- The simplification of the differences between the use of the perfect vs. the imperfect. In my observations, this has led to a disproportionate use of the imperfect. For example, classical authors use the perfect of possum more frequently than the imperfect.
- Many textbooks teach that the perfect stem of certain 3rd and 4th declension verbs like audio and eo ends in either -i- or -iv-. Did you know that the audiv- stem is more common than audi-? Or that the reverse is true for eo!
But how can I search the corpora of Greek and Latin literature to find out what authors actually used? The two resources below allow you to search the works classical authors.
For Latin: The Packard Humanities Institute's Classical Latin Texts (called PHI Latin Texts or simply PHI)
Pros:
- Search by word, phrase, or proximity
- Easy to access, no account required
- Fast search results
- Christian authors and post-classical authors are excluded 😢
- Cannot search by lemma (i.e. see all the usages of all the forms of a word at once)
For Greek and Latin: Perseus Digital Library Scaife Viewer
Pros:
- Search by word, phrase, proximity, and lemma (for Greek only)
- Ancient, medieval, and modern authors are included, even scholia! 😁
- Requires a (free) account
- Search results are slower than on PHI
- Inconsistent appearance of search results (i.e. some results appear as one line of text, others as massive chunks of text that require lots of scrolling)
In addition to these, there is (for Greek) the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG), but I have limited experience with it. The TLG also requires an account and you have to pay to access all of its features.
If you know of any others, please share them with me!
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