Is TEMPUS A Part of Greek Grammar?

Ed Gorham aekalm at a-znet.com
Fri Sep 24 07:08:18 EDT 1999


It's important to remember that those who write about aspect don't even 
agree on how it operates. It is still a (relatively)recent concept that, by 
all accounts, needs further study.

S. Porter, coming from a liguistic point of view,  holds that time is not 
grammaticalized, not even in the indicative. But I don't believe that he 
goes as far as to say that we ought to dispense with the idea of 
temporality. He simply says that is not grammaticalized in the verbal form 
itself. He points to other temporal indicators, context, lexis, etc. as 
places to go for that information, though he himself does not fully explore 
this.

Fanning, coming from a pragmatic point of view, agrees with Porter in a 
broad definition of aspect, but goes further in examining how these other 
indicators combine with the unaffected sense of a particular tense to 
communicate an idea. Dan Wallace also seems to adopt a similar position.

A helpful book in this regard is Biblical Language and Linguistics: Open 
Questions In The Curent Debate, edited by Porter and Carson, with 
contributions from them as well as Silva, Schmidt and Fanning. Sheffield is 
the publisher. Rod Decker also has a wonderful paper on his website that 
deals with this.

-Ed Gorham
aekalm at a-znet.com



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