That elusive Greek verb paradigm!

Greek Learning Greek
1

If I want to check up on a particular Latin verb form, all I have to do is take down The Big Gold Book of Latin Verbs (555 paradigms) by Gavin Betts and there it is, all simply laid out and crystal clear.

By contrast, checking up on a Greek verb form is like being up the proverbial creek without an oar. Take for example:

φοβεῖται (he fears)
ἐφοβεῖτο (he feared)

My free Unicorn parser (faithful workhorse) will kindly parse these forms for me and provide the following information:

φοβέω, φοβήσω, ἐφόβησα, πεφόβηκα, πεφόβημαι, ἐφοβήθην: terrify; put to flight; (mid.) fear, be afraid, feel awe
φοβ-εῖται : Verb, present, indic, mid/pass, 3rd sing (contracted)
ἐφοβ-εῖτο : Verb, imperfect, indic, mid/pass, 3rd sing (contracted)

But where can I find the complete paradigm of a ‘model verb’ that includes this particular verb form? I’m sure it’s out there somewhere, but how to locate it? What steps must I take to navigate the jungle of tables that exist?

Conversely, if I want to use the imperfect, indic, mid/pass, 3rd sing of φοβέω what steps must I follow to find it or assemble it?

How do you gurus for whom this has become second nature do it? I would be so grateful if you could walk me through SOME EXAMPLES step by step, thus revealing the mental algorithm you use. And does anyone know of a textbook whose author walks the learner stepwise through this process?

Also, why hasn’t some bright professor, after choosing certain verbs to serve as ‘models’ and creating the appropriate paradigms, made a list of the 1000 most common verbs and included in each entry the appropriate model verb to which the learner may refer? Would this be so difficult?

Cheers,
Int

2

hi, there are verb paradigms on the net, eg :

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ancgreek/paradigmsU/paradigms_U.html

but i don’t know of any resource where you can put in a grk verb form and it will give you a full paradigm.

this however is an advantage over latin, not a disadvantage: the paucity of grk resources for producing quick answers means that you need to need to really learn how the verb works. this requires more initial work and determination, but once it’s in your head it will stay and will come naturally.

(i admit i’ve been reading the grk orators recently and unconsciously copied demosthenes’ form of argument for the future advantage of a current disadvantage – but in any case i do think this is true, that the lack of easy answers in grk is an advantage for long-term understanding.)

the best tip i can give – one i used when doing my textbook exercises – is to use a 2 step process for writing a verb: first, separate all the parts of a verb with hyphens, then take out each hyphen and see for each removed hyphen whether any phonetic changes need to be made – vowel contractions, consonant assimilations etc. (and note in your book the rule you’ve followed).

what are the parts of a verb? you can use a visual diagram like this to help you (from the best book on grk verbs in my opinion: duhoux’s le verbe grec ancien, pg 34):

http://books.google.fr/books?id=IfCKYns6CIkC&pg=PA34#v=onepage&q&f=false

what are each of these parts and when do you use them? this comes from learning the grk verb from any textbook.

e.g. to get to ἐφοβεῖτο, you start with the verb’s stem φοβε-. it has an ε at the end because the verb comes from the noun φόβος. then when you put in all the other parts required for ἐφοβεῖτο, you get: ἐ-φοβέ-ε-το, ie. augment, stem, thematic vowel, secondary termination. then when you take out the hyphens, the first one come out without any change, the second hyphen coming out gives εε which contracts to ει (see tables of vowel contractions) and the accent becomes circumflex (see accenting books), and the last hyphen comes out without change.

i recommend working all the way through a short book on verbs like tiarks, which i linked to in this post: http://discourse.textkit.com/t/methods-for-learning-greek/10207/1 . i did this and found it really helpful.

cheers, chad :slight_smile:

3

Chad,

Thanks for your generous advice.

‘Then felt I like some watcher of the skies … etc’. Your post produced a kind of ‘Darien moment’ in me. To think that I had never really seen THAT before! As a language learner I have hitherto been something of an ‘accretionist’ or ‘absorptionist’. For most languages this errant acquisition method has more or less done the job. But now - just for Ancient Greek! - I plan to start building a mental parsing engine of my own.

Your demonstration of the hyphen method was exactly what I was looking for. Sent me scurrying back to my Crosby & Schaeffer’s contract verbs. Now I understood why they wrote what they wrote.

I could still wish some inspired professor had written a whole chapter devoted to similar parsing operations. But as you say, sweet are the uses of adversity (excuse switch from pebble to plume).

I’ll borrow Dutoux from the library. And Tiarks, here I come! (btw his book’s from 1833, not 1883 as stated in that other thread).

Cheers,
Int

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Interaxus wrote:

‘Then felt I like some watcher of the skies … etc’.

Regarding first looking into Chapman’s Homer, John Keats wrote:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken…

Markos writes:

θεατής τις ἐγενόμην τῶν οὐρανῶν, καινοῦ τινος φανερήσαντος πλανήτου.

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φανερωθέντος?

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Markos:

θεατής τις ἐγενόμην τῶν οὐρανῶν, καινοῦ τινος φανερήσαντος πλανήτου.

Beautiful! Thanks for the learning experience! Knowing the original makes it easier to recognize known (or half-known) words and guess the rest.

I became/was (as) a spectator of the skies, of a strange/new planet .. (‘that just appeared’)

Still, one thing ‘teases me out of thought’ (in other words my new mental parsing machine just broke down): what’s φανερήσαντος? I want it to be an aorist m/p participle, but wouldn’t that be φάνθεντος …?

Perhaps Chad can help with a hyphen or two.

Now if you have the time, Marcos, I’d like a plain Attic (or Koine) prose version of the whole sonnet. What a brill lesson that would be (for me)! :smiley:

Cheers,
Int

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Markos wrote:φανερήσαντος


φανερωθέντος?

Yes, that’s right. Thanks for catching that mistake, Damoetas.

Now if you have the time, Marcos, I’d like a plain Attic (or Koine) prose version of the whole sonnet.

A nice thought, but I prefer Keats’ English to my Greek! :smiley:

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I’m a little late, but I think what you are looking for is this site:

http://www.greekverbs.com/

There’s no indication of who owns/runs the site, no instructions, just start typing a verbal form (in Greek or phonetically in latin characters) and it will find it for you. Click on the present indicative form and it will give you the entire paradigm.

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This is quite comprehensive:
http://research.uni-leipzig.de/giannis/Philosophie/Gedicht%205.pdf