Aorist never codes an open situation? - to Kimmo

Mark Wilson emory2oo2 at hotmail.com
Sun Dec 17 22:31:35 EST 2000



Moon:

You said:

-----
>I understand your claim. "to love" itself is unbound like uncountable
>nouns. But uncountable nouns can be made countable as in "two coffees,
>please". Similarly verbs that are lexically open-ended can be made bound
>by the aorist coding. It seems to be a nice and systmetic explanation of
>aorist aspect.
------

Since this is to Kimmo, I thought I would ask some Verbal Aspect questions.

Correct my thinking Kimmo:

Moon has, to some extent, hit on the weakness of Porter's Verbal Aspect 
system, namely, LEXICAL ASPECT. The Aorist FORM encodes GRAMMATICAL ASPECT, 
but not LEXICAL ASPECT. Hence, you have a more complex issue here than just 
the Aorist aspect (Perfective Aspect).

This may also be relevant: Not only does John say that God "loved" but he 
also associates (joins) this act with the Aorist transitive verb EDWKEN (he 
gave). Since EDWKEN takes a Direct Object here, you have a telic aspect 
(i.e., there must be a specific time in which this act reaches a termination 
point) as well.

It seems to me that the telic aspect of EDWKEN would naturally join with an 
Aorist form verb (perfective aspect). Since John has in mind some act in 
which God "gave," he would naturally (default ??) use a perfective aspect 
with AGAPAW.

This may be a chicken and egg question, but which comes first here: Does 
John use the Aorist of AGAPAW "because" he plans on using the Aorist EDWKEN?

My questions...

Mark Wilson


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