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FINDING THE PERFECTIVE STEM OF ACTIVE VERBS IN MODERN GREEK
Author(s) -
Kazazis Kostas
Publication year - 1968
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1968.tb00204.x
Subject(s) - linguistics , relevance (law) , psychology , point (geometry) , task (project management) , mathematics , philosophy , geometry , management , political science , law , economics
This paper suggests a method for helping students find the perfective stem of active verbs in Modern Greek, given their imperfective stem. This method consists of teaching the students a few phonological rules, whose relevance extends well beyond the grammatical point at hand. With respect to easing the students’ task in learning the perfective stem of some superficially irregular verbs, the paper suggests that teachers familiarize their students with the “underlying” imperfective stem of such verbs, as well as with related lexical items that carry the phonological information which is absent from the surface form of the imperfective stem, but which must be posited for the underlying form of that stem. On the whole, the paper advocates that teachers should not shy from conveying to their student linguistic information which “explains” some of the processes which language‐learners have to learn in order to manipulate a new language, provided that such information is given in terms which the students can understand.