From: Trevor & Julie Peterson (spedrson@thesimpsons.com)
Date: Fri Jun 02 2000 - 21:51:33 EDT
Parsing isn't something native English speakers tend to think about, because
the inflection of English is minimal. ("Inflection" refers to the way that
words change form to adjust meaning.) But we do have some of the same
factors to think about. Take the examples:
He runs.
She ran.
They run.
The "s" ending (at least here) indicates a singular subject and present
tense. The change from "u" to "a" indicates past tense. In Greek as well,
the form of a word can tell you about number and tense (although tense in
Greek isn't quite what you might expect from the way tense functions in
English). But it also indicates voice (active, passive, middle), mood (for
instance, the difference between stating a fact--indicative--and giving a
command--imperative), and person. In English we typically have to add other
words to achieve these shades of meaning, whereas Greek can convey them
simply by changing an ending, lengthening a vowel, etc.
So when you parse a verb, you are trying to identify all the things its form
can tell you, to get at the full meaning of the verb as it's being used in
the sentence. There's more to it than that (since the meaning of words is
governed by how words fit together with one another in a given context), but
it's one of the basic steps in the process.
Trevor Peterson
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Don Myers [mailto:dmyers@rmci.net]
> Sent: Friday, June 02, 2000 4:42 PM
> To: Biblical Greek
> Subject: Question
>
>
> I am trying to understand the term parsing? Can any one shed a definition
> for me.
>
> Don Myers
>
>
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