Hunches and Concerns

John Schwandt jschwandt at nsa.edu
Tue Jul 2 16:33:58 EDT 2002


> Carl wrote:
>
> -----
>
>> (2) Another notorious focus of bad terminology is the very word 
>> "tense" and
>> the implications of its confusion of "time" and "aspect" inevitably 
>> arising
>> from the
>> derivation of "tense" from Fr. "temps." What on earth might we 
>> substitute
>> for the word "tense" as a category inclusive of Present, Imperfect, 
>> Aorist,
>> Future, Perfect, Pluperfect, and Future Perfect?
>
> -----

I've been waiting for this to come up again in order to chime in.  I've 
found the best way to handle this terminological issue is by slightly 
streamlining some morphological and grammatical terminology.  If we 
reserve the term "tense" for use only in its richest sense indicating 
both temporal ad aspectual meaning (seen in the difference between the 
English imperfect tense and simple past tense), we can avoid confusing 
with mere temporal meaning, which is the common implication of "tense"as 
pointed out by Carl).  This is the problem of the term "tense stem."  If 
"stem" is defined as being exhausted by the six principle parts, stems 
only communicate aspect and not time.  Thus the term "tense" should not 
be combined with it.  Time is traditionally identified by the two 
temporal endings in Greek, primary and endings and secondary endings.  
Notice that I did not say primary tenses or secondary tenses, which is 
also confusing since it refers to merely the temporal side of things.  
Only when we maintain the rich sense of "tense"(both time and aspect) 
can we consistently talk about the Greek present tense, or aorist tense.

This is how I avoid the use of the problematic term "tense stem."  When 
I refer to the STEMS of various principle parts (I number them in this 
context), I only consider aspect and avoid temporally loaded concepts 
like present or future.  It is only the combination of the aspectual 
stem and temporal ending that produces our common categories of present, 
future, aorist, etc.  For example, the first principle part stem 
communicates atelic (incomplete) action, combined with a primary ending 
(present or future time) it yields what we call the present tense, an 
atelic action (in some sort of progress) occurring at the present time.  
If we add the secondary ending to the same atelic principle part, we get 
a past action in some sort of progress (I don't want to exclude aspects 
like conative), which is labeled the imperfect tense.  By this method we 
can explain every Greek tense (which by definition includes time and 
aspect).

There are many benefits to this system:
1) It doesn't create new grammatical terms or alter traditional terms.
2) It eliminates equivocation of mere aspect with aspect in time by 
avoiding the classification of "tense stem."  Notice in the examples, I 
do not use the term "tense stem," I only use "stem" which may be 
qualified with appropriate aspectual qualifiers like atelic or telic.  
When speaking merely about stem or aspect I refrain from referring to 
principle parts with temporally loaded terms like present (see #4).  
Instead I merely use the common linguistic convention of referring to 
principal parts by number.
3) It properly elevates the meaning and usefulness of primary and 
secondary endings. (My students find a two ending system easier to 
identify and compose than six plus)
4) The common terms, Present (tense), Imperfect, Future, Aorist ect. are 
welcomed but necessarily defined by both time (ending) and aspect (stem).
5) The horticultural metaphor works very well - Root = lexical data of 
the verb; Stem = aspectual data; Ending (too bad "bud" isn't 
traditional) = timing data.

Looking forward to comments,
John Schwandt




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