[B-Greek] The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data: An Argument for a Large Corpus Size (i.e., Reading WIdely)

Dr. Don Wilkins drdwilkins at verizon.net
Thu Mar 25 20:02:24 EDT 2010


Yancy, I'm sure you understand this "opposition" better than you  
indicate. Calling a wide personal familiarity with ancient Greek  
"some (non-linguistic?) approach"?? How about linguistics (since in  
this context it is used as a specialized term) vs. traditional  
grammar or syntax? I don't want to offend you, but I think Elizabeth  
Kline's comments have been much more relevant. I do like your comment  
about cultural knowledge etc., but the impressions you speak of  
necessarily include a deeper understanding of the language itself,  
that being the path to the culture and so forth.

I'm not arguing that linguistics has no value for ancient Greek, so  
I'm not surprised at the benefit you received from Prof. Schmidt's  
use of Chomsky. My original suggestion was just that the article  
originally cited could be viewed as an affirmation of the proposition  
that expertise gained by personally reading the larger corpus of  
Greek cannot be duplicated by other means, including linguistics as a  
specialty or profession (without reading the corpus). But there  
should be mutual respect for the expertise on both sides. It seems to  
me that scholars widely-read in ancient Greek are much more ready to  
accommodate the linguists than the reverse, but that may be just my  
own bias speaking. In any case I've said enough; time to go back to  
lurking.

Don Wilkins

On Mar 25, 2010, at 3:47 PM, yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net wrote:

> I don't think the opposition of "the linguistics approach" to some  
> (non-linguistic?) approach is particularly helpful. Really, many of  
> us develop a rough and ready linguistic theory as we learn another  
> language and try to interpret texts, if it has any. I was greatly  
> helped by the late professor Daryl Schmidt at TCU by his use of  
> Chomsky's linguistics in his beginning courses. Schmidt was well  
> read in ancient Greek, particularly philosophical texts and  
> Hellenistic texts. Newer theoretical approaches can help us see new  
> aspects of old problems that our older linguistic theories hid from  
> view. Some of these insights are very important for reading,  
> comprehension and exegesis, develop new knowledge. Steve Runge's  
> Discourse Grammar contrasts with and supplements the "old School"  
> approach exemplified by Wallace, who sidesteps discourse beyond the  
> sentence and information structure. The functional approach of  
> Levinson and Runge represents some of the best fruit coming out of  
> theolog
>  ically more conservative circles, based on the insights of Bible  
> translators like Levinsohn's, (see Discourse Features of New  
> Testament Greek). Sure there are some fruitless debates that have  
> occurred around these issues.
>
> But nothing, not even linguistic theory can substitute for the  
> cultural knowledge and the impressions that begin to settle in  
> after long hours with Homer, Herodotus, Xenophon, Plato, non- 
> literary papyri, inscriptions, Hellenistic authors like Josephus,  
> Philo, Theon, Epictetus, Lucian, Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch, Diogenes  
> Laertius, and Athanaeus. Even working through 20 or so pages of  
> each of these would open one's eyes to so much more than can be  
> contained in theory and reading the NT or the LXX one more time.
>
>
> Yancy Smith, PhD
> yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
> Y.W.Smith at tcu.edu
> yancy at wbtc.com
> 5636 Wedgworth Road
> Fort Worth, TX 76133
> 817-361-7565
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mar 25, 2010, at 5:04 PM, Dr. Don Wilkins wrote:
>
>> Well said, Elizabeth; that's exactly why I suggested that some would
>> think the article supports the linguistics approach. But I'm sure
>> you'll agree that advocating and doing the actual reading are two
>> different things. My experience with NT linguists is that they are
>> not personally well-read in Greek at the level were talking about
>> (sometimes not even at the NT level). I don't blame them, because the
>> issue is mainly a matter of time, and their obligation to cover many
>> languages seems to eliminate the opportunity to read a large corpus
>> of any one language. But I'll offer you a similar challenge: show me
>> one contemporary NT linguist who has read at a comparable level to a
>> Carl Conrad or some of the other Classics/Greek Ph.D.'s on the list.
>> Better yet, show me a few of them. My hat is off to anyone who has a
>> 2-year competency or better in a couple of dozen languages, plus the
>> completion of a Ph.D.-level reading list in ancient Greek. And if you
>> are one of them, you have my utmost admiration.
>>
>> While I'm thinking of Carl, my apologies to him if I am steering this
>> thread off-topic. In that case, I immediately repent.
>>
>> Don Wilkins
>>
>> On Mar 25, 2010, at 2:33 PM, Elizabeth Kline wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Mar 25, 2010, at 2:27 PM, Dr. Don Wilkins wrote:
>>>
>>>> Very interesting. I wonder what (if anything) this says for the
>>>> conflicts between the linguistics approach to Greek and the old
>>>> school. Some might say that this supports the former, but it  
>>>> could be
>>>> argued that it actually supports the latter, i.e. those students of
>>>> Greek who base their conclusions on a wider personal familiarity  
>>>> with
>>>> the extant literature.
>>>
>>> Show me one contemporary NT linguists who does not advocate using a
>>> Corpus beyond NT and LXX.
>>>
>>> Elizabeth Kline
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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