Meaning of the perfect tense

Mark Wilson emory2oo2 at hotmail.com
Sun Jan 14 01:48:01 EST 2001



Steve:

You wrote:

------
>The two "states" spoken of above are only implied. The prepositional 
>phrases
>do not describe states per se, but motion "out of" and motion "into"
>different domains accomplished by the action of the verb in question. When
>you say, "The result would be the state of life," this is correct. But ZWH
>as a state is only implied, not stated explicitly. The reason we can speak
>of the "state of death" is that it is logical to conclude that if someone
>crossed over EK TOU QANATOU that person must have been in a state of death.
>Likewise, we can speak of the result here as being "the state of life," not
>because it is explicit, but because it is logical to conclude that if
>someone crossed over EIS THN ZWHN that person must now be in "the state of
>life." But the prepositional phrases do not state these things explicitly;
>they only imply them.
-----

I think your comments here about the prep. phrases are both correct and 
incorrect. When you say that the prep. phrases do not describe "states" but 
"motions," I think this is correct. But we do not have prep. phrases used 
independently here; they are part of a larger syntactical structure, and it 
is in this structure that the prep. phrases combine with other grammatical 
features to communicate a  more complex concept than just a prep. phrase "in 
a vacuum."

The Perfect tense form creates, for some, a Stative Aspect, while others 
argue for a Perfective Aspect. But either way, the Perfect tense views the 
situation at its completion. So, although the prep. phrases denote "motion" 
here, when they combine with other grammatical features, they "give way" to 
the Perfective Aspect of the Perfect tense, IMHO.

I think Cindy is correct in looking at the "completion" of the verb here by 
virtue of its grammatical aspect (perfectivity).

So, I think that the states are more than implied, I see them as explicitly 
stated by the perfective aspect of the verb. I also believe that the state 
of life is more emphatic than the former state of death by virtue of the 
Perfect tense again.

My thoughts,

Mark Wilson

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