Re: deponency
Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Tue, 21 Jan 1997 09:22:03 -0600
At 9:03 AM -0600 1/21/97, Paul F. Evans wrote:
>Carl, et. al.,As I am want to do, let me display my rank ignorance once
>more. In the intersting discussions on deponency, you, and others, have
>made refernce to "morphology." I am sure that I could find a definition
>for this just about anywhere, but could you define the term in the context
>of these discussions? I am one of those "mechanical Greeks" you speak of
>(please, list, I am not trying to introduce a new sub-category of Greek
>student) and I am trying to "re-conceive" of NT Greek in the sorts of
>terms that this list uses. I think that it would be a mental liberation
>to me I f I could move away from the rather stilted models to which I have
>beome attached. However, it is scarey too ...<
Paul: Morphology is the whole system of inflected "forms" of a language:
conjugations of verbs, declensions of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives,
etc.--all those paradigms like LUW/LUEIS/LUEI or AGROS/AGROU/AGRWi/AGRON
that one simply has to learn. People generally distinguish the big category
of "grammar" into these two subcategories: morphology--the system of
word-forms in a language, and syntax--the patterns of usage governing
sentence construction and the meanings expressed when the word-forms are
combined to communicate.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/