[B-Greek] Finding Verbal Roots (more on rules and paradigms)
Kenneth Litwak
javajedi2 at yahoo.com
Tue Sep 16 18:13:10 EDT 2008
One of the things that Mounce (BBG) emphasizes is verbal roots. He asserts that the notion of "irregular" forms is wrong. Rather, the forms of a verb are modifications of the verbal root. Fine. The question is, where do we find verbal roots for every verb? He talks about this concept in relation to Second Aorist verbs. He shows the root for EIPON, with a digamma. I'm not sure how much value there is in telling a student, "You can understand how the second aorist of LEGW is formed by knowing this root, which contains a letter we never use." For other verbs, like EIDON, he does not even give the root. If knowing the root is so important, where would a student go to find a list of them? I never learned about this in Beginning Greek, but since I'm teaching out of BBG, I need to be able to do something more than wave my hands and say "these are important." I need a resource for students to use or I need to skip the topic. Anyone who teaches Greek in
favor of skipping the topic of verb roots? Thanks.
Ken
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