Are Participles Marked Temporally?
George Blaisdell
maqhth at hotmail.com
Wed Mar 3 14:40:14 EST 1999
>From: Christopher Hutson
>My question has to do with participles. Participles have no augment,
>so according to the general consensus given above they should have
>aspectual but not temporal significance. And yet, it nearly always
>"works" in my mind to read an aorist participle as describing action
>that takes place prior to the action of the verb in the main clause,
>while a present participle describes action that takes place
>simultaneously with the action of the main verb. Can you listers help
>me make sense of how you fit participles into your time/aspect
>theories? Why is it that participles seem to have temporal
>significance even though they have no augments?
This is a great question.
I do not know 'the' answer, and I pray that I do not muck up the waters
with the following.
Time and Aspect are perhaps not as separable as they might seem.
The 'ongoingness' aspect is a present 'time', and refers to a
past-present, a present-present, of a future present. [Imperfect,
present or future.]
Perfective aspect refers to past time, in that the action in question
has perfected itself ~ it refers to the completion and stoppage of the
action, which forces it into past time. There are three of these as
well, corresponding to the three 'presents' of the present aspects:
Pluperfect, perfect and future perfect.
Hence we have past completion, present completion, and future
completion, all by reference to the presents that have been, are now, or
shall be obtaining.
The perfective aspect of the aorist lies in the fact that it denotes the
whole action, without indicating its inception, ongoingness, or
completion [stoppage]. It is not limited to those horizons, except by
context. Some even hold that it is not time denotive at all!! [moi]
So it is no great wonder that Time-Aspect theory is currently in such a
quandry with nomenclature and layout of the relationships. It is a hard
topic to talk about because it does not really separate time from aspect
all that easily, if at all.
So how does past time sneak in on those pesky unaugmented participles??
I would have to guess that it does so through aspect, which is in truth
inseparable from time designation. The stumbler on this approach, of
course, is the idea of three presents: Before Now, Now, and After Now
[past, present and future]. That is hard to think and talk about as
well.
So at least your question has been addressed directly, if clumsily!!
Most aspect theorists think that time and aspect are separable, I
believe. I do not.
I pray that this is at minimum not unhelpful...
George
George Blaisdell
Roslyn, WA
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