What’s Unique about Greek

Greek is a unique language, you know, just like every other language is.

But seriously, there are things going on in Greek that the majority of languages do not do. What I’m thinking of presently is the the verb morphology of Greek. Its is pretty cool - especially the way inflectional and derivational morphology function.

Inflection morphology changes the stem or root of a word without changing the word itself. For example, the case endings are inflectional morphology: Nominative, Accusative, Dative, and Genitive. Likewise, the verb endings for Person and Number are inflectional as is Tense/Aspect.

Derivational Morphology changes the word into a new word such as the affixation of prepositions to the front of verbs: δίδωμι ‘give’ and παραδιδωμι ‘hand over.’ That’s a derivational change. We have the root and then we add the preposition to create a new stem.

In the majority of languages inflectional morphology always occurs outside the root or stem. But in Greek the past marker actually occurs between the the derivational prefix and the root:

παραδιδωμι

παρ-έ-δωκεν

Now that is really unique. So today, you’ve learned something about language typology - what most languages do. All languages diverge from the norm at some point. And this is one of the special places where Greek does. This the kind of thing that makes a morphologist say, “hmmm, interesting…”

 

Taking Up An Issue of Syntax

I’ve been wanting to discuss a particular debated point regarding Greek Noun Phrases for some time. I’ve touched on it before, but never really expanded on it:

What is an N-Bar and why is it a necessary concept for Greek Syntax?

In a way, its impossible to answer the first question without also answering the second.

An N-Bar (N’) is a structural category. More specifically for Greek, it is a structural category that occurs between the word level and the phrase level. Thus in the Noun Phrase (NP) “ὁ λόγος,” there are two words and one phrase. N’ comes into play to explain why certain word patterns do not occur. For example, we can have οὗτος λόγος and οὗτος ὁ λόγος but never ὁ οὗτος λόγος. This structure is ungrammatical. To put it simply, if there is no N’ between the Noun Phrase level and the Word level, then there is no way to explain why the that third pattern cannot occur.

Likewise we can have πᾶς ὁ λόγος and ὁ πᾶς λόγος, but the two patterns have different meanings: ‘every message/word’ and ‘the whole message/word,’ respectively. If there is no N’ then there is no way to account for the distinction. Let me show you:

Without the N’, we have the following phrase structures:

• [NP οὗτος λόγος]
• [NP οὗτος ὁ λόγος]
• *[NP ὁ οὗτος λόγος]

Structurally speaking, why is the third wrong? Well, a person could posit that there is another Noun Phrase within the Noun Phrase in the second example:

• [NP οὗτος [NP ὁ λόγος]]

But that does not explain it. If its just a noun phrase within a Noun Phrase then there is still no structural reason we could not have:

• *[NP ὁ [NP οὗτος λόγος]]

But again, its still ungrammatical. The most reasonable explanation is that there is another layer:

• [NP οὗτος [NP ὁ [N' λόγος]]]

According to this analysis, the Demonstrative always has another Noun Phrase as its sister (i.e. the are on the same structural level). Likewise, the Article always has an N’ as its sister. The N’ provides a structural reason for why our third structure is ungrammatical, something that cannot be explained with only a word level and a phrase level. See Palmer’s book for a more expansive explanation.

 

There’s a new Blog out there

Bryon (with an O) S. for his first “real” post has given an excellent discussion of textual criticism and the TNIV.

Do we have an angry Jesus?

Bart Ehrman, Mark 1:41 and the TNIV

Hopefully, we’ll get to see more like this coming from his blog.

And guys, its a wordpress blog, so your life is easier too.

 

First “Official” Greek Round Up!

Welcome to our first major round up of Greek posts from around the blogosphere. I hope that I can provide you all with a delightful tour of what I considered some of the most interesting and/or helpful posts related to the Greek language that have popped up during the past several weeks. So let us begin…

Greek Beginnings:

A number of bloggers are documenting their Greek learning, particularly Nick and Nathan. Others have been placing extremely helpful pieces of info on their blogs that any Greek student should know and never forget! For example, George has been giving us Noun Paradigms in a couple Posts: HERE, HERE, and HERE!

And when you get past your basic grammar, Eric has provided us with a delicious series on Greek readers so that we can keep up and expand our knowledge!

I also came across a new Greek blog…but I don’t know if anything more will come of it. We’ll see!

Translation and Commentary:

James discusses one of the major themes of Ephesians (perhaps I should say the major theme) in his continuing series: Ephesians Sentence by Sentence. He discusses verses 4:1-6 here, observing that “the Greek is interesting here.” And I say, yes, the Greek is interesting everywhere! I mean, just look at the nominalized set of prepositional phrases that end verse 6: ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων καὶ διὰ πάντων καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν. Now that is beautiful - three prepositional phrases connected joined by two καὶ’s and functioning as a Noun Phrase. What other language does that? Literally: “the over all and through all and in all.” Oh, but be sure to read James’ interpretation and application as well. Enrich your mind and your soul.

George doesn’t only do paradigms, he’s got commentary too. And he’s given us a delightful discussion of Matthew 5:38-42. He bring Jesus’ sermon to us and tell us what it means then and now with all sorts of grammar thrown in.

What’s going on in the first verses of 1 Peter? This perhaps should go down into the semantics category, but I think there’s enough commentary to fit them in here. Basically, Sean over at Primal Submersion is wondering about the meaning of a couple words that begin the letter and how they should be best translated. Aliens, foreigners? Are these metaphors or real people? These are questions. Questions in need of answers.

Rick’s wondering about how 1 Timothy 3.2 and 4.3 fit together over at Pastoral Epistles. He also gives a helpful discussion.

While Kurk’s post is not translation and commentary in the traditional sense, it does contain both, so go broaden your horizons and think outside the male box.

Greek & History:

Richard over at dokeo has a great discussion of the LXX, which is worth perusing and it looks like there will be more to come. Keep an eye out.

Determining the Text:

The main highlight in this category is Randall Buth, one of the few around these days who can actually speak Greek, who takes the NA27 to task on its punctuation at the Evangelical Textual Criticism Blog. Be sure to browse through the comments as well!

Also, Bryan (with a Y) has discussed the infamous problem at Romans 5.1. Do we have peace? Or should we have peace?

Meaning and Morphology

Jim (whose namesake wrote some of my favorite piano music) takes Young’s grammar to task over the vocative case and its usage with a nice cup of strong coffee. Do check it out.

Semantics…what does that even mean??

We can always count on Suzanne to take us to task for our word study mistakes. It doesn’t matter who was on your doctoral committee, if you mess up your word study, you’ll hear about it! Suzanne knows the texts and she knows them well. Not only that, but she also takes comparing translations to the extreme! Can a woman exercise authority? She sure does every time she posts. Suzanne writes with authority when she studies words.

TC - not textual criticism - asks about the difference in meaning between diakonos, “servant,” and doulos, “slave.” Yes, he says, though I would disagree particularly with his final statement. Translations do not necessarily need to differentiate the meaning of the words because I can guarantee that sometimes, there is no difference in meaning. Meaning is determined by context, not the lexicon. So I say, sometimes translations should make the distinction.

Nathan at Sum Sekel points us toward Danker’s revision of the article on σκηνοποιός. Paul’s not a tentmaker, guys (and gals).

Syntax…My second love…

Another Mike is bringing Greek Syntax into the 21st Century and challenging the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Is he right? Well, go do the search yourself!

Taking Grammar Beyond the Sentence!

What the traditional New Testament scholar calls exegesis or interpretation, Steven Runge calls grammar. And he’s right. And in Adverbial KAI as thematic addition, he challenges us to realize that grammar is more than words and clauses, so to paraphrase without citing and respond to one scholar’s words to Jeffery Reed, “Why should I read a discourse analysis of Philippians when I can read the brilliant exegesis of Joseph Lightfoot?” Why? Do you really need to ask? Because General Linguistics has taken us a long way in understanding how not just a word functions and not just how a subordinate clause functions, but how a paragraph function and even an entire text! Because NT scholars shouldn’t be so proud by the fact that their language has been studied for hundreds of years to think that there’s nothing left. Get beyond the sentence! So go discover exactly what Runge is talking about and learn how NT authors use καὶ to develop their argument at the discourse level! And from these go over to Rick’s blog and read about the difference between αλλα and δε. Yes, there is a difference and, yes, it impacts the discourse as a whole.

From the Archive:

This last bit, I hope, will give you all some reading for the next month. Here are some Greek articles from the Bible Translator posted online from last July…and when you finish those, read some of these texts!

Finally, Suzanne, a while back, brought all of her discussions of kephale together under one roof so that we can all enjoy her thorough research more easily, HERE.

Finally…I encourage all of you to place your bid on Adolf Deissmann’s Bible Studies, which I’ve wanted to see get through to publication for some time…Deissman revolutionized the study of the Greek New Testament and we all should read his work!

That wraps it up for this month I think…perhaps when June comes along I’ll try to do this again! And those of you I linked to here, let me know if you’re not already on my blogroll!

 

Its Official

I simply don’t have the internet any more. I had been sharing a wireless network with a couple of people in my apartment building. One of them moved out last week and because the other is leaving at the beginning of June (as am I), they decided just to end the service. I was a tag on anyway.

I still plan on getting the Greek Round Up up this evening when I’m at the library - so keep an eye open for it!

 

The lack of posts this week:

My internet is having a lot of problems right now. Hopefully, I’ll be back online again soon…hopefully.

 

Only in Dreams

Stanley and Wendy (his wife) Porter are publishing a volume entitled, New Testament Greek Papyri and Parchments: New Editions.

It looks like a great book providing text critical resources to the very few people and libraries in the world that can afford and $237 book.

So, I’m disappointed. Maybe I’ll have a change in a school library someday to peruse its pages. But until then, I can only dream about it.

 

Did You Know?

Did you guys know that in this new version of WordPress, you can create a hierarchy of categories? Now I have Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse Analysis all under Grammar, which with Translation is now under Linguistics, which is under Language.

But I don’t know how much all of that matters since I use a category cloud rather than a list…

 

Russian Morphology

Now that I’ve finished, relatively speaking (there’s more to do in morphophonemics), working on Russian Phonology. My sights have now turned to morphology - yes that’s right, how words are formed!

My Russian group (three pairs of two) have split up the parts of speech to lighten the load. Unfortunately, my wife and I were stuck with verbs. My goodness, now that’s complicated.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Russian only has two morphological tense: Past & Non-past. Future tense is either marked by an auxiliary verb like we do in English, “I will go to the bank tomorrow” or the present and future are combined in one single form.

In the present (i.e. non-past) tense, the verb agrees with the subject in person and number.

In the past tense, the verb agrees with the subject in gender in the singular and only has number agreement in the plural.

But the truly serious morphology is derivational (i.e. like in English: dependent -> in+dependent = independent). Russian marks Verbal Aspect with derivational morphemes (for those who have studied Greek, remember? The aorist “tense” marks the perfective aspect - looking at the action as a whole). I barely understand the Russian system and I’m already amazed. You take a basic imperfective verb (i.e. a verb that expresses a process or a state) like /zat’/ “to squeeze” and you put a prefix on it, which places spatial/abstract limits on it, but also changes the verb from imperfective aspect to perfective aspect, such as /otzat’/ “to wring out.” The difference between the two is that the second perfective form has an end goal. Its telic. But that’s not the craziest part. You then take that prefixed verb and give it a suffix that transforms it back into an imperfective verb again: /otzimat’/ “to wring out.”

What’s the difference in meaning between the two? Well since /otzat’/ is perfective, the action is viewed as a whole. Thus, not only was the towel (or whatever) wrung out, but it was wrung out completely and definitively.

In contrast to that, /otzimat’/ would be used when some one began to wring out a towel or something, but a) never actually finished, b) when the towel will be completely wrung out is unknown, or c) the event of wringing out the towel is a customary, regular event. In all these cases, the action has the potential to be completed but when that definitive conclusion is to come is not known or irrelevant.

Okay class, here is your quiz. In the following two clauses, which one would you use?

The man wrung out the towel and then he went to work.

a. otzat’
b. otzimat’

The man was wringing out the towel, but then the phone rang and he had to leave.

a. otzat’
b. otzimat’

(I hope I got that right myself in those sentences…)

But seriously, even this tiny glimpse into Russian aspect blew me away. What kind of language has a specific derived verb for actions that could potentially be completed but are not??? Russian apparently. Amazing.

 

The Pericope Adulterae

I’ve been dialogging with Doug over at Metacatholic a bit about his posts on the pericope adulterae.

In his first post, he argued that it should still be part of the canon.

While I fully agree on its lack of authenticity as a part of the fourth gospel, I entirely disagree with Tim (and note some evidence of early retellings of this story) on its canonicity, since as far as I’m concerned there is ample evidence of the church having read it as scripture for a very long time.

I responded with a comments:

So what you’re saying then is that we have an open canon? Becuase that’s what I’m hearing.

Exactly what criteria would you then propose for texts to be scripture? Or is anything the church uses fair game?

Of course, I didn’t think he was suggesting an open canon, that was a bit of a rhetorical flourish in my search for some clarity.

And he replied:

No, Mike, I don’t think this is an open canon. And while I wouldn’t quite say “anything the church uses” I do think there’s a case for saying anything the church has long and widely read as scripture is scripture.

To which I replied:

The next reasonable question, then, is how long is long enough? Does the long ending to mark make it into the canon? I’ll go get my snake.

That little dialogue brought about another post from Doug on the subject, “Not the Original Text.” I appreciate his attitude in this post. There is a lot with these passages that is unclear. Doug concludes that while these passages should be considered scripture, they should not be considered gospel [edit: i.e. they should not be considered part of the gospel narratives in which they occur.]

I not entirely sure what I think of this, especially since neither of these passages would have been used in the lectionary until the late 2nd century (perhaps later?). I have no reason to believe that these passages were viewed as scripture by churches that existed before they were inserted into the text and for those later churches who did not have access to such texts.