The Drama of Contract Verbs: Thinking Inside and Outside the Box

Byron F. Stayskal (University of Iowa)

“Dramatic” is not the word that we Greek teachers would expect our beginning students to use if we asked them to describe contract verbs. There is something embarrassing about the messiness of these verbs and the trouble they cause, but their minor vowel changes cause major confusions unless students grasp them thoroughly. Worst of all is having to teach contraction rules for all the buzzing, swarming vowel combinations or the similarly painful alternative of brute force memorization. Thus, “frustrating” and “boring” are more likely descriptors than “dramatic.”

It is, however, precisely because most presentations of contract verbs lack the basic structure of good drama that the subject ends up being confusing, uninteresting and—worst of all—hard to learn. In this paper, therefore, I present four ‘dramatic’ principles and how they can change the approach to this problematic area. The principles are: 1) careful preparation and foreshadowing, 2) revealing characterization, 3) precipitating the action with a few, simple ideas, and 4) foregrounding the big picture rather than small subtleties.

Preparation for contract verbs should begin long before students see them, and the regular omega verb provides the necessary foreshadowing. If the regular verb is arranged in two columns (sing. and plur.), students see that three forms have ‘o’ connecting vowels and three are characterized by ‘e’ connecting vowels. A box can then be drawn around 2nd sing., 2nd plur., and 3rd sing., i.e., around forms with “ei” or “e” connecting vowels. This simple box is the basis for understanding all contract verbs patterns. When contract verbs finally make their entrance, they should be characterized as regular omega verbs (students tend to think of contracted forms as irregular). Since contracts are omega verbs, it is logical that their connecting vowels show the same grouping of “in the box” and “out of the box” as normal omega verbs. In other words, the connecting vowels in the box (2nd & 3rd sing., 2nd plur.) tend to be the same, and the connecting vowels out of the box (1st sing., 1st & 3rd plur.) also tend to be the same. This observation will ultimately spare the student tiresome calculating or memorizing.

Two simple ideas predict in general terms the vowel for any contract form. The first idea is that three vowel pairs (a/o, ei/ou, and oi/ou) correspond to the three types of contract verbs. The second idea is that for any type of contract verb and its corresponding vowel pair, the first vowel of the pair will be “in the box”; the second will be “out of the box”. Yes, there are minor details omitted, but the big picture is more important. Students should first learn a simple and reasonably accurate rule and then make necessary additions and corrections. Know the drama’s plot before worrying about a dropped or interpolated line.

These principles for teaching contract verbs have implications for teaching Greek more generally. Phonetic changes, difficult paradigms, and even the sequence of formal and grammatical topics can and should be far more logical, effective, and interesting. After all, learning Greek should be a compelling and even dramatic experience, not just an exercise in the theater of the absurd.