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Re: Long reply (was "short.response")

Simply, applause.


At 07:54 AM 6/1/97 -0400, you wrote:

>At 6:55 AM -0400 6/1/97, BTHURMAN@unca.edu wrote:

>>

>>i had noted that one cannot say anything true about language and i guess that

>>includes me. still, as with others, some could learn some truth by considering

>>the statements taken as a whole.

>>

>>from what i think i understand so far of carl's position, i'll bet if we had

>>time to talk it out and did so, venn diagrams of our commonalities on said

>>matters would be hugely overlapping with very little left completely peculiar

>>to each. if carl thinks otherwise, i'd accede to what he thinks on it, because

>>he's a practicing professional and most of my time is now taken with movement

>>arts ministry and questions of how to relate the power of love to spiritual

>>warfare -- i'm particularly concerned with affairs near the headwaters of the

>>tigris - euphrates and in my own 'backyard' called 'pisgah territory'.

>

>Let me chime in here and add my support to what Bearded Bill has stated,

>with regard to:

>

>(1) what is true about language: I posted a separate response to this

>Dictum Guilielmis Barbati immediately after I read it: it was the quote of

>the day! Certainly it ill befits one who claims a Socratic agnosticism (I

>will declare my CONVICTIONS openly but I shan't confuse them with what I

>KNOW); if I were (as I am not [love them counterfactuals]) so bold as to

>offer an expansive scholium on said dictum, it might endeavor to relate

>said Dictum to the Uncertainty Principle (about which I may speak as boldly

>as any other who knows as little about it as do I); I might even formulate

>said scholium on said dictum as a counterfactual: if it were not necessary

>to employ language to do so, then it might be possible to say something

>true about you language, but since, as any plain fool can see ... (at which

>point I adopt also the Stilus Guilielmi Barbati and allow readers to draw

>their own conclusion.

>

>(2) Relative stances of B.B. and myself on the ancient Greek voices: I know

>less (and am much more uncertain) about Venn than about the Uncertainty

>Principle. Nevertheless I rather think that B.B. and I are probably not as

>far apart on this subject as it may appear on the surface. (I might even

>bring Randy Leedy in on this, having spent a most enjoyable afternoon and

>evening with him in both Carolinas {finding both mountains and valleys in

>each of them, if the truth be told} and report that, although we found

>weightier things to discuss than the Voices, we reached full and

>unmitigated agreement on ELATTOUSQAI and its proper translation in

>English--"decrease"). More specifically (and also more seriously):

>	(a) B.B. has done us a service in reminding us that we really ought

>to inform ourselves of what the remains of the ancient grammatical

>tradition have to say on these issues before we go off (as I so enjoy

>doing) half-cocked on our own grammatical tangents. If I thought UNC-A had

>accessible texts of same, I think I would try to get them and read through

>them--I wonder if they even have a Pauly-Wissowa. I'm not sure just how

>thoroughly any speaker of a language DOES understand his/her own language,

>but I wish I did know what those Greek-speakers who wrote about Greek

>grammar had to say about it, and the plain fact is that I don't; every bit

>of what I "know" of Greek grammar I have gotten from sources in English,

>German, and French. Honestly I feel just a little silly talking about Greek

>grammar without knowing more about that Greek grammatical tradition.

>	(b) My "observations on ancient Greek voices" were just that:

>observations--largely speculations on how they might be understood in a

>somewhat more intelligible interrelationship. I really do think that

>there's some complex relationship beyond my full understanding between

>present-middles, athematic long-vowel (what I call "third") aorists and

>second perfects--and I am thinking particularly of those verbs we tend to

>think of as intransitive (but transitive/intransitive is another polarity

>about which I have much less clarity than I once thought I had)--such verbs

>as hISTAMAI/ESTHN/hESTAA. Nevertheless I honestly do think that the

>phenomena of voice in the Greek verb may well be beyond any complete

>rationalization. The other day I called attention to Smyth, ##800-821, pp.

>218-224, s.v. "Peculiarities in the use of the Voice-Forms, etc." and

>"Forms of One Voice in the Sense of Another." I believe that the lengthy

>compendium of observations from A.T. Robertson cited by B.B. a couple days

>ago pointed in much the same direction--which is to say, in ALL directions,

>such that it would appear to require an Einstein to produce any "unified

>field theory" of Greek voices. I don't think B.B. and I are all that far

>apart, although we have differences of opinion on some matters. What I very

>much want to see is a little less chaos in the understanding and

>presentation of the Greek voice system than what the traditional

>understanding and presentation seems to me to have offered.

>

>It appears that I have adopted much of B.B.'s "oracular" style in this

>message. I have two excuses: (1) all of western NC has been under a

>continuing flash-flood warning since 11 p.m. last night, and I'm now

>contemplating the risks of "crossing over the bridge" to drive 15 miles to

>church this morning; (2) It's hard to give "voice" to a complete sentence

>when your tongue is firmly planted in the side of your mouth.

>

>Carl W. Conrad

>Department of Classics/Washington University

>One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018

>Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(704) 675-4243

>cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu

>WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

>

>

>

>

<bold>

Randall McRoberts

</bold>rmcrob@iquest.net or rcm@bioanalytical.com

Check out my Biblical Studies website at http://www.iquest.net/~rmcrob


"Apply yourself wholly to the text; apply the text wholly to yourself." 

- Johann Albrecht Bengel