Talk:Modern Greek grammar

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[edit] New article outline

Nice job with all this material for a new article. Just a few thoughts:

• I think the amount of paradigm tables should be reduced a bit. Of course, we can't write a full grammar of Modern Greek here anyway, so we shouldn't aim to reproduce all the possible paradigms, just the most important ones.
• Some tables can be presented in a more concise fashion, I think. Especially the verb paradigms. I'm thinking of a nice way of presenting such a table that I once found in my Greek learning grammar for Germans. I'll make a draft shortly.
• "Grammar" is, of course, more than just morphology, and morphology is more than just paradigm tables. I think in some places more important than the tables themselves will be the explanations: E.g. what is an inflectional class in the first place?
• A bit of syntax should be added too, of course.

If you like, I'll join in the development of this article. I can probably find some time tonight. Lukas ^(T.|@) 14:47, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Some common forms of the verbs would be nice to have, such as, how to negate a sentence, and some small stuff like that. Where to put adverbs, etc. --Puellanivis 00:23, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Greek language article series

Could people interested in this article please have a look at a discussion I instigated at Talk:Greek language, regarding a proposed restructuring of the whole series of Greek-related language articles. Thanks! Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:30, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Demotic" and "Standard Modern Greek"

Does the 'proposition' section make enough of an argument to imply in the head that modern Greek grammar contains elements of purification? Kathareuousa influences are mainly found on vocabulary. To claim that Standard Greek and Demotic Greek are different idioms due to katharevousan's influence is something truly "pulled by the hair". Britannica is the only source I've ever seen to support this claim. It needs to be further researched. Miskin 00:17, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The relation between "Standard Modern Greek"/"Νεοελληνική Κοινή" and "Demotic" proper has been quite a big issue in modern Greek linguistics. I can certainly find you some references. Yes, there are "learned" elements in SMG grammar. Much is just vocabulary, but the vocabulary brings with it whole new gramatical forms that didn't exist in pure Demotic. Off the top of my head, what I was thinking of are mostly inflectional paradigms, like:

• adjectives in -ής/-ες (διεθνής)
• feminine nouns in -ος (οδός)
• feminine plurals in -εις/-εων (πόλεις)
• neuter nouns in -ος (βάθος)
• various minor verb classes (εξαρτάται, ενδείκνυται...)
• participles preserving reduplication (τετελεσμένος)
• various other participle forms (επήγων, μέλλων, ...)

Fut.Perf. ☼ 00:44, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm aware of those mentioned influences but in my opinion they are overexaggerated. For example, unless someone claims that toponyms like Paros, Andros, Rhodos and Samos fell out of use, the second point is exaggerated. Similarly for the 4rth, I doubt that words like 'μάκρος' existed in Katharevousa. I'm not sure about the origin of plural in -eis. All the rest can be more safely seen as loan words rather than grammatical rules. Despite all influences, it's absurde to say that Standard Greek is a different idiom from Demotic because of a number of Katharevousa loan words (which is the only concrete influence anyway). Most sources claim that Demotic replaced Katharevousa as the official Greek language, and it didn't transform into something else. Miskin 10:18, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I thought I'd properly avoided giving any definite statement about whether SMG and Dem. constitute "separate" varieties. (If you read closely, the sentence in the intro is primarily stating their fundamental identity, only with a "but" added.) Anyway, that SMG has an overall character of a compromise variety with significant admixtures of Kath., including grammar and phonology, is indeed consensus in the literature. Babiniotis was making much of that idea back in the 70s or 80s when he was promoting his notion of modern "koine"; Mackridge (1985) is a authoritative treatment, Horrocks (1997) devotes the last chapter of his book to it. His list of learned features in grammar is similar to what I sketched out above, but contains quite a few more. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:49, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I see you removed your "fact" tag, so I guess we can regard this as clarified for now. But thanks for questioning it anyway, because that shows there's room for some expansion of this topic, maybe in a separate article on Greek language question or a separate article on Demotic Greek. The picture I get from the literature is that during the 60s/70s, the political rhetorics of the "language struggle" very much worked in terms of a strict dichotomy between Dem. and Kath., and both sides regarded any "mixed" forms with some ideological misgivings. That's why, when the relevant political decisions were made after 1974, they were made in terms of "replacing Kath. with Dem." It was only a few linguists at first who drew attention to the fact that linguistic reality had in fact moved on independently and was producing these convergent koine phenomena. Interesting stuff. - I'll add Mackridge and perhaps Babiniotis to the sources; actually you were right there should be a footnote where your "fact" tag was. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)