A Plea for Inductive Greek Study
It is a well known fact that in general, contemporary linguistic theory has made embarrassingly little headway into the world of New Testament studies. Scholars in the British Isles have for the most part done a better job than those in the United States in such integration of linguistics and Koine Greek, but their work is far from enough. In general the study of Greek from a contemporary linguistic perspective is limited to advanced doctoral studies, inaccessible (both physically and intellectually) to the vast majority of Greek students. A large amount of work is being down connecting Hellenistic Greek to contemporary linguistics (cf. opentext.org). Much has been published in the past decade.
But as a whole the majority of linguistic study has not trickled down to be at all helpful for first and second year Greek students. The two main exceptions that I can think of are the intermediate grammar by Young and Porter:
Intermediate New Testament Greek
Idioms of the Greek New Testament (Biblical Languages: Greek)
<UPDATE> there are also David Alan Black’s work:
Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek,: A Survey of Basic Concepts and Applications
Learn to Read New Testament Greek
It’s Still Greek to Me: An Easy-to-Understand Guide to Intermediate Greek
I don’t know how inductive or deductive Black’s books are…</UPDATE>
I propose that even a basic understanding of grammatical analysis would go long way in teaching even first year students Koine Greek. Thus instead of handing the student a sheet of paradigms for noun endings, teacher could teach the students how to make a position class charts in order to break up Greek words morphologically. The strength of this would be that students, instead of learning paradigms through rote memorization, would learn their morphological paradigms inductively – and thus relatively more natural than typical class room instruction. In a sense, the student would “discover” the paradigms on their own with the guidance of the professor.
By pulling four clauses from the text students could compare Greek forms on their own in order to determine the Greek morphemes:
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος - John 1.1
in beginning was the.nom word.nom
In the beginning was the word.
ἡμεῖς δὲ τῇ προσευχῇ καὶ τῇ διακονίᾳ τοῦ λόγου προσκαρτερήσομεν – Acts 6.4
we.1stpl but prayer.dative and ministry.dative det.gen word.gen devote oneself.fut.1stpl
But we will devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word
Καὶ τὰ νῦν παρατίθεμαι ὑμᾶς τῷ θεῷ καὶ τῷ λόγῳ τῆς χάριτος αὐτοῦ – Acts 20.32
and det.acc now entrust.1stsing you.acc det.dat God.dat and det.dat word.dat det.gen grace.gen pro.1stsing.gen
And now I entrust you to God and to the word of his grace
καὶ τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἔχετε ἐν ὑμῖν – John 5.38
And the.acc word.acc his.gen not have.2ndpl in you.dative.2ndpl
And you do not have his word in you
Students would only have to focus on the word and forms at hand in bold for their analysis. From here the student would create paradigms of their own:
λόγος – ος Nominative (Subject)
λόγου – ου Genitive (descriptive/possessive [-ish])
λόγῳ – ῳ Dative (Secondary Object)
λόγον – ον Accusative (Primary Object)
Such an activity would help them gain and comprehend the information on their own instead of depending upon a simple paradigm sheet produced by someone else. Inductive learning gives opportunity for better retention of the information. I’ve learned more about Greek grammar through my personal studies than I ever did in my first year grammar class.
Guiding students through basic tree diagramming using Greek text would would be a beneficial method for teaching students basic syntax with regard to the distribution of words Earlier this week, I presented arguments for a structural representation for the Quantifier πᾶς (HERE). In explaining the function of various words there would be significantly more benefit for students if they were not only told what the attributive and predicative positions for adjectives were, but also shown the difference in tree diagrams and teach them how to create such diagrams of their own. This would give them an edge in the future in terms of developing their own personal understanding of the language.
Thus for the adjective instead of simply saying, the attributive position is ὁ ἀγαθὸς βασιλεύς, the teacher could show them the significance of the position structurally:
To conclude, teacher can and should take advantage of contemporary linguistic theory in teaching languages. Greek is dead enough already, let’s not kill it any more by forcing unbearable deductive methods on to the student.
I know that much of what I’ve written might not even be understandable to those who have not studied grammatical analysis. But I hope that some out there who might come across this post might be convinced by my words. I want Greek student to develop an understanding of the language beyond being able to throw out paradigm at will or parse verbs. I want them to gain comprehension inductively and naturally through grammatical analysis and their own discovery of its structure.
For more discussion of learning Biblical languages, see HERE and HERE and the other links they refer to.
David Alan Black teach Greek from a linguistic perspective – have you seen his Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek,: A Survey of Basic Concepts and Applications?
Brian
February 9, 2008 at 9:09 pm
shoot, that’s true. I did know that. I’ll update the post. I didn’t think of it because his is one of the few grammars I have not browsed at all – though I have read, Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek. Thanks Brian.
Mike
February 9, 2008 at 9:31 pm
This whole thing with attributive adjectives etc. has always seemed contrived. If you could shed light on it through grammatical analysis I’d be grateful
Seeing the forms in context is a plus. However, syntax isn’t going to help them the way it might in English so the students are back to having to know which one it is before they can know what goes where and why. Hmmm, I’m not making much sense.
I’ll stop making an idiot of myself and just say, “Good post!”
Lingamish
February 10, 2008 at 12:37 am
Basically, what I’d like to see is instead of teaching students English grammar with Greek grammar (which to me seems potentially confusing and counter productive), we should be teaching them grammatical analysis in general.
Tell you what, tomorrow I’ll write a post discussing the difference between the attributive and the predicative adjectives.
PS – doesn’t the word “discussing” sound like a really strange way to describe a blog post? I mean, who in the world am I discussing with. I’m the only one writing the post. Any discussion happens in the comments and that’s not guaranteed at all. What a strange word…
Mike
February 10, 2008 at 12:58 am
you really should consider checking out Black’s Greek Grammar – do you read his blog at all?
Brian
February 10, 2008 at 11:06 am
yes, i do. we don’t have it at our library, but i do plan on looking at in the next couple weeks and hopefully purchasing it.
Mike
February 10, 2008 at 5:33 pm
you might want to wait, he has recently updated it and it is coming out some time in the coming year, but it is up to you. I don’t think his grammar is inductive but he lays the ground work for linguistic and grammatical analysis for future study of NT Greek. I think you are on the right track with learning to move beyond just looking at words to looking at phrases and clauses. My Greek prof talked about the need for intermediates to move from being form chasers to function chasers (move from determining word forms (aorist, future, present, participle) to determining how words function in sentences, clauses and or phrases; adjectival, adverbial, verbal, etc).
Brian
February 10, 2008 at 7:07 pm
[...] February, 2008 · No Comments Yesterday in a comment, our dear friend Lingamish said, “This whole thing with attributive adjectives etc. has [...]
Predicative and Attributive Adjectives « εν εφέσω: Thoughts and Meditations
February 10, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Lingamish, I have a discussion of the Attributive / Predicative positions.
I also gave a quick explanation of the evidence for an N-Bar in Greek. If you don’t want to read that, just scroll down to the bottom.
Mike
February 10, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Mike, if you read Spanish there are many New Testament scholars in Spain who are employing an integrative methodology. I would recommend El Nuevo Testamento by my good friends Antonio Pinero and Jesus Pelaez. Also, are you familiar with the journal Filologia Neotestamentaria? It is very up-to-date in terms of Greek linguistics. Here’s a link:
http://www.bsw.org/project/filologia/index.php
My very best wishes, Dave Black
Dave Black
February 13, 2008 at 10:39 am
Dr. Black, thanks for the suggestion. I’ve enjoyed reading several of the articles. Unfortunately, my Spanish is too rusty.
Would you be okay with me e-mailing you a couple questions about teaching Greek?
Mike
February 13, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Sure, Mike.
Dave Black
February 13, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Clarity (even simplicity) in teaching methodology is a benefit, too. For example, in your illustration about “attributive” adjectives, the first thing many students do is turn the teacher off when they hear a technical sounding word like “attributive.” But hey, words have meaning, so the teacher tells the student that attributive means what it means, an “attibute” (like “good,” or “bad”).
Then, the adjective is attributive simply by noticing if it immediately follows the definite article (in your example, “The good king”. If not, it’s “predicate”—meaning describing someone or something by verbal means: “The king (is) good.”
Robert Wermuth, author “Wermuth’s GREEKBOOK”
(www.wermuthsgreekbook.com). See also: “It’s All Greek to YOU!” at http://www.greek2u.wordpress.com
Robert Wermuth
July 25, 2009 at 1:23 pm