Greek Grammar. A Comprehensive Grammar of the Modern Language

by David Holton

Ships from and sold by diaspora.books

Genres: Reference, Linguistics, Language

495 pages, Unknown Binding

First published October 15, 1997

Reviews

[Paula C · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say -- this is a breathtakingly comprehensive and intricate gem. I love dipping back into this from time to time and never cease to marvel at the Herculean efforts undertaken by Messrs Holton, Mackridge and Philippaki-Walburton to produce this grammatical bible of modern Greek. I doff my hat to the authors.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book displays amazing depth in its coverage of the Greek language. It is divided into three parts: 1) the sound and writing system, 2) morphology (declensions, conjugations, etc.), and 3) syntax (actual usage). The first part gets hopelessly technical at times, using such specialized terms as "fricative," "plosive," etc., and is often beyond the average reader. But the other two parts are more readable, even if they too get weighed down at times with terms such as "proparoxytone," "inchoative," "monolectic," "interrogative intonation contour," and "irrealis expression," which come across as rather pretentious. The book covers a wide range of topics that any student of Modern Greek would need or want to know. In addition, it's useful not just as a reference but also as a teaching tool. This book definitely deserves an A for its ambition, because I'm not aware of any other books written in English that give such an extensive treatment of Modern Greek. Although beginners would not want to start out with this book, they still might find it helpful as a reference.

While an excellent book overall, it does have its share of deficiencies. For instance, it makes absolutely no mention of how to decline an irregular feminine noun such as ισχρύς. It also wrongly lumps the declension of όρος (mountain) in with that of all the other neuter nouns ending in -ος. In addition, it doesn't go into nearly enough detail about the different kinds of participles (especially the active past, which has two different forms), leaving the reader guessing about both how to form/decline them and how to use them. (It does give some examples--just not enough.) The book also completely neglects the topic of periphrastic verbs such as έχω ανάγκη. So, just because the book calls itself "comprehensive," that doesn't mean it covers all there is to know about Greek grammar, and you will be left with some questions. Sometimes the explanations in the book just aren't very clear either. There are also plenty of other inaccuracies and inconsistencies to be found. For example, on p. 196, the book states: "We include all second-conjugation verbs which form their active perfective stem otherwise than in -ησ- [in the following table]." That is definitely an exaggeration, because there are many such verbs missing from that table. Who are the authors trying to kid? Here are a few more examples. On p. 495, the book states: "Like μέχρι, ως can be followed by και+noun phrase in accusative...." This, of course, implies that the authors have already mentioned that μέχρι can be followed by such a construction, when in fact they have not, even though μέχρι is discussed about 10 pages earlier. And on p. 548, the authors claim that the sentence "Έβαλα του Γιάννη να φάει" contains two direct objects, which is clearly wrong, according to their own definition of "direct object" in the glossary. In addition, the section in which this sentence appears, 5.3.4.1, is poorly organized. After the first three pages, it just seems to start throwing information at the reader in a rather rambling fashion. The section needs to be cleaned up so that the second part is tied more logically to the first, or perhaps even split into two sections. Also in this section, the authors say that και (or που) can replace να in certain clauses without a change in meaning, but they never explain why the verbs often change tenses (such as from κλαίει to έκλαιγε) as well, which is rather confusing. Then in section 5.3.7, which discusses temporal clauses, absolutely no mention is made of the conjunction εκεί που, even though it's used as a temporal conjunction earlier in a sentence at the bottom of p. 521. And in their section on adversative clauses, the authors state that such clauses are "typically introduced by...παρά το γεγονός, και που, ότι...." That's a huge blunder right there; instead, it should say: "...παρά το γεγονός ότι, και που...." I could give plenty more examples, but these should suffice. Unfortunately, since the authors don't give an e-mail address for readers to submit errata, I guess they don't care to learn about problems like these either.

Furthermore, the writing style of the book is often stilted and pretentious. Ιn the sentence mentioned above, for instance, it would sound far more natural to say, "We include all second-conjugation verbs that do not form their active perfective stems in -ησ-." You can eventually get used to the authors' pompous writing style for the most part, but it's definitely a drawback and often makes for a dry read. The proofreading on the book also seems to have been rather sloppy, because you often encounter typos as well as poor punctuation. Here's a really boneheaded gaffe from p. 286: Οδηʝάει έχουιάς πιέι πολύ. Obviously what they meant is: Οδηγάει έχοντας πιει πολύ. Was the proofreader even awake on that one? ;) And sometimes the authors' translation of their Greek examples suffers when they can't even get their English right, such as in their translation of έφτασα on p. 296: "I will be there so soon that it is as if I had already done so." In grammatical English, can "done so," which indicates action, properly modify a state of being, such as "be there"? I don't think so. It would make far more sense to say, "I will be there so soon that it is as if I were already there now," or "I will be there so soon that it is as if I had already arrived." Elsewhere, they seem to think that "vice versa" is one word: "viceversa." We also have gems such as "more than one stresses" and "20 x 4 = 5." Sad to say, examples like these abound, and the English of the authors could use some serious work.

So, this book is definitely broad and comprehensive, but also rather careless and clunky at times. It gets an A (maybe even an A+) for coverage, but only a C (at best) for readability. In addition, I would not recommend it as the sole book for someone learning Greek; but as a supplement and reference, it could be indispensable.

[Daniel Evensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without question, this book is a must for any serious student of Modern Greek. The authors have gone all out here, using thousands of example sentences and phrases to demonstrate grammatical points in the most minute detail imaginable. This is far from a simplistic phrasebook or a conjugation guide to a few verbs. This is the real deal, including some uncommon usages, dialectical features, and holdovers from the "learned" classical language.

There are a few things I wondered about while I read this volume. First, I'm not entirely certain how much longer we will continue to have descriptive explanations of the sounds of a language. It seems so much more efficient these days to have some kind of digital solution. It seems such a waste of words to describe the correct pronunciation of a phrase like τον πατέρα as "the realization of a nasal before a labial consonant" when even the least experienced beginner can quickly find native pronunciation online. At least this book avoids that common mistakes of grammatical guides of the past - the frequent references to French and German pronunciation.

Second, the somewhat arbitrary decision to avoid the terms "aorist" and "subjunctive" in describing verb conjugation makes things challenging for the curious beginner. We might complain that the term aorist is imprecise; however, when we avoid this term entirely, we only serve to confuse the beginner or intermediate reader who is trying so desperately to reconcile this work with other books (and websites) on modern Greek grammar. We might not like the imprecision, but we also cannot realistically divorce modern Greek from the ancient language. "Dependent" works as a somewhat arbitrary term, though the confusion remains.

The verb chapter in general is in need of a complete rewrite. After trying for days in vain to understand the conjugation patterns as presented, I gave up, looked up each word on Wiktionary, and created my own table. It's actually not so difficult when you write it out yourself, and the patterns are a bit more clear than this book makes them out to be. It would have been nice to have all verb endings presented at once as a sort of roadmap, followed by the painstaking detail that enticed us to use this book in the first place. Instead, the current setup is extremely confusing, jumping around the various voicings and endings with little rhyme or reason.

The rest is simply marvelous. There are more than enough sentences to help the neophyte understand what is going on, and the grammatical explanations are simple and plain.

If you really want to learn Modern Greek, you need this book. Nothing else comes close.