Feedback on Greek Voice Tagging and Rationale

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Jonathan Robie
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Re: Feedback on Greek Voice Tagging and Rationale

Post by Jonathan Robie »

cwconrad wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:What I would really like is a more complete list of verbs classified according to this scheme...
Rutger Allan’s dissertation offers several lists of verbs by category drawn from Homeric and Classical Greek. For illustrative purposes I’m uploading below another PDF, an article by Neva Miller originally published in the appendix to the Friberg Analytical Lexicon of the GNT (ANLEX) in 2000. The author was thinking about “deponency” along the same lines as I was thinking. A helpful feature of her article is a categorized list of middle (“deponent”) verbs. I am preparing a similar listing of GNT verbs for inclusion in an appendix, but I’ll be employing categories more closely following those of Suzanne Kemmer.
Neva_Miller_deponent_verbs_032814.pdf
Very nice, exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Stephen Hughes
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Another feeler question

Post by Stephen Hughes »

3) Do the designations have to be so short?

Could you use designations that have meaning within your system?

"ω/μι", "Sa" and "Sa-θη" might give more of a clue to users about your thinking that some forms designate subject-affectedness rather than neutral designations like α. β. γ.

There is nothing inherent or natural about the sequence A. M. P. except that we're used to it.

DOES space allow for descriptive designations?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
cwconrad
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Re: Another feeler question

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Hughes wrote:3) Do the designations have to be so short?

Could you use designations that have meaning within your system?

"ω/μι", "Sa" and "Sa-θη" might give more of a clue to users about your thinking that some forms designate subject-affectedness rather than neutral designations like α. β. γ.

There is nothing inherent or natural about the sequence A. M. P. except that we're used to it.

DOES space allow for descriptive designations?
It's an interesting thought. I think, however, that terms based on endings are somewhat awkward; if we use 1st sg. endings, it might be ω/μι, μαι and θην. I do like the descriptive character of terms like "common voice" (κοινὴ διάθεσις) and "reflexive voice" (ἑαυτικὴ διάθεσις), the latter comprising both middle-passive and passive morphoparadigms. But I think that fact that we are used to A, M, P makes that easier. What's more important to adjust is our understanding of the implications of the distinct morphoparadigms for meaning.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stephen Hughes
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Clearly written

Post by Stephen Hughes »

I agree with SC and JR that the article is clearly written, but I would qualify that praise by saying that I find it clearly written because I have sufficient mastery of Greek to be able to read it.

For those who have not and may in fact never gain sufficient mastery of the language, I suggest that you include a gloss after all the Greek words. At present some are glossed and others are not. I suggest that you explain a little when you group / classify. They are not obviously recognisable I find that I am guessing what is meant by things like mental-activity, mental-process, collective action, and then checking my guess from the Greek. The people you are ostensibly writing for will not have that luxury; especially unglossed Greek.

There is some inconsistency in your article when you talk about endings. Sometimes you write whole words, and some times just the ending. Your use of hyphenation in this matter is also inconsistent.

From the point of view of interlinear users, pre-beginners and those who have failed the learning process, but still want some accept access to the New Testament in the original language, there are things that could be clearer.
Last edited by Stephen Hughes on April 15th, 2014, 7:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Another feeler question

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:I think, however, that terms based on endings are somewhat awkward; if we use 1st sg. endings, it might be ω/μι, μαι and θην

....

But I think that fact that we are used to A, M, P makes that easier. What's more important to adjust is our understanding of the implications of the distinct morphoparadigms for meaning.
Those first person endings make sense, especially when lined up with the tables of principal parts.

Another thing that probably the deponent bath water contained along with baby is that when a verb is designated deponent, we know immediately that there is no active form, so look for all meaning in the deponent form. If you could mark that other forms don't exist that would help decoding. That is to say that the principal parts of verbs are essential nit only for what they do say, but also for what they don't. Could the omissions in the table of principal parts be included in your encoding system?

For we the grammatically inculcated A, M, P have a meaning, but for the οι πολλοί (in the Greek sense) active is either a good employee or a naughty child, passive has a negative withdrawn socially awkward connotation that the Greek doesn't. Middle has as many meanings as people guessing it.
What is the middle voice?
Why for men it's the baritone and for women it's the mesosoprano.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
MAubrey
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Re: Clearly written

Post by MAubrey »

Stephen Hughes wrote:From the point of view of interlinear users, pre-beginners and those who have failed the learning process, but still want some accept access to the New Testament in the original language, there are things that could be clearer.
Does it need to be clear for them? If they're pre-beginners, then I'm not sure that there's really anything that would be clear...
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
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Eeli Kaikkonen
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Re: Feedback on Greek Voice Tagging and Rationale

Post by Eeli Kaikkonen »

Eeli Kaikkonen wrote:I'm trying to find an informal description for myself.
The quest continues... "The subject is under the influence of the event described in the verb."
cwconrad wrote:That’s helpful. The troublesome sentence might be reformulated to include these elements: “Middle marking indicates that the subject is somehow involved in the action or process to which the verb refers. The subject may be an agent and also a patient (direct reflexive), or an agent and also a beneficiary (indirect reflexive). The subject may be a patient affected by an external agent or instrument (passive). The subject may be an experiencer receiving sensations or responding emotionally or engaging in a cognitive process or interaction with another or others. The subject may be an undergoer of an internal process, whether spontaneous or voluntary (birth, growth, change,body movement, spatial movement).”
It still has the first sentence untouched. That was what I found problematic. It kind of says one thing and then the rest says another thing. "involved more than just as an agent" or something like that would be better. But the rest is now very good.

Considering the audience, can you assume that the reader knows what "agent" and "patient" mean? (A CIA agent was wounded and became a patient in a hospital...)
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Clearly written

Post by Stephen Hughes »

MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:From the point of view of interlinear users, pre-beginners and those who have failed the learning process, but still want some accept access to the New Testament in the original language, there are that gs that could be clearer.
Does it need to be clear fitor pi ther them? If they're pre-beginners, then I'm not sure that there's really anything that would be clear...
In their case the best that could be hoped for would be that they could recognise the framework of the verbal voice ststem, within which future learning might take place.

Let me parenthesise my next comment by saying that as he stated earlier in reply to my first two questions, Carl's article is not meant to teach the Greek voice system.

From what I, with my limidufferencted powers of understanding, understand from his article is that deponency was an inadequate concept because it only looked at the first principal part, whereas understanding the possibilities that a verb could follow means being aware of whether a verb could have been used in what range of forms in the language, and then to use that background understanding of the possible uses to guide our assignment of a semantic value to a particular verbal form - the final quote.

To do that effectively, supporting reference material, or Carl's own nomenclature would be more useful if the idiom of each verb was indicated in addition to what he is proposing about just marking the fornaments without semantic implication. όψονται could be MP1! (where the exclamation mark or some other symbol indicates that form of the verb is lacking all or one or other forms). If I understand the article correctly, but it seems to say that the forms -όντο / -θησαν are semantically indistinguishable - if that is true, then even though there are three ways of marking a form for its voice idiom, there are only two significant ommisions that need to be marked- either the Active is missing from the language or that neither of the MP forms are present for that verb. If that assumption of no difference is not made then the complexity of marking the verbs voice idiom would be overly complex and users can look at the first few lines in a dictionary entry for the information (assuming that the limited corpus of the New Testament represents the language) - a step that pre-beginners probably wouldn't take.

NONE of that, of course is relevant to the present limited discussion.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
cwconrad
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Voice tags and lexical distinctions - Utility of parsing gui

Post by cwconrad »

Jonathan Robie wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:I think A, M, and P for active, middle, and passive is fine. They are the traditional terms and they cover the prototypical uses. Just because some non-typical uses don't fall under the umbrella doesn't necessary that it is a bad time. It is the same way with tense: the past tense isn't always past time but still an appropriate name.
I agree with Stephen's answers, but I would expand on the answer to Question 3. You have yourself argued that the differences in meaning are lexically based. That means that the lexicon should make these distinctions, or we should make lists of verbs according to their semantics with respect to voice.
This almost slipped through the cracks, but it's a significant issue that deserves some thought.
One of the reasons for my thinking that verbs should be tagged for voice strictly in terms of the morphoparadigm into which they fall (A, M, P -- or whatever) is that I believe those who need to consult a parsing guide (i.e., those with relatively limited experience reading Greek) need to consult a good lexicon when they encounter an unfamiliar word and should study the entry for that word to grasp the array of usages and examples -- it's like taking the time to familiarize oneself with a newly-met person with whom one expects to have more encounters. I think a good lexicon ought also to distinguish between, let's say, ἵστασθαι/στῆνα/ἑστηκέναι and ἱστάναι/στῆσαι so that the user understands that the stative intransitive "stand" is conveyed by the perfect active, while the active ἱστάναι is transitive and causative. So too, a good Koine or specialized GNT lexicon ought to note that ἐγείρεσθαι/ἐγερθῆναι is intransitive in the sense of "awake" or "arise", while ἐγείρειν/ἐγεῖραι is ordinarily transitive-causative but also is commonly used in the active imperative in the intransitive sense,"rise, get up!" Again, a good lexicon should probably have separate (but cross-referenced) entries for ἄρχειν "rule/be chief over" and ἄρχεσθαι "begin." The tags on verbs for voice in a parsing guide don't complete the circle of learning something new about a word encountered in a text -- any more than does a one-word gloss under a Greek word in an interlinear. IF tools such as interlinears and parsing guides are to serve a useful function pedagogically, the user must be expected, indeed challenged to consult the lexical entry to learn more about the Greek word just encountered and the range of senses it can bear in different contexts. I believe that acquisition of this habit of making use of the parsing guide is the only way that it can serve as a practical pedagogical instrument that can help users begin the ascent out of the cave.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
cwconrad
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Re: Clearly written

Post by cwconrad »

MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:From the point of view of interlinear users, pre-beginners and those who have failed the learning process, but still want some accept access to the New Testament in the original language, there are things that could be clearer.
Does it need to be clear for them? If they're pre-beginners, then I'm not sure that there's really anything that would be clear...
Let's try, please, to get some more light on the cui bono? question: "For whom is this resource intended?" And really, that's not necessarily the same question as, "Who's actually going to use this resource?"

Here's what I think: AGNT is indeed a parsing guide -- and there are several parsing guides on the market -- but it was not intended for the "pre-beginner", and, to be frank, no "pre-beginner" is going to learn anything at all from this or any other parsing guide. To be perfectly honest, I haven't made a study of available parsing guides -- nor do I intend to, but, judging from the relatively-detailed introductory material to AGNT and from considerable dialogue with Tim Friberg, I believe that AGNT was intended for students who have acquired a basic grounding in Biblical Greek and have sufficient grammatical acumen to make good use of the tagged texts and lexical database. Suffice it to say, however, that these users are not Greek scholars; I think it was intended for a) serious students of Biblical Greek who are still learning to read it comfortably, b) pastors who learned Greek in school or seminary and want to study the GNT without going on to master the language, and c) Biblical translators in the field who may need to check the data on a particular word in a particular context and then move on to the lexical database to get a better sense of how form and meaning function together in this context. I believe this sort of intended user is implied in the nature of the introductory material to AGNT, and it's that sort of user for whom my own brief rationale for voice tagging was written: a student of Greek with some sophistication who has nevertheless not fully mastered the language (ah, but who of us can honestly claim that laurel?).
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

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