When we talk about the concepts of background and foreground, it needs to be emphasized that we are […]
Category Archive: Linguistics
Tense and aspect are central for narrative text. The perfective and imperfective aspect, particularly, are essential for how an author builds a narrative structure and signals to the reader the flow of the story.
Here are 5 forthcoming books related to the study of language and Ancient Greek that I’m looking forward to and perhaps you should be aware of, if you’re interested in Ancient Greek grammar.
Herein, we come to the end of our discussion of the semantics of σκύβαλον and how it relates to English taboo words.
Wherein σκύβαλον becomes a much larger problem in cities compared to out on the farm.
This piece picks up from Obscenity in Paul? The Question of σκύβαλον, examining how the word σκύβαλον is used […]
Is there profanity in Paul? It’s sort of an old question. There’s a certain appeal to the idea for some perhaps and the fact that σκύβαλον can be glossed ‘dung’ or ‘manure’ likely encourages the possibility to extend its English rendering a little further.
With the great success from publication the The Greek Verb Revisited: A Fresh Approach for Biblical Exegesis now a couple years behind us and the great labor of writing, editing, rewriting and more editing all, but happy distant memory, it seems worthwhile to share the conclusion to the article I contributed to the volume.
I examined the question of Greek prohibitions and the much argued about expressions: stop doing X (imperfective aspect) and do not start X (perfective aspect). Traditionally these expressions are wholly associated their respective aspect verb form as motivation for their meanings, going back to journal articles from over 100 years ago. In my article, I put forward an alternative approach, suggesting that not also aspect, but also the nature of the negation itself plays a role in the how and why of these expressions.
So without further ado, enjoy:
Brill’s Etymological Dictionary of Greek by Robert Beekes has been sitting quietly on prepublication page at Logos.com for about two and a half years now. It languished for some time, particularly because it was priced, as all Brill books are, exorbitantly high. That seems to have changed recently.
It’s now on pre-order for $104.
rather than, I can’t remember, $299? The original pre-order price was something like that. We have left the realm of astronomically unaffordable and have arrived in the realm of a great deal for 1,808 pages of Greek and proto-Indo-European lexicography.
Etymological dictionaries are a special breed, of course. The mode of operation for their usage diverges from a standard lexicon like BDAG or LSJM. The coverage is more specific to words with a longer history and you crack them open for the purposes of research rather than reading or interpretation of texts. Nevertheless, Beekes’ etymological dictionary is an essential for any serious linguistic research on Greek diachronically or proto-Indo-European more generally.
$104 for a digital version of Beekes? I’m in—especially since I don’t go for using print lexicons any more. Digital is better. Now we just need Peeters to realize this so we can have digital edition of Muraoka’s LXX lexicon, too.
In the meantime, all I can say is: “Well done Brill & Logos.”
What to do when a word seems to mean completely different things?
Koine-Greek 