katante^santes

Here you can discuss all things Ancient Greek. Use this board to ask questions about grammar, discuss learning strategies, get help with a difficult passage of Greek, and more.
Post Reply
Junya
Textkit Enthusiast
Posts: 464
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2007 2:26 am
Location: Japan

katante^santes

Post by Junya »

hi. :)

what is the dictionary form (finite present indicative singular) of katante^santes ?
I think it is the aorist participle of katantao^, but what is its root verb ?
kata + anti + what ?
In the intermediate Liddell&Scott, I could find, in the antao^ article, that aor.1 was anta^sa,
but I couldnt make sure if there was another form ante^sa (for katante^santes).

mwh
Textkit Zealot
Posts: 4790
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 2:34 am

Re: katante^santes

Post by mwh »

Yes it’s aor.pple. of καταντάω, which is κατα + ἀντάω (not ἀντί-, though related). Aor. in Attic is ἤντησα, (giving ἀντήσαντες), as usual w/ -αω contract verbs. The form with alpha rather than eta is “Doric,” as routinely used in tragic lyric.

Junya
Textkit Enthusiast
Posts: 464
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2007 2:26 am
Location: Japan

Re: katante^santes

Post by Junya »

Thank you ! :D
In the article for antao^ in the largest Liddell&Scott, the forms were listed few, and aor. was not there.
There were a few forms listed in the Intermediate Liddell&Scott, and there I could see aor.1 anta^sa, but no further information about aor. forms.
How ought I to have looked up the form with e^ (ante^sa) in the dictionaries ?
(I should have remembered about the system of -ao^ verbs, though, in the first place.)

Victor
Textkit Fan
Posts: 253
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2013 1:19 am

Re: katante^santes

Post by Victor »

Junya wrote:How ought I to have looked up the form with e^ (ante^sa) in the dictionaries ?
If you look up ἤντησα in the middle Liddell you'll find it listed alphabetically alongside ἤντεον.
Junya wrote:I should have remembered about the system of -ao^ verbs, though, in the first place.
Yes, learning paradigms saves you a great deal of time in the long run.

Junya
Textkit Enthusiast
Posts: 464
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2007 2:26 am
Location: Japan

Re: katante^santes

Post by Junya »

Hi, Victor. :)
I thought the word was a compound of
anti + some root verb, which I couldn't trace in the Largest and the Intermediate,
and the listed forms of verbs in the Intermediate are usually of root verbs,
so I didn't check ante^sa.
Anyways, the laziness in consulting dictionaries seems to be still left in me.

mwh
Textkit Zealot
Posts: 4790
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 2:34 am

Re: katante^santes

Post by mwh »

Given καταντήσαντες, you should have looked up κατ-αντάω and/or κατ-αντέω. (-)αντέω doesn’t exist, and you might have encountered other compounds of ἀντάω such as ἀπ-αντάω “meet” to help you guess –άω. Anyhow, you did get as far as καταντάω. Since the aorist is perfectly regular, a dictionary may not bother giving it. It’s expected you know how contract verbs form their aorists. (-άω & –έω > -ησα, -όω > -ωσα — plus augment!)

ἀντησα you would not have found: you need to augment it, ἤντησα (aor.indic.). If the form you met with were ἤντησα, the main dictionary entry might in principle be any of αντεω, ανταω, εντεω, ενταω, ηντεω, or ηνταω! (Those dratted augments.) That’s why the more tender-hearted dictionaries may include ἤντησα as a headword and direct you to ἀντάω, while users of the big LSJ are expected to recognize the verb as ἀντάω without needing to be told.

Junya
Textkit Enthusiast
Posts: 464
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2007 2:26 am
Location: Japan

Re: katante^santes

Post by Junya »

mwh, thank you for the tips. :)
I wanted such advices. Thank you very much.
I'm learning on my own, so I'm curious about how others of orthodox education do.
The grammar I use for checking declension/conjugation tables
doesn't give the tenses other than pres. and impf. for the
contracted verbs -ao^, -eo^, -oo^.
I only know -e^sa, -o^sa ending of aor. or such -e^ & -o^ sound in pf. from the
experience (I have seen such forms listed in the
article of some root verbs in the
Intermediate or the Largest LSJ several times).

mwh
Textkit Zealot
Posts: 4790
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 2:34 am

Re: katante^santes

Post by mwh »

Sounds as if you’d better get hold of a proper grammar. As Victor said, you need to learn the standard paradigms. Both Goodwin’s and Smyth’s Greek grammars can be downloaded from this site, and either one will serve you: look at the Library menu.

Junya
Textkit Enthusiast
Posts: 464
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2007 2:26 am
Location: Japan

Re: katante^santes

Post by Junya »

mwh, thank you for keeping company with me.
I have a copy of Smyth, but have never used it for checking paradigms,
I just use it when I come across some syntactical problem.
Yes, I will use it from now on for paradigms.

But, back to the original case,
I wasn't sure if katante^santes was a form of katantao^
not because I didn't know the conjugation of -ao^ verbs,
but because I couldn't trace its root verb, and consequently was unsure if this was an -ao^ verb.
---===---===---
In the Largest LSJ, many conjugated forms are given in the articles of root verbs.
I depend on that, to cover my poor memory of paradigms and poor knowledge of irregular forms.
When I encounter an unknown verb to me, I never fail to check the root verb in the Largest LSJ, to find a form there which I need to find.
---===---===---
So I would like to check the root verb of this katantao^ to see if there are given a lot of conjugated forms in its article.
In the article of antao^, there was very few forms given.
So it wouldn't be the root verb.
How am I supposed to trace its root verb ?
---===---===---
I would be grateful if you gave me an advice from your experience on the variation of
the methods of guessing, to guess out what would be the root verb of a verb form.
If it is tiresome to list up all the variations, then tell me about the more difficult cases.

mwh
Textkit Zealot
Posts: 4790
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 2:34 am

Re: katante^santes

Post by mwh »

I’m not quite sure what you mean by the root verb—the form of a verb given as a headword in LSJ? (1 sing. pres. indic.) Grammarians do speak of verbs as having “roots,” however (αντ in the case of αντάω).

It’s advisable to learn typical “principal parts.” Learn your paradigms (conjugations), and then if you know a verb’s principal parts you can—in theory—recognize (or even form) any form of the verb in question. Of course, you may not care to learn all of a verb’s principal parts, and you should not need to: most of them are fairly predictable or fall into certain patterns which repeat from verb to verb. You may be tempted just to pick them up as you go along. You can do this, but as Victor said, it will certainly save time in the long run, and help avoid confusion, if you learn them, or at least observe how they typically work. That way you can grasp the language’s verbal system as a system, and see the big picture.
For the principal parts of contract verbs, refer to Smyth para.387. (Para.385 gives the “paradigms”—you have to know your conjugations!) With one small exception (a few -άω contract verbs instead of eta keep alpha, lengthened, in the non-present-stem tenses) all contract verbs behave in exactly the same way.
Some verbs—ἀντάω is one—are more common in compounds than in the simple form, so you’ll find more forms attested in them. But they’re all perfectly regular and entirely predictable.

Some practical hints for procedure with unknown verb forms:
1. If it looks as if it has an augment, remove the augment and look up what’s left. (It will be an imperfect or aorist indicative, so you may be in a position to guess what the present will be.) Remember compound verbs normally augment after the prepositional prefix. The augment is ἐ-, but if the verb itself begins with a vowel, the augment may coalesce with that vowel to form a different vowel or diphthong (often ἠ-). E.g. ἀπῄτει you’d find under ἀπαιτέω, the simple verb being αἰτέω. (The various combinations will be listed by Smyth.)
2. If it looks like a “second” or “strong” aorist, however, e.g. λαβών, λαβεῖν or πεσών, πεσεῖν (note the position of the accents), you need to know the present (λαμβάν-, πίπτ-) in order to find the main dictionary entry. Likewise with –μι verbs (e.g. θείς, θεῖναι, “from” τίθημι). Another reason to learn principal parts!
3. If it looks as if it’s reduplicated (perfect tense, or pluperf. if augmented), remove the reduplication and look up what’s left.

These rules won’t always be sufficient, but they'll work much of the time. There’ll always be frustrating cases, however. Irregular (or apparently irregular) and awkward forms are more likely to be given entries in the shorter versions of LSJ than in the big one.

That’s enough from me!
Last edited by mwh on Wed Feb 04, 2015 4:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Junya
Textkit Enthusiast
Posts: 464
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2007 2:26 am
Location: Japan

Re: katante^santes

Post by Junya »

mwh,
I'm glad you showed me how you do. :D

By root verb I mean the original verb of a compound verb,
as lambano^ of katalambano^, temno^ of prosapotemno^.
------------
In this light, could you read my previous post again ?
(I quoted it at the bottom of this post for your convenience.)

I seem to be usually going though all the process you mentioned, but now I found that I need to
see more of the section on vowel coalescing phenomenon in grammar, which I am rather weak at.
----====----====----
====----====----====
Now I tell you how I do.
Give me your opinion if there is.
When I meet a verb form I can't tell what tense it is in and what its "root verb" is, katante^santes for example,
I take apart prefixes and look up the remnant part in the Intermediate (or in the Abridged).
If it has a kind of irregularity, I will surely find some like forms as entries, where the Intermediate implies to me what its "root verb" is.
Then I pull up the Largest LSJ and go to the entry of the "root verb",
and there I will see a lot of conjugated forms listed, and I look through them to
find out the exact tense of the verb I met, katante^santes for example.
----====----====----
----====----====----
But this time, I couldn't find the "root verb" of katante^santes in this mothod.
I couldn't go beyond antao^.
So I got stumped, totally forgetting to check if it was an -ao^ verb, and threw a post in this forum.


back to the original case, I wasn't sure if katante^santes was a form of katantao^ not because I didn't know the conjugation of -ao^ verbs, but because I couldn't trace its root verb, and consequently was unsure if this was an -ao^ verb.
---===---===---
In the Largest LSJ, many conjugated forms are given in the articles of root verbs. I depend on that, to cover my poor memory of paradigms and poor knowledge of irregular forms. When I encounter an unknown verb to me, I never fail to check the root verb in the Largest LSJ, to find a form there which I need to find.
---===---===---
So I would like to check the root verb of this katantao^ to see if there are given a lot of conjugated forms in its article. In the article of antao^, there was very few forms given. So it wouldn't be the root verb. How am I supposed to trace its root verb ?
---===---===---
I would be grateful if you gave me an advice from your experience on the variation of the methods of guessing, to guess out what would be the root verb of a verb form. If it is tiresome to list up all the variations, then tell me about the more difficult cases.

mwh
Textkit Zealot
Posts: 4790
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 2:34 am

Re: katante^santes

Post by mwh »

The answers are there in what I’ve already written.

What you are calling the “root verb” of καταντήσαντες is ἀντάω.

A “root verb” sometimes (as with ανταω) has fewer attested forms than its compounds (e.g. απανταω).

You should not expect to find all attested forms given in the dictionary. But any of the L&S lexica will give most if not all of the principal parts, plus forms that aren’t fully predictable. And the shorter ones will often give a potentially problematic form its own entry, with cross-ref to the verb's main entry. At this stage I wouldn't recommend using the big LSJ unless you really need to; there's such a thing as too much information.

Taking off the prepositional prefix in compounds is usually straightforward. I think you already know that κατα, απο, επι, υπο, δια etc. (but not περι) elide when a vowel follows.

For the form taken by the augment when the verb itself begins with a vowel (basically a lengthening of the vowel), see Smyth 435 (and also 431).

Junya
Textkit Enthusiast
Posts: 464
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2007 2:26 am
Location: Japan

Re: katante^santes

Post by Junya »

Thank you very much, mwh. :)
I greatly appreciate your kindness.


I need the big LSJ (because I'm translating Greek texts), and, having gone through
much suffering, I'm already used to that intimidating dictionary.
Although I'm still on the beginners' level, I'm partly developed above that level.
I've been messing around with Greek for these 6 or 7 years.
First year I read an elementary grammar written in Japanese, and then straightway
started translating Greek texts I was interested in.
So 5 or 6 years of translating experience, using the Intermediate and the Largest LSJ.
Of course for the first 2 or 3 years I really suffered from the
flood of information (and those tiny micro-letters) of the Largest.
---===---===---
But totally self-taught, I didn't know how to train myself in basics.
I have been doing things without firm basics.
Now I decided to re-start the basic learning.
----====----====----
Till today, I have never looked into the morphology section of Smyth, so I didn't know
I could analyse the form of a verb by the knowledge from that section of Smyth.
In tracing the tense or "root verb" of a verb, I was too much dependent on the dictionaries.

Thank you, mwh,
the communication with was very meaningful. :)

mwh
Textkit Zealot
Posts: 4790
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 2:34 am

Re: katante^santes

Post by mwh »

Good. I do think you’ll make faster progress, and find reading less laborious and more satisfying, if you combine your reading with some studying of verb conjugations. If you want to read both fluently and accurately, you need to be able to recognize forms without having to search for specific attestation in LSJ. LSJ is a truly great dictionary, but even experienced readers find the Intermediate handier to use.

Post Reply