From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 23 1998 - 19:31:48 EDT
At 11:15 AM -0400 7/23/98, Tom Conry wrote:
>First of all, I want to thank everyone for all their help. I'm at the
>very
>beginning of this process and so can only understand perhaps
>ten percent of the conversation, but that conversation is
>genuinely useful. I'm looking forward to understanding more.
Welcome to the List, Tom. I'd like to think you've come to the right place
for this sort of question and I think that there are plenty here who are
ready to respond to even beginners' questions.
>My question goes to using the dictionary - or more precisely,
>the _Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other
>early Christian literature_ which is an adaptation of Walter
>Bauer's work by Arndt and Gingrich.
And that is indeed the standard lexicon for GNT work. We're eagerly
awaiting publication of a new edition of it, hopefully before another whole
year has passed.
> Our class is in the trenches,
>parsing verbs and writing out forms. I would like to be able to
>look up the infinitive forms of BALLW and KELEUW. So, I
>go to the big book, and I find a discussion of the uses of
>BALLW for example, and a few of its forms listed in the first
>paragraph, but - at least to my eye - no infinitives. Is there
>anywhere where I can go to check my verb forms? It doesn't
>seem useful to me to memorize my mistakes! (Or maybe it
>is, but it would also be useful to memorize the correct forms
>and see where I have gone off the tracks.) Thanks for any
>help you can give.
What the lexicon (whether Bauer/Arndt/Gingrich/Danker or LSJ) will normally
offer you as the first entry is the first person singular of the present
indicative. If this is active (like BALLW or KELEUW) then the present
active infinitive will always be a form with the ending -EIN appended to
the present STEM (that first person singular form without the first
signular ending -W), hence BALLEIN or KELEUEIN. If that first entry is a
middle/deponent form (e.g. GINOMAI, ERCOMAI), then the present stem will be
that form without the first singular ending -OMAI, and the infinitive
ending will be -ESQAI, hence for those two verbs the infinitives will be
GINESQAI and ERCESQAI. When you're asked for an infinitive of a verb, what
is usually meant is, in fact, this present infinitive--and usually this
will be the active form in -EIN. You should realize, however, that any verb
that is not defective may well have both an active and a middle/passive
infinitive in the present and perfect "tenses" while it may have THREE
different infinitives in the aorist and future (active, middle, and
passive).
The work of learning Greek "in the trenches" is more than anything else a
struggle to master all the forms of the verb. Whatever textbook you are
using should have an appendix that shows you the standard conjugational
forms of both normal verbs and irregular verbs. You'll probably want to
consult those charts of verb conjugation frequently as you learn more and
more about how the verbs are conjugated. Don't be discouraged: the Greek
verb is an immensely complex instrument but it can be very precise and if
you keep at it long enough and hard enough, you'll find it is a marvel of
precise expression. Good luck!
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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