Logos Morphology and Greek Deponent Verbs: Observations and Suggestions

As my primary area of interest is NT Greek, what follows primarily applies to it. I have a few observations and opinions, a short excursus concerning deponent verbs, and a sincere suggestion/request.

Observations and Opinions:

Over the last several years I have observed that Logos has been moving away from other morphological tagging (MT) systems (e.g., Friberg, GRAMCORD, Swanson, etc.) in favor of its own in-house system. I can understand this as it allows Logos to simplify/unify things by using a single system (database) across all resources, with the added advantage of avoiding licensing costs and issues (legacy issues aside).
I think that students of the NT would benefit from a standard or de facto MT system. I also think that Logos is uniquely positioned to provide that MT system, especially in light of its apparent working relationship with the Society of Biblical Literature.
I generally like the Logos MT system and appreciate that it essentially follows the categories in Daniel Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics.
I recall that a few years ago (possibly about the time L4 was released) Logos called for development of new paradigms in teaching/learning/studying Greek based on resources such as those found in Logos. I wholeheartedly concurred with Logos' vision. I was especially excited about the prospect of developing teaching materials that moved away from traditional vocabulary and paradigm memorization, and that focused on grammar and syntax.
The present Logos MT system has one deficiency that obstructs the vision of item 4 above. That deficiency is how the present MT system handles deponent verbs.

An Excursus on Deponent Verbs:

I am well aware of the disagreement among Greek grammarians over the nature of deponent verbs. Those disagreements aside, what remains is the fact that certain Greek verbs with middle/passive inflectional endings are translated in the active voice. Friberg and Swanson in their MT systems have a method for identifying deponent verbs. Unfortunately Logos does not. By not identifying deponent verbs Logos does a disservice to its users, particularly those without very strong traditional skills and those who came to Greek via a nontraditional approach.

By modifying its MT system to include identification of deponent verbs, Logos would take what could be the final step in laying the foundation upon which the called for new paradigms for learning/using NT Greek could be built. I submit that it would be far far easier for those who don't like or who question the deponent verb classification to look past the new tags, than for those who accept it to double check many if not most of the verbs presently tagged as M, P, or U. It would also alert the uninformed to the existence of deponent verbs.

Suggestion/Request:

I would like to suggest and request that Logos sincerely examines the possibility of modifying its present Greek MT system to identify deponent verbs.

Should Logos consent to undertake this admittedly large task and provide updated resources, I would further suggest they establish a dedicated email address for submitting any possible corrections, such as they have done for their syntax database. This would go far in establishing Logos MT as the standard.

May God give you discernment and direction in this matter.

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Comments

Donnie Hale

Interesting write-up, Terry. Comments & questions:

a) I'm not familiar with Friberg or Swanson MT systems (I do have the Friberg lexicon). How do those systems identify deponent verbs?

b) Would you advocate following those systems, or would you advocate a different approach? Suggestions?

c) How would you handle verbs which over which is disagreement as to whether the lemma is an active form or deponent? If I recall correctly, "euangelizo" vs. "euangelizomai" is one such verb, with about 2/3 of my resources having the lemma as an active form and the other 1/3 having it as a deponent verb.

An interested bystander...

Donnie

Terry M. Moore

Hi Donnie,

Good questions.

a) I'm not familiar with Friberg or Swanson MT systems (I do have the Friberg lexicon). How do those systems identify deponent verbs?

Like Logos, Friberg has tags for active, middle, passive, and undefined or what he calls "either". In addition he has tags for middle deponent (D), passive deponent (O), and middle or passive deponent (N). Swanson has active, middle, and passive, but omits undefined. He also lumps all deponent (D) together .

b) Would you advocate following those systems, or would you advocate a different approach? Suggestions?

I don't advocate switching the whole Logos system to one of these others--they have their own issues and Logos' is essentially sound. What I would like to see is for users to get a heads up that the verb is deponent. Logos could expand their present voice tags to include deponent verbs; preferably adopting a methodology like Friberg's that made a distinction between deponent middle, passive, and undefined could be made.

c) How would you handle verbs which over which is disagreement as to whether the lemma is an active form or deponent? If I recall correctly, "euangelizo" vs. "euangelizomai" is one such verb, with about 2/3 of my resources having the lemma as an active form and the other 1/3 having it as a deponent verb.

This is part of the debate in deponent verbs and indicative of the challenge Logos would have to be willing to undertake. There would have to be a good amount of "hand checking" done to create the database. Lets look at two examples:

First yours.Since εὐαγγελίω occurs in the active voice in the NT, a case can be made that it is not a true deponent verb (lexical not -ομαι but -ω). Logos correctly tags the 2 active (e.g., Rev 10:7) and 8 passive (e.g., Lk 16:16) voice occurrences. The 44 middle voice occurrences are interesting. Though all tagged as middle voice, they are all translated as active; though they all could have also been translated as reflexive middle (Ro 15:19, to proclaim the gospel myself). The middle voice here may be as A.T Robertson says, "Sometimes the variation from the active is too minute for translation into English."
Next look at γι'νομαι. Its lexical form is -ομαι and it occurs in the active, middle, passive, and either middle or passive voices. In all cases it is translated as active.

Donnie, this wouldn't be easy and Logos would have to decide if it is feasible or worthwhile. The alternative is that one either has to know or look up each verb+voice to determine how to translate it. Having said that something just occurred to me.

The root of my taking up this cause is that I've been working on a new grammar to teach NT Greek in a nontraditional way using Logos, and I was having difficulty with how to teach identification of deponent verbs. The now obvious and simple answer is to work primarily from an interlinear text with MTs like the Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament (LGNTI). I should be able to develop a few simple "rules" for alerting students to the possible need to examine a verb more closely to see if it's deponent.

So thanks for asking your questions! In answering them it looks like I've found an answer for myself. [:D]

God bless,
--Terry

Donnie Hale

... I was having difficulty with how to teach identification of deponent verbs.

Is it not enough to point to verbs whose lemmas end in "omai", noting that as with everything else in N.T. Greek there are exceptions and a few open questions? That's how I was taught, and what I've seen in the extra grammars I've consulted. It's only my OCD nature on this stuff that makes me know (as a bit of a novice) that has even made me aware of the edge cases.

Let me know if you get your grammar to the point that you want some proofreading or feedback. I've done a reasonable amount of that for one of my professors. Not Greek work, but it was my finding a couple dozen previously unknown errors in the grammar we used that let him to ask me to proof other stuff he was writing / editing...

Good chatting with you,

Donnie

Jerry M

Have you seen this thread on deponent verbs?

Greek deponent verbs - Logos Bible Software Forums

Terry M. Moore

Donnie,

Thanks again for your input and I understand the OCD thing. Language is messy, isn't it? The vision I have is to develop a nontraditional methodology for teaching NT Greek using the new tools that have become available with computers. I hope to avoid much of the traditional memorization of vocabulary and paradigms, and instead focus very early on grammar, syntax, and the meaning of the text. We will see what God has in this.

Regard,
--Terry

Rick Brannan (Logos)

Hi Terry

I would like to suggest and request that Logos sincerely examines the possibility of modifying its present Greek MT system to identify deponent verbs.

Thanks for the well thought out suggestion.

One major difference between Friberg and Swanson (on the one hand) and the Logos morph (on the other) is that Friberg and Swanson only deal with the New Testament. The Logos morph deals with a much wider corpus — millions of words compared to the ~138,000 of the Greek NT — including classical stuff (Perseus), LXX, Apostolic Fathers, Greek Pseudepigrapha, Josephus and Philo.

And a single limited corpus (e.g. the Fribergs and Swanson), deponency, while slippery, is easier to work out. In an essentially unlimited corpus (classical and hellenistic Greek) deponency is nigh impossible to work out. That said, we have handled some things in the NT only (type/subtype of conjunctions, types of adverbs/particles, etc.) yet are in the morph classification applied to all texts. However, that has led to some confusion among folks who search, say, the LXX or Josephus for particular types of conjunctions and get no hits. This leads me to be wary of introducing changes to the morphological scheme that apply only to one particular corpus (NT).

So, overall, I'd say that if one is interested in deponency, then Swanson and Friberg are two great places to look for information and examples. This is one of the reasons we offer multiple morphologies of the Greek NT.

Hope this helps. I do honestly appreciate the suggestion, but I think the reality is that working out deponency in the entire available Greek corpus when folks can't even agree on deponency in the relatively small corpus of the NT is more than we want to bite off right now.

Terry M. Moore

Hi Rick,

Hope this helps. I do honestly appreciate the suggestion, but I think the reality is that working out deponency in the entire available Greek corpus when folks can't even agree on deponency in the relatively small corpus of the NT is more than we want to bite off right now.

Thank you for your kind and enlightening response. I can now see how my personal interests in the NT created some tunnel vision on my part. I also recognize my initial perception of what would be entailed in such an undertaking by Logos was short by at least an order or magnitude. I will look at workarounds for my particular need.

Thanks again for the "home office" response and thanks for the exceptional set of tools that Logos is.

--Terry

Chad M. Foster

If you really want to see where potential deponant verbs are you could 1) do a morph search for lemma:*μαι , then 2) make a filter, 3)add a highlight then 4) they would show up in your text.