21st Century Classical Greek -- multiple uses for the same spelling

Today we’re going to fix two problems with the verb conjugations in the old grammars. Click on afairisetai and look at what the Word Tool tells you.

τῆς γὰρ ἐμπορίας οὐκ οὔσης, οὐδ᾽ ἐπιμειγνύντες ἀδεῶς ἀλλήλοις οὔτε κατὰ γῆν οὔτε διὰ θαλάσσης, νεμόμενοί τε τὰ αὑτῶν ἕκαστοι ὅσον ἀποζῆν καὶ περιουσίαν χρημάτων οὐκ ἔχοντες οὐδὲ γῆν φυτεύοντες, ἄδηλον ὂν ὁπότε τις ἐπελθὼν καὶ ἀτειχίστων ἅμα ὄντων ἄλλος ἀφαιρήσεται, τῆς τε καθ᾽ ἡμέραν ἀναγκαίου τροφῆς πανταχοῦ ἂν ἡγούμενοι ἐπικρατεῖν, οὐ χαλεπῶς ἀπανίσταντο, καὶ δι᾽ αὐτὸ οὔτε μεγέθει πόλεων ἴσχυον οὔτε τῇ ἄλλῃ παρασκευῇ.

It’s a real mish-mash, isn’t it? How could a verb simultaneously be so many things? Well, the verb isn’t the issue at all, it’s the spelling. In the old grammars, that spelling shows up in three separate sections on conjugation. Actually, this happens in English, too; “I set the dish down” vs “I can set the dish down”, one of which is probably past tense and the other sort of a future tense.

Context is king when you want to know the meaning; morphology alone won’t get you there.

Let’s deal with the first one first. Here’s our aspect table again.

ASPECT         FLAVOR =>  eventive           conceptual

Imperfective

Progressive

Perfective

Based on what the word tool tells you, afairisetai could belong in the last row as “future perfect”. Because it’s labeled “future”, you might think it goes in the conceptual column where the old “future tense” belongs. Because it’s labeled “perfect” you might think it goes in the bottom row – but that position is already populated by the morphology formerly known as “perfect tense”.

And in fact Goodwin, page 156, section 704 says that “future perfect” is passive voice.  The only reason this verb form was labeled “perfect” is because in Attic Greek it has the same reduplication as the perfect and pluperfect tenses (perfective conceptual and eventive in our schema). You can see this in White, page 241, section 770, alongside the imperfective passive.

Remember, only imperfective has a passive in non-mai verbs; progressive and perfective aspects do not have a passive. With -mai endings, verbs have only passive and base voices.

Now remember that you use passive structures for complete intransitivity. This subsection of Thucydides refers to strangers showing up and taking away produce of those who settled the Peloponnese ahead of the Hellenes. By definition, if you take X away, you have a transitive structure. So “future perfect” or “imperfective conceptual passive,” that’s the wrong label to assign this verb in this context.

The second choice is imperfective conceptual indicative in base voice. That has the nuance that the taking would not be deliberate; I hope you can come up with a citation to a context where it is used that way. While technically it’s a form you could generate, that doesn’t mean any surviving texts use it. Same thing happens in Biblical Hebrew.

That leaves only one option, and that gets us into the subject of modality (formerly known as “mood”).

21st Century Classical Greek -- noun case quiz

This week is a quiz on noun cases. Go through these and identify where they go in my system – oi, -on, -ous, -ois. Some of them have articles and you were supposed to memorize those. Some are plural so it’s obvious. Go for it.

I.1.

τὸν πόλεμον

τῶν Πελοποννησίων καὶ Ἀθηναίων

τῶν προγεγενημένων

τῇ πάσῃ

τὸ ἄλλο Ἑλληνικὸν

τοῖς Ἕλλησιν

τῶν βαρβάρων

τὰ …τὰ

τοὺς πολέμους

τὰ ἄλλα.

 

I.2.

τὰ πρότερα

τὴν …ἀπολείποντες

τῆς ἐμπορίας

τῆς .. τροφῆς

τῇ ἄλλῃ παρασκευῇ.

 

These you should be able to tell because they are plural and the endings look like the definite article plural.

I.1

ἀμφότεροι

ἑκατέρους

ἀνθρώπων

τεκμηρίων

 

I.2

πλειόνων

χρημάτων

ἀτειχίστων

 

By the way, notice in 2.2, that khrimaton ouk ekhontes is another negation taking the -on case.

So don’t you feel a little better about knowing noun cases?

I am going to leave the “gender” labels alone even though, as I said, they do not predict declension. It won’t matter  because you are going to learn each noun as you come to it instead of memorizing categories that don’t apply to all similar nouns and end up being more confusing than helpful.

21st Century Classical Greek -- declension categories

All right, section 2, subsection 2. This is long so go through it first and mark everything you’ve seen before.

τῆς γὰρ ἐμπορίας οὐκ οὔσης, οὐδ᾽ ἐπιμειγνύντες ἀδεῶς ἀλλήλοις οὔτε κατὰ γῆν οὔτε διὰ θαλάσσης, νεμόμενοί τε τὰ αὑτῶν ἕκαστοι ὅσον ἀποζῆν καὶ περιουσίαν χρημάτων οὐκ ἔχοντες οὐδὲ γῆν φυτεύοντες, ἄδηλον ὂν ὁπότε τις ἐπελθὼν καὶ ἀτειχίστων ἅμα ὄντων ἄλλος ἀφαιρήσεται, τῆς τε καθ᾽ ἡμέραν ἀναγκαίου τροφῆς πανταχοῦ ἂν ἡγούμενοι ἐπικρατεῖν, οὐ χαλεπῶς ἀπανίσταντο, καὶ δι᾽ αὐτὸ οὔτε μεγέθει πόλεων ἴσχυον οὔτε τῇ ἄλλῃ παρασκευῇ.

Having learned the declension of the definite article, you know what case emporias is.

But why is it the -on case? Check ousis. It’s from eimi, “be”. How could you have “be” with anything but the -oi case?

It’s not the “be” guiding the grammar here, it’s the ouk, a negation.

Goodwin does not discuss this issue.

But it’s familiar to me because I know Russian, another Indo-European aspectual language. In Russian, nyet yeyo means “she’s not here” and uses the negative particle plus the genitive of the pronoun.

Which is an important illustration of how confusing case labels can be.  The same pronoun form yeyo is also accusative. You have to look at the context to know which case you’re using.

The old Greek grammars try to place nouns into categories (“o declension” etc.) that are supposed to predict what the declension is. But there are so many categories, and so many variations within the categories, and so many nouns that you would think fit in one category but actually belong to a different one, that once again, the categories stress your mind without helping you memorize the actual nouns.

You have to learn the noun just like you have to learn the verb.  

So I will give you high-frequency nouns to memorize, and since Thucydides is about to analyze the history of the Greeks, you need to know thalassa, sea, and gi, earth. These are the two theaters of operation in wars of the Greeks throughout their history.

And of course, as I said several weeks ago, I’m going to use different labels for the cases.

Nominative becomes -oi;

Genitive becomes -on (meaning omega nu);

Dative becomes -ois;

Accusative becomes -ous.

21st Century Classical Greek -- base voice personal gerundives

There are three base voice personal gerundives in this subsection. Let’s pound home what these gerundives do.

φαίνεται γὰρ ἡ νῦν Ἑλλὰς καλουμένη οὐ πάλαι βεβαίως οἰκουμένη, ἀλλὰ μεταναστάσεις τε οὖσαι τὰ πρότερα καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἕκαστοι τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἀπολείποντες βιαζόμενοι ὑπό τινων αἰεὶ πλειόνων.

Nun … kaloumeni means “now called”. The Hellas in the middle is what the personal gerundive refers to.

This is part of a definite noun phrase, “the [region] now called Hellas.”

Notice that the timing derives from the context, that nun. The old grammars would not have called kaloumeni an “absolute” because it is in the -oi case, not an oblique case. However, they give no reason why only oblique cases could be termed absolutes. And as I already showed, things that might be absolutes don’t indicate timing because it’s present in the context, not the morphology.

As a progressive conceptual, kaloumeni means people being in the habit of calling a specific region Hellas.

And being in base voice, kaloumeni shows that the name was not deliberately adopted for the purpose of naming the region, which would be executive voice.

Oikoumeni refers to a non-deliberate settling of Hellas, as if people just spontaneously wandered into the region and settled there.

Now we have some wording which shows how the phrasing has to break out. Apoleipontes is an executive voice personal gerundive. Tin eauton apoleipontes means “each one his own [property] leaving.” Thucydides can’t be definite about any individual who did this, so he can’t use a conjugated verb.

Then biazomenoi, “constrained”, meaning nobody deliberately forced them out. In the next subseection Thucydides will talk about why people felt constrained to leave beyond the fact of tinon aiei pleionon showing up.

The entire phrase is ekastoi…biazomenoi upo, etc.

Remember, the only conjugated verb in this subsection is fainetai. All the other events, Thucydides refers to by description. He recognizes their modern effects, but he can’t conjugate his verb.

By the way, go to White, page 235, section 760 and if you didn’t already learn eautou, the real reflexive pronoun, do it now. If you did learn it, go to page 236, section 763 and learn tis, which  you have seen in tini ton barbaron. The Middle Liddell entry will show you that it’s one of the most flexible words in Classical Greek, so it’s worth learning just for itself. 

21st Century Classical Greek -- faino

I’m going to start section 2, subsection 1 here a) to give you a feeling of progress; b) for another test of what you already know and c) to have you memorize an important verb.

So mark this text up in your own special way to identify words you know.

φαίνεται γὰρ ἡ νῦν Ἑλλὰς καλουμένη οὐ πάλαι βεβαίως οἰκουμένη, ἀλλὰ μεταναστάσεις τε οὖσαι τὰ πρότερα καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἕκαστοι τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἀπολείποντες βιαζόμενοι ὑπό τινων αἰεὶ πλειόνων.

Learn nun as “now”, you will see it a lot.

Click on fainetai, look it up in Wiktionary, and learn the conjugation.

Thucydides uses versions of faino a lot to say that the evidence gives such-and-such an appearance.

The first problem with Jowett’s translation is that he ignores faino most of the time, so that Thucydides comes out as more assertive than he is. Thucydides’ audience comes from his own class and they may know as much about history as Thucydides does; he doesn’t want to antagonize them by basically saying “my way or the highway”.

It’s also possible that some of them contributed information; they would be offenced if  Thucydides said something that rejected their information. Mr. T is suggesting that he had alternative evidence so they don’t get mad at him.

Now for a poke at Goodwin. Remember he wanted you to use ou to negate adjectives that are specific. What is definite about ou palai ? It’s an adverb of time. Goodwin never discusses negation of adverbs. He probably thought ou applied to oikoumeni, and that’s what 3 of the 4 online translations show.

But to show that the region was inhabited in ancient times, Thucydides deals first with whether the inhabitants lived securely, using another adverb, bebaios, and we all know that adverbs can modify adverbs. So ou palai modifies bebaios, not oikoumeni.

In English, to avoid clumsy expression, we would say “It was, seemingly, not in ancient times that the land called Hellas was securely settled.” Thucydides tells us why not and ties it into his theme of I 1.3 about what small change previous wars were. In section 7 he turns to how things changed.

While Thucydides has been chunked into sections for time out of mind, he actually writes story arcs. This first one is about 6 sections long; there will be longer ones later. It’s perfectly reasonable that translators have missed the story arcs; they didn’t even catch the relationships between subsections much. They were too focused on morphology to look at context, and this promoted word-for-word substitution, the most error-prone method of translation of all time.

The first clause is in SVO order with the only definite verb being fainetai. Everybody knows about Hellas being the name of a place and having inhabitants, but Thucydides can’t get much more definite about these issues than a gerundive.

The second clause, after alla, also fails to pin down any migrations by using a conjugated verb. Thucydides gets the idea of migrations from the notion, which he will state explicitly later, that the “Herakleides” (AKA Dorians) took over the peninsula from the prior inhabitants.

We can’t translate this subsection into English without adding conjugated verbs. This should have been a sign that the gerundives had some equivalence to verbs, but none of the old grammars give them credit for replacing conjugated verbs. As a result, nobody tried to form an idea of why the material didn’t use conjugated verbs everywhere that English would. This is another example of how scholars weren’t really reading Greek, they were reading “Grenglish”.

21st Century Classical Greek -- -mai versus non-mai verbs

Now. Since I called the last post “negation 1”, you might think I should cover everything I learned about negation in a chunk. But I’d rather have you go sequentially through Thucydides. It lets me show you how he structured things, and that is going to bring out what’s wrong with Jowett’s translation. It does turn out later that most of what I have to say about conditional (“if-then”) statements clusters reviews 3 and 4. And there will be a consolidated roundup at the end of this thread. But how Thucydides structured his material is not discussed in any of the old grammars and it’s important to my contention that Thucydides wrote as he spoke, from the oral basis with which Greek material originated, reinforced by the theater and the agora and the basilica. If you know of an on-line work that does discuss these issues, I’d love to see the link.

Here’s another thing that none of the grammarians ever talk about, again, because they were looking at morphology, not at context, and they simply accepted that a given morphology of a given verb meant X without asking why that verb was there in the first place.

τὰ γὰρ πρὸ αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ ἔτι παλαίτερα σαφῶς μὲν εὑρεῖν διὰ χρόνου πλῆθος ἀδύνατα ἦν, ἐκ δὲ τεκμηρίων ὧν ἐπὶ μακρότατον σκοποῦντί μοι πιστεῦσαι ξυμβαίνει οὐ μεγάλα νομίζω γενέσθαι οὔτε κατὰ τοὺς πολέμους οὔτε ἐς τὰ ἄλλα.

When you click on ksumbainei, the Perseus Word Tool tells you that when used with an impersonal gerundive (“inf.”), you get “it happened to me to trust”.

But I told you gignomai means “happen”. So ou megala nomizo genesthai ought to mean “I thought they happened to not be great”.

But it’s also a pretty good demonstration of the split in use between all -mai verbs and all of the other verbs.

The -mai verbs are used to evaluate something (ou megala) and non-mai verbs are used for other purposes.

Ksumbainei pisteusai may mean “I happened”, but it’s not an evaluation, it’s soft-pedalling the deliberate decision Thucydides made not to trust some of his data.

I’ll point out other places where Thucydides could have used a -mai verb but used the other form with the same meaning, so that you know I’m not just making things up or seeing things that aren’t there.

21st Century Classical Greek -- negatives 1

Time to look at a very important part of language, negatives. Two negatives are in this third subsection.

τὰ γὰρ πρὸ αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ ἔτι παλαίτερα σαφῶς μὲν εὑρεῖν διὰ χρόνου πλῆθος ἀδύνατα ἦν, ἐκ δὲ τεκμηρίων ὧν ἐπὶ μακρότατον σκοποῦντί μοι πιστεῦσαι ξυμβαίνει οὐ μεγάλα νομίζω γενέσθαι οὔτε κατὰ τοὺς πολέμους οὔτε ἐς τὰ ἄλλα.

Oute…oute is neither…nor.

There are two ways to negate verbs, ou which we have here, and mi, μὴ.

One of the big problems with White is that he never discusses negation. It’s not listed in his table of contents; it’s not listed in his index. Leaving out such an important part of language is a serious flaw in a book that is preparing you to read Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, which is some 800 pages long in the Loeb Classics Library edition. You know that such a long work will definitely have negatives in it.

Goodwin claims that there are two forms of verb with which ou is used, but we can see here that ou negates megala, not a verb. Goodwin says ou occurs with adjectives when they are not part of a conditional statement and when they refer to definite persons or things. He gives one example of definite and one of non-definite. He puts the cart before the horse, as so many grammars do with autos: when an author wants to designate specific persons or things, he uses ou[k].

So in I 1.3 ou megala relates to the two ta’s at the start of the subsection, which relate to kinisis auti at the start of subsection 2, a specific action.

I am going to have to revisit the topic of negation more than once because Goodwin gets into things we haven’t had examples of yet and when we do, I’ll explain why the negation works the way it does.

For now, see section 1611, page 346 about impersonal gerundives. Goodwin admits that the context determines which negation to use by distinguishing between quoted speech and direct speech, and then saying that there are exceptions. He gives no examples and no citations so we are on our own. By analogy with what he has already said, we can expect ou with an i.g. in a specific context and mi in a context where you can’t be specific.

Go through your favorite author and see if what Goodwin says pans out. One thing is for sure, in subsection 3 we wouldn’t have known megala’s antecedent was specific until we got to the start of subsection 2.  You can’t rely on a narrow context to support Goodwin’s claims