While it is a general typological norm for inflectional affixes to occur outside derivational affixes, the fact that inflection attaches to the root here is not evidence that the 'prepositions' are separate entities. There are other languages where some kind of derivation appears on the outside and inflection occurs closer to the verb root. As such, your #1 argument forms no basis for arguing one way or the other.Alan Bunning wrote:1. The syntax of verb conjugation clearly shows that they were treated as separate words because augmentation/reduplication occurs on the root verb after the preposition, not on the preposition. For example, when “απολυω” is augment it is “απελυσα” not “ηπολυσα”. Notice that the principal parts are also the same for the root verb as they are for the alleged compound verbs, indicating that the preposition was merely moved in front of the verb, not attached to form a new compound verb.
Splitting Compound Verbs?
Re: Splitting Compound Verbs?
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
SIL International
Koine-Greek.com
SIL International
Koine-Greek.com
-
- Posts: 3355
- Joined: May 11th, 2011, 10:51 am
- Location: Melbourne
- Contact:
Re: Splitting Compound Verbs?
Evidence needs a theory to make sense. Otherwise, it's just raw data and arbitrary observations. I would recommend that you study the differences between content words, function words, clitics, derivational affixes, and inflectional affixes, and the kind of evidence that people use in assigning (free and bound) morphemes to this or that category. Once that is understood, you can look for and properly evaluate the evidence regarding the status of verbal prefixes.Alan Bunning wrote:To summarize where this issue now stands, it seems that there is evidence both for and against splitting compound verbs, so it is a mixed bag. I would appreciate some help in making some sense of the evidence.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne, Australia
-
- Posts: 303
- Joined: June 5th, 2011, 7:31 am
- Contact:
Re: Splitting Compound Verbs?
The theory and other rationale was previously referred to in this thread in this proposed update (http://bunning.gweb.io/CNTR/downloads/worddivisions.pdf) which basically implies that this practice in Greek was later influenced by the conventions of Latin, but not necessarily how the Greeks understood and used their own language in the first century. Whether it makes sense or not is debatable. The way that the words are divided now appears to me to violate the standard rules of linguistics. In other words, if an alien were to analyze the Greek language of the first century from scratch, I wonder if word divisions would be done the way they are done now, without a bias to conform to conventions of compound words of Latin (and now English).Stephen Carlson wrote:Evidence needs a theory to make sense. Otherwise, it's just raw data and arbitrary observations. I would recommend that you study the differences between content words, function words, clitics, derivational affixes, and inflectional affixes, and the kind of evidence that people use in assigning (free and bound) morphemes to this or that category. Once that is understood, you can look for and properly evaluate the evidence regarding the status of verbal prefixes.Alan Bunning wrote:To summarize where this issue now stands, it seems that there is evidence both for and against splitting compound verbs, so it is a mixed bag. I would appreciate some help in making some sense of the evidence.
-
- Posts: 303
- Joined: June 5th, 2011, 7:31 am
- Contact:
Re: Splitting Compound Verbs?
Thanks for that. Can you give some examples of those other languages?MAubrey wrote:While it is a general typological norm for inflectional affixes to occur outside derivational affixes, the fact that inflection attaches to the root here is not evidence that the 'prepositions' are separate entities. There are other languages where some kind of derivation appears on the outside and inflection occurs closer to the verb root. As such, your #1 argument forms no basis for arguing one way or the other.Alan Bunning wrote:1. The syntax of verb conjugation clearly shows that they were treated as separate words because augmentation/reduplication occurs on the root verb after the preposition, not on the preposition. For example, when “απολυω” is augment it is “απελυσα” not “ηπολυσα”. Notice that the principal parts are also the same for the root verb as they are for the alleged compound verbs, indicating that the preposition was merely moved in front of the verb, not attached to form a new compound verb.
-
- Posts: 3355
- Joined: May 11th, 2011, 10:51 am
- Location: Melbourne
- Contact:
Re: Splitting Compound Verbs?
I could find nothing on your page refering to any standard rules of linguistics. There is no mention of affixes or clitics on the page, and my suggestion that you study what those terms mean is to help point you to what linguistics has to say about it.Alan Bunning wrote:The theory and other rationale was previously referred to in this thread in this proposed update (http://bunning.gweb.io/CNTR/downloads/worddivisions.pdf) which basically implies that this practice in Greek was later influenced by the conventions of Latin, but not necessarily how the Greeks understood and used their own language in the first century. Whether it makes sense or not is debatable. The way that the words are divided now appears to me to violate the standard rules of linguistics. In other words, if an alien were to analyze the Greek language of the first century from scratch, I wonder if word divisions would be done the way they are done now, without a bias to conform to conventions of compound words of Latin (and now English).
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne, Australia
-
- Posts: 3323
- Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am
Integrate a discussion of accents / word stress into your ar
I agree that you need a theoretical basis for your approach. The observations do not lead to a self-evident conclusion. It needs to be lead somewhere.
I think you need to integrate a discussion of word stress / accent into you presentation. It is clear from poetic examples that after tmesis, the prepositions have there own accents. You need to state clearly what you believe is happening to that in the separation that you are proposing.
It also seems that you are running together two things. First a generally observation about Greek, and second an attempt time do something where it is significant. In my looking through and thinking so far, I can only find those two examples that I've cited where separation is contextually significant.
It seems that you are looking for words which are significantly separated in all situations. I think that you need to look at certain meanings of the words for that, not for every meaning. A first step is to subjectively determine which of the words meanings is meant in given passage.
I think you need to integrate a discussion of word stress / accent into you presentation. It is clear from poetic examples that after tmesis, the prepositions have there own accents. You need to state clearly what you believe is happening to that in the separation that you are proposing.
It also seems that you are running together two things. First a generally observation about Greek, and second an attempt time do something where it is significant. In my looking through and thinking so far, I can only find those two examples that I've cited where separation is contextually significant.
It seems that you are looking for words which are significantly separated in all situations. I think that you need to look at certain meanings of the words for that, not for every meaning. A first step is to subjectively determine which of the words meanings is meant in given passage.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
-
- Posts: 303
- Joined: June 5th, 2011, 7:31 am
- Contact:
Re: Splitting Compound Verbs?
The statement, “words should be divided into the smallest units possible that can stand alone as individual words without sacrificing any loss of meaning” is basically my summary of the standard linguistic convention of a word. Wikipedia defines a word in this way: “the smallest element that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content (with literal or practical meaning).” With Greek, it can be claimed that this clearly was not followed in many cases, since the prepositions in many compound verbs could be separated without any loss of meaning! Several examples of this have already been cited. The question is not what “affixes” or “clitics” are, for I believe those concepts have already been covered and they certainly may provide possible explanations, but do they apply to these compound verbs and what is the evidence to support that for the Greek language in the first century. That is why I am focusing on the evidence, and why it may or may not be valid.Stephen Carlson wrote:I could find nothing on your page refering to any standard rules of linguistics. There is no mention of affixes or clitics on the page, and my suggestion that you study what those terms mean is to help point you to what linguistics has to say about it.Alan Bunning wrote:The theory and other rationale was previously referred to in this thread in this proposed update (http://bunning.gweb.io/CNTR/downloads/worddivisions.pdf) which basically implies that this practice in Greek was later influenced by the conventions of Latin, but not necessarily how the Greeks understood and used their own language in the first century. Whether it makes sense or not is debatable. The way that the words are divided now appears to me to violate the standard rules of linguistics. In other words, if an alien were to analyze the Greek language of the first century from scratch, I wonder if word divisions would be done the way they are done now, without a bias to conform to conventions of compound words of Latin (and now English).
Re: Od.20, 280-1 διελεῖν "to separate" an essential working
Yes, I know what the common wisdom on this is, but I'm questioning it (not militantly, however). How do we know that by the 8th century B.C. what Homer is doing (in terms using the elements separately) would not have sounded poetic simply because that's not the way people were speaking in everyday speech? The argument that Homer is reflecting an earlier stage of the language, when prepositions were adverbs, seems to me to be bit circular, if there is another explanation for the phenomenon. As it is, the Wiki article and the book citation (from 1861, mind you) stand in my view as simple assertions.cwconrad wrote:I think the Wiki article cited is quite right in asserting that "tmesis" is inaccurate as a term for Homeric practice, -- that the elements shaping the verbal conception as a whole had not yet coalesced into a single unit. But there's something comparable, as I suggested back in the early stages of this thread, in the modern German usage of so-called "separable-prefix-verbs," as in the simple differentiation between the infinitive annehmen or anzunehmen, "to assume", and usage in an independent clause, e.g. ich nehme an, "I assume". In the case of these German verbs, there's no question but that the adverbial/prepositional elements are authentic parts of the verb, although idiomatic usage separates them in an independent clause.Alan Bunning wrote:I found this unreferenced blurb on Wikipedia:Barry Hofstetter wrote:How do we know that in the 8th century BC Greek speakers weren't using compound verbs just as later Greek and Homer wasn't doing the tmesis thing? What was the non-literary Greek of the Homeric period like? Does Linear B offer any insights here (understanding that Linear B is a thousand years earlier than Homeric Greek)?
Tmesis in Ancient Greek is something of a misnomer, since there is not necessarily a splitting of the prefix from the verb; rather the consensus now seems to be that the separate prefix or pre-verb reflects a stage in the language where the prefix had not yet joined onto the verb. There are many examples in Homer's epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, both of which preserve archaic features. One common and oft-cited example is κατὰ δάκρυα λείβων kata dakrua leibōn "shedding tears", in which the pre-verb κατά kata "down" has not yet joined the verbal participle λείβων leibōn "shedding". In later Greek, these would combine to form the compound verb καταλείβων kataleibōn "shedding (in a downwards direction)".
And then I later found this: http://books.google.com/books?id=ELwzAQ ... &lpg=PA341
I remember reading something from more than one source that said something like "The Greek language was in a period of change during the Koine period, and the prepositional prefixes were beginning to attach to verbs to form compound verbs." I have looked for that quote recently and could not find it anywhere. I thought AT Robertson might have said something like that, but I couldn't find a direct reference to it in there either. Does anybody know where something like that has explicitly been said?
-
- Posts: 303
- Joined: June 5th, 2011, 7:31 am
- Contact:
Re: Integrate a discussion of accents / word stress into you
No, I really don't want to develop any kind of theory, because I don't want to do any such thing. What I would like is for people to state why the apparent support for splitting those words is invalid, so I can go on my merry way. I have 2 pretty good reasons to not split them, and would like the reasons for splitting them to be refuted or at least marginalized.Stephen Hughes wrote:I agree that you need a theoretical basis for your approach. The observations do not lead to a self-evident conclusion. It needs to be lead somewhere.
I think you need to integrate a discussion of word stress / accent into you presentation. It is clear from poetic examples that after tmesis, the prepositions have there own accents. You need to state clearly what you believe is happening to that in the separation that you are proposing.
It also seems that you are running together two things. First a generally observation about Greek, and second an attempt time do something where it is significant. In my looking through and thinking so far, I can only find those two examples that I've cited where separation is contextually significant.
It seems that you are looking for words which are significantly separated in all situations. I think that you need to look at certain meanings of the words for that, not for every meaning. A first step is to subjectively determine which of the words meanings is meant in given passage.
-
- Posts: 3323
- Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am
Re: Splitting Compound Verbs?
How will the competent reader be helped by splitting them?
I understand how it could be useful for an intermediate students working through a text where the derivation morphology has been simplified to see which words had a direct correspondence between form and meaning, and by implication where that is not the case.
I am not convinced this type of division is useful to those already competent in Greek.
Who benefits? is a relevant question, I think. Even if you are proved right, I think there still needs to be a reason of benefit to make a change. That is an additional thing that you might like to address.
I understand how it could be useful for an intermediate students working through a text where the derivation morphology has been simplified to see which words had a direct correspondence between form and meaning, and by implication where that is not the case.
I am not convinced this type of division is useful to those already competent in Greek.
Who benefits? is a relevant question, I think. Even if you are proved right, I think there still needs to be a reason of benefit to make a change. That is an additional thing that you might like to address.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)