Linguists: What have you done for me lately?

[Jonathan Robie]

In a thread on jargon, some questions were raised about the value of modern linguistics for biblical Greek.

Suppose no work had been done on linguistics in the last 50 years - how would our understanding of biblical Greek language be different? In the last 100 years, what are the main accomplishments of linguistics with respect to biblical Greek?

[MAubrey]

Well, the easiest answer is simply to link to here:

http://greek-language.com/Palmer-bibliography.html

Beyond that, aside from the various grammatical issues that have been discussed, we wouldn't have a historically accurate pronunciation of 1st century Greek if it wasn't for linguistics. That, at least, is highly relevant to those who are primarily interested in language acquisition rather than on language structure.

[Jonathan Robie]

Well, the easiest answer is simply to link to here:

http://greek-language.com/Palmer-bibliography.html

Could you please cherry pick that a bit? What are a few clear cut results from that bibliography that have practical value for how we understand Greek today? (This is not a hostile cross-examination, I'm asking for help in identifying what matters in linguistics.)

Beyond that, aside from the various grammatical issues that have been discussed, we wouldn't have a historically accurate pronunciation of 1st century Greek if it wasn't for linguistics. That, at least, is highly relevant to those who are primarily interested in language acquisition rather than on language structure.

I agree, this is relevent.

[MAubrey]

Well, the easiest answer is simply to link to here:

http://greek-language.com/Palmer-bibliography.html

Could you please cherry pick that a bit? What are a few clear cut results from that bibliography that have practical value for how we understand Greek today? (This is not a hostile cross-examination, I'm asking for help in identifying what matters in linguistics.)

More than happy to.

There is still a lot, but they represent some of my favorite highlights. And there are others not here (because they're not related to the Koine).

Allan, Rutger J. The Middle Voice in Ancient Greek: A Study of Polysemy. Amsterdam Studies in Classical Philology. Brill Academic Publishers, 2003.

Allen, W. Sidney. Accent and Rhythm: Prosodic Features of Latin and Greek: A Study in Theory and Reconstruction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Armstrong, D. "The ancient Greek aorist as the aspect of countable action." In Syntax and Semantics 14: Tense and Aspect. Ed. P. Tedeschi and A. Zaenen. New York: Academic Press, 1981.

Bailey, Nicholas Andrew. "Thetic Constructions in Koine Greek, with special attention to clauses with εἰμί ‘be’, γίνομαι ‘occur’, ἔρχομαι ‘come’, ἰδοῦ/ἴδε ‘behold’, and complement clauses of ὀράω ‘see.’" Doctoral Thesis. Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit, 2009.

Bakker, Egbert J. "Voice, Aspect and Aktionsart: Middle and Passive in Ancient Greek." In Voice: Form and Function. Ed. Barbara Fox and Paul J. Hopper. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1994, pp. 23-47.

Bubenik, Vit. "Dialect Contact and Koineization: The Case of Hellenistic Greek." International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 99 (1993) 9 23.

Bubenik, Vit. Hellenistic and Roman Greece as a Sociolinguistic Area. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 1989.

Bubenik, Vit. The Phonological Interpretation of Ancient Greek: A Pandialectal Analysis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983.

Buth, Randall. “Verbs Perception and Aspect: Greek Lexicography and Grammar: Helping Students to Think in Greek.” In Bernard a. Taylor, John A. L. Lee, Peter R. Burton, and Richard E. Whitaker, eds. Biblical Greek Language and Lexicography. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 2004, pp. 177—198.

Danove, Paul. Grammatical and Exegetical Study of New Testament Verbs of Transference: A Case Frame Guide to Interpretation and Translation. Library of New Testament Studies. T & T Clark International, August 18, 2009.

Devine, A.M. and Laurence D. Stephens. Discontinuous Syntax: Hyperbaton in Greek. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Devine, A.M. and Laurence D. Stephens. The Prosody of Greek Speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Fox, Barbara. "The discourse function of the participle in ancient Greek." In Discourse Perspectives on Syntax. Ed. Flora Klein-Andreu. New York: Academic, 1983, pp. 23-41.

Haspelmath, Martin. “From resultative to perfect in Ancient Greek”. In: Iturrioz Leza, José Luis (ed.) Nuevos estudios sobre construcciones resultativos. (= Función 11-12) Universidad de Guadalajara: Centro de Investigación de Lenguas Indígenas, 1992, pp. 187-224a.

Janse, Mark. “Aspects of Bilingualism in the History of the Greek Language.” In: J.N. Adams, Mark Janse & Simon Swain (eds.), Bilingualism in Ancient Society. Language Contact and the Written Word. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, 332-390.

Janse, Mark. “The Distribution of the Enclitic Personal Pronouns in New Tetament Greek in the Light of the Septuagint and the Modern Greek Dialects of Asia Minor: A Structural-Functional Analysis.” PhD. dissertation: Ghent University, Department of Latin and Greek.

Levinsohn, Stephen H. Discourse Features of New Testament Greek: A Coursebook. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1992.

Levinsohn, Stephen H. "Participant Reference in Koine Greek Narrative." In David Alan Black, Katharine Barnwell, and Stephen Levinsohn, eds. Linguistics and New Testament Interpretation: Essays on Discourse Analysis. Nashville: Broadman; 1992, pages 31-44.

Luraghi, Silva. On the Meaning of Prepositions and Cases: The expression of semantic roles in Ancient Greek. Amsterdan/Philadelphia, Benjamins, 2003.

Palmer, Micheal. “From the Lexicon to the Sentence: Argument Structure in Hellenistic Greek.” Forum: the Academic Journal of the Westar Institute. New Series 2:2 (1999): 215-238.

Palmer, Micheal. “How do we know a phrase is a phrase: a plea for procedural clarity in the application of linguistics to biblical Greek.” In Porter, Stanley and D.A. Carson, eds., Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics: Open Questions in Current Research. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993.

Probert, Philemon. “Ancient Greek Accentuation in Generative Phonology and Optimality Theory.” Language and Linguistics Compass. Volume 4, Issue 1, pages 1–26, January 2010.

Runge, Steven E. Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction for Teaching and Exegesis. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009.

Smith, Rondal Bruce. "Empirical Evidence and Theoretical Interpretations of Greek Phonology: Prolegomena to a Theory of Sound Patterns in the Hellenistic Greek 'Koine'." Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1972.

Teodorsson, Sven-Tage. The Phonology of Attic in the Hellenistic Period. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1978.

Teodorsson, Sven-Tage. The Phonology of Ptolemaic Koine. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1977.

Wakker, Gerry. Conditions and Conditionals: An Investigation of Ancient Greek. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1994.

Wong, Simon Sek-muk. A Classification of Semantic Case-Relations in the Pauline Epistles. Peter Lang Publishing, 1997.

Woodard, Roger D. On Interpreting Morphological Change: The Greek Reflexive Pronoun. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1990.

[cwconrad]

I think that the bibliography and Mike's highlighting of those items in it that he deems most significant are helpful in response to Jonathan's question, but I'd really like to see a listing of matters that have been seriously discussed and positively illuminated in this arbitrarily delimited "Linguistic century." Mike mentioned determnation of the right pronunciation (more or less) of Hellenistic Greek; I'd certainly add the substantial advancement of our understanding of voice/διάθεσις. It's probably safe to say that no single matter has occupied center stage more than verbal aspect (with the jury still out on the question of how well the matter has been illuminated). I'd really like to see a listing of matters/subjects bearing on our understanding of "how ancient Greek works" that have been seriously dealt with and to what extent they have really been illuminated. I realize that it may be difficult to compile an objective list -- perspectives will surely differ on the temporality of the Greek indicative forms, for instance. From an outsider's perspective, it seems to me that so much of Linguistics is dependent upon competing theoretical frameworks and alternative terminologies; if that's the case (and it may well be that I overestimate the dissension), what items can be listed that have really moved our understanding of "how ancient Greek works" beyond what traditional Greek grammatical lore taught us? To put it another way, to what extent has the lore set forth in such classical works as the grammars of ATR and Smyth been made obsolete? In which particular respects are those classics outdated by the work of Linguists?

[MAubrey]

That's a lot of questions. I'm not entirely sure that I can answer them in a way that's satisfactory for you.

The main reason for that is that I think the idea of treating "modern linguistics" as "Post-Saussurean" linguistics is thoroughly wrong-headed and nonsensical. I would trace the beginning of modern linguistic thought rather to Wilhelm von Humboldt...which means that I view ATR as falling within that period, i.e., ATR's grammar is precisely a modern linguistic contribution. Insights into language in general from the 19th century that were rejected or ignored in the 1930s through 50s are again receiving attention today.

Nevertheless, I can still make some observations about recent work over the past three or four decades:

Voice
Linguistics: Kemmer, Shibantani, Maldonado, Klaiman, Naess, Hopper & Thompson
Greek: Bakker & Allan

Word Order/Information Structure
Linguistics: Lambrecht, Halliday, Erteschik-Shir, (Simon) Dik, Kiss, etc.
Greek: Levinsohn, Runge, (Helma) Dik, Devine & Stephens, Goldstein

Semantics
Linguistics: Rosch, Lakoff & Johnson, Langacker, Taylor, Sweetser, etc.
Greek: Horrocks, Bortone, Luraghi (there's lots to do here)

Beyond that, most linguistic work that's significant to Greek is on larger topics, e.g. What is the nature of processes of grammaticalization in human language? Topics that are asking what we could call "meta-linguistic" in that they are questions about how language works that we can then apply to problems in Greek that didn't previously have answers.

Our knowledge of dialectology and sociolinguistics has grown significantly as well and has been applied to Greek by Vit Bubnik with great success...though his work has had very little input in New Testament studies.

The terminological nightmare that has been linguistics over the past 40 years is slowly improving. And I believe the best work, especially for Greek is still yet to come.

[Louis L Sorenson]

Would you consider pragmatics as a separate topic or include it under semantics? Perhaps you could define pramgatics and then give some suggestions.

[David M. Miller]

Would you consider pragmatics as a separate topic or include it under semantics? Perhaps you could define pragmatics and then give some suggestions.

Precisely my question--or at least I hope it fits here: Can semantic features of a verb be cancelled by pragmatic (or contextual) factors? The opposing sides of the aspect debate seem to disagree on this point:

Conrad Campbell says it can't:

“When speaking of verbs, semantics refers to the values that are encoded in the verbal form. These values are unchanging and are always there when the particular verbal form occurs (allowing for exceptional circumstances such as anomalous expressions and certain fixed idioms). In anything other than these exceptional circumstances, a semantic value is uncancelable—it is always there and cannot be canceled out. Semantics refers to what the verb means at its core” (Campbell 2008: 22).

Runge seems to agree, more-or-less:

"Most HP [Historical Present] actions are perfective in nature, yet they are grammaticalized using an imperfective form. This should not be understood to change the meaning of the verb; rather, it is simply another way in which the HP usage stands out in its context" (Runge 2010: 129).

According to Wallace, however, “the unaffected meaning of the tenses in the indicative involves both aspect and time. However, either one of these can be suppressed by lexemic, contextual, or grammatical intrusions” (1996: 511).

Is there linguistic consensus on this point? (Hopefully, the question is not too far off topic.)

[George F Somsel]

David Miller wrote:

Conrad Campbell says it can't:

Do you perhaps mean Constantine Campbell?

[RandallButh]

Kind of silly to say absolutely, "it can't" and then follow up with "allowing for exceptions" and then say that the other side of the debate is wrong because there are exceptions.

Linguistics, of course, is theorectically neutral and will help people clean up the mess in NT studies that has been caused by mis-readings and mis-applications from some NT folk reading linguistics.