Class Notes: July 7, 2007

Class Notes and Comments

Lesson 5: Important Sections and points (but read all the Sections):):

27. Memorize the vocabulary and the extra vocabulary (see Sidebar for Lesson 5 vocabulary). There are no extra words from the LXX-NT vocabulary (the ones you'll need to know will be included in the regular vocabulary in future Lessons), but there are eight extra words which occur 20x or more in the New Testament. An audio file of the words is in the Sidebar.

28. Memorize the definite article paradigm.

29. Memorize the forms of first and second declension adjectives. The endings are in almost every case the same as those for nouns and the definite article, so if you've memorized the definite article and the first and second declension noun endings, you already know these forms (just remove the τ from the article to get the adjective/noun endings). Note the accent rule.

A note re: the singular endings of first declension feminine nouns and adjectives that end in α:

1. In nouns (Lesson 3 Section 18):


• If the next to the last letter (i.e., the letter before the α) in a word is a ρ or a vowel (usually ε or ι), the noun will be a "Pure Alpha" type and have α in all the singular endings.


• If the next to the last letter (i.e., the letter before the α) is any other letter, the noun will be a "Mixed" type and have η in the genitive and dative singular endings.*
  


2. In adjectives (Lesson 5 Section 29):
   
   
   • If the letter before the -ος ending of the masculine form (i.e., the lexical/dictionary/vocabulary list form) is a ρ or ε or ι, the feminine form of the adjective will have α in all the singular endings.
   
   
   • If the letter before the -ος ending of the masculine form (i.e., the lexical/dictionary/vocabulary list form) is any other letter, the feminine form of the adjective will have η in all the singular endings. I.e., there are no "Mixed" type feminine adjectives; they either have α in all the singular endings or η in all the singular endings.

* Other grammars may state or explain this slightly differently. E.g., David Alan Black in Learn to Read New Testament Greek - Expanded Edition says re: nouns that if the letter before the α is a sibilant phoneme ("sound") - i.e., ζ or σ or a double letter whose sound contains σ (i.e., ξ = κσ or ψ = πσ) - then the noun will be a "Mixed" type, whereas Croy says "Mixed" type nouns are those where the letter before the α is any letter other than a ρ or a vowel (usually ε or ι).

30. This is the most important Section in the Lesson. You must be able to know whether an adjective is attributive, predicate or substantival in order to translate it correctly. By doing all the Exercises, checking your answers, and correcting (and understanding) any mistakes you made, you should be able to grasp this pretty well.

32. Do all the Exercises and then check your answers by clicking the link in the sidebar on the right for the Lesson 5 answers.

NEXT WEEK'S CLASS - JULY 14 - WILL START AT 9:15 A.M. PLEASE BE EARLY!

Class Notes: June 30, 2007

• Class Notes and Comments
• The General Principle of Greek Accentuation

Class Notes and Comments

Lesson 4: Important Sections and points:

22. Memorize the vocabulary and the extra vocabulary. Read the blog entry "Learning Vocabulary" (the audio files are recorded by saying the article before the noun).

See Sidebar for Lesson 4 vocabulary and audio files, including the extra word from the LXX-NT vocabulary, plus the other extra words you are to learn (words that occur 25x or more in the New Testament).

23. Memorize the paradigm (pattern) of the endings for the Second Declension. Memorize the [definite] article if you have not yet done so. (We'll actually encounter it in Lesson 5 next week. Learn it by this week and Lesson 5 will be easy.)

26. Do all the Exercises after you have learned the vocabulary (Section 22, as well as the Lesson 2 and 3 vocabulary) and the Lesson grammar so you are really able to do the Exercises with understanding, and not have to keep looking back in the Lesson to know what to write.

Again, you will at times be introduced to things you have not yet learned, but should be able to deduce based on what you have learned, so don't feel badly if on occasion you get something wrong, or can't quite figure out how to translate something. It's purposeful.

The General Principle of Greek Accentuation

Here is what I shared about accenting from my Attic Greek textbook - from Unit Two, Section 4, p. 17 of Introduction to Attic Greek, by Donald J. Mastronarde:

Contonation and Mora. The apparently complex "rules" of Greek accentuation can be understood in terms of a single general principle involving the concepts of contonation and mora. Contonation is the combination of the rise of pitch generally thought of as the accent with the necessary return or fall to standard pitch which follows it. In the case of an acute accent, the contonation includes both the syllable on which the accent is written (and on which the pitch rises) and the entire following syllable (on which the pitch falls), if any, whether it counts as long or short. In the case of the circumflex accent, the contonation occurs on the one syllable on which the accent is written, for there are both a rise in pitch and a return to standard pitch on that syllable. A mora is the (theoretically assigned) "standard" length of a short vowel (α, ε, ι, ο, υ, and final αι and οι in most cases). A long vowel (α, ει, η, ι, ου, ω, υ) or a diphthong* (except for final αι and οι in most cases) occupies (theoretically) a time span equivalent to two morai.

The general principle of Greek accentuation is that the contonation may be followed by no more than one mora before the end of a word (or phrase pronounced as one word unit). This principle is in many respects similar to rules in other languages (e.g., Latin) which constrain the position of the accent according to the nature of the final syllables of a word. In Greek this principle limits the position of the acute and circumflex accents and requires the addition of an extra accent in some phrases consisting of word + enclitic.**

* Remember that so-called "improper" or "long" diphthongs (α, η, and ω with subscripted ι) are also always long. I am not sure why Mastronarde omits mention of αυ, ευ, and ηυ.

** For the definition of "enclitics," see Section 42 of Lesson 7 in Croy's textbook. Also see "proclitics" in Section 28 of Lesson 5.

By convention there are a couple exceptions to this principle when it comes to the enclitics εστι(ν) and τις/τι:
1) εστι(ν) following a word with a circumflex on the ultima is not accented; one would normally expect an acute on the ultima of εστι(ν); and
2) τινων (the genitive plural) following a word with an acute on the penult has a circumflex accent on its ultima; normally a disyllabic enclitic following such a word receives an acute accent on its second syllable.

Class Notes: June 16, 2007

ΣΟΦΙΑ. ΠΡΟΣΧΩΜΕΝ.

• Review Information
• Class Notes and Comments

• Review Information

Again, memorize the [definite] article (see Class Notes: June 9, 2007). The sooner you do this, the better off you will be for learning nouns, pronouns, adjectives, etc.

Make sure you know Lesson 2 grammar and vocabulary (as well as the alphabet!) pretty well before doing Lesson 3. Each Lesson builds on the previous weeks' knowledge, but there is repetition of grammar and words such that if you didn't quite master everything, succeeding Lessons will help reinforce what you've earlier been exposed to. However, there is sufficient new information in each Lesson that you will sooner or later (and it's usually sooner, not later!) begin falling behind if you don't do your best to master as much as you can each week.

Be sure to read out loud as much as possible. Use the CD to work on and improve your pronunciation.

• Class Notes and Comments

Important Sections and points (read every Section in Lesson 3, though):

15. Memorize the vocabulary and the extra vocabulary. Read the blog entry "Learning Vocabulary" (the audio files are recorded by saying the article before the noun).

See Sidebar for Lesson 3 vocabulary (MS Excel - as noted, you will need to install the TekniaGreek font to read the Greek characters), including the extra word from the LXX-NT vocabulary (δουλευω - shown as δουλευσατε (Aorist Active Imperative 2nd-Person Plural) in the LXX-NT vocabulary list), plus the other extra words you are to learn (words that occur 25x or more in the New Testament). An audio file of the words is in the Sidebar.

17. Read this to understand the various functions of the cases. As stated in class, verbs are parsed by Tense, Voice, Mood, Person and Number, and nouns, pronouns and adjectives are parsed by Gender (feminine, masculine, neuter), Number (singular, plural) and Case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative). Since most 1st-declension nouns are feminine, that is the Gender you will indicate for the nouns in this Lesson (the article that is listed with the noun indicates the Gender - η for feminine; ο for masculine; το for neuter).

18. Learn these forms, and how to tell if a 1st-declension noun follows the α pattern, the η pattern, or the mixed pattern. (As you can see, this only applies to the singular; the plural forms all use α's in the endings.) Note that ι is a clue that you're dealing with a dative case (whether it's a regular ι or a subscripted ι - the subscript ι is just as much a letter and part of a word's spelling as any other letter).

19. For the third time - MEMORIZE THE [DEFINITE] ARTICLE PARADIGM! ;^)

20. Read and try to remember the accent(uation) rules in the textbook.

21. Do all the Exercises. Again, make sure you know the vocabulary (Section 15, as well as the Lesson 2 vocabulary) and the Lesson grammar before doing the Exercises so you are really able to do the Exercises with understanding, and not have to keep looking back in the Lesson to know what to write.

You'll notice, e.g., in a few of the LXX sentences for Lesson 3 that Croy introduces some forms that he has not yet discussed in the book. E.g., he uses the genitive singular form of the article in sentence 1., even though he doesn't discuss the article until Lesson 5 (but we have already discussed all the article forms in class). Also, e.g., in the NT section he uses a singular masculine accusative ending in one sentence, even though you won't learn the masculine 2nd-declension noun endings until Lesson 4 (i.e., at our forthcoming class).

In other words, you will at times be introduced to things you have not yet learned, but should be able to deduce based on what you have learned. As I've looked ahead, I see he does this in future Lessons, too. So, don't feel badly if on occasion you get something wrong, or can't quite figure out how to translate something. It's purposeful.

(There are Greek to English and English to Greek vocabulary lists in the back of the book if you get really stumped, but you should rely mostly on the words and things you've learned before turning there.)

Learning Vocabulary

We've discussed various tools for learning vocabulary - e.g., flashcards and Greek vocabulary books, software programs (we haven't really discussed this one yet), etc. Choose and use whatever helps you best or most efficiently learn the words.

Most vocabulary flashcards and books, as well as lexicons, list nouns as:

nominative singular, genitive singular ending, article (to indicate the noun's gender)

E.g.:

λογος, -ου, ο and αδελφη, -ης, η

While this is the way words are listed, it might be better to memorize the words with the article first, e.g.:

ο λογος, -ου and η αδελφη, -ης

This way you will always associate the gender (ο masculine, η feminine, το neuter) with the noun, which comes in handy when dealing with 1st-declension masculine nouns like ο μαθητης or 2nd-declension feminine nouns like η οδος, since most 1st-declension nouns are feminine, and most 2nd-declension nouns are masculine or neuter.

At a minimum one should learn (memorize) the word with the article, e.g.:

ο λογος = "(the) word" and η αδελφη = "(the) sister"

and not simply as:

λογος = "word" and αδελφη = "sister"

When it comes to 3rd-declension nouns, though (Lesson 17, Section 116ff.; Lesson 25, Section 175ff.), you need to know the genitive form, too, because that contains the noun's lexical stem. (This is actually true for all declensions, but in 1st- and 2nd-declension nouns the nominative and genitive use the same stem.)

Ideally one should learn a noun (with the article, of course) in both its nominative form and its genitive form, not just the genitive ending, because even though the genitive form is regular for 1st- and 2nd-declension nouns, sometimes the accent changes.

Vocabulary Lists for the Course

I've finally completed the vocabulary lists by Lesson for the course - click on the link on the sidebar under "Class Links" that says:

Vocabulary list (MS Excel) for A Primer of Biblical Greek, expanded from the textbook to include all words that occur in the New Testament 25x or more (plus 20x-24x); Extra Words only

The list is sorted in Lesson order. Words added from the Exercises LXX/NT vocabulary lists are indicated by LN; extra words that occur 25x or more in the New Testament are indicated by +; extra words that occur 20x-24x are indicated by ++.

Because Excel sorts alphabetically according to English, the Greek ordering may not be alphabetical (e.g., it treats ζ, the sixth letter in the Greek alphabet, as a "z," the last letter in the English alphabet, and the accents and breathing marks are treated as the characters on the the keys that are used to type them). At some point I'll get around to sorting each Lesson's words in proper Greek alphabetical order.

I've input brief definitions for the + and ++ words; you have definitions for the other words, since they're in the textbook. The LXX/NT words are not in the vocabulary lists in the back of the book; they're only in the lists for the Exercises. Some of these words appear in more than one Lesson, and I've indicated the Lesson(s) in my list. Also, the forms given for the LXX/NT vocabulary are the way they appear in the Exercises, and not necessarily the lexical/dictionary form, which is what I list in the Vocabulary lists and how you should learn/memorize them. I'll double-check the definitions by the time we get to the Lesson.

If you learn all the words in the lists, you will have a very sizable vocabulary by the end of the course, quite a bit larger than what many 1st-year courses teach.