EAN + verb in present or aorist

John Schwandt JSchwandt at nsa.edu
Fri Nov 1 20:52:52 EST 2002




Iver Larsen wrote:

>
>The difference in approach is that you start with assumptions given in Greek
>textbooks, while I am trying to look at the data from scratch using
>descriptive linguistics. Personally, I think some of the textbook
>assumptions are dubious.
>
Iver,

Thanks for responding.  I will attempt to answer all of your questions.

I would rather avoid a prescriptive/descriptive linguistic debate on 
this forum.  So if you think the traditional thesis concerning 
chronological possibilities of the protasis of conditions is dubious, I 
would merely ask you to provide counter examples or argumentation.

>
>How do you know that a protasis clause is temporally dependent on the
>apodosis, rather than the other way round?
>
First, the subjunctive mood which is commonly used in the protasis of 
future conditions (where both actions of protasis and apodosis occur in 
the future) has no future form.   Obviously, the timing of the apodosis 
action is not determined by the tense-form the protasis in these 
examples.  These also provide supporting evidence that tense-form in the 
subjunctive mood does not typically convey any time reference.

Second, it is not unnatural for various dependent clauses to be 
temporally dependent.  The protasis being a dependent clause would just 
be another example of this.

> It is more logical to say that
>the result depends on the condition, than the condition on the result.
>What is meant by saying that when the apodosis is present the entire
>condition is normally present whether the verb is in present or aorist?
>
I said that

>If the apodosis is present than the entire condition is normally
> present (including the present or aorist subjunctive).

Remember that logical order doesn't necessarily imply temporal 
succession.  Take these for example:
1) If it is raining then the grass is wet.
2) If anyone sins he has an advocate with the father.

They are both temporally related.  They are both present general 
conditions and each protasis is occurring at the time of the apodosis. 
 It may help to reverse the word order.

1) The grass is wet if the it is raining.
2) He has an advocate with the father if he sins.

I would expect the EAN+subj. construction in the protasis to render 
these in Greek.  Furthermore I would expect #1 to be present and #2 to 
aorist due to the lexical nature of each verb.  The tense-form choice in 
the protasis would not be determined by the timing of the main clause. 
 If #2 goes against the lexical (and possibility constructional) 
aspectual preference and is rendered with a present subjunctive, then 
the condition would have some atelic nuance (e.g. He has an advocate 
with the father if he continues to sin).


> How
>would one then describe the difference between using a present or aorist
>form? Is it arbitrary?
>
The choice between atelic or telic stems (present or aorist forms) in 
these situations may be governed by:

3) Lexical nature of the root word (the aspectual nature of  the action, 
performance, activity or state conveyed by the word itself)
4) Construction (some grammatical constructions prefer certain aspects - 
I'm not convinced that EAN+subj. does.)
5) Intended aspectual nuance not conveyed by #3 or #4.

Although the timing of the action, performance, activity or state does 
not factor in to stem choice, these factors make the choice far from 
arbitrary.

>
>When we have a condition and a result dependent on that condition, then the
>result follows the condition logically and usually also temporally. If a
>result is triggered by a certain event, that event logically must happen
>first. This does put some restrictions on the verb forms that can be used.
>
As I have already shown (#1 and #2), it isn't difficult to produce 
conditions where the temporal and logical order of constituents differ. 
 Here are a couple more:

6) If there is smoke then there is fire. (We normally think of the fire 
producing the smoke)
7) If it walks like a duck then it is duck. (The duck's doesn't come 
into existence after the walking.)

>
>When looking at a few examples it appears that when a present tense is used
>in the conditional clause it can be followed by a present or future or a
>verbless main clause, quite often a future. A linguistic description ought
>to explain why one or the other is used.
>
The traditional approach does this.  A present apodosis normally conveys 
a present condition and a future apodosis normally conveys a future 
condition without reference to the tense of the protasis.

>
>When the conditional clause uses an aorist verb form, the main clause may
>have an aorist, present, future or perfect. (This is not a comprehensive
>statement, since I have not looked at all EAN clauses.) A linguistic
>description ought to explain why different forms are used in the main
>clause, and also why the conditional clause at times has a present verb
>form, at other times an aorist verb form.
>
Are you implying that a present subjunctive after EAN may not appear 
with an aorist or perfect apodosis? If you are, do you really have 
enough statistical data merely looking at EAN constructions to make such 
a general statement.  (Do EI+indicative constructions, which are very 
similar logically to EAN+subj, have the same tense phenomena?) I hope 
you are not considering the tense choice of non indicatives in the 
apodosis in your data.  Those choices would likely be made for other 
reasons than an indicative in that position.  The mood of a non 
indicative may have more temporal influence than the tense.  For 
example, an aorist imperative is still futuristic never past.

In summary, I do not see any compelling reason to either lengthen or 
shorten my list of factors (#3, #4, and #5) that influence aspectual 
choice in EAN+subj. constructions.

Thanks for the discussion,
John Schwandt




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