Time and Aspect in Verb tenses

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Oct 23 08:03:06 EDT 2002


At 11:46 PM +0000 10/22/02, dconklin at tcq.net wrote:
>> At 12:59 PM -0700 10/22/02, Mitch Larramore wrote:
>
>> >Can someone explain to me what and why Greek has Primary tenses and
>> >Secondary tenses. Why are the Primary Tenses the ones they are like
>> >Present, Future and Perfect?
>
>In line with Mitch's question I had an exchange on a forum that went like
>this:
>
>>Note that Paul says that these things "are" (present tense) not "were"
>(past tense).
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Tense in Greek is morphological, not time-oriented. It actually conveys
>the authors concept of the action. See Stanley Porter's Verbal Aspect in
>the Greek New Testament.
>
>Is that true?

Not in that simplistic formulation--although the snippet of dialogue is a
bit insubstantial to be sure of the context of discussion. In the
indicative the tenses are indicative of time in relationship to a reference
point, normally the writer/speaker's time of writing/speaking. Outside the
indicative verbal aspect rather than temporal reference comes more into
play.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



More information about the B-Greek mailing list