Aspect of the Greek Verb
hefin jones
hefinjones at hotmail.com
Tue Dec 17 17:40:42 EST 2002
I think Aristotle meant that it was undefined with respect to time, I'm
wondering whether it is also undefined with respect to aspect, i.e. it is
genuinely "unmarked" or to use the Chomskyian minimalist terminology, it is
"empty". This is not to say that the Aorist is undefinable, it is simply to
suggest that it is undefined with respect to time (controversial) and
undefined with respect to aspect (far more controversial). The analogy with
aspect as it manifests itself in English then becomes more obvious.
Further Eric and others would do well to reconsider their 'popular' style
definitions/explanations of aorist and perfect when the explanations clearly
overlap in confusing ways (I've seen the confusion amongst my fellow
students...).
Anyway, these are just the musings of a non-expert.
Hefin Jones
>From: "Eric S. Weiss" <eweiss at gte.net>
>Reply-To: "Eric S. Weiss" <eweiss at gte.net>
>To: Biblical Greek <b-greek at franklin.oit.unc.edu>
>Subject: [b-greek] Re: Aspect of the Greek Verb
>Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 10:12:04 -0500
>
> > Fully recognising the terminological, as well as paradigmatic minefield
>I
> > really do have a problem with the not infrequent attempt to describe the
> > aorist forms as "action seen as complete or as a whole". Part of the
>problem
> > lies that such a description is too easily confused with
>perfect/perfective
> > (3. in Eric's scheme below). As yet I'm unshaken not only from my
> > Porter-esque notion that the aorist goes not grammaticalise time, but
>also
> > neither does it actually grammaticalise aspect. If you want to, you
>could
> > describe it as 0-aspect ("Null-aspect"). Hence the parallel I tried to
>bring
> > out in my original "teaching aspect via english" between greek aorist
>and
> > english simple forms. The aorist is literally "undefined", not only with
> > respect to time (so Aristotle), but also aspect.
> >
> > Hefin Jones
>
>To say that the aorist is "literally 'undefined'" just trades Greek for
>Latin. A + hORIZEIN = un + definire, as I recall Carl suggesting in a past
>post (my dictionary indicates that Latin would be "in," not "un"). So,
>what do we mean by UNDEFINED? Can we define something that by definition
>is "undefined"? Is the aorist really "undefined"? Just because it has the
>name "aorist" doesn't necessarily mean that it is literally "undefined,"
>i.e., no definition/category/description can be applied to it and its
>usages. Sorry if this just makes things more confusing. I have somewhat
>read Porter's Idiom book and his treatment/translation of Romans 1:18ff
>with present tenses (like the TEV does) based on this idea of the aorist
>(if I recall correctly) goes against so much that so many seem to teach
>about the aorist.
>
>---
>B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
>You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [hefinjones at hotmail.com]
>To unsubscribe, forward this message to
>$subst('Email.Unsub')
>To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek at franklin.oit.unc.edu
_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list