When I came to the substantive use of the article in Hansen and Quinn's
book and all the accompanying exercises, it was like a light came on. All
of a sudden I could see the structure of a greek sentence even though
portions would be unknown to me. It seems that all that Dobson and Machen
do is tell you how the verbs and the nouns work and remind you that with an
inflected language, word order is not important in determining meaning in a
Greek. Have a nice day.
Well, with Hansen and Quinn, in only the 5th chapter (out of 20), they
explain the substantive use of articles and how by use of the article
sentences can become nouns within larger sentences. Like I say, it was
like a light came on. Now I can look at unfamiliar text and start to see
the structure of what is being said.
I find this an aspect of greek that is really different compared to
English. I find that Machen and Dobson really miss something by not
putting more emphasis on that.
Chuck
Kodiak, Alaska