From: Mark Wilson (emory2oo2@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Nov 09 2000 - 12:19:38 EST
<x-flowed>
Dr. Decker:
You wrote:
>Only to how *English* speakers talk. Don't impose what seems natural in
>your own language on other languages. There are enormous differences in
>this regard.
I wonder if this is correct. I rather suspect that children "conceptualize"
the same way regardless of linguistic limitations.
The vehicle (specific language/dialect) one must use to describe one's
concepts seems secondary.
If I child said:
"I thirsty." (no context)
No parent would wonder if this child was thirsty in the past, or is making a
prediction that in the future it is expecting to be thirsty again.
My point is that a child in Greek or English is communicaing the same
concept. And I would think it extremely odd that a Greek child, wanting a
drink of water NOW, would say so with an Aorist, Imperfect, Future, or
Pluperfect of DIYAW. (Bear in mind that the Aorist is the default tense.)
And in English, if a child says, "I fall down" (in the sense that it wants
to communicate that it had recently fallen to the ground) we might correct
it by saying "you FELL down."
My question is: do you think that a Greek parent would make a similiar
correction, changing the child's Present to an Aorist (and probably not a
Pluperfect)?
Thank you,
Mark Wilson
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
http://profiles.msn.com.
---
B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [jwrobie@mindspring.com]
To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu
To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu
</x-flowed>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:36:40 EDT