I have uploaded a flash card exercise for the vocabulary in Lesson 23: “Imperfect Middle and Passive. The card set includes review vocabulary from earlier lessons as well. when a review word is given, the earlier lesson or lessons in which it appeared are noted.
Another exercise for lesson two
I have not added this one to lesson two yet, but I’m considering it. It is not necessary to understand the text in order to complete the exercise. It’s only necessary to recognize the capital letters and know that the first word in a paragraph is capitalized even if it is not a proper name.
The text in this exercise is Luke 1:5-7. I selected that passage because it has a good concentration of proper names.
Lesson 27: Pronouns for Direct Conversation (ἐγὼ and σύ)
A few minutes ago I uploaded lesson 27 of my online grammar. There are a couple of reasons this particular lesson is a little unusual.
First, I have not yet uploaded lessons 24-26, so this one is coming out of sequence. I’m doing that simply because this one is much closer to completion than the others, and except for a couple of words that will be unfamiliar, it is quite understandable without having read the three preceding lessons. I have still not added the interactive practice exercises, but I’ll get to that as soon as I can.
Second, those of you who have been using the grammar will notice some clear formatting changes. These are due to the increasing need to make the grammar readable on a smartphone! It’s a bit amazing to me how many people use it that way, but it looks like that’s the wave of the future.
In fact, the entirety of Greek-Language.com is getting a major face-lift this summer, and it’s not just because of smartphones. The basic coding behind much of what’s on the web is quickly becoming obsolete. The net is moving full steam ahead to HTML5 and some serious upgrades to CSS. (If those acronyms are meaningless to you, don’t worry, they are to most people.) Since I wrote the code behind much of what is on the site without the help of any automated web page software, I have serious rewriting to do as HTML4 becomes obsolete. It’s a steep learning curve, but I really enjoy it.
If you notice any mistakes in lesson 27, or if any part of it seems unclear to you, don’t hesitate to point that out as comments below. Challenges from my readers make the grammar better for everyone.
Argument Structure in Hellenistic Greek
I have uploaded my paper, “Argument Structure in Hellenistic Greek” to two places. You can read it here at Greek-Language.com at the following location:
You can also view it at Academia.edu.
This paper is an updated version of one I presented at a national meeting of the SBL in the late 1990s. A slightly updated version was published by Forum, the journal of the Westar Institute in 1999 under the title “From the Lexicon to the Sentence: Argument Structure in Hellenistic Greek.”
This latest version lays out my proposals for information that should be included in an electronic lexicon of Hellenistic Greek. Serious advances in digital technology have made it possible to include information about syntactic and semantic relationships that would have been impractical only a few years ago, and in the context of the work that Jonathan Robie and I are doing on using XML to structure and query databases, I decided it was time to make my most recent proposals easier to locate.
Article on the Greek Perfect in the New Testament
Have any of you read the following article in the current issue of the Journal of Greek Linguistics? It sounds interesting, but it costs $30 to download. Is it worth the money?
Post a comment if you have read it.
Update to "A Comprehensive Bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics"
I have added Mike Aubrey’s thesis, The Greek perfect and the categorization of tense and aspect, to the bibliography at Greek-Language.com. When I finish reading it I’ll add some comments, but I wanted to go ahead and get it listed since it clearly meets the criteria for inclusion.
Ancient Greek Relative Clauses
In the latest volume of the Journal of Greek Linguistics (Volume 14), Stefanie Fauconnier has published an article on Ancient Greek relative clauses using data from Zenophon. She argues for a perspective that I have not encountered in work on the hellenistic period. Here is what her abstract says:
In this paper I argue that Ancient Greek has two distinct strategies for relative clause formation, corresponding to what is known in typology as externally and internally headed relative clauses. Furthermore, I explore two differences between these constructions. First, in comparison with their external counterparts, internal constructions are more restricted semantically. They can only be interpreted as restrictive relative clauses, while external constructions can also be interpreted as non-restrictive. Second, internal constructions are more restricted syntactically, given that they are not used when the domain nominal is subject in the relative clause. For external constructions there is no such syntactic restriction. Finally, I point out a number of convergences between internal relative clauses and noun phrases with an attributive participle. The findings presented in this paper are based on a study of Xenophon.
The journal requires a paid subscription to view online. If you do not have a subscription, but want to see an earlier version of Fauconnier’s research on this topic, you can take a look at the outline of a 2011 presentation she gave at the Pavia International Summer School for Indo-European Linguistics (University of Pavia, Italy). That outline shows some of the evidence she used and basic elements of her argument.
If you are aware of similar research on the hellenistic period, please let me know. I would like to have something in the bibliography here at Greek-Language.com on this topic. If nothing is available for the hellenistic period, I’ll add Fauconnier’s article.
Update to the Manuscripts Page
I have updated the manuscripts page at Greek-Language.com to include Alan Bunning’s Center for New Testament Restoration. By providing online access to the contents of an amazing number of early New Testament manuscripts, Allan is providing a tremendous service to all who are interested in the earliest wording of text of the New Testament.
Updates to the Epigraphy Page
Today I updated the epigraphy page at Greek-Language.com to provide references to two books relevant to the topic.
Bradley H. McLean’s 2011 book, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods from Alexander the Great down to the Reign of Constantine, provides a discussion of the evidence from the period of greatest concern for this website and blog. Craig Cooper’s recent collection of essays (2013), Epigraphy and the Greek Historian, provides discussions of specific inscriptions illustrating the nature of epigraphy and its relevance to the task of the historian.
Lexicography/Dictionaries Page
I have made a number of changes to the Lexicography and Dictionaries page at Greek-Language.com. Here are the main ones:
- I’ve added a section listing Greek Lexica in Print and provided opportunities to purchase them. I’ve included BAGD, Louw & Nida, and Sakae Kubo’s small readers lexicon.
- A new section on dictionaries of linguistics in print describes the two most commonly used ones and provides opportunities for purchase.
- I’ve updated the section on Ancient Greek Lexicographers to add links to appropriate articles at Wikipedia.
I hope you find these additions helpful.