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Nice overview of verb morphology

Posted: June 16th, 2011, 10:29 am
by Jonathan Robie
I found the format of this particular overview useful:

http://www.torahresource.com/Greek/Verbs2.pdf

Re: Nice overview of verb morphology

Posted: June 16th, 2011, 11:44 am
by cwconrad
Jonathan Robie wrote:I found the format of this particular overview useful:

http://www.torahresource.com/Greek/Verbs2.pdf
The formatting is nice. The execution, however, involves a couple problems:

(a) The verb λύειν has no aorist middle ἐλυσάημν κτλ. in NT Koine, although there are two instances of the aorist middle of this verb in the LXX;

(b) The formula set out in the square box on page 1 reads: "[augment] / stem / [tense suffix] / [connecting vowel] / personal ending ἐλυσάμθα: ἐ/λυ/σά/μθα" -- but the personal ending here should be μεθα, not μθα.

(c) The chart seems to be keyed to the primers of Machen and Mounce; it might need some adjustments to be suited to others.

I think that one probably could make best use of this later in the first year, after one has already become reasonably intimate with present, future, imperfect, and aorist standard forms. I'm not sure that it's really possible to fit all irregularities into these formulas -- e.g., the thematic imperfect singulars of μι-verbs such as ἐτίθεις, ἐτίθει, ἐδίδους, ἐδίδου.

One needs to learn, as distinct groups of analytic information, the principal parts, how to figure out tense-stems from the principal parts, how the personal endings mimic each other with ω/μ/ν ς (τ) με(θα) τε/σθε ντ, how the thematic vowel works, and some other items, most particularly how basic phonetic principles explain the difference between the extant forms and the forms that these formative principles would lead one to expect. In other words, this sort of chart is not really a substitute for learning the paradigms (and learning them in context of their standard complements) so much as it is a tool enabling a student who already has most of the verb forms within grasp to understand the structural logic of the verbal system.

Re: Nice overview of verb morphology

Posted: June 16th, 2011, 11:54 am
by cwconrad
For what it's worth, I have a compendium of the ancient Greek verb accessible at my own web-site, spelling out in considerably greater detail the matters that I discussed in my response above.

Overview of Ancient Greek Verb: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/d ... ekVerb.pdf

GNT Irregular verbs: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/d ... rbsGNT.pdf

Compendium of Ancient Greek Phonology: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/docs/CompPhon.pdf