Are participles temporally unmarked? Mk 1:35

George Blaisdell maqhth at hotmail.com
Sat Mar 6 14:47:06 EST 1999





"Hultberg, Alan D" writes

>"George Blaisdell" [wrote]

>And aspectually ANASTAS simply indicates the fact of the 
>complete action of arising at this time

>From what I understand of aspect theory, George's above
>statement is technically incorrect....  

>George's statement is one of
>*Aktionsart*, in that it posits a direct relationship          >between 
the action as it occurred in reality and the              >verb tense 
(as a morphological, not temporal
>category) used to describe the action. In other words,               
>part [of] *Aktionsart* posits that the aorist "indicates           >the 
FACT of the complete action..."  

Alan, you are doubtless correct, and I have no way of knowing because I 
do not understand the distinction all that well.  Aktionsart, to me, 
refers to the 'sort' of action and thereby its morphological portrayal 
in the Greek verb system.  Thus a 'handclap', due to its brevity, would 
be usually portrayed with an aorist [or other 'perfective'], and the 
verb 'to be', due to its ongoing nature, would be portrayed with a 
present [or other 'imperfective'].  And the range of kinds of action in 
between these two is vast.

ANASTAS, in terms of Aktionsart, is well into the middle of this range, 
in that it can be seen as a slow and liesurely process [imperfective] or 
as a sudden event [perfective]. The 'seeing' of it one way or the other 
is a function of aspect, not Aktionsart, as I understand things.  So 
when ANASTAS [2nd aor] appears, it portrays the action as a complete 
unit of thought, which is the whole action presented simply as the fact 
of that action, without reference to the ongoingness [of arising] that 
comprised it as it was occurring.

So the distinction remains elusive for me...

>...aspect theory says the choice of the morphological             >verb 
tense bears no necessary relationship to the actual             
>performance of the action described; it
>only reflects the author's/speaker's PORTRAYAL of the action.

And this is where I find myself getting real dense.  Does the author's 
PORTRAYAL of the action bear no necessary relationship to the actual 
performance of the action described???  I just flat out do not 
understand how that can be...

>In this instance, Mark portrays the action of Jesus'           >arising 
as a complete act, or as simply having occurred,            >if you 
will--he gives us a snapshot of the action, not
>a movie.

Well, a snapshot freezes the action at some point during its commission, 
and cannot possibly denote the whole [or complete] action, which is why 
I have trouble with the 'snapshot' understanding of the aorist or any 
other perfective 'aspect'.  

Perfectivity is a conceptual term in that it regards _as a unit of 
thought_ an action that takes place across time, and on this 
understanding even our handclap occurs across time, you see...  

Yet the aorist portrays this time involved action as a thought that 
really has, of itself, no time whatsoever.  A thought is the ultimate 
perfective kind of Aktionsart, yes?

So I am still mucking about as I look at aspect theory, and doubtless am 
mis-stating things horribly!  And I still do not see how tense and 
aspect can be separated in reality, any more than heads is separate from 
tails on my coins.

George


George Blaisdell
Roslyn, WA


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