Re: Syntax Grammars

From: Daniel Ria–o (danielrr@retemail.es)
Date: Thu Dec 09 1999 - 12:15:50 EST


        Clayton has shifted the thread from its initial question to a
different one, far more interesting and difficult, but to start for the
beginning:

>What is the best grammar book for learning advanced Greek syntax.

I am surprised that no one (unless I missed anything) gave the obvious
answer: the best advanced Grammar (if advanced means not simply not-for
starters) is by far and without hesitation the second volume of Kźhner,
Raphael y Gerth, Bernhard. 1898. Ausfźhrliche Grammatik der griechischen
Sprache. 3 ed. Vol. 2. Hannover and Leipzig. Schwyzer's Syntax volume is
superior in some aspects, but in many regards the book as a whole is a step
backwards to historical linguistics (Schwyzer's first volume, however, is
far superior to Kuehner-Blass).
        The most notorious thing about it is that in almost every aspect of
syntax Kuehner-Gerth is outdated (their approaches are not followed by
linguistics anymore) and we do have very good monographs for many aspects
of Greek syntax and partial Grammars, but we simply do not have yet an
exhaustive Syntax of Greek written under the frame of modern linguistics.
        Most of the books quoted are as ageing as K.G., but far less solid
and complete, and most of them over simplistic. Smith's Grammar is fairly
complete for Attic and easy to read, the book is well composed and has good
indexes, but it was written with a conservative view of syntax, using a
perspective of 1920. Brooks&Winbery ("the ablative case is used to express
the idea of separation. It indicates the idea of such things as point of
departure, source, origin") or Dana&Mantey can't seriously be taken as
advanced grammars, using "advanced" as above. Sure Wallace is book worth of
reading, but I very much doubt that it offers a new perspective in the
treatment of syntactical issues (but I could be wrong, I have read only up
to p. 208). It is only a pity that outside the basic essential German
books, Wallace ignores everything which was not written in English, (if one
may come such conclusions from bibliography: and the book's content doesn't
seem to contradict that). The same is true for most of the books quoted in
this thread. But if the requirement of being written in English was a
self-understanding condition, I am surprised that no one quoted Guy L.
Cooper's (nach Krueger),. 1998. Attic Greek prose Syntax. With all its many
idiosyncrasies is definitely a book worth reading, and possibly the
necessary manual in Attic you need to know before reading most of NT
Grammars. And you don't need to worry about the use of modern linguistic
jargon: Prof. Cooper, a notable philologist as he his, does not care a
thing about modern linguistics, so it seems.

Clayton Stirling Bartholomew wrote:
>It would be entirely fair for someone to ask the question:
>
>But Clay, how would you improve on our current grammars?
>
>Here is a suggestion, just one of many possible approaches. To begin
>with we might completely reorganized around a functional model (NO
>connection with Systemic Functional Linguistics).
>
>Let's say we start out with an abstract language model that is a complex
>network of functional domains. By complex I mean that the relational
>connections between the functional domains are many to many, which gives
>us a network that looks a lot like Louw and Nida's semantic domain model
>for lexical semantics. But instead of lexical-semantic nodes in our
>network we have functional nodes which I will now try and illustrate.
>
(BIG SNIP HERE)

>The main difference between this and our current grammars is that it is
>not organized around the so called "parts of speech" but starts at the
>beginning with a functional model and applies it throughout the
>presentation of the material.
>
>With this approach the genitive case and an adjective would be found
>listed under the same functional domain when they both were being used
>to limit a substantive. The genitive case would also appear under other
>functional domains since it has a number of potential functions.

        Approximately the same approach has already been taken in Latin
Linguistics by Pinkster, Harm. 1984. "Latijnse Syntaxis en Semantiek",
Amsterdam 1944, translated into German, English and Spanish. (If you can
read Spanish I strongly recommend this last edition, improved in several
point over the previous versions.) It is not an exhaustive Grammar like
Kuehner&Stegman or Hofmann&Szantyr, but it deals with the main points of
Latin syntax in a very clear way.
        Latin studies are now ahead of Greek studies. Of the moderns
schools of linguistics, only Structuralism (European, including Dependency
Grammar) and Functionalism had a significative influence in Greek (and
Latin) Grammars. American structuralism and Generativism had almost none
(but following D. Dean Schmidt "rule" that "by the time any 'revolutionary'
grammar appeared for H(ellenistic) G(reek) its linguistic basis had been
superseded by another revolution in linguistics, making such grammar
anachronistic from its inception," one should expect a Generative Grammar
of HG to appear any day :-)). You can see the "Nueva Sintaxis griega" of
F.R. Adrados and Happ, H. 1976. Grundfragen einer Dependenz-Grammatik des
Lateinischen. Gšttingen as examples, and for the bibliography]. My personal
view is that Cognitive Grammar too offers an excellent theoretical scheme
for Ancient Greek linguistics.
        But IMO, no grammarian should be specially concerned about
school-labelling of his work. As a matter of fact (I must say this is my
view, probably not shared by many) most of what is written now in
functionalism (a la Pinkster) is profoundly influenced by structuralism,
and could be called simply structural, and the main works of structuralist
are equally influenced by functionalism; and all the cognitivists older
than 12 years once were/are now functio-structuralists or generativists.

        I sympathise with Clayton's proposed model, only that in the
description (and explanation) **of a given language** I am inclined to give
far more relevance to "form" that he and most of the functionalists seem
willing to give. And that, in addition, makes Grammars easier to consult
(and philologists are always practical guys).

        With apologies for the barbarisms and the bandwidth wasted.
        Daniel

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Daniel Ria–o Rufilanchas
Madrid, Espa–a

Por favor, tomad nota de la nueva direcci—n de correo: danielrr@retemail.es

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