I just added a vocabulary flash card exercise to lesson 17. As with other lessons, the flash card exercise is located at the end of the lesson, after the reading and translation exercise.
Lesson 17: Present Tense Review and Expansion
I have added three new exercises to lesson 17. Enjoy.
Update to Lesson 17 on the Greek Present
I just added a short paragraph to the section on usage of the Greek present. Here’s what I added to the end of that section:
- What you can know for sure when you encounter a Greek present form is that the focus is not on when the action begins or ends. The Greek present form indicates imperfective verbal aspect. That is, it conveys a focus on the ongoing action, not on the beginning or end of the process.
This does not change anything I had already said. It just makes the connection to verbal aspect theory a little clearer.
Lesson 21: More on the Aorist Middle and Passive
I have added lesson 21 (Aorist Middle/Passive) to the online grammar. Because I am working late at night—rushing to get it up and running before I go back to work tomorrow—I’m sure there will be a few typographical errors that I will need to correct over the next few days. Still, I thought it would be best to get the text “out there” so you can have a look at it and give my any feedback you would like.
As I have done with other lessons recently, I have uploaded it without the automated practice exercises. I will get to those soon (I hope!).
Progress on Lesson 21 (Aorist Middle/Passive)
I spent some very good time this morning at a coffee shop working on lesson 21. I’m writing the Reading and Translation section now. I’m working against the clock since I have to go back to work on Monday, and I’ll be out of town a good part of the weekend. As soon as I finish the lesson I’ll post a notice here.
Topical Index and the Middle Voice
I’ve added appropriate categories to the Topical Index for my grammar to cover the issues introduced in Lesson 20: The Middle Voice.
Additions to the Lexicon
I’ve added the vocabulary from lesson 20 to the online lexicon. I’ll work on the topical index tomorrow.
Lesson 20: The Middle Voice, The Aorist Middle
Well… After a very long wait, I’ve finally uploaded my lesson on the Aorist Middle. As I have done with a few other lessons, I’ve uploaded it without the automated practice exercises. I hope to finish those over the next few days. For now, I’d love to have your reaction to the discussion and the particular examples I’ve chosen.
Feel free to criticize, suggest revisions, etc.
Back to Greek tomorrow
I spent the day today in a training seminar on teaching English to speakers of other languages. I’ll be back to working on Greek tomorrow.
I spent Monday working on the next lesson for the online grammar, dealing with the middle voice. I hope to finish it in the next few days.
Lesson 19: Semantic Roles and Voice, The Aorist Passive
I’ve uploaded a slightly revised version of Lesson 19: Semantic Roles and Voice: the Aorist Passive.
The changes are designed to make it clear that what has traditionally been called the Aorist Passive is a set of forms that, while they often suggest a passive interpretation, are not exclusively (or even primarily) passive.
The middle voice will be introduced later, and at that point I will have more to say about Greek voice, and I’ll introduce the notion of transitivity. My goals for this lesson are simply to introduce the notion of the semantic roles AGENT and PATIENT—establishing their independence from specific morphological Case forms—and to introduce the forms traditionally called aorist passive.
I would love to hear from readers about how well you think I have accomplished these goals and about how clearly (or unclearly) I have handled the issue of insuring that students do not equate these forms exclusively with passive voice interpretations.