In your wildest dreams, you never suspected it would take 4 months to go through one section of Thucydides, when there are nearly a thousand sections in the whole work.
Here’s a look at how much you’ve learned.
Conjugation of eimi, “be”
Conjugation of gignomai, “happen”
These two conjugations are gateways
to recognizing all their prefixed forms.
The aspectual table and the conjugational endings for the base voice.
Imperfective μην/ο/το/μεθα/σθε/ντο μαι/ει/ται/μεθα/σθε/νται
Progressive μην/ου/το/μεθα/σθε/ντο μαι/ει/ται/μεθα/σθε/νται
Perfective μην/σο/το/μεθα/σθε/ντο μαι/σαι/ται/μεθα/σθε/νται
I used this table of conjugational endings strictly to show how little morphological difference there is between “middle” and “middle-passive”. I do not want you to learn paradigms; they will always let you down at some point.
Learn the actual verbs.
The uses of the aspects.
Imperfective:
1. Simple
expression of an action.
2. Repetition,
to restore a result that has worn off or been nullified.
3. Reversal,
usually of direction of motion.
Progressive
1. Process.
2. Repetition
due to or forming a habit.
3. Existence
of a condition, situation or habit.
Perfective
1. Result
of an action expressed in a verb.
2. Permanent
existence, for example, of a poet’s finished writings.
The nuances of the flavors:
1. Eventive:
an action.
2. Conceptual:
a habit or situation; a permanent result; an action that has not happened yet.
You have objective definitions for the voices.
1. Executive:
action performed deliberately and voluntarily (was “active voice”).
2. Passive:
used in fully intransitive structures, sometimes with a descriptive nuance. The
grammatical subject is the logical object of the verb.
3. Base:
everything else.
The difference in voice use by -mai and non-mai verbs, as well as in the aspects: there is no passive voice for progressive or perfective aspects in non-mai verbs, and there is no executive voice for -mai verbs.
The endings of the personal gerundives in all three voices.
1) -antes, -ontes, and -untes
are the endings in executive voice.
2) -entes is the ending in passive
voice.
3) -men- between the root and the personal
ending in base voice.
The endings of the impersonal gerundives in all three voices.
1) -ein is the progressive conceptual
i.g in executive voice; -sthai otherwise. There is no progressive
eventive i.g. morphology.
2) -sai is the imperfective conceptual
in executive voice; -sthai otherwise.
3) -ein is the imperfective eventive
for executive voice; -sthai otherwise.
4) -nai is the ending for the perfective
conceptual executive voice; -sthai otherwise.
The uses of gerundives.
1) Adjectives
2) Substantives, particularly with the
definite article.
3) Substitute for conjugated verb, to
indicate less definiteness and rather a description of the action or a naming
of the action, than a statement that it happened.
Declension of definite article. This will help you identify the case of any definite noun, including gerundives that are turned into nouns by the definite article and personal gerundives as adjectives. The plurals of most nouns are identical to the article and so you can identify as much as 80% of noun cases from this.
The anti-passive structure used to avoid changing the case of a noun which is the object of one verbal form and the subject of another, in contrast to a passive structure which uses a noun as the grammatical subject and logical object of a single verb to express intransitivity.
Case information:
1.
The accusative case as the
subject of an impersonal gerundive when it is part of an anti-passive structure.
The noun is the object of a verbal as well as the subject of the impersonal
gerundive.
2.
The genitive case for a
noun that modifies another noun.
3.
The dative case for
instrumental of an inanimate object.
Cases are crucial to determining the meaning of a verb, which is the opposite of what old grammars teach – that certain categories of verbs take certain cases.
Factors in the structure of Thucydides’ prose.
4.
Make it comprehensible.
5.
Make it memorable.
6.
Get audience buy-in with a number of devices.
He uses three tools for comprehension.
1.
Syntax particles to chunk
things.
2.
Street-level grammar, even
infrequent things like anti-passives.
3.
Simple compared to poetry;
nothing obscure or flowery.
For memorability, there is a separate set of tools.
1.
References to previous
material, sometimes with topic order
sentences.
2.
Parallelism and rounded
periods.
3.
Repetitions after sidebars.
I’ll point these out when we get to them but the fact is Torah does the same thing
and it is demonstrably suited to oral presentation.
For audience buy-in, Thucydides does three things.
1.
Clearly marks the actions he
finds important with conjugated verbs to avoid confusing them with too many
things to focus on.
2.
Uses grammar to avoid seeming arrogant in stating
his opinions.
3.
Sticks to things they have personal knowledge of,
unlike Herodotus who starts out by appealing to Persian history.
These factors parallel material in Axel Olrik’s Principles of Oral Narrative Research, showing that Thucydides grew up with and operated in an oral environment and incorporated its habits into his writing.
Three different uses of nouns:
1.
Subject.
2.
Topic.
3.
Agent.
I’ve destroyed
1) The cognitive dissonance of the label “[tense]
infinitive”
2) The concept that morphology identifies
reflexivity.
3) The concept that morphology identifies
causality.
4) The “[noun case] absolute”
5) Any need to explain why a “present
tense” exists in a past context.
6) Categories of verbs as requiring
specific cases of their objects.
That is a hell of a lot of material, and you have mastered it in less than five months.
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