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sentence

just before i send nomail to listserve, i thot i'd mention sentence.

in hellenistic education parts of speech meant something about like parts of
sentence. logoc = logus there had the import of assertion or statement.

this, of course, means that the skeptics were technically right:

the parts of homeric logoc, e.g. mhviv aeide, 0ea, k.t.l. "chant the wrath,
goddess &c.

were really mhviv and aeide and 0ea and not ovoma = onoma noun,
npo0ecic = prothesis preposition or any of the rest.

and 'we' peripatetic grammarians therefore will have been shown quite correct
in saying that only necessary parts to constitute a logoc will have been
whatever functions to predicate, scil. a phma = rhema (but not to be mentally
identified with the narrower stoic category of verbs), and whatever it is about
which the predication, or categorizing, is done, scil. an ovoma = onoma (but,
again, not be taken as mentally coinciding with the stoic noun) and other words
that hold the two in relationships. (therefore peripatetic grammar sticks to
the functional and does not indulge in the arbitrary conflation of x amount of
form and y amount of function.)

as you may note, posts here have been resorting to relatively modern
significations within a narrow english context of terms rooted in a much more
diverse history, e.g. sententia and clausula. if my memory holds, often in
france and other parts of europe i recall  the derivatives of fpacic = phrasis
as meanining about what we do when we say sentence.

so. i advise great care.

the only really substantive help i now offer, to help some get some priorities
straight will have been to as a couple of questions:

is the old spartan mother's directive <<h tav h eni tav = e tan e epi tan>>
doric dialect for "either this [shield, scil. worn en retour] or upon this
[shield, scil. as a corpse duly borne back from battlefield]"  --
are her five words a sentence?

thus the question concerns how terms like logos, sentence, &c. are to be
defined and, additionally, whether, once defined, they may refer to elliptical
expressions.

again, is bacileueic = basilevis or basileueis a sentence? it has a 'subject'
and a 'predicate' doesn't it?

then take up the interrogative issue. does it still 'assert' or 'state' as
asserting or stating a question?

now, one more quick word about grammars. in my career i mostly used my own
materials, done on the basis of the traditional stoic pedagogy, but with
peripatetic caveats. these are available on floppies still. they're in
catechetim and they work quickly to visible vocabulary greek-latin editio
editions of johannine epistles, jude and romans, also authored by me.

but of standard grammars in print my pick is james turney allen, first year of
greek or that big thing by ruck or pharr's homeric greek (if that's where the
class wants to start).  main points of rationale: most students do not learn
to read greek well who learn it only from the standpoint of one narrow band of
authorship. i would think it insufficiently broadening (not for some of you,
but for a foreigner learning english) to try to teach  courses in only
elizabethan english (primarily shakespeare).                  

for pharr as an exception to this, see pharr's preface.

the allen and ruck i much much prefer because they do the best jobs of practice
in the larger patterns that must be quickly comprehended when one gains
competence in a language. if anyone has seen any 'nt' material that does what
these two do, please let me know (not on b-greek, since this is a bientot for
real).

shalom,
bearded bill of asheville <bthurman@unca.edu>
unca not having approved either whom or thereof.