Are Greek Verbs Not Marked Temporally Even In Indicative Clauses?

Carl Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Mar 3 08:54:33 EST 1999


On 03/02/99, ""Moon-Ryul Jung" <moon at saint.soongsil.ac.kr>" wrote:
> Dear members, 
I learned BG tense and aspect by reading M. Zerwick's "Biblical
Greek- illustrated by examples". I was impressed by the constant
emphasis that "present", "aorist", "imperfect", "perfect" refer to
aspect, not tense. It seems to say that even "future" has some volitional
element and would have been derived from subjunctive. Even in English,
"I will go" has some volitional element, while "he will go" may not. 

While the "future" may have a volitional element, I think that may account 
for many of them being in the middle voice, but as for derivation from the 
subjunctive (and it would be an aorist subjunctive), that's not so clear as 
it was once thought to be. I think that current theory is that the ancient 
Greek future is based upon a "desiderative" infix (-S[e]-) that is added 
either to the verb's root or to the present tense stem. Of course, all that 
is theoretical; I'm just citing what I understand to be the currently held 
general view.

But "aorist" and "present" aspects have temporal significance
when they are used in independent indicative sentences. But because 
"present" verb forms can be used to describe future situations,
and "future" verb forms acquired future time value accidentally, only 
aorist indicative has [+past] feature.  Why would it be? Zerwick simply
says that it is exception. 

Is it possible that "aorist"'s semantic meaning involves only aorist 
aspect, but when used to describe historic situations it acquires temporal
significance pragmatically? 

This is more complicated. You'll probably start getting answers from the 
so-called 'aspect-geeks' on this question and you may find those answers, 
as well as  my own, more confusing than helpful (I say that not in 
disparagement of the so-called 'aspect-geeks' but rather because they don't 
seem to be in total agreement with each other about some of the basic 
questions involved).

Let me just state what I think is a "more-or-less" agreed and traditional 
view: the "tense" stems really do express only aspect, but when the AUGMENT 
(whether temporal or syllabic) is added in an Imperfect, an Aorist, or a 
Pluperfect form, then temporal indication of past time is also clearly 
there. But to this must be added that even that statement will be disputed 
by some who will claim that an Aorist indicative may point to present time 
or even to future time, and that other factors in the sentence, including 
the nature of the verb being used as well as adverbs, etc., etc., enter 
into play in indicating the time frame.

And if that's not confusing enough, perhaps others will contribute--either 
to further obfuscation or even to clarification.




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