thus, the lexical form for AGAPW= ἀγαπῶ would be AGAPA=N
> ἀγαπᾶν, and the user is immediately clued into the fact that it is an
> alpha contract.
> 
> But if one is going to use an infinitive as the lexical form, there is
> a strong temptation for the aorist infinitive.  After all, the aorist
> forms often reflect the actual verbal root better than the present.
> For example, the aorist BALEI=N βαλεῖν better reflects that that the
> verbal root is BAL- βαλ- than the present BA/LLEIN βάλλειν, with the
> double lambda.  Similarly, LABEI=N λαβεῖν shows that the verbal root
> is LAB- λαβ-, while the present infinitive shows and infixed form,
> LAMBA/NEIN λαμβάνειν.  Another benefit is that aorist infinitives
> really can be nicely glossed by the English infinitive form "to X."
> Also, aorist infinitives don't have the augment.
> 
> But I see a couple of drawbacks for using aorist infinitives:
> 
> 1.  Some verbs, e.g., EINAI εἶναι (EIMI/ εἰμί) don't have an aorist
> infinitive, so the present has to be used instead.
> 
> 2.  Some verbs have multiple aorist infinitives, over time, whether
> due to suppletion (e.g. for TREXW τρέχω, the epic aorist QRECAI θρέξαι
> was later replaced by DRAMEIN δραμεῖν).
> 
> 3. Yet the biggest issue that I'm having is that are two non-active
> aorist infinitives, commonly termed the aorist middle infinitive and
> the aorist passive infinitive.  Which one should be chosen for the
> lexical form?  For example, in Gal 3:10, 13, 4:22, 47, Paul uses the
> word GEGRAPTAI γέγραπται ("it is written").  Should the appropriate
> aorist infinitive for lexicalization be the passive GRAFHNAI γραφῆναι
> or the middle GRAYASQAI γράψασθαι?  The fact that Greek distinguishes
> between them forces us to make a decision.  Do we lexicalize based on
> the passive or middle aorist based on usage elsewhere?  But this loses
> the advantage in being guided solely by morphology,
> 
> I'm inclined to believe, that no matter how tempting the aorist
> infinitive is, it seems to me better to lexicalize both actives and
> middles based on the present (whether an infinitive or the common
> first person singular).  In this case, "passives" would go under the
> middle, so the treatment is strictly morphological.  Go when the MP
> (middle-passive) form GEGRAPTAI γέγραπται is seen, the student should
> look up its meaning under either GRAFOMAI γράφομαι or GRAFESQAI
> γράφεσθαι.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Stephen
> --
> Stephen C. Carlson
> Graduate Program in Religion
> Duke University







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