Grammatical Terms in Greek

Biblical Greek morphology and syntax, aspect, linguistics, discourse analysis, and related topics
MAubrey
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Re: Grammatical Terms in Greek

Post by MAubrey »

Stephen Carlson wrote: I told them that Greek middles were a lot like Spanish/French reflexive verbs.
You mean a lot like Spanish/French middle verbs.

http://ricardomaldonado.weebly.com/uplo ... review.pdf
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: Grammatical Terms in Greek

Post by Stephen Carlson »

MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote: I told them that Greek middles were a lot like Spanish/French reflexive verbs.
You mean a lot like Spanish/French middle verbs.
:) Yeah, but to make these analogies work for students you have to use the terms they're familiar with.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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RandallButh
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Re: Grammatical Terms in Greek

Post by RandallButh »

Louis' second list is more accurate.
Paul-Nitz
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Re: Grammatical Terms in Greek

Post by Paul-Nitz »

Did I miss it in this thread? What is a Greek term for "aspect" and how would we use it?

When we say that a word is an Aorist Indicative verb, we mean that it is both past tense and Aorist aspect.
  • ὁ ἀόριστος χρόνος και ?????
    ὁ παρεληλυθώς χρόνος και ἀόριστος aspect????
I'm finding some confusion with the Imperfect, as well. The Indicative Imperfect is the ὁ παρατατικός χρόνος, but the verb in the "Present" (continual) Infinitive is ἡ παρατατική ἀπαρέμφατος (ἐγκλισις).
Paul D. Nitz - Lilongwe Malawi
RandallButh
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Re: Grammatical Terms in Greek

Post by RandallButh »

I use ὄψις for aspect. It is based on modern Greek (συνοπτικὴ ὄψη = perfective aspect), since the old Greek only talked about 'families' among the verbs.

Thus,
παρατατικὴ ὄψις.
ἀόριστος ὄψις
παρακειμένη ὄψις.

παρατατικὴ μετοχή.
ἀόριστος μετοχἠ
παρακειμένη μετοχή.

The traditional Greek term was 'present participle', thus ἐνεστῶσα μετοχή.
Louis L Sorenson
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Re: Grammatical Terms in Greek

Post by Louis L Sorenson »

Eleanor Dickey lists terminology in Chapter 6 of Ancient Greek scholarship: a Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica and Grammatical Treatises, from Their Beginnings to the Byzantine Period, (Oxford University Press, 2007.) The whole chapter is a list of grammatical terms (55 pages long pp. 209-265) Bold text is my highlight:
This section is not a complete dictionary, but a glossary giving in most cases only the grammatical meanings of the words included; these words are also used by scholarly writers in their non-technical senses on occasion. For such meanings and fuller information on these words, including citations of passages in which they occur, see LS] and Becares Botas (1985). A selection of references is given here to other works in which individual terms are discussed; such references are normally given only once but should be understood to apply to closely related words as well (e.g. a discussion of ἀμφιβολία will normally
be useful for understanding ἀμφίβολος as well).

The state of scholarship on Greek grammatical terminology is not one that would make it possible for a glossary of this type to be completely reliable. The only specialized dictionary (Becares Botas 1985) is full of errors, the information in LS] is seriously incomplete, and other discussions are Widely scattered, incomplete, and often unreliable. There is a great need for a thorough, accurate study of this vocabulary-and this glossary is not intended to address that need, only to help learners to get through texts. For lack of anything better, the information given here is based on that in Becares Botas (1985) and LS], corrected and supplemented from a wide range of other sources.
RandallButh
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Re: Grammatical Terms in Greek

Post by RandallButh »

Thanks, Louis.

I had forgotten all about that list, and the book is sitting on a shelf across from my desk. ;)

Briefly, I suspect that you will not find a word for 'aspect', but some niceties like ατελἠς for imperfective verbs (not to mention παρατατική, of course),
and συντελικός for aoristic.

Incidentally, I opened the list and landed on κεῖμαι but did not find κεἰμενον "text". So yes, more work needs doing.
Paul-Nitz
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Re: Grammatical Terms in Greek

Post by Paul-Nitz »

I managed to sort out my thinking about naming the Indicatives. For what it's worth...

Image

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_5w2D ... sp=sharing
Paul D. Nitz - Lilongwe Malawi
MAubrey
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Re: Grammatical Terms in Greek

Post by MAubrey »

Hi Paul,

That looks good. The only think I'd suggest changing is how you us the word "time."

It would be better if you did this:

| Example | Aspect | Tense | Brief Name |

Tense is the grammatical category that convey an events location in time. But time itself is a non-linguistic category. Or you could say that Time is a meta-linguistic category that subsumes both Tense and Aspect together. We want to make this distinction between Time and tense because both tense and aspect are temporal in nature.
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
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Paul-Nitz
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Re: Grammatical Terms in Greek

Post by Paul-Nitz »

M. Aubrey,
Really good point. I'll revise it. As I presented this in class today, your very point came to mind.

Maybe I should have mentioned that the confusion I was trying to clear up for my students was that often people talk in English about an Aorist Indicative simply as an Aorist. Same with other Indicative tenses. That's a bit confusing for us since we are accustomed to talking about aspect in terms of ἀόριστος καὶ παρατατική. On the Greek terminology side, there is similar confusion. We called the Imperfect tense the παρατατικός χρόνος which brings to mind the παρατατική ὄψις.

All,
I wonder if there is a Greek grammatical term distinct from χρονος that could be used for time.

In English, how would we SIMPLY (no linguist talk allowed!) distinguish the concept of "tense" from general time-related functions in language? Is there anything missing in this statement?

"Tense" answers when the action happened.
Paul D. Nitz - Lilongwe Malawi
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