Jump to content

An English Grammar


Michael Miles

Recommended Posts

Yeah, well... I'm just going to leave this right over here and let it ferment for a while.  The intermittent indented wrapping that is taking place is going to  give my ticker a bit more than an "Oh, Snap!" moment. real. soon. now.   :)
 
Text will just start wrapping all wonky in the User Tool Editor:
post-31033-0-71450200-1448988628_thumb.png
 
And then on top of that, even if it doesn't wrap poorly in the User Tool Editor, the result in the User Tool may wrap badly anyway:
post-31033-0-81541900-1448988640_thumb.png
 
Those two attached graphics were captured with both the Editor and the Actual User Tool both in the same state (just having been saved).
 
From what I'm hearing over >>> yonder, it looks like I can attempt to fist mangle this all day and it may not get any better.  I'm not putting up a white flag.  I'm just parking this here until I either get a clue on how to alleviate this or, if it is a bug, it gets fixed.

 

Now, back to my unfrustrated but still hacking cough and runny nose.

 

It's a good day though - my gal made me steak and eggs for breakfast.  I turned 60 today.   :)

 

I have a suggestion.  Maybe Accordance could just ditch the User Tool Editor and only allow tagged HTML or even complete epub files to be imported.  Maybe even parse in PDF files (both text and/or graphics).  If you want to keep the editor, maybe we need to get the bug fixed that I understand has been in place for a while.  I'd also like the editor to make image maps.  I'm still sick, so I'll just keep rambling on here for a while.  It's not like anyone is going to read this.  How about User Tool Exports - where you can spit out the HTML that you imported?  Ok, break time.

 

Cheers,

Michael

English Grammar Condensed.acc7.zip

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

For anyone who wants to actually sit down and work through a book that teaches English grammar and diagramming at the same time I can recommend Grammar by Diagram by Cindy L. Vitto.  It's workbook style, but I haven't written in mine – I use separate paper – so that someone else can use it after me. It is very well written, has an answer key and an index.  Yes, they killed some trees.  Still, very good and very helpful.  What you learn can easily be applied to Greek and, I assume, Hebrew (only have a smattering of that).  My copy came from Amazon – I asked for it for Christmas one year, confirming my family's opinion that at least one of our number is very strange.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

For anyone who wants to actually sit down and work through a book that teaches English grammar and diagramming at the same time I can recommend Grammar by Diagram by Cindy L. Vitto.  It's workbook style, but I haven't written in mine – I use separate paper – so that someone else can use it after me. It is very well written, has an answer key and an index.  Yes, they killed some trees.  Still, very good and very helpful.  What you learn can easily be applied to Greek and, I assume, Hebrew (only have a smattering of that).  My copy came from Amazon – I asked for it for Christmas one year, confirming my family's opinion that at least one of our number is very strange.

Thank you very much for sharing your findings regarding English Grammar resources.  I just now went over to amazon.com and wishlisted this resource.  I do not mind killing trees.  My great, great, great, great, great grandfather didn't mind either.  :)

 

I would purchase it now, but I'd be running the risk of having to use the cat as a shield from my girlfriend - so next year it is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A better .docx which I had created with Abbyy 12.1.4

 

 

Greetings

 

Fabian

Thank you very much, Fabian.  I can refer to this Word document to help me out.  I'm not going to beat on importing the text or hand typing the text into the User Tool editor until it is working properly or someone has pointed out to me where I turned wrong in my efforts so that I can work on this without the goofy wrap issues.

 

If this was taking place in Microsoft Word, I bet someone would be working to fix it.  Maybe even two people.   :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello Michael

 

I personally found it till 11.0.8 easier to prepare the files in Word and then convert it with Word16! as "Webpage, filtered" to an HTML and then I do the rest in Accordance. But maybe since 11.1.1 it is much easier than before. To work in the User Tool direct.

 

Tables are not supported now, so you have to work with tab.

 

Unfortunately at the moment even colors from the Word file are found in the User Tool, they will be all lost. 

 

The User Tool is much better, than before but it need much improvements till I can say "well done Accordance"

 

This is why I had upload the .docx file 

 

But if you prefer another its easy to make another output from Abbyy.

 

Greetings

 

Fabian

Edited by Fabian
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello Michael

 

I personally found it till 11.0.8 easier to prepare the files in Word and then convert it with Word16! as "Webpage, filtered" to an HTML and then I do the rest in Accordance. But maybe since 11.1.1 it is much easier than before. To work in the User Tool direct.

 

Tables are not supported now, so you have to work with tab.

 

Unfortunately at the moment even colors from the Word file are found in the User Tool, they will be all lost. 

 

The User Tool is much better, than before but it need much improvements till I can say "well done Accordance"

 

This is why I had upload the .docx file 

 

But if you prefer another its easy to make another output from Abbyy.

 

Greetings

 

Fabian

 

:) You're a nice guy, Fabian.  I appreciate your help.  I can use the Word file that you shared with us here and after a bit I will purchase the book the Jullie pointed out, as I would benefit from the sentence diagramming aspects as well.

 

I have used a lot of Bible software over the years and Accordance has a user interface that I find to be very well thought out and pleasing.  I like the company and the people that work at Accordance.  That being said, I find that pretty much every Bible software package that I have ever run into or used has major issues with importing user modules.  Some are just buggy.  Some require convoluted hoop-jumping.  Some require expensive proprietary software.  Some store their user files in obscure or antiquated formats and don't upgrade them.  It would be nice if someone actually made the importing of user resources easy and glitch-free.

 

I have a study partner that does not use Accordance.  I would love for this person to have and use it and with the current deal where I could get the starter package for free for this person with a $150 purchase on my part almost makes me want to go out into the yard and dig up the oak barrel full of quarters that I have out there, and use that to buy this person an upgrade to the Original Languages package, leveraging the free starter package into the deal.  I do not like paying the asking price for anything because in my 60 years I have learned that there is generally a lot of wiggle room, so I look for and use bargains.  But my point is that I would want this person to have Accordance so that we could share User Tools and User Notes and if the software facilities that are built in to Accordance for these features do not work, then my reason to make a purchase doesn't work either.

 

Regards,

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm self-taught at my Hebrew and I have, over the years, had expansive excursions into it mixed with eras of time wherein I am not even remotely "into" it.  My work is so opposite and far removed from any sort of scholarly discipline and the rigors of that work sometimes collectively serve to beat the tar out of my backside, so that I am too worn out to care about Hebrew at all, and am rather focused on Cheetos.  Then I have what might be described as manic episodes in that I am very absorbed, but I find myself re-learning things that I had learned sometimes several times before.  They do come much easier, but my Hebrew suffers from both the fact that I am self-taught without any orchestrated course of study, and then that I also need to go back and re-learn my rules of grammar; both Hebrew and English. I'd be of the mind that my last formal schooling ended long before many of you took your first breaths, and it ended when I finished High School.

 

When inside of Accordance, I find it distracting to have to get out on the internet, with all of the flashy flash advertisements that makes one feel like they are visiting Las Vegas, to go look up what a pronominal suffix is, for example.  I have Hebrew grammars in Accordance (possibly all of them), but it would be very nice to have an English grammar in Accordance, so that my attention might be fixed inside the application and then I could perhaps focus more closely on things.

 

With that long and basically unnecessary preface, I'd like to cast my vote for a simple old-school English grammar to be offered as an Accordance module.  Perhaps I could fabricate one, but I'd much rather just flash my credit card and have one downloaded in an instant.  My girlfriend probably does not share these sentiments, so I'd appreciate it immensely if this were all just between myself and all of you reading this.   :)  If Accordance offered a senior discount *hint *hint then I'd not suffer as much when purchasing resources.  Just saying'.

 

Thank you,

Michael

Michael, et. al.,

 

I'm not certain if this would be a sufficient for all of your questions on English grammar, but with respect to first understanding grammatical concepts clearly in English so as to understand them correctly in Hebrew, I highly recommend this book by Garry Long: Grammatical Concepts 101 for students of Biblical Hebrew. It is a wonderful book, born out of a realization that students often did not understand a concept in biblical Hebrew Grammar because the students were in need of a strong foundation in general grammatical concepts (English grammar is so often poorly taught, or not taught well or systematically nowadays).

 

The text is filled with examples, illustrating concepts first in English–to crystallize the idea in the atudent's mind–and then in Hebrew. And it covers LOTS of concepts. After a thorough run through this, most atudents would have little difficullty working theough Waltke & O'Connor, for example. I bought a copy of this book years ago for a reference, and because I thought it would be useful to pull from when teaching. It has been updated in the last 2 years as well...

 

http://www.amazon.com/Grammatical-Concepts-101-Biblical-Hebrew/dp/0801048745/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449170250&sr=1-1&keywords=grammatical+concepts+101+for+biblical+hebrew

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just read the language, if you really want to move into a discussion of Hebrew grammar then look at how our Ulplan methods have developed. What you are really discussing here is translation theory—infused with a healthy toxic dose of Chomskyian Linguistics.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Over here (England) I don't remember being taught English grammar using diagrams. I don't remember meeting them until I saw them in Accordance. We were taught (1950s) English grammar, parts of speech etc, but we also had to learn and understand how to translate between English and a much more synthetic language like Latin. This means understanding grammatical differences which aren't really visible in English like 'how to spot a gerund'.  I'd rather assumed the diagrams had been developed as a useful tool to help native English speakers who had not done Latin understand how a sentence in a synthetic language works.

 

It worked both ways. It also included how to translate between English and languages (like Latin and French) which lack a lot of the tense constructions that the English verb has. 'I am coming to see you tomorrow' does not translate as 'je suis venant à vous voir demain'. 

 

I would have thought one of the text books used now for TEFL teaching might be more useful than a grammar book from 96 years ago.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Dru,  What do you mean by "synthetic" here ?

 

Thx

D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Michael, et. al.,

 

I'm not certain if this would be a sufficient for all of your questions on English grammar, but with respect to first understanding grammatical concepts clearly in English so as to understand them correctly in Hebrew, I highly recommend this book by Garry Long: Grammatical Concepts 101 for students of Biblical Hebrew. It is a wonderful book, born out of a realization that students often did not understand a concept in biblical Hebrew Grammar because the students were in need of a strong foundation in general grammatical concepts (English grammar is so often poorly taught, or not taught well or systematically nowadays).

 

The text is filled with examples, illustrating concepts first in English–to crystallize the idea in the atudent's mind–and then in Hebrew. And it covers LOTS of concepts. After a thorough run through this, most atudents would have little difficullty working theough Waltke & O'Connor, for example. I bought a copy of this book years ago for a reference, and because I thought it would be useful to pull from when teaching. It has been updated in the last 2 years as well...

 

http://www.amazon.com/Grammatical-Concepts-101-Biblical-Hebrew/dp/0801048745/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449170250&sr=1-1&keywords=grammatical+concepts+101+for+biblical+hebrew

Hi David,

 

Thanks for those tips.  I have Waltke & O'Conner here on the shelf as well as Gary Long's Grammatical Concepts 101.  What I was looking for was an Accordance module that I could refer to that would serve as a quick bit of memory starter fluid without having to leave Accordance.  The library is maybe 15 feet away, but sometimes I get immersed and need to quickly locate an English example.  I'm an old guy and getting out of the chair is like a job, and then dragging my carcass over to the oak shelves kind of breaks up my groove.  Plus, if I get up my wife has a tendency to take advantage of that fact and it might be some time before I get back to my study.  If I go out on the internet, then I sometimes get sidetracked, so I wanted a reference work in Accordance so I could just keep my face inside the software.

 

I'm still not pleased that Accordance has seen fit to not work their way through the problems in the User Tools aspect of the software and I'm of the mind to not purchase any more Accordance resources until that gets fixed. 

 

That being said, I see that Logos offers Gary Long's Grammatical Concepts 101, which would be great to have on the Mac and I can just click over into Logos and get the answer that I need on the grammar.  Problem solved.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just read the language, if you really want to move into a discussion of Hebrew grammar then look at how our Ulplan methods have developed. What you are really discussing here is translation theory—infused with a healthy toxic dose of Chomskyian Linguistics.

Hi Michael,

 

Thanks for the tip on Ulplan.  I had not ever heard of it until you pointed it out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No worries—and I think you will see some significant changes in language pedagogy in the coming years. It has not reached the current biblical Hebrew grammars, since most who write these are not paying attention to the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). A small group of people at SBL have been working on incorporating a "communicative" approach to language study—a much more productive way to view language (as opposed to Chomskyian Theory). My point with Ulpan is that one enters the Ulpan classroom—it's only Hebrew in Hebrew.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Michael, have you seen the material by Randall Buth (http://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/) ? I haven't been able to attend his in person classes though I think they'd be very effective. I am working through his self-study materials which of course have to have some English in them. But the first of those materials in both Greek and Hebrew are picture cards and spoken Greek or Hebrew only.

 

Thx

D

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Dru,  What do you mean by "synthetic" here ?

 

Thx

D

Daniel,

 

Technically, "Synthetic" means a language with a "high morpheme-per-word ratio". More generally, it describes a language like Latin where syntax expresses itself by inflecting the word itself, rather than using more words to do this, e.g. amo, amas, amat, English I love, thou lovest, he/she/it loves. In Latin the, o, as and at endings replace, I, thou, he/she/it. Latin is more synthetic than English, but the est and s in that sequence in English are synthetic. The opposite of 'synthetic' is 'analytic'. Very few languages are wholly one or the other.

 

In Latin, the more complex tenses are often formed by yet more changes to the verb, rather than constructions using auxiliaries as in English. Likewise nouns change their endings in circumstances where in English we'd use a preposition.

 

Greek and Hebrew are both more synthetic than English, though English is more synthetic than we sometimes realise. in addition to the example above, take another word from the previous paragraph, 'constructions'. The s inflection makes it plural. The ion inflection makes it a noun.

 

As a digression, although construct  is usually a verb, it exists as a noun with a different meaning from construction. But, and this is feature which is widespread in English but may be linguistically slightly unusual, the stress pattern changes. As a verb, the stress falls on the second syllable. As a noun it falls on the first. There are a number of examples of single syllable words where the weight shifts in a similar way, e.g. calf, calve. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanx you Dru for the very full answer.

I would have used the term agglutinative. Do you consider the two terms synonymous or is there a difference between inflection in morphology and true agglutination ?

 

I've found it interesting, as you say, how English has traded complex morphology for syntactical structures involving a larger number of words.

 

Thanx again.

D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Daniel,

 

I'm not a linguistician, but I'm under the impression that an agglutinative language is a particular type of synthetic language where prefixes, suffixes etc are strung together to make a long composite word, rather than where the root word inflects like Latin, Greek or Hebrew. I have heard that Turkish, Hungarian and Finnish are agglutinative but do not know any of them. I'm not sure it's possible to give an example of agglutination since English is not at agglutinative language.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanx Dru. I had been wondering about exactly this distinction. I'm not trained in linguistics and so am rapidly swimming out of my depth but it seemed this distinction could be made. I'll have to read up more on it when I have a minute, but perhaps one of the linguists here will comment.

 

Thx

D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

but perhaps one of the linguists here will comment . . . on the term agglutinative

 

some languages prefer to be agglutinative free :)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Michael, have you seen the material by Randall Buth (http://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/) ? I haven't been able to attend his in person classes though I think they'd be very effective. I am working through his self-study materials which of course have to have some English in them. But the first of those materials in both Greek and Hebrew are picture cards and spoken Greek or Hebrew only.

 

Thx

D

Hi Daniel,

 

I actually have a pile of material here by Randall Buth.  My work life has a distinctive full-time fence around my existence that is hard to break through for long periods.  Even now, as I'm of the mind to begin yet again my Hebrew studies, my employment is morphing into something else that is going to require me to pick up more skill sets.  I'm of the mind to hang with my Hebrew studies this round and ride it out.  In 5 years on the outside I should be all retired with endless days to soak everything up and keep up with my honey-do list as well.  I might even go for daily walks and burn through hearing aid batteries.  I might have to buy a new fishing rod.

 

Thank you for the suggestion.  I should see what new items Randall has.  Right now, I'm reading through about 10 Hebrew grammars, with the one by Ross being my favorite - at least today anyway.  I also just grabbed the Miles Van Pelt Basics of Biblical Hebrew DVD Lectures that I can listen to over and over in zombie mode after my work day has drained the last drop of vitality out of me.  I'm getting tired of getting so far into Hebrew and then letting it all go, only to start it all up again.  I find it fascinating and I know that there are all kinds of interesting aspects of truth in there that I need to be digging out.

 

Cheers,

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I see that Accordance 11.1.2 has fixed the odd tabs that were being placed into User Tools.  I'll perhaps give this a twirl this weekend.  THANK YOU very much to Accordance for their work on getting this fixed.   :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Michael,


 


Back to your original post: you wanted to stay in Acc, in your chair, with a century old grammar to help you during this latest manic episode of re-learning English and Hebrew grammar. But, you received a lot of high brow advice (your phrase :) ) that ranged from leaving your chair to sit in an ulpan in Israel, reading modern Second Language Acquisition grammars, and anti-Chompskian sentiments. You have even been subject to agglutination. 


 


Imho, you would be in good company, even scholarly company, if you stayed on your original course. The main point of contention about applying Teaching English as a Foreign/Second/Additional Language principles to biblical Hebrew is whether adults learn languages the same way as children. This Forum is not the place to discuss my opinion on this. But, whether for practical or theoretical reasons, most Hebrew teachers use a combination of traditional and newer methods. Even Holmstedt and Cook’s Biblical Hebrew: An Illustrated Introduction admits “limits to such second-language acquisition approaches in the teaching and learning of ancient, textual corpus-bound languages. As such, there remains a philological realism to our pedagogy coupled with our use of Second Language Acquisition techniques. . . . Beyond this, there is the instructor’s choice: he/she may maintain a text-based atmosphere . . . or a 'conversation'-based atmosphere” (from the Preface, Draft copy 2011).


 


Regards,


 


Michel

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Hi Michael,

 

Back to your original post: you wanted to stay in Acc, in your chair, with a century old grammar to help you during this latest manic episode of re-learning English and Hebrew grammar. But, you received a lot of high brow advice (your phrase :) ) that ranged from leaving your chair to sit in an ulpan in Israel, reading modern Second Language Acquisition grammars, and anti-Chompskian sentiments. You have even been subject to agglutination. 

 

Imho, you would be in good company, even scholarly company, if you stayed on your original course. The main point of contention about applying Teaching English as a Foreign/Second/Additional Language principles to biblical Hebrew is whether adults learn languages the same way as children. This Forum is not the place to discuss my opinion on this. But, whether for practical or theoretical reasons, most Hebrew teachers use a combination of traditional and newer methods. Even Holmstedt and Cook’s Biblical Hebrew: An Illustrated Introduction admits “limits to such second-language acquisition approaches in the teaching and learning of ancient, textual corpus-bound languages. As such, there remains a philological realism to our pedagogy coupled with our use of Second Language Acquisition techniques. . . . Beyond this, there is the instructor’s choice: he/she may maintain a text-based atmosphere . . . or a 'conversation'-based atmosphere” (from the Preface, Draft copy 2011).

 

Regards,

 

Michel

 

Hello Michel,

 

Thanks for your perspective and points on second language acquisition.  I feel that my time would be best spent working on this from a technical perspective and hinging my steps into it on English grammar with a careful eye to where things may take deviations.  My target is to not only be able to read the Old Testament text, but to be able to read it with the Hebraisms and figures of speech fully intact so as to gain the utmost possible potency of what is being expressed.  I also want to be able to press as much as I can out of aspects such as acrostics and the masoretic meanings of such as inverted letters, crowns, odd pointing and accenting, etc.  I have a very strong pull towards this goal and I aim to get there, even if it takes me going down several routes simultaneously.

 

I'm still sporting my cold, and I have shared it with my friends and better acquaintances.  Perhaps by this weekend, which I forsee having off of work, I might be able to at least put into place a pincer movement of study methods that I can use in my workday evening drained states, and then go back and establish a weekend route of heavy lifting that I can carry on.  My leading to do this now is moreso coming from upstairs rather than myself, and with that I hope that the usual extra boost that I get in other things will also apply to my Hebrew studies.  I'm actually curious to see how much extra jet fuel I get to pull this off.   :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...