The lessons here at Greek-Language.com can now be reached at HellenisticGreek.com. That domain name now redirects to Greek-Language.com/grammar.
New Dissertation on Koine Word Order
In November Allison Kirk (Leiden University) completed a doctoral thesis with the title, Word order and information structure in New Testament Greek.
I have added her dissertation to the bibliography here at Greek-Language.com. With the entry I included a slightly shortened version of the abstract that appears in the entry for the dissertation at the Leiden Repository. Here’s the shortened abstract:
The dissertation examines word order variation in the Koine Greek of the New Testament in declarative clauses, questions and relative clauses. Kirk examines the way word order corresponds to information structure. She argues that although New Testament Greek shows a variety of possible permutations of the sentence elements subject (S), verb (V) and object (O), in declarative clauses, questions and relative clauses; the word order is not free. Rather, it is partly governed by phrase structure and partly by information structural considerations such as Topic and Focus. The basic word order is described as VSO with an SVO alternative. Marked clauses, such as SOV, OVS, OSV, and some SVO clauses, involve topicalization or focus movement of the arguments.
You can download the entire text from the Leiden Repository.
Thomas Hudgins' Discourse Analysis of John 17
I have added the following article by Thomas Hudgins to A Comprehensive Bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics.
Hudgins, Thomas W. “An Application of Discourse Analysis Methodology in the Exegesis of John 17.” Eleutheria: Vol. 2: Iss. 1 (2012), Article 4.
Here’s the comment I made on it there:
Hudgins applies discourse analysis methodology to the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel. The familiar prayer of Jesus in that chapter has traditionally been analyzed in terms of the three referents (Jesus, his contemporary disciples, and future disciples). Hudgins, however, gives greater attention to the “mainline verbs,” shifting the focus to Jesus’ requests and final commitment. By giving greater structural significance to these verbs, he is able to present a fresh understanding of the structural division and natural outline of Jesus’ prayer.
Updates to bibliographic entries for Bortone and Luraghi
I have updated the entries for the following two books
- Luraghi, Silvia. On the meaning of prepositions and cases: Semantic roles in Ancient Greek. Studies in language companion series 67. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003.
- Bortone, Pietro. Greek prepositions from antiquity to the present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
in A Comprehensive Bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics. The updates include a brief description of each book and a link to Mike Aubrey’s reviews.
Two new items for the bibliography
I’ve added the following two works by Christina Sevdali to my Comprehensive Bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics. Both address Classical Greek, but I have been unable to find similar works addressing the Hellenistic period. If you know of works that use a similar method to address control and infinitival constructions in the Hellenistic period, I would love to hear about them.
Sevdali, Christina. ‘Control into CPs: when finiteness does not matter’. In C. Halpert, J. Hartman and D. Hill (eds.) Proceedings of the 2007 Workshop in Greek syntax and semantics at MIT. MIT Working Papers in linguistics 57 (2009), 251 – 266.
Sevdali, Christina. ‘‘Infinitival clauses in Ancient Greek: overt and null subjects, the role of Case and Focus’’ Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, supervised by Professor Ian Roberts, 2007.
If you are interested in following Dr. Sevdali’s work, you can find more information here: University of Ulster – Linguistics Research.
Topical Index updated (voice, imperfective aspect)
I have updated the topical index for my online grammar to include the topics raised in lessons 22 (Present Middle and Passive) and 23 (Imperfect Middle and Passive). These deal mostly with voice and aspect, but also include the formation of the relevant verbs.
Updated Course Lexicon
I have added the vocabulary from Lesson 23: Verbs: The Imperfect Middle and Passive to the course lexicon (the cumulative vocabulary list). If you’ve visited the course lexicon recently, you may need to refresh the page to see the changes.
Updated Manuscripts Page
A few minutes ago I uploaded a new version of the Manuscripts page at Greek-Language.com. A few links needed repair, and some new resources have become available since the last time I updated that page.
I hope you like the new version.
Lesson 18: Future Tense Verbs
I have revised lesson 18: Future Tense Verbs to make it more usable in relation to the upcoming lesson 24: The Future Middle and Passive.
Updates to lessons 22 and 23
I have updated lessons 22 and 23 (Present and Imperfect Middle/Passive). The changes to lesson 22 are very minor—just a few wording changes. The main change to lesson 23, though, is the deletion of the discussion on transitivity. I will introduce that topic in a later lesson with much better examples. This change helps unnecessary complication, tightening the focus on the issue of voice.
I also made a few changes to the course lexicon (cumulative vocabulary list) to improve entries for some of the verbs presented in these lessons.