Category Archives: grammars

Toward a Multimedia Latin Grammar

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What sort of Latin and Greek grammars do we need online? How can existing public domain resources be re-worked, modernized, and leveraged to best serve the community of Latin and Greek learners and scholars going forward?

The current state of things is best represented by The Perseus Project, which early on digitized important English language grammars by Smyth (Greek) and Allen & Greenough (Latin), among others.

Allen & Greenough at Perseus: hyperlinked and searchable

Allen & Greenough at Perseus: hyperlinked and searchable

This version of  A&G has hyperlinks, and navigation by chapter number, and is searchable.

At DCC we have been working online grammars for a few years, and the results so far have been a newly digitized Greek Grammar by Thomas Dwight Goodell, and a revised digital version of Allen & Greenough’s Latin Grammar, based on XML files kindly provided by the Perseus Project. As we prepare to revise Allen & Greenough again in the process of moving it to Drupal (the CMS for our main site), it seemed like a good time to ask for ideas and suggestions on what would be most useful. First, some background.

In the fall of 2013 Kaylin Bednarz (Dickinson ’15) scanned a copy of the 1903 printing of Allen & Greenough so that we had good quality page images. Then she cleaned the existing XML files from the Perseus Project, linking the XML files to the photo scans on Dickinson servers.

The main changes to the XML involved correcting errors and simplifying and altering some XML tags. Here is an example of the source XML from Perseus of ch. 26

Perseus XML for Allen & Greenough ch. 26

Perseus XML for Allen & Greenough ch. 26

The DCC version looks like this:

DCC Allen & Greenough ch. 26 XML

DCC Allen & Greenough ch. 26 XML

Using the new scans Kaylin also created new XML files for the index of the book, which had not been included in the Perseus version. The purpose there was to make the book browseable via the index, which is important for user utility, and absent in all other online versions. For example, a search in the Perseus version for the term indirect discourse yields six results, rather confusingly displayed, and you could sort through and find what you need. But the index itself is analytical and gets you right where you want to go.

Index page added to Perseus digitization of Allen & Greenough

Index page added to Perseus digitization of Allen & Greenough

 

Kaylin then created html files based on the XML. She was assisted and trained in the use of Oxygen software (which converts the XML into web-ready html) by Matthew Kochis, Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at Dickinson.

In late March, Dickinson web developer Ryan Burke uploaded the page images, html, and XML files to Dickinson servers, and created the web interface for our version of A&G. This revealed issues of formatting: indentations were often not preserved, resulting in lack of clarity. Some character formatting was not right, especially in charts, and footnotes from the original print resource were not clearly displayed. Forward and back buttons had to be put in for each of the 638 sections.

Meagan Ayer (PhD in classics and ancient history, University of Buffalo, 2012) began work hand-editing Allen & Greenough html files, removing errors and fixing formatting, adding navigational infrastructure using Adobe Dreamweaver. A few missing XML files had to be added and converted to html.

All this work is now complete, and the results I would characterize as somewhat underwhelming. The interface is not attractive, and navigation and searching, always a weak point in the Perseus version, has only been marginally improved (though I do use that index fairly regularly). More importantly, there is no easy way to add things, like audio, video, test question banks, anything. In the fall of 2015 Meagan and I designed a content type in Drupal so that we could transfer the existing html pages into a more flexible and media-friendly box. Ryan Burke built the content type, and Meagan is now in the process of transferring content and making colored versions of the charts as .jpg files that could be consulted as a group. The Drupal version will allow for linked translations, as with our core vocabulary. For example, we hope to have a Chinese version in the next five years. Drupal’s translation module allows us to keep all versions tied together and easily edited. Drupal also has tagging features for enhanced searchability, and allows for embedded and tagged images, audio, and video.

For the design we went with a three column format (as in Perseus) to aid in readability. Navigation is on the left, and we reserved the right sidebar for media. For this version we combined several chapters on a single page (node) when that seemed logical. For example, sections 53-55 all discuss and summarize the types of 3rd declension nouns, so it seemed perverse to make three separate nodes in Drupal for that. In effect we have created a new table of contents (with two levels, and expandable), while preserving the standard reference system by numbered chapters. This in itself should aid in finding. Here is a page with sample audio and video players, and the page image at the right. The new TOC (still in development as the pages are created) is at the left: DCC_AG_with_media

And here is a sample with one of Meagan’s colored charts. You can also see the chart as a downloadable .pdf, and download the XML if you wish.

DCC_AG_with_chartsNow that we have a designated zone (at the right) for media, what exactly should go there? Pedagogical advice? Video a la Khan Academy? Banks of multiple choice quizzes? Commentary that modernizes the discussion of the grammar? Examples for the corpus of Latin (a la Logeion)? What do you think?

 

Goodell’s School Grammar of Attic Greek

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In an earlier post I bemoaned the lack of a fully digitized school grammar of ancient Greek, and kvetched that the existing Greek grammars digitized at Perseus lack something important, namely, the English index to those works. The index is how most of us consult Greek grammars, and this lack, combined with an occasionally dodgy search capability in Smyth apud Perseus, made it seem desirable to fully digitize a good Greek grammar, including the index. We chose one that is I suspect much better for learners than Smyth, and now I am proud to say that it is done and up.

May I present to you Thomas Dwight Goodell, A School Grammar of Attic Greek (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1902). Goodell’s orientation is nicely seen in the dedication of the book:

Goodell screen shot dedication

The content, with its judicious selection of detail and clear explanations, shows the dedication of a gifted teacher.

The original scan came from the Internet Archive. Our version was created in 2013­–2014 with support from the Roberts Fund for Classical Studies and the Mellon Fund for Digital Humanities at Dickinson College. Bruce Robertson of Mont Allison University performed the OCR using Rigaudon, the output of which is available on Lace. At Dickinson the OCR output was edited and the XML and HTML pages created by Christina Errico. Ryan Burke created the web interface, and Meagan Ayer edited and corrected the HTML pages. The content is freely available for re-use under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

I hope you can find some use in it. Each section is given its own page, which results in widely different lengths of pages, and also sometimes some inconvenience when a single topic is covered over many chapters. On the other hand, we included page images at the foot of every page to allow you to look over several chapters at once, and also to check the accuracy of the transcription. The pages are also available as XML.

Page images are available at the foot of the page, as is a link to and XML version.

Page images are available as clickable thumbnails at the foot of the page, and there is a link to an XML version.

Navigation is via the English or Greek index, by chapter, or by full text search.

Navigation

Various means of navigation and search

Megan Ayer made a few alterations to the original text. She corrected small typos, clarified abbreviations, and created tables in html with unobtrusive color coding to aid in readability.

Greek grammatical table with green, grey and yellow shading.

Shading aids readability of tables.

Another nice feature is the verb list, a quite extensive list of principle parts, with hyper links to further discussion elsewhere in the book. The font, New Athena, was likewise chosen for readability. Normally we would have used Cardo, but the issue with the character “rho + rough breathing” in Cardo has still not been resolved.

Verb list with principle parts and links to further discussion

Verb list with principle parts and links to further discussion

We made the decision not to put this content into Drupal, essentially for reasons of cost. I see the desirability of a Drupal-based Greek grammar, and someday we may be able to achieve it, but for now it is straight html.

Though the content has been carefully edited, there may be errors or infelicities, and I would be most grateful to be notified. Please comment here if you have suggestions, or shoot me an email.

A New Allen and Greenough

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With support from the Mellon Digital Humanities Fund and the Roberts Fund for Classical Studies at Dickinson, we have completed a new digital version of that perennially useful tool, Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges, edited by J.B. Greenough, G.L. Kitteredge, A.A. Howard, and Benjamin L. D’Ooge. Boston: Ginn & Company, 1903.

Allen_and_Greenough_screenshot

The project involved re-scanning the book to have good quality page images, then editing a set of existing XML files kindly provided by the Perseus Project. We added to that the newly digitized index, which was not in the Perseus XML. The purpose there was to make the book browsable via the index, which is important for user utility, and absent in all other online versions. On March 23, 2014, Kaylin Bednarz (Dickinson ’15) finished revision of XML files for Allen & Grenough, and the creation of html files based on the new XML. She was assisted and trained in the use of Oxygen software (which converts the XML into web-ready html) by Matthew Kochis, Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities, who also helped with day to day project management.

In late March, Dickinson web developer Ryan Burke uploaded the html and XML files to Dickinson servers, and created the web interface for A&G in html. This revealed issues of formatting: indentations were often not preserved, resulting in lack of clarity. Some character formatting was not right, and footnotes from the original print resource were not clearly displayed. Forward and back buttons had to be put in for each of the 638 sections.

On May 20, 2014, Meagan Ayer (PhD in classics and ancient history, University of Buffalo, 2013) began work hand-editing Allen & Greenough html files, removing errors and fixing formatting, adding navigational infrastructure using Adobe Dreamweaver. A few missing XML files had to be added and converted to html, and those finishing touches were put on last week.

The differences between our version of A&G and others available on the internet are:

  • Page images attached to every section
  • Analytical index makes finding what you need easier
  • Functioning word search for the entire work
  • Attractive presentation with readable fonts and formatting
  • Fully edited to remove spelling errors and OCR misreads (further error notifications appreciated!)

And of course the whole is freely available under a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license. We plan to systematically link to this version of A&G in our Latin commentaries, and we are planning to have a similar work on the Greek side up soon:

Thomas Dwight Goodell, A School Grammar of Attic Greek (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1902). This excellent work was scanned by the Internet Archive. Last year Bruce Robertson of Mont Allison University kindly performed the OCR using Rigaudon, the output of which is available on Lace. At Dickinson the OCR output was edited and the XML and html pages created by Christina Errico. Ryan Burke has created the web interface. Meagan Ayer is in the process of editing and correcting the html pages. So look for that in the next few months!

Ancient Greek Grammars Online

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Perseus digitized some Greek grammar resources early on (see below), but since then more has become available in .pdf form from thanks to Google Books and Archive.org. This survey for some reason does not include scans of books. One need in my view is for a good searchable school grammar of ancient Greek. The searchable ones currently available are of the more systematic variety, and are potentially bewildering to students and non-expert readers. Smyth and his 3048 chapters is not for everybody. The best choice in English in my opinion would be Goodell (see below). This spring DCC will be embarking on a project to digitize it properly, making it searchable, and integrating it into the notes of our forthcoming Greek commentaries. This will be done with crucial assistance from Bruce Roberson at Mount Allison University, and Rigaudon.

Frontispiece of Greek grammar, William Camden, 1598, via museumoflonson.org.uk

Another problem with the existing Greek grammar digitizations at Perseus is that the indices have not apparently been included. The index, as anyone who uses the print versions of these books will be aware, is the primary way that we consult these works, and not having the index amounts to a serious impediment to usability. Our Goodell will be browse-able via the index. And we are almost finished with a modification of the Perseus XML of Allen & Greenough’s New Latin Grammar that includes the index. We hope to make an index-browseable A&G available early in the new year.

Ok, here are some Greek grammars. Let me know your favorites, and if you think I am misguided in my love of Goodell.

Babbit, Frank Cole. A Grammar of Attic and Ionic Greek (New York: American Book Co., 1902). Google Books. archive.org

Buttman, Alexander. Grammar of the New Testament Greek (Andover: Warren F. Draper, 1891) at archive.org

Brugmann, Karl. Griechische Grammatik 3rd edition (Münich: Beck, 1900) at archive.org, and Google Books

Goodell, Thomas Dwight. A School Grammar of Attic Greek (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1903) Google Books. Archive.org (better scan)

Goodwin, William W. Greek Grammar, revised and enlarged (Boston: Ginn & Co., 1896). Google Books.

Hadley, James. Greek Grammar for Schools and Colleges, revised and in part rewritten by Frederic De Forest Allen (New York: American Book Company, 1912) Google Books.

Meyer, Gustav. Griechische Grammatik, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1886) at archive.org and at Google Books (and another).

Monroe, D.B. A Grammar of the Homeric Dialect (Oxford: Clarendon, 1891) at archive.org.

These items are already available at Perseus:

Goodwin,William Watson.  Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb (London, Melbourne, Toronto 1889) Goodwin’s Moods and Tenses

Gildersleeve,Basil Lanneau. Syntax of Classical Greek from Homer to Demosthenes (New York 1900)

Smyth, Herbert Weir. A Greek Grammar for Colleges (1920) and (also at Philologic Chicago)

Kühner, Raphael, Friedrich Blass, and Bernhard Gerth. Ausführliche Grammatik der Griechischen Sprache (ed. Ildar Ibraguimov, Hannover und Leipzig, 1904).