Talking about Greek words, phrases, grammar, κτλ.

[Louis Sorenson]

The following is taken from William Annis' paper "Greek Grammar in Greek" http://scholiastae.org/docs/el/greek_grammar_in_greek.pdf.  It's usage is as follows:

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. To view a copy of this license,visithttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I've broken out the separate suggestions as bullets. Terminology matters, and a good, vetted terminology needs to be worked up, including how to talk about words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc. But some the basics (parts of speech, etc.) are not in question. Annis gets most of his presentation from Eleanor Dickey's Ancient Greek scholarship: a Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica and Grammatical Treatises, from Their Beginnings to the Byzantine Period, (Oxford University Press, 2007.) Eleanor Dickey lists terminology in Chapter 6 of  The whole chapter is a list of grammatical terms (55 pages long pp. 209-265. Bold text is my highlight):

This section is not a complete dictionary, but a glossary giving in most cases only the grammatical meanings of the words included; these words are also used by scholarly writers in their non-technical senses on occasion. For such meanings and fuller information on these words, including citations of passages in which they occur, see LS] and Becares Botas (1985). A selection of references is given here to other works in which individual terms are discussed; such references are normally given only once but should be understood to apply to closely related words as well (e.g. a discussion of ἀμφιβολία will normally be useful for understanding ἀμφίβολος as well).

The state of scholarship on Greek grammatical terminology is not one that would make it possible for a glossary of this type to be completely reliable. The only specialized dictionary (Becares Botas 1985) is full of errors, the information in LS] is seriously incomplete, and other discussions are Widely scattered, incomplete, and often unreliable. There is a great need for a thorough, accurate study of this vocabulary-and this glossary is not intended to address that need, only to help learners to get through texts. For lack of anything better, the information given here is based on that in Becares Botas (1985) and LSJ, corrected and supplemented from a wide range of other sources.

What other pointers could we add? What other parts of speech, discourse elements have you discussed in class and found yourself missing the word or knowing how to talk about it the way a Greek did. (Note, we most likely do not want to follow the ancient Greek delineation of parts of speech. 2000 years later, we know much more about how language works. But we still have issues -- is the infinitive and participle a mood and classified as a type of verb or as a separate entity?)

Speaking Grammatically

1. ·  Talking about words: Because ancient Greek didn’t have quotes, a word or phrase under discussion is generally brought into the grammar of the sentence by tacking τό onto it. So one may speak of τὸ μείρω, “the verb μείρω.” However a particular part of speech might take the article matching the term for that part of speech, such as ἡ ἐπί, “the (preposition) ἐπί.” Since computers these days offer both quotes and underlines you should mark off a word or phrase with more than just τό, to avoid confusion. Letters and parts of words (such as inflectional endings) in the ancient commentaries generally had an overline, but there’s no reason not to indicate endings in the usual modern way, with a leading dash. Finally, words under discussion usually have their accent in dictionary form. Since many grammatical terms are nominalized adjectives, they will typically agree with whatever grammatical term has been dropped. For example, words related to tense will often agree with χρόνος, though they may also agree with ῥῆμα, the part of speech. Just as in English, a full grammatical description of a word may result in quite the pile-up, οὐδὲν ῥῆμα ὁριστικὸν ἑνικὸν πρῶτον πρόσωπον, “no indicative, singular first person verb...”
2.  When citing the usage of an author, use παρά + dat., as παρ’ Ὁμήρῳ. A characteristic habit of a particular author may be indicated with εἴωθα, as in εἴωθε δὲ τοῦτο ποιεῖν ὁ Θουκυδίδης, “T. often does this.”
3. Clause/Word Groups:         πρός + acc. can mean “goes with,” in the grammatical sense, τὸ “σύν” πρὸς τὸ “αὔξῃς,” “σύν goes with αὔξῃς.”·
4. Grammatical agreement is indicated with συμφέρεται + dat., as in τὰ ἄρθρα· συμφερόμενα γὰρ τοῖς ὀνόμασιν, “the articles: agreeing with the nouns...” To not agree is expressed with ἀδιαφορέω with κατά + acc. indicating the feature in which the concord is missing, as in ἀδιαφορεῖ καὶ κατὰ τὴν πτῶσιν καὶ κατὰ τὸν ἀριθμόν.
5. Spelling: To discuss spelling, διά + gen. is usual, διὰ τοῦ α γράφεται, “it is written with an alpha.” When discussing word endings λήγει εἰς Χ is used, as τὰ εἰς -μι λήγοντα ῥήματα, “verbs ending in -μι.” The verb is often omitted, though it is also common for a word to “have” an ending, τὸ “αἰδώς” καὶ “ἠώς” εἰς -ους ἔχουσι τὴν γενικήν, οἷον αἰδοῦς καὶ ἠοῦς “αἰδώς and ἠώς have the genitive in -ους, e.g., αἰδοῦς and ἠοῦς.”
6. The usage of a word may be described with παραλαμβάνω, “use,” or in the passive to describe grammatical phenomena (“be found, occur, admit”) as in ἐπὶ αἰτιατικῆς ἔσθ’ ὅτε παραλαμβανο-μένη, “occurs sometimes in the accusative.” Another word is συντάσσω “arrange, place together, construct” with the dative of case, Ἀλεξίων συντάσσει τῇ γενικῇ τὴν πρόθεσιν, “Alexion uses the preposition with the genitive.” Or in the passive, ἡ “διά” πρόθεσις οὐ μόνον γενικῇ συντάσσεται ἀλλὰ καὶ αἰτιατικῇ, “the preposition διά is used not only with the genitive but also the accusative.” Another: τὸ “βασιλεύω” συντάσσεται γενικῇ. Note that the case name sometimes uses the article, sometimes not.
7. When something is omitted the usual verb is λείπει or ἐλλείπει, as in ἐλλείπει ἡ ἐν, “the (preposition) ἐν is omitted” or πολλάκις λείπει τὸ ῥῆμα, “the verb is often omitted.” The perfect passive of σημειόω (σεσημείωται) is used to note exceptions, as in σεσημείωται τὸ “ὦ γύναι” noting the unusual vocative of γυνή.
8. Examples:When giving examples of usage, use οἷον “e.g., such as.” This is a common prose use of οἷον.
9. Reordering a phrase:       When the word order is tricky, a reordered version of a phrase is introduced with τὸ ἑξῆς.
10. Discussing meaning:         The usual word for “meaning” (of a word, a phrase, etc.) is ἡ διάνοια.
11. Definitions:      A definition is ὁρισμός, ὁ, the verb “define” is ὁρίζομαι.
12. Manuscripts:    A copy of a manuscript is usually τὸ ἀντίγραφον, in which a text φέρεται “is transmitted.” The ἀντίγραφον itself ἔχει “has” words, examples, etc. One may also speak of the παράδοσις, ἡ “tradition,” though in modern textual criticism this word is often brought into English, “paradosis,” meaning the text as it has reached us, free of recent editorial tinkering.

[Σαῦλος]

Which is better?

Μαθητής·  δια τι το πωλήσῃ οὐκ ἔχει το ε;

Διδάσκαλος· δια τουτο οτι υποτατική εγκλισις ου λέγει ουδεν περι χρόνου.  το ε λέγει περι χρόνου ὅτι παρεληλυθώς εστιν το ρῆμα.  

OR 

Student: Why doesn't πωλήσῃ have an augment?

Teacher: Because the Subjunctive mood does not indicate time.  The augment indicates past time.

Actually, I am coming to the conclusion that a few Greek words for grammatical items are indispensable, the rest are dispensable.

The English way of talking about λέγε is "Present Active Imperative of λεγω"  This is wrong.  

The form doesn't have anything to do with this present time.

Neither does λέγειν, λέγῃ, λέγων  (infinitive, subjunctive, participle).

We use the English word "present" but we mean "continuing, continual, ongoing, repetitive aspect."  It's misleading.

 

παρατατική is a VERY nice Greek grammatical term to use here.   λέγει is indeed ενεστως (present) and it is παρατατική.   

Likewise, when we talk about εἰπέ, ειπεῖν, είπῃ, και ειπών in English, we say it is Aorist (Aorist Imperative, Infinitive, Subjunctive, and Participle).   This is correct.  But when we talk about εἶπεν we ONLY say that it is Aorist.  We mean that it is both Aorist in aspect and Past in time.  This is again misleading.   Same with the "Imperfect" (named only for it's aspect).  ἔλεγον is παρατατική in aspect and Past in regards to time.  

And so, I've become fond of using these TWO TERMS IN GREEK:  παρατατική και ἀόριστος οψις.

The rest of the words are substittutions.  υποτατική or Subjunctive - The meaning makes no difference. Using the Greek term is dispensable.  However, I do like to stay in the target language.  It helps to keep the language fairies in flight.