Teaching aspect via english

hefin jones hefinjones at hotmail.com
Sun Dec 8 02:38:03 EST 2002


Following up on our thread on Fanning and Porter, what do people think about 
the idea of teaching the concept of aspect as it manifests itself in English 
as preparation for introducing the concept in Greek? It seems to me that 
many of us students think "aspect" is yet another thing which the esoteric 
language Greek, throws up at us, and we are  sometimes tempted to think it 
would be so much simpler if "english had been good enough for Paul".... :-)

The fact is aspect is there in English in the form of the aspectual 
auxilaries: perfective "have" and imperfective "be". The difference between 
greek and english seems to be that time is more central to the english tense 
system. A further difference is that english allows the use of aspectual 
"have" and "be" together (e.g. the Paul gag above).

Further, and here I fully expect to be shot down in flames, isn't the rough 
conceptual analogy that exists between greek and english aspectual systems 
thus:

    perfective   =  perfective

    imperfective =  imperfective

    simple       =  "aorist"

Hefin Jones





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