Imperative Mood: Present vs. Aorist

Jonathan Robie jonathan at texcel.no
Fri Oct 23 21:28:43 EDT 1998


At 02:48 PM 10/23/98 -0700, Don Wilkins wrote:
 
>Carl and Jim already responded to this question with good analysis and
>advice. What I find noteworthy is the approach described and the results,
>i.e. one comes to the text expecting to find certain things, one is
>surprised, therefore one decides that the best course of action might be to
>redefine the grammar (in this case, that there is sometimes no difference
>between the aorist and present imper., excluding problems with deponents,
>etc.). 

When I learn a new grammatical feature, I read the theory, don't quite
grasp it, look at the examples, begin to understand what they meant by the
theory, then look for other examples. Often, I just can't figure out how to
apply it to the new examples, and my understanding has to shift to
incorporate the new examples. It's easy to want to discard the theory at
this point. Instead, I post a question here, and more experienced hands
help me through...

>I mean no disrespect, but it seems to me that this is what some
>scholars occasionally do when they seek to provide "new insights".

Alas, some scholars have published much too early in the process I describe
above...

Jonathan
 
___________________________________________________________________________

Jonathan Robie		jwrobie at mindspring.com

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