Mark 5:9 verb salience, R E Longacre

clayton stirling bartholomew c.s.bartholomew at worldnet.att.net
Tue Feb 15 13:25:46 EST 2000


R.E. Longacre* has a "Cline of Dyamicity for the Greek Verbs found in 
Mark 5" in his excellent article found in the book I have been talking
about for several days now. Longacre ranks the salience of the
historical present below the aorist and above the imperfect but includes
a remark that the historical present with speech verbs is a special case
which he does not address in this article (p 178 last sentence). The
leads into my question about Mark 5:9.

Mark 5:9

KAI EPHRWTA AUTON
TI ONOMA SOI;
KAI LEGEI AUTWi
LEGIWN ONOMA MOI,
hOTI POLLOI ESMEN.

How would we rank the salience of LEGEI in this verse? Is this question
and answer about the name LEGIWN a supporting detail somewhat
subordinate to the main story line which is being carried along by the
verbs in the aorist? I would be tempted to see the salience of EPHRWTA
and LEGEI as roughly equal.

Stephanie Black has an article in the same book which treats the
historical present in Matthew. She sees the historical present with
speech verbs as something like a fixed form, which I suspect means that
it would have a different  distribution as well as a different level of
salience than historical present not associated with speech verbs.

Comments on this are always welcome.

--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062

* p179,  Porter, Stanley E. & Jeffrey T. Reed ³Discourse Analysis and
the New Testament, Sheffield Academic Press, 1999



More information about the B-Greek mailing list