[B-Greek] Steve Runge's new Discourse Grammar of the GNT
yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Sat Mar 13 16:20:08 EST 2010
I have been hearing rumors of Steven's forthcoming discourse grammar. If he is able to do for Greek something like Christo Van der Merwe has done for Hebrew, this should be a real treat. I'm going to laydown the cash for the Logos pre-pub.
Yancy Smith, PhD
yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Y.W.Smith at tcu.edu
yancy at wbtc.com
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On Mar 13, 2010, at 11:50 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:
> B-Greekers well know that I am a confirmed skeptic regarding the ability and willingness of academic Linguists to explore and explain the workings of ancient Greek. Nevertheless, I won't hesitate to say that Steven Runge's new book, _A Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction for Teaching and Exegesis_, is a real breakthrough achievement in the centuries-long endeavor to understand and demonstrate how ancient Greek effectively structured what its users wanted to say That claim will require some explanation of my skepticism about linguistics and no less about conventional grammar as an account of how language works and my gratification at this breakthrough.
>
> Heretofore I have disparaged academic Linguistics and its efforts to master the way ancient Greek functions . I have described the academic linguists as dwelling in an ivory tower of Babel with many remote chambers where the elite meet to dialog with those of their own school in a jargon intelligible to each other but less intelligible to those in other wings and almost hopelessly undecipherable to the 'profanum vulgus' down below -- those of us who struggle to make sense of ancient Greek texts , those of us who must rely upon the tools of grammatical lore in order to understand what Homer and Plato and the authors of the New Testament scriptures sought to convey in a language that can come alive only through the arts of Hermes, whose magic wand leads the way across impenetrable boundaries and makes dead languages speak anew what their users of long ago intended for generations yet unborn to understand.
>
> Language is a tool that does not readily lend itself to a clear understanding by its users. Human speech and writing is an instrument whereby we share our experience and our intentions. We learn early in life to speak and to read and write the language of our native communities, and we learn it without having any grasp of how or why our language works. At some point in the course of our education, we are introduced to Grammar as a body of lore intended to help us understand how our language works and how we can use it to communicate more effectively. If and when we come to learn one or more other languages of other human communities, we are likely to encounter, sooner or later, the grammar of that alien language. It may even be the case that we are taught the alien grammar as a primary tool for learning the alien language, although, in my experience, such a course of instruction has very limited success.
>
> I am inclined to think about grammar -- whether it be the grammar of our native language or the grammar of ancient Greek -- as Aristotle thought of moral philosophy: it is useful only to those who have already learned to behave well; it will not turn uncouth savages into good citizens. Neither will grammar turn a Greekless young layperson into an exemplary reader and expounder of the Greek New Testament. And in fact, I rather doubt that the workings of Greek or any other ancient or modern language can be described in all its how's and explained with full accounting for all its why's with full adequacy. One needs terms to refer to the elements and ordering patterns of language generally and of the particular language under consideration; the terms used by traditional grammar (e.g. "tense," "mood," "voice," "aspect," etc.) seem arbitrary), while the terms used by the various schools of academic linguists {e.g. "telic," "perfective," "stative," "eventive, " "grammaticalize," "de
> ictic," etc.) may overlap in some respects while in others they differ because they are intended for use in an altogether different framework for understanding the workings of language. I do not think that either traditional grammar or academic linguistics can be a "science" in the sense of the natural sciences. At best, I think, grammar and linguistics may be a highly-developed art: a methodology that endeavors to describe intelligibly the elements and structures and patterns of usage that constitute a language and to explain why those structures and patterns of usage are successful.I just don't think that grammatical and linguistic explanations of usage in speech and writing are ever likely to be wholly adequate.
>
> Steve's Discourse Grammar will appear both as a book
> ((Logos: http://www.logos.com/products/prepub/details/4598, Hendrickson:https://www.eisenbrauns.com/ECOM/_2VY0IGGUW.HTM)
> and as a Logos six-piece software package at Logos (http://www.logos.com/ldgnt). The software package will include an electronic text of the Discourse Grammar (here called "Introduction"), the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament with discourse elements marked in the Greek text, and the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament: Glossary. In addition the bundled software package includes the Lexham High Definition New Testament: ESV Edition, the Lexham High Definition New Testament: Glossary, and the Lexham High Definition New Testament: Introduction. For my part I have some reservations about the software package. The Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament includes Logos software's signature reverse-interlinear translation (although Steve tells me this can be turned off!), which seems to me a distraction and nuisance to anyone who really knows Biblical Greek -- and what good is an exploration of the discourse features of New Testament Greek to someone whose Greek is so poor that
> she needs an interlinear?
>
> The topics covered in this sizable volume (467 pages including a summary and bibliography) range over the entirety of the ways in which Biblical Greek speech and narrative text are structured for efficacious communication. Following upon a basic introduction including a clear statement of some very basic linguistic principles comes an account of connecting words and devices (e.g. asyndeton, KAI, DE, etc. -- an account that clearly differentiates the usage of each and that seems to me far more informative than the information about these words which one derives either from a standard grammar or from a lexicon. Ensuing sections deal with Forward-Pointing Devices, Information-Structuring Devices, Thematic Highlighting Devices -- I shall not attempt to catalog all these as you can readily see what they are at the URLs that I've noted above. It's worth noting, however, that there are fine accounts offered of the Historical Present, of Framing Devices, especially of Participial cla
> uses ("Circumstantial Frames").
>
> What Steve accomplishes in this volume is, in my judgment, complementary to what a reference grammar such as Smyth or BDF or Wallace's GGBB undertakes to do. In the very opening words of his _Beginning Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek_, Robert Funk stated (http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/project/funk-grammar/pre-alpha/intro-2.html) that, "Learning a language is learning the structure signals." But it is not just the verbs and nouns, pronouns, adverbs, and adjectives and not just the fundamental syntactic patterns that permit these elements to be linked that one must learn in order to read, write and communicate effectively; the "structure signals" involve the whole gamut of devices that are expounded and explained in the Discourse Grammar. One really needs to have a mastery of both kinds of grammar, and in my perusal of the Discourse Grammar I came to recognize one item after another that was familiar to me from my extensive reading but that never had a name that I co
> uld refer to in describing it. I think that is as it should be: grammar really is the johnny-come-lately accounting for the usage with which one should already be familiar through reading, speaking, and interaction with the language.
>
> Steve's regular procedure in the chapters of his grammar, wherever it is applicable -- as it usually is -- is to set forth clearly first the conventional grammarians' accounting for a usage such as circumstantial clauses and then go on to discuss how these elements are understood in terms of discourse functions, then fnally the discourse account is illustrated and applied with ample NT Greek examples. What is so far removed from what seems the common mode of presentation by academic linguists is the pains taken to communicate with those of us who have learned Greek in the old-fashioned way, when, whether rightly or wrongly, we often feel that our notions of how ancient Greek words are dismissed out of hand as antediluvian and laughable. One wants to say, if this is the beginning of a dialogue between the academic linguists and us dead grammrians, "Long live the dialogue!"
>
> Of course, this could not be a book by a linguist if there were no jargon at all present. When one comes to chapter headings such as "Left-dislocations" and "Right-dislocations," one is inclined to think that we have turned from a discussion of Biblical Greek to a discussion of some orthopedic surgeon. But in fact, it soon becomes clear exactly what is meant by such terms and one soon recognizes that one has seen these animals repeatedly somewhere in the forest of Greek literature that one has read -- we just never knew what to call them.
>
> I had no intention of offering a full-scale review of this book at this time; I don't think that the book is due for publication until September of this year, and I have no idea when the software package at Logos will be available. But the proof copies of the grammar are being made available to some and I am sufficiently delighted with what I'm seeing in print rather than on a computer screen that I had to vent.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>
>
> ---
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