The two-fold and structured moieties of Koine Greek.

Semantic Range, Lexicography, and other approaches to word meaning - in general, or for particular words.
Stephen Hughes
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The two-fold and structured moieties of Koine Greek.

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Greek typically reads like this:
  • Amenities are provided for customers' convenience. You can piss, shit and spit there.
Being educated in Greek meant being able to speak in alternating moieties.

The Greek lexicon (word-set) is divided into three categories. There are those words which belong in the first moiety, those that belong in the second, and those that are used in either moiety. Words that are used in either moiety are typically used in that moiety with a significance appropriate to that moiety.

The moieties of the Greek lexicon are two-fold because there are two of them. They are structured because the first moiety precedes the second.

The characteristic of the first moiety is that it deals with the abstract, while the characteristic of the second is that it deals with the concrete.

All reference works that do not differentiate words into their respective moieties are inadequate.

We are grateful to the Aboriginal elders past and present the custodians of our Australian indigenous languages and culture, who have preseved their languages under the most terrible circumstances, that allow us to compare and see the beauty of the Greek language in ways that are not readily obvious to people of other cultural backgrounds.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Jonathan Robie
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Re: The two-fold and structured moieties of Koine Greek.

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Hughes wrote: April 3rd, 2017, 2:45 pmAll reference works that do not differentiate words into their respective moieties are inadequate.
If moeity means group here, and you are drawing on some well-established classification, pointing to that would be helpful.

If you believe that the Greek lexicon has a particular set of well-defined groups that must be distinguished, could you please describe them precisely, explain how you can distinguish them, and give some evidence that you have distinguished them correctly?
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Paul-Nitz
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Re: The two-fold and structured moieties of Koine Greek.

Post by Paul-Nitz »

It seems moiety has to do with the toilety.
Seriously, sounds fascinating. School us, Stephen.
Paul D. Nitz - Lilongwe Malawi
Stephen Hughes
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Re: The two-fold and structured moieties of Koine Greek.

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Jonathan Robie wrote: April 3rd, 2017, 10:19 pm
Stephen Hughes wrote: April 3rd, 2017, 2:45 pmAll reference works that do not differentiate words into their respective moieties are inadequate.
If moeity means group here, and you are drawing on some well-established classification, pointing to that would be helpful.
It is an anthropological word. I am derivibg it specifically from its use in describing Australian Aboriginal kinship, and hence language usage patterns. There is no specific correlation between Aboriginal language usage patterns and the way that Greek is used, but it was at the time that I was Australian Aboriginal languages and cultures that I first realised the systematic nature of the Greek that I was also reading each day. Aboriginal languages are the possession of the tribe, and it is a privilage when anthropologists and liguistists study the languages, it by the permission of the elders of the tribe. If you were to study Yolngu for example, you need to first undertake to respect the language. The second reason is that terms like "social register" and "dialect", which are more familiar also carry so much other baggage.

The features of discourse styles in English, or in the avoidance relationships of Aboriginal society are not not the same as they are in Greek. English tends to express relative social power, while in Aboriginal society, people conform themselves to one or other of the pre-defined styles. In the way of conforming to predefined styles, Greek is similar. The two-fold nature of open and avoidance relationships in Aboriginal society is similar to Greek, but not the nature of what the two are. Avoidance style in Aboriginal languages, as the name suggests, avoids mentioning things specifically, and may require the use of specific words and vocabulary, while joking style allows familiar even to the point of ribald comments to be made without a sense of shame. Within a particular social relationship, members of Australian Aboriginal society speak in the appropriate style exclusively.

Greek has a similar division into the vague and the direct, except that Greek is structured into an alternating pattern, with the discourse markers affecting which moiety of the language is going to be used. That is why the subject of this thread includes the word "structured".
Jonathan Robie wrote: April 3rd, 2017, 10:19 pmIf you believe that the Greek lexicon has a particular set of well-defined groups that must be distinguished, could you please describe them precisely, explain how you can distinguish them, and give some evidence that you have distinguished them correctly?
Would you like a Coke or fries with that?

Seriously, though, if this is accepted, then it will take decades before it is well defined, for now let's avoid anything that sounds like, "Prove to us that you are not wrong." "Prove that you don't have mistakes." That mode of questioning is a road to war that I would like to keep away from. We already know that you value logical proofs as a means of finding truths, while I think that logical proof is only needed of somebody needs to be convinced of something not obvious, and that if truth is not self-evident, then it is not truth. At the end of what I am going to say, you will say that you are not convinced, and I will say that I was explaining not convincing. To forestall repeating that cycle again, I propose the following.

If you (or anybody) would like to know about this, then enter into a creative dialogue. I think that "explain how you [ie "I"] can distinguish them" is a good starting point.

The easy answer is that you can't, because you don't know what they are. If you knew what they were, then you wouldn't need to dustinguish, only recognise them. If the starting point was easy, then we woukd have all learnt it from about week 5, but we didn't. So, where to begin?

Have a look at the first section of the story of the prodigal son.
Luke 15:11-13 wrote:11Εἶπεν δέ, Ἄνθρωπός τις εἶχεν δύο υἱούς·
12 καὶ εἶπεν ὁ νεώτερος αὐτῶν τῷ πατρί, Πάτερ, δός μοι τὸ ἐπιβάλλον μέρος τῆς οὐσίας. Καὶ διεῖλεν αὐτοῖς τὸν βίον. 13 Καὶ μετ’ οὐ πολλὰς ἡμέρας συναγαγὼν ἅπαντα ὁ νεώτερος υἱὸς ἀπεδήμησεν εἰς χώραν μακράν, καὶ ἐκεῖ διεσκόρπισεν τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτοῦ, ζῶν ἀσώτως.
Where is the most striking synonym? It can be phrasal or a single word. Where is the authour saying the same thing twice?

Well, οὐσία and βίος are two, δίδωμι τινι τὸ ἐπιβάλλον μέρος and διαιρέω might be another pair.

What are the distinctive words?

A few of them might be συνάγω, ἀποδημέω, διασκορπίζω, ζήω and ἀσώτως.

The basis for distinguishing which of the moieties the synonyms belong to is the associations of the distinctive words.

Have a look through συνάγω.
Matthew 12:30 wrote:καὶ ὁ μὴ συνάγων μετ’ ἐμοῦ, σκορπίζει.
Who is the ὁ μὴ συνάγων? It could be anybody.
Matthew 25:24 wrote:Κύριε, ἔγνων σε ὅτι σκληρὸς εἶ ἄνθρωπος, θερίζων ὅπου οὐκ ἔσπειρας, καὶ συνάγων ὅθεν οὐ διεσκόρπισας·
Here the γιγνώσκω introduces a general statement, while θερίζω, σπείρω, συνάγω and διασκορπίζω are specific concrete actions.
Matthew 26:3-4 wrote:Τότε συνήχθησαν οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ οἱ γραμματεῖς καὶ οἱ πρεσβύτεροι τοῦ λαοῦ εἰς τὴν αὐλὴν τοῦ ἀρχιερέως τοῦ λεγομένου Καϊάφα, 4 καὶ συνεβουλεύσαντο ἵνα τὸν Ἰησοῦν δόλῳ κρατήσωσιν καὶ ἀποκτείνωσιν.
Here in the passive voice, συνάγομαι sets the general context for what will follow and belongs to the abstract moiety. Voice seemps to be a way to switch between moieties. We know that κρατέω and ἀποκτείνω belong to the concrete / specific moiety, but for συμβουλεύω there is not enough NT evidence to categorise it.

Let me jog on for a moment, before coming back and plodding through those opening phrases again.
14 Δαπανήσαντος δὲ αὐτοῦ πάντα, ἐγένετο λιμὸς ἰσχυρὸς κατὰ τὴν χώραν ἐκείνην, καὶ αὐτὸς ἤρξατο ὑστερεῖσθαι.
Genitives (or even nominatives) absolute are amazing things, functioning as one of the contextualising statements.
Based on Luke 14:28 [Τίς γὰρ ἐξ ὑμῶν, ὁ θέλων (concrete moiety) πύργον (concrete moiety) οἰκοδομῆσαι (concrete moiety), (contextualising statement) οὐχὶ πρῶτον καθίσας ψηφίζει (abstract moiety) τὴν δαπάνην (by association an abstract moiety word too), εἰ ἔχει τὰ εἰς ἀπαρτισμόν; (concrete moiety word).] δαπανάω is an abstract moiety word, ie that it was a rather long-term and involved process (cf. the widow and physicians).
Words on the vicinity of these types of theme-setting ἐγένετο statements, don't follow the moiety rules as expected. λιμὸς is a concrete / specific moiety word, but the statement functions as if it were abstracted.
15 Καὶ πορευθεὶς ἐκολλήθη ἑνὶ τῶν πολιτῶν τῆς χώρας ἐκείνης · καὶ ἔπεμψεν αὐτὸν εἰς τοὺς ἀγροὺς αὐτοῦ βόσκειν χοίρους.
The word πορεύομαι tends to belong to the abstract moiety, and the sense of this ἐκολλήθη is not a literal attachment, so functioning in the abstract moiety with an appropriate meaning is probable. We know our old friend πέμπω is from the concrete moiety, so that marks the phrase as concrete moiety.
16 Καὶ ἐπεθύμει γεμίσαι τὴν κοιλίαν αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῶν κερατίων ὧν ἤσθιον οἱ χοῖροι· καὶ οὐδεὶς ἐδίδου αὐτῷ.
ἐπεθύμει putting this "he day dreamed of" makes the following statement abstract. Relative clauses seem to follow similar, but different rules, and are generally abstract in sense.
The verb δίδωμι is a bit big to have been fully looked at yet, but in contradistinction to the abstract phrase, I think it is concrete here.
17 Εἰς ἑαυτὸν δὲ ἐλθὼν εἶπεν, Πόσοι μίσθιοι τοῦ πατρός μου περισσεύουσιν ἄρτων, ἐγὼ δὲ λιμῷ ἀπόλλυμαι·
Πόσος and περισσεύω here are both abstract words. ἄρτος is not a bun in his hand or mouth, but in his imagination. On the contrary, he felt the hunger and was quite literally being destroyed.
18 ἀναστὰς πορεύσομαι πρὸς τὸν πατέρα μου, καὶ ἐρῶ αὐτῷ, Πάτερ, ἥμαρτον εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ ἐνώπιόν σου·
19 καὶ οὐκέτι εἰμὶ ἄξιος κληθῆναι υἱός σου· ποίησόν με ὡς ἕνα τῶν μισθίων σου.
πορεύομαι - see above
The πρὸς - εἰς distinction here is a tendency, rather than a rule in the abstract - concrete moieties distinction.
κληθῆναι in the abstract sense of "be known as"
ποίησόν is typically a concrete word.
Jonathan Robie wrote: April 3rd, 2017, 10:19 pmcould you please describe them precisely,
It seems that there are two of what I have called moieties, and that words are either strictly one or the other, or they can be either - with a different meaning according to the one they are in.

As this is off the limit of maps in grammar, I think it is too early to make very strict definitions.

This is too long to risk losing on digital technology, so I'll break this post.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
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Re: The two-fold and structured moieties of Koine Greek.

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Luke 15:11-13 wrote: 11Εἶπεν δέ, Ἄνθρωπός τις εἶχεν δύο υἱούς·
12 καὶ εἶπεν ὁ νεώτερος αὐτῶν τῷ πατρί, Πάτερ, δός μοι τὸ ἐπιβάλλον μέρος τῆς οὐσίας. Καὶ διεῖλεν αὐτοῖς τὸν βίον. 13 Καὶ μετ’ οὐ πολλὰς ἡμέρας συναγαγὼν ἅπαντα ὁ νεώτερος υἱὸς ἀπεδήμησεν εἰς χώραν μακράν, καὶ ἐκεῖ διεσκόρπισεν τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτοῦ, ζῶν ἀσώτως.
I suspect that since this son speaks to his father in only the concrete moiety here (Πάτερ, δός μοι τὸ ἐπιβάλλον μέρος τῆς οὐσίας.) he is being characterised in some way. There is another instance in Acts, but sorry I can't recall where, in one of the court contexts where only the abstract is used, but in general things are differentiated and split.
οὐσία in this sense of "money" is limited in scope. In the sense of God's essence, it might be abstract.
The verb ζήω belongs in the concrete moiety, while the βιός family belong in the abstract.
Our word διαιρέω, as we can see from 1 Corinthians 12:11 διαιροῦν ἰδίᾳ ἑκάστῳ καθὼς βούλεται. is abstract moiety, while βούλομαι is concrete moiety.
ἐπιβάλλω is a word in a very specific legal sense.

That raises the issue of versification. It seems that the break of 12 to 13 is not logical. It seems that the abstract statement is at the end of 12, and the concrete is in 13.
Καὶ διεῖλεν αὐτοῖς τὸν βίον. 13 Καὶ μετ’ οὐ πολλὰς ἡμέρας συναγαγὼν ἅπαντα ὁ νεώτερος υἱὸς ἀπεδήμησεν εἰς χώραν μακράν,
ἀπεδημέω is usually concrete moiety, but in a participle (dare one use adverbial participle) form, it can function in the abstract moiety, if it has a non-specific reference.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Jonathan Robie
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Re: The two-fold and structured moieties of Koine Greek.

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Hughes wrote: April 4th, 2017, 6:07 amGreek has a similar division into the vague and the direct, except that Greek is structured into an alternating pattern, with the discourse markers affecting which moiety of the language is going to be used. That is why the subject of this thread includes the word "structured".
Jonathan Robie wrote: April 3rd, 2017, 10:19 pmIf you believe that the Greek lexicon has a particular set of well-defined groups that must be distinguished, could you please describe them precisely, explain how you can distinguish them, and give some evidence that you have distinguished them correctly?
Would you like a Coke or fries with that?

Seriously, though, if this is accepted, then it will take decades before it is well defined, for now let's avoid anything that sounds like, "Prove to us that you are not wrong." "Prove that you don't have mistakes." That mode of questioning is a road to war that I would like to keep away from.
It sounds like you are in fairly early stages of a research project, trying out some ideas. It is possible that Greek is like these aboriginal languages in this way, it is also possible that it is not.

Here's something I would appreciate for the sake of the forum, though: could you please give this theory a name, and talk about it as something in early stages that you are working on? Or perhaps, "here's how I see this passage..."

If you make authoritative claims that this is just how the Greek language works, and someone else makes authoritative claims that it is not, that's precisely the kind of war that is useless. Propose a possible distinction, give a few examples, let us discuss them to see if we think what you are saying makes sense or not. Treat it as exploratory, not as proven fact. Especially in the beginner's forum.

I'll take a look at your examples later on and work through them.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Stephen Hughes
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Re: The two-fold and structured moieties of Koine Greek.

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Jonathan Robie wrote: April 4th, 2017, 7:20 amIf you make authoritative claims that this is just how the Greek language works, and someone else makes authoritative claims that it is not, that's precisely the kind of war that is useless.
I am not American. I am not sensitive to dogmatism and I don't mind authoritative sounding statements. I your ears it may sound absolute or dogmatic and that may seem to challenge the ideal of personal something, but you are misunderstanding my tone in that case.

All ideas that are expressed by anybody, here (or anywhere), whether personally, or hiding behind the thoughts of others who we agree with (agree with us) are personal claims.

From my point of view, when you jump in after I make a comment, and moderate (non-technical sense) what you see as dogmatism, with "intuition" or other comments, that makes me seem dogmatic to others. I would prefer if you found a different way to deal with your cultural sensitivities. I am not making comments within the same cultural framework. I'm happy to share thoughts with you about Greek, but not to share your cultural orientations. Besides that, as you can see from my signature, I don't necessarily expect anybody to follow what I am saying anyway, but if they do, that is great.

I speak from the position of my constantly developing understanding of the Greek, including from this higher and lower register (abstract and concrete moiety) understanding. In effect, you are suggesting I should point out the difference between new ideas and old, calling attention to what has been recently acquired and which others may not have accepted. I'd rather remain simple. It is the position of the other to differentiate themselves from me, not me to differentiate myself from myself. I have seen differences in synomy for many years, but only last year understood just how systematic it all is.

I had hesitated in posting an actual answer to Alan's question, for the sake of not getting flagged, and asked for explanations for choosing to speak from a different perspective. But since he (Alan and in the composition threads Wes) are my regular dialogue partners, I feel can speak to them like my lectures told us their own understandings, beyond what was in the canonical grammars, and how students worth their salt expressed their own views too. As you can see the explanation in Alan's thread is quite rounded. It is not in the initial stages, but of course there are still more questions than answers.

You probably don't remember, but one of your earlier, "How can I prove ... ?" statements is actually the basis for this. The way you can use your data quierying and programming skills to prove this is to look at collocations in phrases. You can start with, say, πεμπω and then tag every word that occurs in a phrase with πέμπω as also being concrete moiety, then take all the words that collocate in the concrete moiety can likewise form the basis for a search and so on to perhaps three levels of removal from the original seed. Then reseed the model with some other of the words that belong to the concrete moiety. The data from that will yeild about 50 words per seeding. Words resulting from those collocational searches can be compared, and those with a higher than average degree of correlation can form the seeds for another search. That should easily get to between 600 - 800 words. By searching with already recignised abstract seeds too, two data sets can be created. The intersection of the data sets will be the usual common "grammatical " words and those words which exist in both moieties, but whise means alternates. Those overlapping words are expected to have two distinct meanings in the existing dictionaries. Alligning the meanings of either moiety to the meanings in the dictionary will allow an extra degree of intelligence to AI translation program algorithms.

The feature is not only in Australian Aboriginal languages. It is in Chinese and English too. In English, the higher registers are populated by latinate words, and the lower registers by Anglosaxon words, as in the pseudo-Greek at the head of this thread. Greek has a monolingual wordstock, which has made recognition of the moieties more difficult. Chinese uses different structures and words. The hint that I got from studying Aboriginal languages was that direct and indirect could be differentiated, and that words could (in some cases) come from common wordstock.

Another step beyond identification of which part of the lexicon belongs to which moiety, is to understand their origins. This alternating pattern may be a phenomenon that arose in the Koine, or it may have arisen earlier during the classical period. (It certainly does not seem to be present in the Modern Greek.) One possibility is that words that are marked as being typical of prose ended up in one of the moieties, while those of verse origin ended up in the other, alternatively, there may not have been such a correlation between the structure of Attic Greek and the Koine. It may be that the earlier structure was one of most-abstract to least-abstract within phrases without the alternating structure, or it may be that the double structure is also early. If the double structure were to be found to be a hellenistic innovation, that would be a plus because it marks an innovation, and if it is not an innovation, then it would be an indication that Hellenistic literature had maintained an earlier feature of the language. Testing those would not be difficult, but all in due time, and as a second perhaps confirmational step.

Beyond what I can currently say with any certainty is that I expect to find that certain discourse markers will introduce (or allow the inclusion) of one or other moiety. I expect that patterns in tense choice and sequencing will both be a feature of a moiety at a phrase level, and will allow in some circumstances the inclusion of a word from one moiety in the other. It may be that the structure of moiety usage in genres within the text will be different.

I am not actually doing (or even am in a position to do) research. I live at the edge of a city, which I can walk to other side of and back in a day, and am ten minutes drive in three directions from agricultural land. There are no suitable libraries here. Two other problems are that I am only academically qualified to enter a research degree in Ancient History (Egyptology), and that most other people have as much trouble understanding what I am talking about as people here do, so what would be the point of writing anyway. Ha ha.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Paul-Nitz
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Re: The two-fold and structured moieties of Koine Greek.

Post by Paul-Nitz »

Well done to both Robie and Hughes. You had a little conflict and didn't shy from giving your opinion.

Stephen, your comments on culture are interesting and jibe with what I've seen from visits back to the USA. It's a newish phenomenon, I think. From my sensibilities, Jonathan's moderation wasn't needed, but then moderating isn't easy and most would err on the side of not saying something when they should.

I think I'm getting the gist of what you are seeing, Stephen. I wonder if I could understand it better by contrasting the Greek moities with English. Koine would say it like this..., an Aussie would say it like this... Yes, give it a name. Why not?
Paul D. Nitz - Lilongwe Malawi
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Re: The two-fold and structured moieties of Koine Greek.

Post by Jonathan Robie »

From my perspective, you have already proposed some ways of interpreting specific texts above, and working through them here and asking questions would be a useful way of trying to understand your framework. I plan to do that, and hope others will chime in. I suspect we will wind up trying to understand the distinctions you are making and what explanatory value they have, then apply them to other texts to see if they promote a consistent interpretation. Because your framework is quite different from the mainstream frameworks, this will take some time.

In the main forum, I think the right way to go is to show us what you are looking at in your thinking, in some detail, let us ask questions, and try to understand together. Some time this year, I expect that I will provide a free query interface to our treebanks with a tutorial to help people learn how to query them. In the meantime, I'll do queries on things that interest me, but I have to be careful not to get too distracted because I have my own agenda to drive. And your explanations of specific passages are sufficient to give us something to chew on.

In the Beginner's Forum, I would like to avoid answers based on this framework, which they cannot find written up in any text, and which is not yet proven. Especially since it is currently quite difficult to understand. Beginners who come in with simple questions are sometimes getting flooded, and have no idea which answers are considered mainstream.

You raise a few other things that I think we should discuss in a more private setting.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: The two-fold and structured moieties of Koine Greek.

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Jonathan Robie wrote: April 4th, 2017, 10:31 am ..., you have already proposed some ways of interpreting specific texts above, and working through them here and asking questions would be a useful way of trying to understand your framework. I plan to do that, and hope others will chime in. I suspect we will wind up trying to understand the distinctions you are making and what explanatory value they have, then apply them to other texts to see if they promote a consistent interpretation. Because your framework is quite different from the mainstream frameworks, this will take some time.
There is another one similar to Matthew 1:20 in this verse in the Byzantine rendition:
Καὶ ἰδού, ἀνὴρ ἀπὸ τοῦ ὄχλου ἀνεβόησεν, λέγων, Διδάσκαλε, δέομαί σου, ἐπιβλέψαι ἐπὶ τὸν υἱόν μου, ὅτι μονογενής ἐστίν μοι·
The μονογενής, however, does not clearly belong to either the abstract or concrete moiety.

What I am wondering at present is whether the categorisation of abstract - concrete groups of vocabulary affects the presence or absence of the article with infinitives, and how ἵνα phrases are structured. The question of participles and infinitives is still quite open.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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