Jason Hare wrote: ↑February 24th, 2023, 1:21 pm
That wasn’t my intention... just to give you the background of the discussion here so that you can know what was already said and perhaps build on it.
Ah understood, thanks for clarifying; I read through those thanks for linking to them.
So to take this down a route that hasn't been discussed on those then:
Grant Lee's premise for the sake of argument that φιλεω is being edged out by αγαπαω in usage for the emotion love, does anyone know of any support in modern linguistics for Lee's idea about formality? In the article he references himself from a 1985 paper
https://www.academia.edu/3698768/_Some_ ... _1985_1_26 Here he touches on it in pages 7, 10-11
An appreciation of the long-term trends of the language, and their rate of progress, is essential. This is because it seems to be a general axiom of language that archaism and formality go together: the use of an obsolete or obsolescent feature instead of its current equivalent suggest more formal speech. (Contrast is an essential element here. An old feature is noticeable, or" marked", as regards formality only if it contrasts with some other feature which has replaced it in normal use; otherwise inherited features, which in fact make up the bulk of any language, are unmarked.)This principle is especially applicable to post-Classical Greek, where concern with past forms of the language was a dominant influence. We can be sure that when a writer of this period wished to be formal he would tend to employ obsolete features
What sort of resources would a reader of the GNT need to look at to see whether a particular lexeme is becoming more obsolescent than another at a certain time to help make such a formality judgement. That coupled with the register of the sources it appears in. It strikes me that this sort of analysis is likely something outside my ability to assess properly and is something I will have to rely on others for, then hope I understood them, and that they are right.