RE: On Method and S -> PN and Ontological Meaning

From: Micheal Palmer (mwpalmer@earthlink.net)
Date: Wed Jul 30 1997 - 00:54:03 EDT


At 7:44 PM +0000 7/29/97, Clayton Bartholomew wrote:

>If the veteran language teachers think that the *basic meaning* of
>a grammatical form is a useful concept for teaching then by all
>means use it. But you may be teaching by inference the concept
>that *basic meaning* of a grammatical form is actually a part of
>the language under discussion. And it is this notion that I think
>needs to be examined closely.

I am quite sure others will disagree, but I have taught beginning Greek
quite a few times and I have never found the notion of a basic meaning (an
inherent meaning) for the cases to be very helpful. I talk about their
'most common usages' rather than a basic meaning.

I learned Greek from a teacher (and a textbook) which used the 'basic
meaning' approach and found it to be confusing and misleading.

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Micheal W. Palmer mwpalmer@earthlink.net
Religion & Philosophy
Meredith College

Visit the Greek Language and Linguistics Gateway at
http://home.earthlink.net/~mwpalmer/
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