toward a definition of Verbal Apect

Dale Noonan dknoonan at hotmail.com
Mon Nov 4 17:23:53 EST 2002


I'm confused over Jonathan's example of Mary entering the house, and
Stagg's example of Romans 3:22-23 in the prior message by Calton.  I
believe both are in the indicative?  I thought that, for indicative, the
aorist or present were indicators of time in relation to the speaker, e.g.
past or present.  I did not think aspect (ongoing vs. point-in-time) could
be determined in the indicative.

Likewise, I was under the impression that outside the indicative (the
infinitive for example), aorist or present do not tell us about time, but
only about aspect.

I thought it was an either-or situation, kind of like the Heisenberg
Uncertainty principle.  You can either know the speed of an electron or
its position, but not both.  So in Greek aorist/present  -- in the
indicative you can know the tense, but not aspect.  Outside of the
indicative you can know the aspect, but not the tense!

Thanks,
Dale Noonan



More information about the B-Greek mailing list