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

Mark Lightman lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Sat Mar 27 13:13:13 EDT 2010


<Name just one thing? I'm reminded of a president who was asked at a 
news conference (more than half a century ago) to name one original
idea contributed by his vice president; his response: "Give me a week
and ask me that question again.">
 
Yes, Carl I agree.  Linguistics is to NT Greek what
Richard Nixon was to honest government.
 
JOKE JOKE THAT WAS A JOKE.
 
Seriously, thanks for the links.  We will read this stuff
with an open mind.  


Mark L


FWSFOROS MARKOS

--- On Sat, 3/27/10, Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com> wrote:


From: Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data: An Argumentfor a Large Corpus Size (i.e., Reading WIdely)
To: "B-Greek B-Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Saturday, March 27, 2010, 10:38 AM


On Mar 27, 2010, at 9:54 AM, Dr. Don Wilkins wrote:
> 
> On Mar 27, 2010, at 3:52 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:
> 
>> ...For my money, Smyth and BDF remain indispensable, and ATR  
>> remains eminently worth consulting because of the breadth of  
>> Robertson's learning, an extraordinarily judicious assessment of  
>> questions, and a diachronic perspective on NT Koine the range of  
>> which I do not find, as does Don Wilkins, excessive.
>> 
> I didn't think that I said ATR's range was excessive, and if it  
> sounded that way, my mistake. ATR is important for all the reasons  
> you mention. I just think that he relies too much on very old Greek  
> to explain Koine. But that's just a judgment call.

What you said: "A. T. Robertson went too  
far IMO in trying to apply the opposite approach." When my first
Greek teacher, J.B. McMinn of blessed memory, brought my 
attention as a freshman to ATR, I was fascinated, all the more when
we went from GNT in first year to Homer in second year. I recall
how illuminating it was to learn that the pronominal usage of the
article in the GNT had been regular in residual usage in Greek
since the Homeric poems where it was a standard third-person
pronoun.

>> Linguistics-bashing seems to have become a fashionable sport in  
>> this forum lately. I have played that game myself, sometimes too  
>> gleefully, I fear. But I have to say that I have found traditional  
>> grammatical references inadequate in my own studies of ancient  
>> Greek voice: ATR has some very perceptive comments on the  
>> inadequacies of traditional voice terminology and offers to a  
>> careful reader a nuanced account of much of what's going on in  
>> voice-form usage in the GNT; I have found in Smyth just about all  
>> the elements needed for constructing a new framework for  
>> understanding ancient Greek voice -- but the terminology is  
>> problematic and often misleading and the pieces are scattered all  
>> over the contents of the grammar. On the other hand, I've come to  
>> understand more than I can adequately acknowledge about default  
>> ("active") and reflexive-type dichotomies in many languages and  
>> gleaned key elements of an understanding of the middle voice in  
>> Greek from Suzanne Kemmer;. A relatively short paper by Egbert  
>> Bakker helped me to understand how transitivity, aspect, and  
>> Aktionsart bear upon voice-forms in Classical Attic. More recently  
>> a major dissertation by Sidney Allan has set forth a linguistic  
>> accounting for the nature and development of middle and passive  
>> forms in Homeric and Classical Greek. I have found these works hard  
>> reading because of the terminology I've had to become accusstomed  
>> to, but I have found the effort eminently rewarding and helpful,  
>> even if they have left some questions unanswered. And I have  
>> learned from what I thought was a splendid dissertation by Margaret  
>> Sim on ἵνα hINA and ὅτι hOTI in NT Koine, and I have only  
>> recently said that I thought Steve Runge's Discourse Grammar of the  
>> GNT was a breakthrough achievement in making the fruits of a major  
>> item of linguistic studies accessible to those who have no  
>> background in linguistics.
>> 
> When you talk I always listen, Carl, but it would help me if you  
> provided one example. Since I know your passion for analyzing the  
> middle voice, that would be a good one, but any would do. What  
> specific linguistic input did you personally find eminently rewarding  
> and helpful?


W ... BRADEIS THi KARDIAi TOU PISTEUEIN EPI PASIN hOIS ELALHSAN hOI GLWSSOLOGOI.· 

Is it really not sufficient to name the books and articles and
indicate where they can be accessed? Working through Margaret
Sim's dissertation which is accessible as a PDF is too much trouble?

Name just one thing? I'm reminded of a president who was asked at a 
news conference (more than half a century ago) to name one original
idea contributed by his vice president; his response: "Give me a week
and ask me that question again."

If you will check §§7-8 on my web-page devoted to Ancient Greek Voice
(http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/GrkVc.html), you will
see Suzanne Kemmer's list of the kinds of actions that are commonly
indicated by middle-voice or reflexive verb-forms in a great variety
of languages, not merely Indo-European languages. That is fully
sufficient I think, to establish a legitimate category of what should
be called "Middle" verbs and to rid ancient Greek pedagogy from
reliance upon the bogus doctrine of deponency that still holds sway
in traditional NT Koine primers such as Machen. I might note that
the revised edition of Reading Greek deals with that issue as it
should be dealt with.

> 
>> I'm sorry that the insights of linguists haven't had more impact  
>> upon the preparation of primers in Biblical Greek. There is, of  
>> course, powerful linguistic underpinning to the oral methods of  
>> Randall Buth and Christophe Rico. I personally continue to believe  
>> that the best primer in Biblical Greek in English is still the 1977  
>> work of Robert Funk, _Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic  
>> Greek_ (http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/project/funk-grammar/pre- 
>> alpha/); that was probably much too-heavily grounded in linguistic  
>> principles to make a dent in Biblical Greek academic pedagogy.   
>> Ward  Powers, who was once an active member of this list, based his  
>> own primer  on his linguistic studies, _Learn to Read New Testament  
>> Greek_ (http://www.amazon.com/Learn-read-Greek-Testament-cross- 
>> referenced/dp/0802835783/ref=sr_1_1? 
>> ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269686771&sr=8-1 = http://tinyurl.com/ 
>> ybstuvp), but I think it was more successful in Australia than in  
>> the U.S. Linguistic theory has been a major factor in two primers  
>> for Classical Attic, Athenaze and Reading Greek. NT Koine Greek  
>> pedagogy, however, seems pretty much stuck in a rut, as witness the  
>> continued republication of the old fossil textbook of Machen.
> 
> I personally like both Athenaze and Machen. Smyth is old too, but  
> obviously still excellent.
>> 
>> I honestly believe that our best understanding of the "how's"and  
>> "whys"  of ancient Greek usage is tentative and incomplete. We are  
>> reluctant to try to learn about ancient Greek from the linguists  
>> but I think we fail to appreciate how tenuous and incomplete,  
>> sometimes very fuzzy the accounts we are offered by traditional  
>> grammarians of such things as "objects of passive verbs" or  
>> "passive imperatives" or "participial imperatives." We cling to the  
>> traditional grammatical lore of the centuries because it's the only  
>> lens through which we think we can contemplate the lofty  
>> complexities of ancient Greek; I think we just hate to conttemplate  
>> that our vision might possibly be improved by better lenses.
> 
> A good defense of linguistics. I think we've already acknowledged  
> weak areas in traditional Greek grammar. But I'd still like an  
> example or two of how NT linguists have solved a mystery in  
> traditional grammar. You tantalize us, or at least me, by the issues  
> you just listed. In a perfect world, perhaps our Greek grammar would  
> provide the best from both schools of thought.

I think it's already made an impact on the study of classical Attic
Greek; it may well be that the dust-storm raised by the aspectologists
has left an unpleasant Geruch and suspicion of the whole field of
academic linguists. That's unfortunate. And it's unfortunate that
we're reluctant to take a first-hand look at the stuff, off-putting as
its language may be. One might think that a serious endeavor to
learn Greek at all is about as venturesome as one could dare to be.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)



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