Recent Greek Grammar?

Greek Learning Greek
1

Can someone suggest a good recent work on ancient Greek grammar, preferably one intended for a linguist audience? Most of the sources I know about are from the 19th century. Thanks.

Lee

2

If you want a grammar, there is no such thing. At least not in English. It is a tragedy of the current state of classics that most of our reference tools are antiques.

For a linguistic and historical perspective on Greek, Geoffrey Horrocks’ Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers is a great book. A second edition — 200 pages longer than the first, apparently — will be out in a few months (Feb 2010 in the US).

3

If you want a grammar, there is no such thing. At least not in English.

How about in other languages?

4

There are a lot of interesting books that treat Ancient Greek from a modern point of view but that are limited in scope, e.g. “Conditions and Conditionals” by Wakker which is about every (literally every) conditional clause in Ancient Greek. They’re more ambitious theoretically so to speak so it’s easier to disagree with their conclusions but they contain loads of information and often offer new perspectives on things you think are pretty well established (like that ει + future indicative implies doubt in the case of the above book).

5

hi, duhoux’s verbe grec is my favourite book in any language for the grammar + syntax of the verb and it is quite recent (2000). here is a link: scroll to the end first and see the table of contents (french books often put these at the end):

http://books.google.fr/books?id=IfCKYns6CIkC

for latin, you may find this book interesting: i found it in a bookstore recently and it is recent (2008), easy to read and v useful:

http://www.amazon.fr/Grammaire-latine-Introduction-linguistique-langue/dp/271819961X

cheers, chad :slight_smile:

6

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions.

Lee

7

Albert Rijksbaron, Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical
Greek, 3rd ed., U Chicago Press, 2002.

See the post on the B-Greek email list regarding this book. http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2009-April/048832.html

8

Everyone who studies ancient Greek should have this one.