Meaning of the perfect tense

CWestf5155 at aol.com CWestf5155 at aol.com
Tue Jan 16 10:33:58 EST 2001


Mark,

In a message dated 01/14/2001 7:45:31 PM Mountain Standard Time, 
emory2oo2 at hotmail.com writes:

> 
>  I am not picking up on the temporal dilemma in Jn. 5:24, but I would ask 
>  this question regarding the Perfect Tense, especially in light of Dana and 
>  Mantey's definition. Would it not be correct to say that the Perfect Tense 
>  is related, not to the time of speaking, but to any contextually developed 
>  deictic center (DC)? Once a DC is developed contextually, the Perfect 
Tense 
>  will "now" (as opposed to Dana and Mantey) hold true: a prior situation 
(to 
>  the DC) that is being viewed as concurrent with the DC (in fact, being 
>  viewed as in a State at the time of the DC)?
>  
>  Perhaps in Jn. 5:24, we could have something very roughly like:
>  
>  "this one has eternal life and does not come into judgment
>  why...
>  (because) this one now (concurrent with DC) resides in a state of life, 
>  having passed out of death."
>  

Good question.

In verbal systems that are strictly temporal, nearly all sentences are 
anchored to the context of utterance--the deictic center is located where the 
speaker is (the commons reference points are speakers, addressees, indicated 
objects, places and times).

The question of deixis involves determining what role context plays in 
specifying what properties the sentence expresses on this occasion of 
utterance. (see S.C. Levinson, <<Pragmatics>>, p. 59.

While some communication is written or recorded with a deictic center related 
to recipients that are receiving it at a later time, in Jn. 5:24, the 
intended recipients are present, so I don't think that the deictic center can 
be located in the way you are describing. It is not really what is meant by 
'the context of the utterance', which is what deixis is about.

Rather, we read this statement and specify the circumstances under which Jn. 
5:24 could be true, and we determine pragmatically that the meaning of what 
Jesus said remains constant across different occasions of utterance (and 
where the 'indicated object' of the one hearing Jesus' word and receiving the 
one who sent him can be different individuals). 

Cindy Westfall
PhD Student, University of Surrey at Roehampton



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