[B-Greek] Lexicography and Deponency

Stephen Carlson stemmatic at gmail.com
Sat Nov 6 12:58:03 EDT 2010


On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 4:40 PM, Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com> wrote:
> 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.

That's an interesting proposal.  Now that I've started teaching the
augment to my class, I'm wondering if using the infinitive for
principal parts is perhaps less than ideal because it does not show
how some of the (irregular) augments are formed.  On the other hand,
the first person singular isn't ideal either, because, as far as I can
tell, no principal part in the first person singular distinguishes
among the contract verbs.  How about the third person singular for
principal parts?

Stephen
--
Stephen C. Carlson
Graduate Program in Religion
Duke University



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