Ancient Greek resources on the internet are in a constant state of change, with pages moving to new locations and new tools being added from time to time. Over the past few days I have updated the epigraphy page to correct links, update descriptions, and hopefully make the page more useful. Check it out to see what you think.
Structural Lexicology and the Greek New Testament
I have added Todd Price’s Structural Lexicology and the Greek New Testament: Applying Corpus Linguistics for Word Sense Possibility Delimitation Using Collocational Indicators
The book was published in 2015 by Gorgias Press and sells for $180 at Amazon.com
I do not own a copy of the book (due to the price!), but here’s what I’ve gleaned from the abstract provided by the publisher and available in the Library of Congress online catalog. If you own a copy of the book, feel free to tell me how far off I am!
Price’s book addresses both lexical meaning and phrase-level meaning in context. After introducing the concept of structural lexicology as developed through the use of computational linguistics, computational lexicography and corpus linguistics, Price explains his method for determining the contextual meaning of New Testament Greek words and phrases through an analysis of their collocations (with what other words does word x tend to appear?), colligations (in its various contexts, with what kinds of words does word x tend to hold grammatical relationships?) and semantic preferences (with what words does word x share key elements of meaning?). His approach emphasizes defining words in context by disambiguating their possible meanings.
He argues, uncontroversially, that an analysis of large (digital) corpora of Hellenistic Greek can advance our understanding of lexical semantics, and he includes numerous case studies in the Greek New Testament applying his method to exegetically problematic texts.
Revisiting Aspect and Aktionsart : a corpus approach to Koine Greek event typology
Brill is publishing a revised version of Francis G.H. Pang’s doctoral dissertation, Revisiting Aspect and Aktionsart: a corpus approach to Koine Greek event typology. Pang completed the dissertation at McMaster Divinity College in May of 2014.
As with all things Brill, the projected price puts the book out of reach for most biblical scholars and seems more directed at library collections: $142 (€110).
Here’s what the abstract says at Brill’s website:
In Revisiting Aspect and Aktionsart, Francis G.H. Pang employs a corpus approach to analyze the relationship between Greek aspect and Aktionsart. Recent works have tried to predict the meanings that emerge when a certain set of clausal factors and lexical features combine with one of the grammatical aspects. Most of these works rely heavily on Zeno Vendler’s telicity distinction. Based on empirical evidence, Pang argues that telicity and perfectivity are not related in a systematic manner in Koine Greek. As a corollary, Aktionsart should be considered an interpretive category, meaning that its different values emerge, not from the interaction of only one or two linguistic parameters, but from the process of interpreting language in context.
The Library of Congress entry for the book indicates that there is an online version, but I have been unable to find it.
I will have an entry prepared for the bibliography here at Greek-Language.com later in the day today.
Marking thought and talk in New Testament Greek: new light from linguistics on the particles ἵνα and ὅτι
I have just added Margaret Sim’s 2011 book, Marking Thought and Talk in New Testament Greek: New Light from Linguistics on the Particles ἵνα and ὅτι
She presents a new analysis of ἵνα and ὅτι using Relevance Theory. The book is a further development of her doctoral dissertation completed in 2006 at the University of Edinburgh under the title “A relevance theoretic approach to the particle ʻína in Koine Greek.”
It’s wonderful that Wipf & Stock Pub can offer this volume for only $27!
Robert Crellin on the Hellenistic Greek Perfect
Robert Crellin, writer of the entries on prepositions for the Greek Lexicon Project in Cambridge, has recently published The syntax and semantics of the perfect active in literary Koine Greek, (Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell), 2016.
The book is not yet available in the Wiley catalogue, but it is projected to cost $45.00. Not bad for a 264 page book by a competent linguist! According to the abstract at the Library of Congress, Crellin
Offers a comprehensive and unified account of the Greek perfect that considers its behaviour in terms of tense and aspect, as well as voice (or diathesis)…
I have not yet been able to get a copy of the book, but according to the abstract, Crellin discusses the syntax and semantics of the Greek perfect using a large corpus of Hellenistic Greek texts that has not previously been discussed in the linguistics literature about the perfect. The book is targeted primarily at linguists and researchers specializing in (Hellenistic) Koine Greek.
Crellin has also recently uploaded his 307 page PhD thesis on the Koine Greek perfect to Academia.edu: The Greek Perfect Active System: 200 BC – AD 150. The thesis was completed in 2012 under the supervision of Geoffrey Horrocks at the University of Cambridge. I’m not certain of the relationship between the book discussed above and the PhD thesis, but here’s what Crellin says of his aim’s and the scope of his corpus in the uploaded thesis:
It is the aim of the present investigation to establish under what circumstances the various senses, past and present, active and medio-passive, may be attributed to the perfect active stem in this period, and from this to seek to provide an account of the semantics and function of the form which most readily accounts for the observed distribution. At the heart of the investigation is a very large corpus, approximately 800,000 words, containing work of the historians Polybius, Plutarch, Josephus and Appian. A combination of close contextual analysis and quantitative statistical methods is then used to analyse this. The investigation is primarily synchronic, but seeks to use findings made on a synchronic level to inform discussion of diachronic developments (p. 3).
I’ve added both the book and the thesis to the bibliography here at Greek-Language.com.
Exercise for Lesson 23: Imperfect Middle and Passive
I have added two interactive exercises for lesson 23: Imperfect Middle and Passive.
You can try them out here:
Unicode Greek in the Online Grammar
After two very frustrating days of frantic coding, the Greek text in the online grammar is converted to unicode and displaying correctly. For a day and a half I was unable to get the revised files to show up after uploading them, but that problem is now resolved.
As I continue to update the HTML and CSS supporting the grammar some formatting may look odd for a day or two, and if you notice anything that doesn’t look right, please feel free to contact me using the contact link above.
For the next few weeks the topical index will have a great deal of problems. The HTML4 method for linking to specific paragraphs within a web page has been deprecated. The HTML5 method is seriously different, and it will take me some time to get everything converted to the new method.
Lesson 23 Vocabulary Flashcards
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.