From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 06 2000 - 09:40:00 EDT
At 8:20 AM -0500 9/6/00, Perry L. Stepp wrote:
>Does anyone know of an introductory grammar that introduces verb endings
>"cross-ways"?
>
>The "normal" way of teaching verbs is to introduce the endings by case:
>first, you study the Present-Active-Indicative endings, and then go on to
>aorists, imperfects, etc.
"Case" is generally regarded as a category descriptive of nouns,
adjectives, and participles rather than of verbs, but I think you make
yourself clear anyhow.
>When I first studied Greek, we (using a textbook that the professor wrote
>and published himself) instead learned all the 1st person-Active-Indicative
>endings for our model verbs.
>
>So instead of walking around the second week singing the P-A-I endings under
>my breath, "W-EIS-EI-OMEN-ETE-OUSI(N)", I was singing "W-ON-SW-SA-KA-KEIN"
>(the endings for the 1st singular-A-I present, imperfect, future, aorist,
>perfect, and pluperfect [respectively] of LUW.)
>
>Are there any generally available introductory grammars that introduce the
>verbs this way?
This does seem rather bizarre; unless you can relocate your professor and
his store of self-published textbooks, I doubt seriously you'll find
anything that matches such a description. I even wonder whether you might
be remembering the typical formations of principal parts with their
tense-stems included, since the -S- of the future and of the aorist, and
the -K- of the perfect and pluperfect are not really parts of the ending
but of the tense-stem. I certainly learned principal parts as, e.g.,
PAIDEUW/PAEIDEUSW/EPAIDEUSA/PEPAIDEUKA/PEPAIDEUMAI/EPAIDEUQHN
and since the principal parts and dictionary look-up forms are all based
upon first-person morphology, I really suspect that's more likely what
you're remembering. But admittedly that's only a guess.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
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