Re: On Method and S -> PN

Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Mon, 28 Jul 1997 13:29:59 -0400

At 7:57 AM -0400 7/28/97, Karen Pitts wrote:
>George Box, a famous statistician, has this to say about models and modeling.
>
>"All models are wrong; some are useful".
>
>He would also agree that model fitting is an iterative process of forming
>hypeotheses, gathering data, analyzing data, and revising the hypotheses.
>
>I think that's a healthy attitude toward modeling. Models are approximations.
> You can never perfectly model reality; you may be able to model it well
>enough to use if for something, but you should never forget that the model
>does not equal reality.
>
>My $.02 worth.

Do I dare to say "Amen" (in a non-theological sense, whatever that means)?
I am never altogether sure what Clayton means by some of his sharply-worded
statements, but I had feared, without being quite sure this is what he
meant, that he might be trying to say that, when it comes to Greek grammar,
we need to re-invent the wheel. I sincerely hope that's not the case.

I am one very much in favor of re-formulating our traditional conceptions
of grammatical constructions--in Greek as well as elsewhere--in more
accurate terms that better reflect the demonstrable evidence of our texts.
I am particularly eager to do this with respect to voice, where I think the
traditional conceptions are neither quite valid nor quite intelligible. I
am also very much in favor of drawing distinctions between structural uses
of cases (the original true dative, the nominative, the "pertinentive"
types genitives, for instance) and semantic uses of cases that are readily
discernible (instrumental-comitatives, ablatival genitives, locatives, for
instance). But after a semester's work last spring endeavoring to draw such
distinctions in a comparative grammar class, I don't think this is a very
easy thing to do. Moreover, I don't think we are going any time soon to
supplant the work of the classical grammarians or render it obsolete; I am
more inclined to think that some of the experimental grammatical works
coming out now will not survive very long in competition with the work of
the classical grammarians. I am certainly not a defender of tradition at
any cost, but I cannot imagine a new systematic grammar that will not owe a
prfound and solid debt to the work of more than twenty centuries of
previous effort expended on understanding the way the Greek language works.

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 OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/