Greek I: Introduction to Ancient Greek (2008 Autumn UCSC)
Notes on a 2008 course by Dr. Thomas Walsh.

Aging Crime History (non-USA) Language and Linguistics Natural History Philosophy Political Science Psychology Spirituality USA Modern History

Disclaimer Links. Books read recently. Best books read. Harry Potter books.

Greek 1: Introduction to Ancient Greek (2008 Autumn UCSC). Greek 2: The Saga Continues in Ancient Greek (2009 Winter UCSC). Greek 3: At last we are Reading Ancient Greek (2009 Spring UCSC).

Worthy dictionary: Buy An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon: Founded upon the 7th ed. of Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon by H. G. Liddell and Robert Scott [Hardcover: 914 pages]

An Introduction to Ancient Greek: A Literary Approach by C. A. E. Luschnig. An Introduction to Ancient Greek: A Literary Approach presents basic traditional grammar without frills and introduces Greek written by ancient Greeks, from the first day of study. From Alpha to Omega, An Introduction to Classical Greek. by Anne H. Groton.

Highlight of first 10-week Ancient Greek class:

Day 1; Day 2; Day 3; Day 4; Day 5;	Day 6; Day 7; Day 8; Day 9; Day 10;
Day 11; Day 12; Day 13; Day 14; Day 15;	Day 16; Day 17; Day 18; Day 19; Day 20;
Day 21; Day 22; Day 23; Day 24; Day 25;	Day 26; Day 27.
Vocabulary growth	Midterm; Final

Day 1

• Letters (names and sounds) of the Greek alphabet.
• Historical context.
• Read to p. 10 in Luschnig (An Introduction to Ancient Greek: A Literary Approach).

Day 2: "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy."

• Writing the Greek alphabet.

• Ancient Greek is a set of dialects.

• Start with Attic Greek, a central starting place that allows potential learning of any other dialect:
  • Mycenean: starting perhaps as early as 1400 BCE; the earliest known European language; written in Linear B, whose decipherment hinged on the guess (contrary to the fashionable wisdom that Linear B was not Greek) that is was Greek:
    • 1900: Arthur Evans discovered clay tablets with Linear B in the ruins of Knossos.
    • By 1950: Emmett Bennett deciphered the metrical system.
    • By 1950: Alice Kober (died 1950) recognized that identical groups of Linear B syllables often had different endings, suggesting inflections as in Ancient Greek; drew up tables linking symbols that seemed to have a strong grammatical relationship.
    • 1951-1953 mainly: Michael Ventris and John Chadwick leveraged Kober's work to analyze Linear B systematically and break its code. Ventris deduced pronunciation of the syllables. Chadwick (expert in ancient Greek) helped decipher the text and rebuild the vocabulary and grammar.
  • Ionic: Archaic Homeric Greek (800-700 BCE, perhaps) is a Literary Ionic.
  • Doric: of the northwest and the Spartans; adapted into Literary Doric and used for the "high-sounding" choruses in Greek tragedy.
  • Aeolic: of the east; used by Sappho and other poets.
  • Attic: used mainly for prose, while the above dialects survive for us essentially through poetry.

• Stress symbols are placed over vowels:
  • Three symbols:
    • acute (ó)
    • grave (ò)
    • circumflex (ô)
  • At most one stress per word.
  • Only the last three syllables can be the stressed one:
    • the last one or ultima can take any of the three.
    • the second from last or penult can take acute (ó) or circumflex (ô).
    • the third from last or antepenult can take acute (ó) only.

• To understand stress marks an placement, do the excellent exercise on p. 12 in Luschnig (An Introduction to Ancient Greek).

Day 3

• Consolidation of alphabet (writing, pronunciation, and transcription), particularly:
  • zeta: ζ/Ζ (sd)
  • xi: ξ/Ξ (x or ks)
  • chi: χ/Χ (kh)
  • psi: ψ/Ψ (ps)

• Placement of stress marks:
  • The magnetic-gravitational-vodoo attraction toward the end of each Greek word pulls the accent to the end of the word, and absolutely to one of the final three syllables.
  • Persistent accents:
  • Recessive accent:
    • Moves as far left (to the front of the word) as possible.
    • Occurs for most finite verbs (verb forms with a personal ending and thus the action is confined to a specific person (1°, 2°, or 3°) and number (singular or plural).

Day 4

• Reviewed transliteration exercise. House rules include:
  • show accents as in the Greek (even though these are not usually show in transliterated texts).
  • show long line over long vowels (e.g.
    • omega: ō for ω; Ō for Ω;
    • eta: ē for η; Ē for Η.
    • long-a: ā and Ā.
  • Circumflex appears over long vowel only, and so is diagnostic for an ambiguous vowel: α, ι, υ.
  • Transliterate a breathing diacritic as a "h": precedes a vowel and follows a consonant (e.g. "rh").
  • Transliterate iota-subscript as a diphthong.
  • Hellenize diphthongs in transliteration: e.g. ευ becomes "eu" (not "ey").
  • Double-gamma becomes nasalized: γγ becomes "ng" (not "gg"). See p. 6 in Luschnig.

• Grave (as in ò) accent occurs:
  • only in sentences, not on stand-alone words.
  • only on ultima, when before another accented word.
  • only when the ultima would otherwise have the acute accent.

• Verb endings for Present Indicative Active of o-verbs: the thematic vowel (if still distinct from the long ending) and the long ending itself:

  Singular (1°, 2°, 3°)	Plural (1°, 2°, 3°)
  -ω -εισ -ει	-ο -μεν -ε -τε -ουσι(ν)

• Vocabulary Batch 1 assigned: verbs on p. 24-25 in Luschnig.

Day 5

• Reviewed conjugation of Present Indicative Active for paradigm o-verb:

  Singular (1°, 2°, 3°)	Plural (1°, 2°, 3°)
  λυω λυεισ λυει	λυομεν λυετε λυουσι(ν)

• Quiz #1 on Vocabulary Batch 1:
  • Paradigm o-verb.
  • 22 o-verbs vocabulary.

• The Passive Voice: the Agent of a verb is no longer its subject. (Contrast with Active Voice, where the Agent is the verb's subject.)

• The Middle Voice: we can approximate it as similar to a reflexive verb in English, where one does something to oneself; can also apply in Greek to one's action on something that one owns.

• Verb endings for Present Indicative Passive (and Middle) of o-verbs; also infinitives (active and passive). Again note the thematic vowel (shown separately only if distinct from the long ending) and the long ending itself:

  Singular (1°, 2°, 3°)	Plural (1°, 2°, 3°)	Infinites
  -ο -μαι -ει -ε -ται	-ο -μεθα -ε -σθε -ο -νται	-ειν [Active] -ε -σθαι [Passive]

• Deponent verb: one that has a passive form only, though its meaning is active.

Day 6

• Review of Quiz #1.
• Review of homework after Day 4: Luschnig's Ex. 1.A.1 on marking stress accents.
• Review of homework after Day 5: Luschnig's Ex. 1.A.2a and b on o-verbs.

Day 7

• Review of attributes of the VERB:
  • Voice: Active; Middle; Passive. Note that the "middle-passive" is not a voice but simply a convenient term applied to the form of a verb that can serve as middle voice or as passive voice, depending upon context.
  • Number: Singular, Plural, Dual.
  • Person: 1st, 2nd, 3rd.
  • Tense: Present; Future; Past (Perfect, Imperfect, Aorist).
  • Mood.

• A brief subroutine riff on the double-tau, which is an Attic modification of older words that contained kappa-tau. e.g.:

  π ρ α τ τ ω

• Review of attributes of the NOUN:
  • Gender: M, F, N.
  • Number: Singular, Plural, Dual.
  • Case: articulates relationship of nouns to a sentence:
    • N: Nominative; subject of the sentence.
    • G: Genitive; possessive.
    • D: Dative; indirect object.
    • A: Accusative; direct object.
    • V: Vocative.

• Learn the paradigm of δíκη and associated article.

Day 8

• Quiz #2 on Vocabulary Batch 2 assigned: 5-minute heart attack of vocabulary: nouns, phrases, one adjective, particles, and prepositions, from Luschnig's Chapter 1, part B.
• Discussion of Noun cases
• Noun's dictionary entry shows:
  • Nominative.
  • Genitive: tells the declension that the noun belongs to.
  • Definite article: tells the noun's gender.
• Persistence of stress accents on nouns: move rarely (compared with accents on verbs).
• Particles and their post-positive attribute.
• Prepositions and how they take cases.
• Assignment: Lots of exercises from Luschnig.

Day 9

• Review of Quiz #2. Emphasis on learning areas widely missed: the 5 phrases that accompany nouns in the vocabulary list, the prepositions.
• Use of the adjective, matching with gender, number, case.
• Reading Greek sentences aloud and attempted translations.

Day 10

• Learning paradigm for -α and -ο declension nouns is to learn them 'down the case column':
  • Singular N-G-D-A[-V];
  • then Plural N-G-D-A[-V].
• Learning paradigm for articles is to learn them 'across the gender columns':
  • Singular M-F-N for each Case: N-G-D-A.
  • then Plural M-F-N for each Case: N-G-D-A.
• Assignment: Recite them aloud, slowly, learning the rhythm, then gradually speed up. Luschnig's Ex. 1.A.1 on marking stress accents.
• Assignment: Translating sentences from Luschnig.
• Assignment: Read the first half dozen pages of Chapter 2 of Luschnig.

Day 11

• Quiz #3: 5-minute heart attack of declining the M-F-N definite article, a simple -α F noun, a simple -οσ M noun, and a simple -ον N noun. Luschnig's Chapter 1, part B.
• Began Luschnig's Chapter 2 with:
  • Imperfect tense paradigm (Active Voice and Middle-Passive Voice).
  • Verb "to be".
• Copious homework on Imperfect tense.

Day 12

• Quiz #4: Group effort to conjugate the imperfect for four verbs on the chalk board.
• Review of the syllabic augment and the temporal augment on the imperfect verb.
• Review of how the long ultima pulls the accent forward toward the end of the word (nouns as well as verbs).
• Notice that nasal sounds tend to appear in the 1st person.

Day 13

• Review of Vocabulary Batch 3: all the new words in Luschnig's Chapter 2.
• Adjectives: Attributive versus predicate.
• Dative of means.

Day 14

• Review of preposition in both Vocabulary Batch 2 and Vocabulary Batch 3.
• Review of problems identified as common in home works:
  • For verb conjugation, be careful in dividing ending from root.
  • Attend to verb thematic vowels: ε or ο.
  • In specifying qualities of a conjugate verb: PNMTV
    P = Person (1 or 2 or 3)
    N = Number (singular or plural)
    M = Mood (indicative, subjunctive, ...)
    T = Tense (present, imperfect, ...)
    V = Voice (active/passive)
  • Drill noun declensions (1st and 2nd declension).

Day 15

• Relative pronouns and relative clauses as in Luschnig's Chapter 2.

Day 16

• Translation to English of Greek sentences using relative pronouns and relative clauses as in Luschnig's Chapter 2.

Day 17

• Review for Midterm.
• Future tense as in Luschnig's Chapter 3.

Day 18

• Future tense as in Luschnig's Chapter 3:

  Signified by "the sign of the future": sigma σ

  Labials (π, β, and φ) plus sigma convert to psi: ψ

  Palatals (κ, γ, and χ) plus sigma convert to xi: ξ

  Dentals (τ, δ, θ and ζ) plus sigma convert to psi: σ only

• Class translation of "prepared" sentences.
• Glimpse at deponent futures.
• Glimpse at irregular futures.

Day 19

• Heads-up on Archílocos, the first Greek lyric poet and a "poet of the people", to be the topic of a guest speaker in the next lesson.
• Quiz on most of Vocabulary Batch 5:
  • 28 first-declension nouns.
  • 11 adjectives.
  • 1 phrase
• Class translation of "prepared" sentences.
• Assignment: memorize 5 paradigms of α-nouns.
• Assignment: prepare Luschnig page 75, Ex 3.

Day 20

• Archílocos, the first Greek lyric poet and a "poet of the people": Prof. Iannis Petropolis (U. of Thrace) on the 1974-discovered P.Colon (papyrus of Cologne), a sub-literal poem that he interprets as a "fragmentary epode that can be seen as a post-modern poem". To us, the interpretation of the ending of the poem can be debated; but to the audience in Archílochos' time, the ending would have been unambiguous in cultural context and presentation.

Day 21

• Three demonstrative pronouns for "that" and "this"; from pp. 70-71 of Luschnig's Chapter 3.
  • The linguistic concept of "shifters" applies to words like these without a direct reference.
  • When used as demonstrative adjective (attributive position), require definite article.
  • Practice the rote declining and memorization of these pronouns.
• Translation to English of Greek sentences using relative pronouns and relative clauses

Day 22

• Quiz on Vocabulary Batch 5.
• Translation to English of Greek sentences using relative pronouns and relative clauses as in Luschnig's Chapter 3.
• Crasis (abbreviation of adjacent vowel sounds at end of one word and the start of the next).
• Preview of aorist tense and Luschnig's Chapter 4.
  The term "aorist" comes from the Greek for "undefined" or "unspecified". Use the aorist tense to express the aspect of the action simply as its occurrence. This can be called a "point" action; it occurs and is completed in an instant.
  [Use the imperfect when indicating duration or repetition or attempt of an action; use the perfect when indicating completion of the action.]

Day 23

• Aorist tense in Luschnig's Chapter 4:
  • Aorist is like a still-camera shot, whereas the imperfect is like a movie camera view.
  • Aorist give in the 3rd Principal Part: cannot be deduced from elsewhere unambiguously.
  • Aorist Active and Middle (with Passive delayed till we see the 6th Principal Part).
  • Aorist can be translated as
    • a simple past: "I stopped".
      
    • a past perfect: "I have stopped".
  • Aorist is one of the past tenses and takes the augment: exception in the Infinitive, which omits the augment and can be read as Present Tense.
  • Two types of aorist:
    • First or Sigmatic Aorist adds σ then α (tense sign) then secondary endings (similar to present tense with only a few modifications) and with orthographic changes (as in future) for a stem ending in a palatal, labial, or dental; first-person-singular ending:

      - σα

      If the stem ends with a liquid (λ or ρ) or a nasal (μ or ν) then the σ is omitted and a compensatory lengthening occurs on the last vowel of the stem:

      ε becomes ει

      α becomes η

    • Second Aorist: "thematic" tense with vowel (ο or ε) added to the stem; usually a stem change; first-person-singular ending:

      - ον

• Assignment: practice the "synopsis" of verbs, reading across the principal parts as on p. 298+ of Luschnig.
• Assignment: fill up notebooks writing out declensions and conjugations.
• Assignment: translating 10 sentences per night is "about right". So gradually complete all 63 of Greek sentences [pp. 76-77] in Luschnig's Chapter 4.

Day 24

• Review of aorist tense in Luschnig's Chapter 4.
• Review of assignment to parse and translate 17 aorist verbs.
• Additional points on the aorist (supplemented from information outside of class):
  • In English, the equivalent of the aorist is the simple past tense usually formed by adding "ed" to the verb.
  • The Greek aorist tense can sometimes be translated by the English perfect tense. [Greek's use of the perfect tense is more restricted than in English.]
  • Like the present, the aorist is often used for other moods than the indicative. The aorist represents point action in each mode. [Continuing action is represented by the present tense.]
• Assignment to memorize all three principal parts of verbs on p. 89.
• Assignment to memorize Vocabulary Batch 6.

Day 25

• Review of Aorist paradigms.
• Sentences, including:
  • Nominal Sentences (as in "The deeds are fair".
  • Use of article to disambiguate the subject.
  • Indirect statements.
  • Tense of infinitive.

Day 26

• Indirect discourse: accusative-infinitive construct.
• Review two ways to form aorist: 1st or second.
• Learn 3 principle parts of all verbs so far.
• Aorist of compound verbs.
• Review prepositions that take single and multiple cases.

Day 27

• Review of all in preparation for final exam.

Vocabulary growth

8 parts of speech plus phrases:

[Luschnig's pages]	Noun	Pronoun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb	Conjunction	Preposition	Particle	phrases	Total this batch	Total so far
Batch 1 [pp. 24-25]	-	-	-	22	1	3	-	-	-	26	26
Batch 2 [pp. 33-35]	29	-	1	-	-	-	4	3	5	42	68
Batch 3 [pp. 53-54]	8	2	17	1	3	2	3	-	3	39	107
Batch 4 [pp. 65-66]	-	-	-	11	2	1	-	-	-	14	121
Batch 5 [pp. 71-72]	28	-	11	-	-	-	2	-	1	42	163
Batch 6 [pp. 93, 98]	2	3	-	6 (1+5)	5	2	-	3	2	23	186

Midterm

• Transliteration: Greek-to-English and English-to-Greek; see especially double-gamma and other double consonants; and vowels.
• Paradigms for 1st and 2nd declension nouns.
• Use summary grammar at rear of Luschnig for O-stem (masc., neuter, and feminine) nouns and A-stem nouns.
• Paradigms of verb conjugations: present, imperfect. Infinitives. Active, and middle-passive for all. To be (Present, Imperfect, and Infinitive).
• Vocabulary, particularly nouns, verbs, prepositions, particles in context. Verbs where Middle Voice has a different meaning (besides Voice) from Active Voice. e.g.

  πεíθω	Active: I persuade.	Middle-passive + Dat.: I obey, trust. {NOT: am persuaded by}
  παúω	Active: I stop.	Middle-passive: I pause (I stop myself)

• Review sentences translated in homework: some of them will reappear in the Midterm.
• Review sentences in Luschnig but not assigned to be translated in homework: some of them will be in the Midterm.

Final

• Sentences (pick 10 of 15 to be scored): (a) translate and (b) answer a grammar question.
• Conjugate verbs:
  • Future active of STOP.
  • Future middle of STOP.
  • (First) aorist active of STOP.
  • (First) aorist middle passive of STOP.
  • (Second) aorist active of λειπω.
  • (Second) aorist middle passive of λειπω.
  • Present or imperfect of BE.
  • Present or imperfect of SAY.
• Paradigms of first and second declension nouns.
• Paradigms of demonstrative (THAT).
• Present, future, and aorist (1st person singular) of 10 of 15 verbs for which the English is given.
• Paradigm of "thief" (κλωψ)

References

An Introduction to Ancient Greek: A Literary Approach by C. A. E. Luschnig. Book blurb: C.A.E. Luschnig's An Introduction to Ancient Greek: A Literary Approach prepares students to read Greek in less than a year by presenting basic traditional grammar without frills and by introducing real Greek written by ancient Greeks, from the first day of study. From Alpha to Omega, An Introduction to Classical Greek by Anne H. Groton.

Check our disclaimer. Copyright © 2008-2009 by J. Zimmerman.

[Thanks for visiting.]