Why are there 6 principal parts instead of only 5?

Shirley Rollinson
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Re: Good enough (and a game for learning principal parts)

Post by Shirley Rollinson »

Alan Bunning wrote:
Wes Wood wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:But what will you be teaching?
This is a good question, though forgive me for being off topic. Alan, I am also curious about what you are intending/wanting/thinking about doing and what your motives are for desiring to do so. You seem to have no qualms denigrating a system that has at the very least been up to the task of leading others to proficiency, so I suppose that is a partial reason.
Yes, I was also taught that same system and am thankful for it, but have also come to realize its many deficiencies by reading this very forum. For example, I learned from Randall Buth that the educational establishment is not teaching the correct pronunciation of the original Greek language, and that was just one of many things I have learned here. So instead of perpetuating flawed systems of Middle Ages Greek, I am willing to move forward. Most of these things have been beaten to death before, so I am not trying to open a new can of worms here, nor do I expect the educational establishment to change.

. . . . ..
Oy veh, 'ere be a loverly can o'wurrums
just how does one define "correct pronunciation" and "original Greek language" ????
Mycenaean (Linear B)?, before the Dorian invasion (if that happened?), Homer (if he existed?), Socrates? Archimedes? Alexander? Matthew? Paul? Luke?, John (or whoever wrote whatever?) - there is no "correct pronunciation" or "original Greek language". We do the best we can - and Erasmian is pretty good, unless you want to try the Modern Greek route - and that has even greater problems.
RandallButh
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Re: Why are there 6 principal parts instead of only 5?

Post by RandallButh »

Well, Shirley, I wouldn't want to begin to unpack "original Greek language" and you are right to flag it.

But is Erasmian "pretty good" and do most people do the "best we can"?

Against a restored 5th century Attic (Allen-Daitz), Phonemic Koine, and Modern Greek, various "Erasmian"(s) would score dead last.

(This can be unpacked in the 14-page PDF at www.biblicallanguagecenter.com under demos, Greek pronunciation.
http://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/w ... n-2012.pdf)
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Why are there 6 principal parts instead of only 5?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I found this article about principal parts: What Your Teacher Told You is True: Latin Verbs Have Four Principal Parts. According to the authors, Raphael Finkel and Gregory Stump, there are different systems for principal parts. The traditional pedagogy for Greek and Latin is to use "static principal parts," but the authors urge that one can also define "adaptive" principal parts and "dynamic" principal parts, which allow the conjugation of the verb to specified with fewer parts. For details, see the linked article.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Alan Bunning
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Re: Why are there 6 principal parts instead of only 5?

Post by Alan Bunning »

Stephen Carlson wrote:I found this article about principal parts: What Your Teacher Told You is True: Latin Verbs Have Four Principal Parts. According to the authors, Raphael Finkel and Gregory Stump, there are different systems for principal parts. The traditional pedagogy for Greek and Latin is to use "static principal parts," but the authors urge that one can also define "adaptive" principal parts and "dynamic" principal parts, which allow the conjugation of the verb to specified with fewer parts. For details, see the linked article.
Thanks for that link! I have been doing something similar to what they have done in Latin by teaching the computer the rules how to conjugate Greek words (which as they point out in the article is not as easy as you think). But their program then goes on to analyze the entire system and reduce it to its fewest principal parts. I only raised my question from a cursory observation of the data, and now I have a little more motivation to explore this area further.

Alan Bunning
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