The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek by Evert van Emde Boas (PDF)

Description

This is the first full-scale reference grammar of Classical Greek in English in a century. The first work of its kind to reflect significant advances in linguistics made in recent decades, it provides students, teachers and academics with a comprehensive yet user-friendly treatment. The chapters on phonology and morphology make full use of insights from comparative and historical linguistics to elucidate complex systems of roots, stems and endings. The syntax offers linguistically up-to-date descriptions of such topics as case usage, tense and aspect, voice, subordinate clauses, infinitives and participles. An innovative section on textual coherence treats particles and word order and discusses several sample passages in detail, demonstrating new ways of approaching Greek texts. Throughout the book numerous original examples are provided, all with translations and often with clarifying notes. Clearly laid-out tables, helpful cross-references and full indexes make this essential resource accessible to users of all levels.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The first major complete grammar of Classical Greek in the English language in nearly a century put together by a team of eminent scholars. What is not to love? This grammar is a great addition to the Greek learner or scholar’s library. What makes it worthwhile to get, even when there are good English language Greek grammars that are in public domain? Here are a few of its best features:1. Is up to date on areas where Greek scholarship has substantially advanced in the past 100 years. Some obvious areas are its description of the verbal system as well as the description of particles/conjunctions. There have been major advances in these areas which the traditional grammars don’t reflect. You won’t even find discourse cohesion discussed as a specific topic in Smyth. Here you have a couple chapters unpacking it.2. It uses language which is more familiar to the modern student. Many grammatical categories and descriptions in older reference grammars are strongly beholden to the Latin tradition. You don’t need to know Latin to understand the grammar terms in this book, but basic exposure to linguistics will be rather helpful. This reflects one of the major directions of current Greek study: engagement with Greek from the viewpoint(s) of linguistics, rather than classical studies as such. Often times the way they discuss different topics in this grammar will be more familiar to people who have cut their teeth on some measure of modern linguistics. That being said, they do not attempt to do a wholesale description of Classical Greek in terms of any particular modern linguistic theory. Most of the categories of traditional Greek grammar are maintained, e.g. you’ll find a chapter on “the Aorist” rather than on the “perfective aspect”. This makes the grammar a comfortable go-between: it is a good introduction to contemporary areas of interest in Greek studies as well as understandable from the terms of traditional categories.3. Its pages are huge and its text is clean and easy to read. Compared to most reference grammars, this one is extremely reader friendly. It is not packed full of small font with even smaller font notes, but is readable, clean, and makes successful use of bold and italic text for emphasis. No squinting required to make out a paradigm.4. It majors on the majors and generally leaves out the minors. By comparison, this grammar gives a lot less information than what is in Smyth, but that is often really nice for just finding what is important to find for most reading. Rather than discussing the different dialect variations of the verb paradigms, or a detailing peculiar usages by the dozen, it sticks to the main meanings and usages. Of course, this means that it is not an exhaustive reference grammar; but it is also not an exhausting one.5. Extensive cross-references between sections enables easy navigation. The index is not as robust as one might like it to be, especially if you are used to using a grammar like Smyth, but the cross-referencing largely makes up for that.This has become my first stop grammar for Ancient Greek. But, certainly don’t get rid of Smyth. Smyth still covers many facets of the Greek language which this one does not. There are whole categories of meaning touched on in Smyth, or various other reference grammars, that don’t appear here. But, this grammar will put the reader in a much better position to understand what is going on in current Greek study than Smyth will, and it will also help those who are simply learning and need a solid grammar.

⭐When I read the previous reviewer’s complaint about the shoddy quality of her copy’s binding, my excitement at finally getting to see this book, intended as a replacement of the venerable Greek Grammar by Herbert Weir Smyth, turned somewhat to anxiety. Would my copy also come with loose pages like hers? I am happy to report that so far the binding seems intact, with no signs of imminent disintegration. It would seem that she, unfortunately, received a defective copy (going by my admittedly small sample size). At over 800 pages–a lot for any paperback binding–it does remain to be seen how well the volume holds up to frequent reference use, but I intend to treat mine as gently as possible and hope for the best.As far as the contents of the book go, I have not had more than one evening to flip through it, but it does seem to be a solid (pun intended) update and supplement for Smyth. There did not appear to be much comparative material, as I had thought there might be, but Andrew L. Sihler’s New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin fills that niche excellently already. (Also, this grammar is intended for undergraduate classes and as a review, and one can only imagine the strain a hypothetical hundred more pages of such material would put on the binding.) One other thing I noticed in my cursory examination is that it does not try to replicate one of my favorite features of Smyth’s grammar, namely the List of Grammatical and Rhetorical Figures, replete with helpful examples, so I would not go so far as to say CGCG will supplant that trusty reference work.

⭐The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek (CGCG) sets out to be the new standard for classical Greek, accessible to students and scholars alike? Does it succeed? Yes, overall.Smyth (for American audiences) will still be helpful for quick referencing phonology and literary techniques.However, CGCG is truly set up to replace Smyth in almost all ways.PROS1) It is up-to-date on the latest research in Greek Linguistics2) It has sections on Coherence, Particles, and Word Order that Smyth and all other basic grammars were lacking or missing a theoretical framework for (this will help those who were confused by the lack of structure in Denniston’s “Greek Particles”3) It has a very nice format.4) It is written by some of the most prominent Ancient Greek linguists (and grammarians) of our time.5) It is pedagogically oriented. That means that it is not too bound to using the language of theoretical linguistics, but it does try to update terminology in appropriate places.CONS:1) It will take getting used to the change in format.2) It is sometimes hard to find familiar terminology in the index.Overall, I highly recommend this grammar and think that everyone should get a copy as soon as possible!

⭐I haven’t read all of it, but welcome a fresh approach to classical/Attic Greek grammar.

⭐Even if you’re not a Classicist, this book is helpful to understand Greek grammar. It’s clearly written and up to date, incorporating material from the ongoing linguistic discussions (eg, aspect). The pages and fonts are well arranged, making it so much easier on the eyes than Smyth’s older grammar.The paperback version is perfect bound (glued) but the book opens up and lays relatively flat. I think it will hold up fine as a reference. I don’t know if the hardcover is glued as well. If it is, this is definitely a better deal.

⭐It’s very detailed and complete.

⭐I had studied Koine Greek in college and seminary, which I daily use, but I wanted to learn Attic Greek. This book was well designed for me to learn Attic. I highly recommend it.

⭐All great

⭐This has been a long-awaited title. I ordered my copy from Amazon over a year ago, and publication was deferred almost on a monthly basis between then and this March (2019), when the book finally appeared. It was well worth the wait.For most of us the late James Morwood’s Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek (2001, £7.99), modest in scope, size and price, will serve our daily needs. For specialists and keen enthusiasts something like the new CGCG, as it will no doubt become known, is long overdue.It was in 1902 that John Thompson published his Grammar of Attic Greek, which has been through periodic reiterations since then and remains a thorough piece of work and a useful reference. But the last comprehensive survey was that of Herbert Weir Smyth, colleague of the famous Gildersleeve and successor as Harvard Professor of Greek Literature of William Goodwin, he of Syntax of the Moods and Voices of the Greek Verbs fame (1860, revised 1899; not a catchy title, but the book is profuse in its citations). It was in 1920 that Smyth’s Greek Grammar appeared. Like its predecessors, it acknowledged the debt owed to Victorian German scholarship, notably Raphael Kühner’s encyclopaedic Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, originally in two volumes (1834–35), an enlarged third edition in four volumes being produced by Friedrich Blass and Bernhard Gerth between 1890 and 1904. It is noteworthy that Kühner appears in the CGCG’s thorough bibliography also.So, with Smyth’s grammar having appeared in 1920 it is only a marginal, and certainly pardonable, exaggeration for the first line of the CGCG’s blurb to state This is the first full-scale grammar of classical Greek in English in a century. The inclusion of the word Cambridge in the title appears to be something of a paradox, the four co-authors hailing from Oxford, Amsterdam, and Heidelberg. This is a masterpiece of collaborative scholarship, and due credit should be accorded also to Cambridge University Press for committing to this project back in 2009.The scope of CGCG is specifically stated, yet easily overlooked in the title: Classical. You will not find a treatment of New Testament Greek here, nor of Homeric or other dialects, or of metre, or of interjections; these are left to other reference works. Thanks to Herodotus there is a treatment of Ionic prose, and attention is paid to some dialectal aspects of drama.The most fascinating aspect of CGCG is its upto date, modern approach, whilst maintaining the traditional features of a Greek grammar. There are not thousands of numbered, cross-referenced paragraphs; just 61 – with plenty of sub-paragraphs, of course; the cross-referencing remains abundant. The initial sections on phonology and morphology are, as expected, followed by one on syntax. But among novel inclusions is a section on textual coherence (text types, particles, word order), and one of sample passages of four text types: narrative (Lysias), description (Xenophon), argument (Plato), and dialogue (Sophocles). Each of these consists of an introduction, the sample text and a perceptive commentary. There are three thorough indices: an index locorum of cited examples – which are all accompanied my modern, idiomatic English translations; subjects; and Greek words. It is worth mentioning that the examples are all from original sources; there are no ‘confected’ examples. These indices, and the cross-referencing, combine to make this volume a pleasure to navigate in pursuit of specific lines of enquiry, or simply to dip into and explore at leisure; there will be an interesting nugget to be gleaned from every page.I have not long been exploring CGCG, but its treatment of that old chestnut, prepositions (31.8), is a good example of a fresh approach and layout, each word being treated under three headings: spatial, temporal and abstract.Some will be thrown by the case order of the morphology section. It is the ‘non-English’, or ‘old’ order of nom, gen, dat, acc, voc. I assume this is with the potential sales market areas in mind. It is easy enough to bear, but there is an on-line resources page to accompany the CGCG from which can be downloaded a pdf of all the tables, in ‘English’ case order if you wish, for reference. This is a bargain resource: it cost me £0.53. (If the topic of case-order is one that excites you, I recommend the thorough treatment of the legendary W. S. Allen and C. O. Brink: The Old Order and the New: A Case History, in Lingua 50 (1980), pp. 61-100.)Ten years in the gestation alone, this is a much needed and long overdue exposition of modern advances in linguistics as applied to classical Greek, and totally thorough and comprehensive in its treatment. I cannot see it being surpassed. These are only my initial impressions, and I am looking forward to many happy hours of dipping in to these 800+ pages over the months and years ahead.On a broader spectrum, these are happy times for Greek freaks. For more than a year now my go-to Greek dictionary has no longer been LSJ but The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek (2015, nearly 2500 pages, £73.00 hardback; a pleasure to use and navigate). For more in-depth stuff I use Leiden’s Etymological Dictionary of Greek (2016, two volumes, 1800+ pages, c. £76.00, another delightful tool). And, of course, the Cambridge Greek Lexicon, 15 years in the making, is due for publication later this year.

⭐This volume might not be the last word on the grammar of Ancient Greek but it is comprehensive in that it covers everything from the first basics to the very advanced. If you can work with the size of it (definitely a desk-sized book) you will be unlikely to need another Greek grammar. However, for the sake of completeness I consider it to be one among four works which are essential references in my studies, the others being:The Cambridge Greek Lexicon (2 vols);Greek Grammar – Beyond the Basics by Wallace (for Koine and Biblical Greek);A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament etc. by Bauer et al. (commonly known as BAGD).Should you require a pocket-sized grammar for carrying around then Morwood’s Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek is both concise and portable. If you require what might be the ultimate grammar for serious work then I have no hesitation in recommending The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek – it truly is excellent.

⭐I am not an academic, but an “intermediate” reader of ancient Greek. I was looking for a grammar which goes further into details than the standard ones, which are good but concise. This new grammar answers all my questions. It is clear and easy to navigate. It contains all the usual parts of a Greek grammar, but with all the necessary details, answering the questions which often arise when you are reading. In addition, Part III on “Textual Coherence” is new to me and very illuminating. There is also a solid chapter on Ionic Greek (I just happen to be reading Herodotus). The examples are well chosen, neither simplistic nor too complicated. I could go on, and I still have a lot to discover, but I can warmly recommend this book to anybody who loves ancient Greek.

⭐This is an excellent work. Clear, extremely thorough and without avoiding the complexities or any of the terms specific to the field, tackles the problems in such a way than an amateur like me can follow. The paper quality however, and this is a great pity, is very thin, and the type both small and lacking in depth and shading-almost ghost like. Perhaps this problem could have been saved by a two volume arrangememt. “Get some glasses”, I hear you say, but I am able to read other academic works with ease and am perplexed that, for some reason, modern things in Greek, and I would include Loeb to some extent in this, seems to end up as miniscule as possible. Perhaps they feel that people who are prepared to put their time into the minutiae of something like Greek grammar would be insulted by reasonable sized print as if it implied they are like nursery school children. Well I wouldn’t be insulted at all. After all I have only been doing Greek for nine years. Nearly an infant in human life terms. Or perhaps they think no one is going to read this book anyway; it’s going to end up on a shelf edgeways on to look impressive. Well , just let me say , that’s not how I spend my money. Most likely, they simply wanted to save money and up the profits by producing as cheaply as possible and hanging on the word Cambridge. I found the accents completely impossible to see without a magnifying glass. Greek is difficult enough already without this extra stress. Brilliant though it is, and I apologise to the writers, who probably had no part in the type layout, I have a feeling it’s going to be back to Perseus Tufts on line .

⭐You may (like me) have a shelf-full of Greek grammars already but this one is certainly worth buying and the price is not high for what you get. This book is bang up-do-date on issues of recent research and covers syntax as well as simply morphology, with copious examples from Greek authors (translated and cited in Greek) to illustrate the points being made. Be warned – the nouns are listed in the order Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Vocative rather than the Nom-Voc-Acc-Gen-Dat sequence familiar from older grammars such as Abbott and Mansfield and Goodwin. This book may look more difficult to understand than the older ones but if you want to master Greek properly it is well worth the effort as the authors explain the grammar rather than just listing words.

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