dickey's prose comp: chapter two

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daivid
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dickey's prose comp: chapter two

Post by daivid »

preliminary exercise 2
- I was really stumped by "s)".

o) the only brotherὁ μόνος ἀδελφός
p) only the brother μόνος ὁ ἀδελφός
s) the stones alone remained (2 ways, do not translate “remained”) ὁ λίθοι μόνοι, μόνοι ὁ λίθοι
perhaps ὁ λίθοι ἐν τούτῳ μόνοι??? or is the sense of remained conveyed by "to be" hence ὁ λίθοι ἦσαν μόνοι
t) the only stones ὁ μόνος λίθος.
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jeidsath
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Re: dickey's prose comp: chapter two

Post by jeidsath »

My understanding:

o) You are also asked to make this accusative: τὸν μόνον ἀδελφόν
p) You are also asked to make this genitive: μόνου τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ
s) οἱ λίθοι μόνοι or μόνοι οἱ λίθοι I would think. I suppose it could have that meaning in context. Maybe she is just trying to signal that this should be nominative. I don't really like the question, personally.
t) οἱ μόνοι λίθοι

You may want to consider adding the sentences with answers in the back of the book to Anki or another flashcard program to drill yourself on agreement.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

mwh
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Re: dickey's prose comp: chapter two

Post by mwh »

Shouldn’t p) be μόνον ὁ ἀδελφός (μονον του αδελφου in gen.)? μονον adverb not adjective. (Cf. e.g. “not only the brother but the sister too,” ου μονον ὁ αδελφος αλλα και ἡ αδελφή.)

s) Again, μονον οἱ λιθοι if it means “only the stones remained.” (Everything else was gone.) As in “Only the brother was there, not the sister too.”
But οι λιθοι μονοι (or μονοι οι λιθοι) if it means “the stones remained alone.” (They were there all alone, all by themselves.) But the English doesn’t really suggest this.

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Re: dickey's prose comp: chapter two

Post by jeidsath »

My Greek isn't really good enough to tell the difference in meaning between adverb/adjective here, but I would think that you are right, and that would be better Greek.

However, for the purposes of this exercise Dickey is very clear that it is only about the attributive/predicative distinction of adjectives, and specifies a limited vocabulary which only seems to include μόνος adjective, not adverb.

And her examples in the text are:

ὁ μόνος παῖς the only child
μόνος ὁ παῖς ἦλθεν only the child came / the child alone came / the child came alone
μόνος ἦλθεν he alone came / he came alone

I'm not trying to argue for Dickey, just trying to present what I think she's doing. I mostly stick with Sidgwick, who never seems to write awkward Greek, as far as I can tell.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

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Re: dickey's prose comp: chapter two

Post by mwh »

That will teach me to butt in without having the book. So jeidsath your corrections must have been right.

daivid you’re still having trouble with the basics of an inflected language. In s) didn’t ὁ λίθοι look wrong to you? And t) obviously has to be plural. Of course you recognize these things once they’re pointed out, but why do they need pointing out?

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Re: dickey's prose comp: chapter two

Post by daivid »

Thanks to both of you for the corrections. These are exercises that I need to repeat
jeidsath wrote: s) οἱ λίθοι μόνοι or μόνοι οἱ λίθοι I would think. I suppose it could have that meaning in context. Maybe she is just trying to signal that this should be nominative. I don't really like the question, personally.
Umm, I am a little reassured that it isn't just me who finds that question really difficult. There is nothing wrong with including more challenging questions but not giving answers for those questions is a problem.
mwh wrote: daivid you’re still having trouble with the basics of an inflected language. In s) didn’t ὁ λίθοι look wrong to you? And t) obviously has to be plural. Of course you recognize these things once they’re pointed out, but why do they need pointing out?
You should know my answer by now. :) It's because I do not have access to simple graded readers that I can read quickly and so expose myself to these forms in quantity.

(I also do tend to make very basic mistakes when I am confronted with a sentence that has something really difficult in it as was true of s.)
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Re: dickey's prose comp: chapter two

Post by mwh »

daivid wrote:You should know my answer by now. :) It's because I do not have access to simple graded readers that I can read quickly and so expose myself to these forms in quantity.
daivid this just won’t wash. You should not need graded readers to know that ὁ is singular not plural, or to see that ὁ λίθοι is wrong. It’s as if when you see “the” you think “ὁ” and altogether forget that Greek is an inflected language, when that is something that should help you read Greek. Turn your back on conscious learning and you’ll never internalize the language.

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Re: dickey's prose comp: chapter two

Post by jeidsath »

I strongly suggest Anki flash cards. You can do something like the following:

Card 1:

the stone of the stone with the stone to the stone
ὁ λίθος τοῦ λίθου τῷ λίθῳ τὸν λίθον

Card 2:

the stones of the stones with the stones to the stones
οἱ λίθοι τῶν λίθων τοῖς λίθοις τοὺς λίθους

If you do something like that for all of the nouns and adjective in Morwood's grammar, you'll internalize the forms pretty well in a few weeks.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

daivid
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Re: dickey's prose comp: chapter two

Post by daivid »

mwh wrote:
daivid wrote:You should know my answer by now. :) It's because I do not have access to simple graded readers that I can read quickly and so expose myself to these forms in quantity.
daivid this just won’t wash. You should not need graded readers to know that ὁ is singular not plural, or to see that ὁ λίθοι is wrong.
You're right I don't need a graded reader to know this. The trouble is that, despite knowing that the article must agree in number with its noun, I still make mistakes like that. The problem is that the forms have not been fully internalized. Hence it didn't feel wrong even though once I looked at it consciously I knew it to be wrong.
mwh wrote: It’s as if when you see “the” you think “ὁ” and altogether forget that Greek is an inflected language, when that is something that should help you read Greek. Turn your back on conscious learning and you’ll never internalize the language.
There is a limit to how many rules I can consciously apply at the same time. In the example below the sentence was difficult for other reasons so checking for number agreement dropped out.

I have turned my back on conscious learning because I have tried hard using that method and it doesn't work.
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daivid
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Re: dickey's prose comp: chapter two

Post by daivid »

mwh wrote:Shouldn’t p) be μόνον ὁ ἀδελφός (μονον του αδελφου in gen.)? μονον adverb not adjective. (Cf. e.g. “not only the brother but the sister too,” ου μονον ὁ αδελφος αλλα και ἡ αδελφή.)

s) Again, μονον οἱ λιθοι if it means “only the stones remained.” (Everything else was gone.) As in “Only the brother was there, not the sister too.”
But οι λιθοι μονοι (or μονοι οι λιθοι) if it means “the stones remained alone.” (They were there all alone, all by themselves.) But the English doesn’t really suggest this.
Today going over this I hesitated between the option you suggest and the one proposed by jeidsath. It is very useful to know both are valid. Your options for s are also very helpful.
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