[B-Greek] Lexicography and Deponency
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Tue Nov 2 13:08:12 EDT 2010
This discussion is a wonderful opening into many points that may
help the field in the generations to come. The issues are important
though some of the answers are not completely clear and may need
some trial and error. I wish that I had more time to elaborate these
days but I'll put in a few comments below.
Ken egrapse
> Well presented, Stephen. I agree with all your points, including the
> preference for the aorist infinitive in principle, ultimately coming back
> to the present infinitive.
First of course, in line with Carl's questions on terminology, we really
can't refer to a 'present' infinitive. It is only present in being linked
morphologically to the present tense. But it is linked to the imperfect
too. I would propose English: either Continuative or Imperfective or
in more plain, simple talk 'Open-ended',
Greek: PARATATIKH (lit: 'extending').
Carl egrapse
> Yesterday I weighed in here on a matter that Stephen hasn't raised
> but that I think belongs to the same discussion: rationalization of the
> pedagogically essential elements of verbs that should be committed to
> memory by students in order to grasp the tense-stems at work in each
> of the major tense-systems and in the voices: i.e., the "principal parts."
> Another item worth addressing, although it is probably even more
> difficult to combat than U.S. resistance to the metric system: the
> terminology we use to identify the morphological and semantic
> categories of the ancient Greek verb. Although Randall suggests that
> we simply accept and employ the Greek terms employed by Dionysius
> Thrax and other "grammatici antiqui," some of the English terms
> might certainly be improved upon (e.g. "tense," "voice," "mood,"
NAI, LALOYN THN ELLHNIKHN
XRWMAI TOIS ONOMASI TOY DIONYSIOY TOY QRAKOS
but I am happy to have reasonable, non-distracting terms when
speaking English. As mentioned above, an open-ended infinitive,
or imperfective infinitive is to the point and non-distracting.
'voice' is a bigger problem because it is a term that is fixed in English
outside of reference to Greek. It does not speak to me at all, except
as a blank word that I understand within a linguistic framework. I
much prefer the backtranslation from Greek DIAQESIS 'disposition'.
Middle voice is often simply a mental 'disposition'. That works for
many/most aorist QH forms, too, though I am resigned to calling
them passives, like POREYQHNAI. Obviously, 'passive' doesn't
mean squat for me when I'm talking about Greek. And the Greeks
started this naming with their PAQHTIKOS. So, OK, I can 'feel'
the 'pathos' in POREYQHNAI if I have to walk up the side of a
mountain.
...
> But now I want to deal more directly with Stephen's questions about
> lemmata, voice-forms, etc.
We have been using pages of verbs for reference for students when
speaking and when practicing on fluency drills.
columns across a landscape page include
aorist paratatikos parakeimenos enestos mellwn upotaktikh eytikh
These pages have metamophicized and now have infinitives at the top
of appropriate columns, aorist first and on the highest line of the table,
PARATATIKH down a row and over the PARATATIKOS, then down
another row and in smaller typeface the PARAKEIMENOS and
MELLWN participles over their respective columns.
Incidentally, the YPOTATAKTIKH and EYTIKH columns have both the
aorist and 'open-ended' forms listed together, divided by a slant in the
appropriate row for the person,
e.g. in the 1st person box AGAPHSAIMI /AGAPWiHN
ἀγαπήσαιμι/ἀγαπῴην
This has worked well.
Subjunctive is more common, of course, but
the principle is the same, listing AGAPHSW/AGAPW, etc., and having
(ἵνα) ὑποτακτική αορ/παρ
at the top of the column in small print.
One result of this is that a table only includes ONE 'disposition' at
a time. In other words we are lemmatizing separate voices of a
verb. This has worked out very well with all of the common and
irregular verbs because they need to be used and carry meaning
according to the voice/disposition.
thus, one looks up
ELESQAI 'to choose' in one table (a.k.a. "AIREW" αιρεω)
and one would look up
ELEIN 'to take' in a different table. (though we don't have this table
among our 180 sample verbs.)
We do have an Eng-Grk index and insert crossrefs in the tables to
where tables may be found, like TREXEIN see DRAMEIN.
The 'downside' of this is that a verb set like POIHSAI~POIEIN
and POIHSASQAI~POIEISQAI are provided separately
lemmacized tables. It doesn't seem like a downside at all with
the extra clarity that it provides.
And as I've mentioned on list more than once I think,
we sometimes refer to verbs by repeating the aorist infinitive
following with paratatikh in order to iconically mimic the
meaning:
DRAMEIN DRAMEIN >> TREXEIN
that is, 'to run, to run, >> to be running'.
PS: as a summary table Carl is correct that we have chosen
LYSAI 'to untie', after having toyed with LOYSAI for a while.
[[It has one big advantage in being a verb that Americans
pronounce correctly. It is ironic to hear the basic paradigm
'I untie' mispronounced as 'I wash' almost always.]]
There are a couple of little irregularities with LOYSAI (very rare
in PAQHTIKOS and having the -SQH- stem) that
led us back to LYSAI, but the middle LOYSASQAI is a real
verb, and practical, if in other people's company. With soap.
ERRWSQE
IWANHS
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth at gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
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