BART and Interlinears

[Patrick Maxwell]

There is not too much concerning which I am dogmatic. A few theological issues and the fact that interlinears are the spawn of the devil. They are the linguistic equivalent of brain eating zombies.

Thank you for this advice about interlinears, Barry. (George Somsel said more or less the same thing.) I will devote myself to SBLGNT's unadorned Greek text.

I suppose the two besetting temptations for a beginner are: (1) Interlinears, and (2) Tools that help with parsing, of which there so many on the Web!

After I introduced myself on this forum, you were the first to welcome me; thank you sincerely. A welcome makes such a difference to a new member.

Bye,
Patrick

[Patrick Maxwell]

Whether a student like me who is doing introductory Greek should (or should NOT) resort to interlinears is another question. If I need to be rebuked to some extent for my interlinear pursuits, please go ahead and do so!

Let me answer your last question and give you a different perspective on interlinear useage and language learning. I have seen many different people take many diverse paths to language proficiency - interlining is one of them...

Thank you, Stephen, for your detailed reply; I have saved the text of your post and will spend some time digesting what you have said.

Just one comment now. You said: "Just using Greek-text - interlined English together will be quite useful for a student's vocabulary". The benefit for me has been "vocabulary in context". There is no shortage of simple vocab lists available to the student, but when I had finished going through Matthew 1:18 - 2:23 in my interlinear, it suddenly dawned on me that I would surely never forget the Greek words for "by a dream" and "secretly" and "not at all the least" because I had seen them in a memorable and meaningful context. (Apologies, I have not yet learned how to put Greek in my posts.)

Thank you,
Patrick

[cwconrad]

There is not too much concerning which I am dogmatic. A few theological issues and the fact that interlinears are the spawn of the devil. They are the linguistic equivalent of brain eating zombies.

Thank you for this advice about interlinears, Barry. (George Somsel said more or less the same thing.) I will devote myself to SBLGNT's unadorned Greek text.

I suppose the two besetting temptations for a beginner are: (1) Interlinears, and (2) Tools that help with parsing, of which there so many on the Web!

As one who has frequently chimed in with the advice on interlinears given by George and Barry, I must say that I think Stephen has given you better advice, albeit not advice that I agree with completely -- you do need to understand that we B-Greekers are an ornery and contentious lot, agreeable if we can be, but not prone to be of one and the same mind about much of anything. Where I would differ from Stephen (unless, as is indeed quite possible) is the matter of attaining an English version that is really equivalent to the Greek text. In my view, your goal (the goal of any student of Greek) should be to think Greek and to read or understand the text, insofar as it's possible, given the difference in time, space, and cultural context), exactly as the audience for whom that Greek text was originally meant. Your goal is to understand the Greek text as a Greek text. If you succeed at that and know how to express yourself well in English (or any language that you know well), then the ability to convey that meaning in the second language should not fail you, but translation of the Greek text into a second language really ought not to be your fundamental objective; rather, your objective ought to be understanding the Greek text as a Greek text -- thinking the meaning of that text in Greek.

[Jonathan Robie]

Thank you for this advice about interlinears, Barry. (George Somsel said more or less the same thing.) I will devote myself to SBLGNT's unadorned Greek text.

Good plan.

Another possibility is to use any Greek text for which you can find audio recordings that you like. Getting Greek into your ears seems to make a huge difference, at least for me.

I suppose the two besetting temptations for a beginner are: (1) Interlinears, and (2) Tools that help with parsing, of which there so many on the Web!

To me, the important part is reading carefully in Greek until you are no longer learning anything new by trying to work it out, at that point, I think there is benefit to checking the parsing to make sure you got it right (Alpheios is my favorite tool for this), looking things up in Grosvenor and Zerwick, seeing what the translations say, etc. But spend 20-30 minutes in pure Greek first, then check your understanding.

For checking your work at the end, normal interlinears are awful, because they do nothing to show you the structure of the phrases, and phrases are where the action is. The Levinsohn diagrams are a little better, but I just tried to use them to discern the structure of some complex sentences, and I don't think they would have helped me for that. You can ask questions on B-Greek for that, of course. The older commentaries are often quite good for this.

[Stephen Hughes]

The benefit for me has been "vocabulary in context".

It may not be readily obvious, but there are actually two contexts you are working with when you use an interlinear. The context of Greek words around it and the context by association with English translation. Both contexts are useful and both contexts have ways in which learning is difficult. If you can balance both of them, you can make the best of them.

All learners second language learners tend to group words according to how they are rendered in English (or anther language). So for example "go" and "know" are the translations for a lot of different words in Greek. By virtue of learning words in context in an interlinear - without first having to get to a level of proficiency in "Greek" - will aid learning the words in context better than just dealing with Greek (and then of course with an English word in a lexicon), as you have said. Learners who initially learn from word-lists, rather than from contexts, probably never get over the confusion of the words for "go" and "know" except by going back to their contexts to try to find the differences. Editions like the Loeb with text on the opposite page are often very useful once you have learnt the language with some measure of progress under your belt. Later still, when your eyes can flip about the page in Greek, like you do in English, you will be able to see the way that the contexts are constructed in the language itself, as Carl has mentioned to you and as Jonathan says " in pure Greek".

when I had finished going through Matthew 1:18 - 2:23 in my interlinear, it suddenly dawned on me that I would surely never forget the Greek words for "by a dream" and "secretly" and "not at all the least" because I had seen them in a memorable and meaningful context.

To follow up on one of your examples... Phrases like ἐν τῷ κρυπτῷ "secretly (in a way that others can't see)", κατ’ ἰδίαν "privately (in a way that doesn't involve others)" and your λάθρᾳ "secretly (in a way that doesn't call the attention of others to what is happening)" seem to be interchangeable, but each has a nuance that you can draw from their contexts. If you wanted to use the interlinear in conjunction with a concordance or concordance programme to see your favourite words in other contexts (in the interlinear) that will be useful too. Students who follow the analyse translate method will get the sense of word meaning that you are getting at beginners' level when they are at an intermediate level - after they are able to do for themselves what the interlinear is doing for you - while you are still learning.

I have not yet learned how to put Greek in my posts.

As a stop-gap measure until you can type, just cut and paste.

[Stephen Hughes]

normal interlinears are awful, because they do nothing to show you the structure of the phrases, and phrases are where the action is.

Interlining the Greek text with English doesn't convey the richness of the conjugational / declensional system of Greek at all, and (except for the odd a, b, c to indicate the order things should be taken in English) doesn't show the interrelatedness of various elements in a sentence. To show the interrelatedness and to capture the richness of the Greek verbal and nominal elements, then grammar needs to be interlined too. Perhaps with grammatical symbols above the words and meanings below.

[Stephen Hughes]

Your goal is to understand the Greek text as a Greek text. If you succeed at that and know how to express yourself well in English (or any language that you know well), then the ability to convey that meaning in the second language should not fail you, but translation of the Greek text into a second language really ought not to be your fundamental objective; rather, your objective ought to be understanding the Greek text as a Greek text -- thinking the meaning of that text in Greek.

I'm not so sure that learning from a text that interlines just English (without any indication of how grammar works) is the best way to get to "understanding Greek text as Greek text". One needs to also interline grammatical relationships with the text too, then to wean oneself off a dependence on the English for common or familiar words, and also to become familiar not only how individual players handle the ball, but also with the way that the words in Greek play together to make a game of it.

"Thinking the meaning of the text in Greek" as you say requires skill (and for less-advanced students suitable reference works) that cater for and encourage Greek to Greek paraphrasing and rendering of meanings. So to get from interlining to what you have descibed as ideal also requires the same tools as I have previously described for analysing translators to get there too, and which have later been explored for the classical Greek work A Greek Boy at home.

Coming to skill in paraphrasing can be achieved by much study and attention to reading over a large corpus of texts over many years if one wanted to do that, but if there were a suitable reference work, that could be achieved more simply at an earlier stage of the game.

[Barry Hofstetter]

There has been some really good advice given in these varied responses. Rather than respond in detail to all or even any one, I'll pose this question: How many modern language teachers advise the use of interlinears in learning French, or German, or Spanish? If the goal is to learn the language on its own terms (and not just as a means to decode English translations), then interlinears can only hinder this process...

In fact, have only seen interlinears for one other language, and that was some interlinear translations of Caesar and Cicero. My response to that was simillarly visceral.

[Stephen Hughes]

How many modern language teachers advise the use of interlinears in learning French, or German, or Spanish?

That is an interesting question. I would also like to add two other questions;

• How many teachers tell their students to interline English over / under the foreign language? AND
  How many people as students have done that anyway regardless of what the teacher has told them to do or not to do when learning a foreign language?

[Another thing, I think that constructing a vocab list for a passage and then fudging together a meaningful English translation (without much reference to grammar) is like a "displaced" interlining, and probably doesn't involve tackling the actual language, but it is enough to get a student through their exams, and up to an apparently passable level of comprehension. Additionally, I think that composition (and other forms of personal expression) in a language are probably a truer litmus test of mastery than the ability to get a translation penned down.]

[Hefin J. Jones]

Just in case anybody missed this thread the first time round, all of Levinsohn's discourse annotations of the whole NT are still up for free access as PDFs at:

http://www-01.sil.org/~levinsohns/BART.html

These are enormously helpful. For those who have access to Runge's analyses via Logos these works by Levinsohn are a great complement. On the whole their theoretical assumptions (in so far as I understand them) are very very similar, and the results are very similar too. However, there are differences - a small number of which are evaluative, but a number of differences represent their choices of what to highlight via their annotation schemes. I'm pretty sure users of Runge will be able to 'translate' Levinsohn's nomenclature by reference to Runge's DGGNT.

These works are very similar and in some ways mutually supporting, but here's a rough-and-ready list of *some* general differences I've noticed:

Levinsohn marks "over-encoding" of active participants, Runge does not.
Levinsohn marks "Dominant Focal Elements", Runge does not (though sometimes these work out as "main clause emphasis" in LDGNT)
Levinsohn marks more right dislocations than Runge, who sometimes marks appropriate examples as "forward pointing targets" of "forward pointing references".
Runge marks Nominitive circumstantial frames, Levinsohn does not
Runge marks overspecification, Levinsohn does not (NB - over specification =/= over-encoding)
Runge marks Thematic Address, Levinsohn does not.

I'm sure that there are more.

This is a recommendation of both these BART annotations and LDGNT etc...