toward a definition of Verbal Apect

Ron Fay roncfay at hotmail.com
Sun Nov 3 19:27:45 EST 2002


With the old adage in mind that you only really know something once you have 
taught it, and knowing that I am just embarking on teaching aspect to my 
students (I am using Porter's categories, supplementing Mounce's book), I 
hesitantly enter into the conversation.

>Aspect:
>
>The nature of the action of a verb as to its beginning, duration, 
>completion, or repetition and without reference to its position in time.
>(http://www.orbilat.com/General_References/Linguistic_Terms.html)
>

That is probably a bit too general to be helpful, especially since the 
concept of repetition does not necessarily fall into the realm of aspect in 
Greek verbs.

>Apect:
>
>The unaffected meaning, while Aktionsart is aspect in combination
>with lexical, grammatical, or contextual features.... Greek has
>essentially three aspects or types of action: internal, external,
>and perfectice-stative.
>
>(GGBB, pg. 499...500).

This seems to be a wonderful non-definition, as unaffected is contrastive 
and giving the segments of something undefined does not in fact define it.


>In Greek there are three aspects:
>
>The CONTINUOUS aspect means that the action of the verb is thought
>of as an ongoing process.
>
>The UNDEFINED aspect means that the action of the verb is thought
>of as a simple event, without commenting on whether or not it is a
>process.... The UNDEFINED aspect is the absence of any specific aspect.
>
>The PERFECT aspect describes an action that was brought to completion
>but has effects carrying into the present.
>

The definitions are not too bad, although the last category listed seems 
more like an Aktionsart perfect tense than a perfect aspect word.  Notice 
that it is defined with respect to time, a definite no-no, since aspect by 
definition (the first one) has no implicit time element.


>Can someone help me understand the logic/reason of defining aspect
>as UNDEFINED? How can there be an absence of aspect? This seems to
>imply that aspect must have some association with verbal velocity,
>that there must be some "movement" for there to be aspect.
>

To be honest, it throws me for a loop as well.  I think he is trying to say 
this is the "default" aspect, the least marked.  I do not think movement per 
se is what he is aiming at, rather it is his understanding of what is 
carrying the most aspectual force (which does mingle with your idea of 
"movement" a little).

I would go with Porter's categories of PERFECTIVE (the action is seen as 
completed, no time element is implied as to past, present or future), 
IMPERFECTIVE (the action is viewed as incomplete or ongoing, analogous to 
the concept of continuous, such that one does not think of the action as 
finished yet, again with no inherent reference to past, present, or future), 
and STATIVE (the action is viewed as a whole, whether completed or not, 
again with no reference to time).

Unlike Porter, I would see at least implicit time in verbal forms (i.e. that 
aorist is past unless there is a reason within the utterance to think 
otherwise).  Mind you, I am talking about Greek verbs only.  I claim no 
knowledge let alone expertise in any other language (even English, hehe).

I hope this helps.  Others please feel free to critique or challenge what I 
say, for I may be wrong.

-Ron Fay

________________________________________________
Ron Fay
Ph. D. student and New Testament Teaching Fellow
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Deerfield, IL.
roncfay at hotmail.com



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