Abbreviations and Latin terms in lexicons, apparatuses

Greek Learning Greek
1

There’s a longer list of abbreviations for the LSJ on the TLG:

http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/lexica.php

or Perseus: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Afrontmatter%3D5

You can access the TLG lexica without a subscription, but I think you need to register (for free). On the TLG version of the LSJ there is a handy button that says “Show Abbrev.” for any entry.

That won’t help you with unabbreviated Latin like rei (for example in c. gen. rei=cum genitivo rei, “with the genitive of the thing”…in contrast to c. gen. pers(onae) with the genitive of the person). You might find this tutorial helpful:

https://kosmossociety.chs.harvard.edu/video-tutorial-decoding-ancient-greek-dictionary-entries-with-joel-christensen/

Relatedly, see this handy list of mainly Latin abbreviations in critical apparatuses, some of which overlap with those used in dictionaries: http://udallasclassics.org/wp-content/uploads/maurer_files/APPARATUSABBREVIATIONS.pdf

For naughty words the whole definition is sometimes in Latin (eg βινέω, πυγίζω, εὐρύπρωκτος, ψωλή, ταῦρος III, several words defined as pudenda muliebria or membrum virile (female and male genitalia)). Or just avoided by “sens. obsc.” (=sensu obsceno, with obscene sense). The abridged versions for schoolboys often remove even these Latin workarounds. In those cases you’ll want a more recent dictionary, especially if you’re reading Aristophanes.

2

What does ‘NCA’ mean on Logeion?

Google says National Crime Agency.

3

Or “adscript”! :laughing:

4

I’m not sure. Can you link to an example on Logeion?

5

I can’t find a definition anywhere on the site, but I suspect that its (often confused) parser thinks it’s a non-concatenative allomorph.

Someone else can do adscript.

6

The word ἄνευ is a form used in dialects (Epic, Doric, or Ionic). So, my guess is NCA = non-canonical Attic.

7

Non-Attic would have been my guess, but I couldn’t see a three-letter abbreviation for it. The other reason is that the first hit on Google for it is the plainest word in Attic:

“ὁ definite article masculine nominative singular (NCA)”

Another example:

“Βάκτρα Proper-name noun feminine nominative singular (NCA)”

What’s so non-Attic about a name? Maybe flagged based on corpus though.

Another NCA that shows up in a fair amount of Attic authors:

“καθά adverb (NCA)”

On the other hand, these could just be parser weirdness. Looking at verb forms, I see lots of non-Attic forms getting flagged with it, and not really any ablaut forms, which is what you’d expect if I were actually correct about it. Looking at verbs specifically, I think it points to non-Attic, like you say. My Google search brought up the above non-verb examples first, perhaps misleadingly.

EDIT:

Looking at this, NCA really does seem to be “non-canonical[?] Attic” as will.dawe suggests. The weirdness above would apparently be from how it parses the LSJ. Look at the following.

To generate the “NCA” entries, it has parsed from LSJ (or a derivative work) “fut. ἑλῶ only late”.

Now καθά, despite showing up (rarely) in Xenophon, Demosthenes, Aristotle, etc., only has non-Attic entries in the LSJ cite. So the NCA label is coming from LSJ-parsing, not corpus-scanning. The bad “ὁ” NCA might be from a parse of something like this in the LSJ: “as demonstr. by the side of οὗτος, ὅδε, and the Art. ὁ, ἡ, τό : in post-Homeric Gr. this use survived only in a few special phrases.”

8

The notes that show up in the morphological parses are of very different status, mostly because I only have one ‘notes’ field:-)
Here are the ones you asked about:
adscript:
The Perseus morphology includes the dat sg (usually, fem) parse for words ending in - αι.
Since most texts in the corpus, however, are public-domain old editions that would print ᾳ for this dative, I mark it as ‘adscript’, in part to warn intermediate-level readers who may take the parse at face value as a legitimate option in texts that do not otherwise feature adscripts. I have added this by hand, so it’s not consistent at all.
NCA:
Shorthand for: Not a form you’d expect to see in Classical Attic -dialect forms, sigmatic aorist forms for classical thematic aorists, etc. A grab bag for forms I either don’t trust or don’t take the time to annotate further - NCA is a click on a button for me to warn me off sleepily picking it as the correct parse in a text (of course, given the right dialect or era, it can be). In addition -as with the adscript note- for post-beginners who may or may not take every parse as scripture.. You’ll note that if you use the standard Perseus morphology output you get forms parsed as XYZ dialect. This is a feature we dropped 15 years ago for reasons of logistics. Occasionally, when there is ambiguity depending on dialect you’ll see an ‘epic’ or ‘ionic’ note.
Various others are more or less informative: XE, Luc, PsCall etc for parses for texts added in recent years (Xenophon of Ephesus, Lucian,..) where parses and lemmatization haven’t necessarily received as much scrutiny yet.

Anyway, I hope this clarifies somewhat. I agree with you that I spend more time editing texts and adding parses than I do documenting:-)

All best,
Helma Dik



Helma Dik
Department of Classics
University of Chicago