Are Greek Verbs Not Marked Temporally Even In Indicative Clauses?
Carl Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Mar 3 11:42:41 EST 1999
For clarification's sake, I'm answering some BG mail via the web-site while
I'm away from St. Louis and can't access my regular server, currently down
for maintenance.
On 03/03/99, "Rolf Furuli <furuli at online.no>" wrote:
> Carl Conrad wrote:
>
> snip
> >
> >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.
>
>
> Dear Carl,
>
> About a year ago, you made some comments regarding Mari's discussion of
> aorist, and I construed you to mean that her discussion had (almost?)
> convinced you that the "semantic meaning" of aorist was not past tense but
> only perfectivity. I remember this because at that time I was sceptical to
> her conclusion regarding aorist. Since that time I have gone deeper into
> the material and I accept her conclusion that aorist is tenseless while the
> imperfect codes both for imperfectivity and for past tense. Have you
> changed your mind, and in that case, why? Or have I misunderstood you?
>
> Btw, the more I work with Mari's model, the more impressed I become
> regarding its explanatory power. I cannot think of a better approach to
> find the meaning of verbs than her scrupulous differention between
> "semantic meaning" and "conversational pragmatic implicature"; the model is
> excellent also for Hebrew studies.
This is helpful, Rolf. I'm glad to hear that you've found you can agree
with Mari on this matter because I have great regard for your opinion as
well as for hers. I still think that my statement above will hold, however,
because I think that there are list-members who find Porter's views on
aspect more convincing and others who find Fanning's views more convincing.
As a relative pessimist who takes the long view, my guess is that consensus
on these matters may be another decade or two in coming, if it comes at
all. Certainly, however, I do think that discussions of aspect on our list
have tended to be confusing, partly because of fundamental or partial
disagreements, partly because respondents aren't definining the terms
consistently or in the same way always as each other.
I also don't think this affects what I stated in an earlier post about
aorist participles in narrative sequence: that they do tend generally to
indicate action prior to the main narrative verb, and that this is probably
a matter of conventional idiomatic usage rather than of anything built-in
in either the aorist itself or in the aorist participle.
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list