Clippings: My New Favorite Feature in Logos 4
I love the new feature in Logos 4 called, “Clippings,” which basically makes it possible to gather content from a variety of books in the same place. As a result, I’ve developed in one location a variety of discussions of the Greek Verb.
Here’s what it looks like:
By clicking on the spot I’ve highlighted, you create a new clipping:
Ignoring the very poorly written quality of my annotation (it’s hard to write with a mouse), you can see what it’s possible to add emphasis with bold, italics, or underlining in your clippings after you’ve created a new Clippings File.
But more importantly is the fact that you can then add notes and comments to the clipping itself:
I’ve gone through about a dozen grammars like this so far. Some are better than others. Swetnam on Aspect is pretty good. My biggest concern is that his highly unusual use of terminology is only going to confuse students in the long run who continue their Greek studies. And for that reason, I wouldn’t recommend his particular discussion. Anyway, that’s beside the point. We’re talking about a software feature, not a grammatical category that’s only caused confusion over the past 20 decades.
Other cool features of “Clippings” include the ability to instantly get bibliographic info. If you click here:
The Clipping “flips around” and you see this:
And you can choose whatever style you want – though sometimes there are still issues to fix, but either way, the information is still there for your citation already.
Also, text formatting is easily available for both your notes as well as the clipping itself:
And these follow the typical shortcuts: ctrl-b for Bold, ctrl-i for italics, etc.
Finally, it’s possible to create multiple collections of clippings depending on what you’re working on.
And then name it whatever you want:
New Clippings Documents are also available via the File Menu:
So cool and so helpful for collecting and annotating your information.
Translating the New Testament: Text, Translation, Theology
Eerdmans just published:
Translating the New Testament: Text, Translation, Theology
Series: McMaster New Testament Studies
Stanley E. Porter (editor), Mark J. Boda (editor)
And I’m seriously considering requesting a review copy — though Eerdmans seems to be much more picky about who it sends review copies to. But I’ll probably give it a try.
At this point though, I’ll taking a rather standoff-ish stance regarding the book.It’s a book on translation. Right?
So why aren’t there any professional translators in the list of contributors.
Barbara Aland
Mark J. Boda
Philip Comfort
Alain Gignac
Edith M. Humphrey
Luke Timothy Johnson
Richard N. Longenecker
Matthew Brook O’Donnell
Stanley E. Porter
Maurice A. Robinson
Elsa Tamez
Francis Watson
Khiok-Khng (K. K.) Yeo
We’ve got theologians, text critics, NT scholars, OT scholars, but not translators. There is not a single scholar on this list whose central academic specialty is translation. Why couldn’t Mildred Larson have contributed? Ernst-August Gutt? Katherine Barnwell? John Callow? Peter Silzer? Ronald Sim? Peter Unseth? Ernst Wendland? Catherine Rountree?
Yeah, you get the idea.
Distinguishing Perfects
There are a variety of reasons why the English Perfect and the Greek Perfect must be distinguished in spite of their shared name and similarities.
Greek students are generally taught to use their intuition in terms of deciding whether to translate a Greek perfect with an English perfect or with an English present. But rarely (ever?) is there any discussion of how these two grammatical forms differ in their usage in a cross-linguistic sense. That is, the English Perfect can be used in the context X where the Greek Perfect would be infelicitous or ungrammatical.
Well today, I’m going to give you at least one way that I found about two weeks ago (I had to search for it to find it again). This assumes that the Greek of Joshua is relatively close enough to natural Greek that this is a valid usage. I haven’t had time to check other texts.
Joshua 13:8: ταῖς δὲ δύο φυλαῖς καὶ τῷ ἡμίσει φυλῆς Μανασση, τῷ Ρουβην καὶ τῷ Γαδ, ἔδωκεν Μωυσῆς ἐν τῷ πέραν τοῦ Ιορδάνου κατ̓ ἀνατολὰς ἡλίου, δέδωκεν αὐτὴν Μωυσῆς ὁ παῖς κυρίου…
But to the two tribes and the half tribe of Manasseh, Reuben and Gad, Moses gave (an inheritance to them) in the land beyond the Jordan eastward. Moses the servant of the Lord gave them …
From there, it goes on to list the lands they received. What’s striking about this. Well for one, we see the Perfect’s move toward the Aorist, but we also see a significant way in which the Greek Perfect is very, very different from the English Perfect.
Moses is dead. Moses was dead when the book was written and Moses was dead when the events described here in chapter 13 transpired (assuming for the sake of argument they did – this is a linguistics blog not a history blog). The English perfect cannot be used with a subject the speaker knows to be deceased. The sentence:
*Moses the Lord’s servant gave them X.
is not felicitous in English.
And that, my friends, is one way in which the Greek and English Perfects are different. This sort of example is relatively easy to recognize intuitively when dong translation, but it is still helpful to recognize and understand the reason why you’ve used the English past perfective verb “gave” instead of the perfect. And that’s what I’m interested in here. The why of things.
UPDATE:
There is a pragmatic felicity condition on the use of the perfect: the subject of a Perfect sentence must be in a position to receive the participant property. Perfect sentences are infelicitous when this is not met. In the following well-known example the person referred to by the subject NP is not alive at the RT [Reference Time]. Consider (20), uttered in 1989.
(20) Einstein has lived in Princeton.
This sentence is grammatical but infelicitous when uttered at a time after the death of Eisten (Jespersen 1931:60), Chomsky (1970:85). We explain this in terms of the participant property. Einstein cannot bear the participant property in 1989, the time of the utterance of (20), and so it is pragmatically impossible to ascribe it to him. this is the force of the example. The felicity requirement, then, is reoughly as in (21):
(21) Felicity condition for the present Perfect
The person to which the subject nounphrase [sic] refers must be pragmatically able to bear the property ascribed to them.The notion of ‘Current Relevant’ is sometimes invoked to explain the infelicity of sentences like this. (Jesphersen 1931: 47, 57, et seq; McCoard 1978, ch. 2).
Carlota Smith, The Parameter of Aspect (2nd ed.; Studies in Linguistics & Philosphy 43; Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1997), 108.
Also, I should note that an English Past Perfect, which is traditionally associated with the Greek Pluperfect would also be acceptable here: Moses had given…
And I turned to my wife and said, “This is us!”
If it wasn’t for the fact that she’s currently in the middle of her degree and right about to begin her thesis, I’d probably jump at this one:
Specialty Areas: Ling & Literature; Pragmatics; Ancient Greek Literature
Required Language(s): Greek, Ancient (grc)
Indo-EuropeanDescription:
Required language: English
Description: Within the Emmy Noether Program of the DFG (Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft), Two PhD student positions are available for a
project titled ‘Pragmatic Functions and Meanings of Ancient Greek
Particles’. The project is funded for 3 years and, upon approval, for 2
more years. The research group will be led by Dr. Anna Bonifazi
(http://ifla.uni-stuttgart.de/index.php?article_id=121).
Perfect Imperative/Indicative?
So I come to the LXX of Joshua 10:19 and see:
ὑμεῖς δὲ μὴ ἑστήκατε καταδιώκοντες ὀπίσω τῶν ἐχθρῶν ὑμῶν.
I initially understood ἑστήκατε as a perfect indicative, which is exactly what it looks like. But then I saw that the NETS translates the word as an imperative, which actually makes significantly more sense in context. So then I began looking for information about perfect imperatives. I know, now, that on the rare occasion that they do occur they tend to be formed as periphrastics. But I also already knew there is a non-periphrastic in Ephesians 5:5: ἴστε. So, my question is this: when imperatives are formed via inflection, do they look like indicatives like we have with other periphrastics?
I’ve dug through Robertson as well as Moulton & Howard, but to no avail.
Thoughts? Comments?
UPDATE: It is an imperative: μὴ, which I should have noticed myself. The B-Greek list is awesome, both for real questions as well as for when my brain isn’t functioning.
Publishing Articles: Question
Does anyone have any advice on publishing journal articles for graduate students?
That is to say, are there any journals who might be willing to accept articles that are
- Written by a grad student?
- Have relatively technical Greek grammar content?
- And then also, what would be the best way to go about it?
Thoughts?
Comments?
Suggestions?
I have a few multi-post series brewing in my head, that it had occurred to me might be better done as journal articles, but I don’t know if it would be really possible.
A Constructive Aspect Post
In lieu of the discussion following my last rather negative post on Aspect, I’ve decided that I need to sit down and write a positive one. So my plan for either this week or next week is to write a post surveying what concensus we have regarding Aspect. There’s a lot more than one might think from the way a number of people (myself included) write.
Journal of Greek Linguistics
Volume 9 is currently available for free download from IngentaConnect.