two models?
Steven Lo Vullo
slovullo at mac.com
Fri Oct 25 22:42:27 EDT 2002
Clay:
I honestly do not mean to add gasoline to the fire, but I feel I must
offer a corrective--or at least a counterbalance--to your comments
below. I do this because there are no doubt many second-year Greek
students out there who are using GGBB and need to be confident that
they are not being led down the road to irretrievable ruin. In
addition, I think it is a matter of simple fairness to accurately
represent the views of a man who has worked very hard to help students
make sense of NT Greek.
> Here is: THE MAIN ISSUE
>
> The hybrid categories that combine morpho-syntactic elements with
> semantic
> elements are completely misleading. For example take the "Gnomic
> Aorist"
>
>
> Wallace:
>
> ******************************
> Gnomic Aorist
>
> A. Definition
>
> The aorist indicative is occasionally used to present a timeless,
> general fact. When it does so, it does not refer to a particular event
> that did happen, but to a generic event that does happen. Normally, it
> is translated like a simple present tense. This usage is quite rare in
> the NT.
> ******************************
>
> The semantic notion of timelessness is not a feature of the Aorist
> form.
> Timelessness is not communicated to the reader/listener by verb
> inflection.
> It is completely misleading to talk about a "Gnomic Aorist" in the
> same way
> that it would be to talk about Marxist bananas, since bananas are not
> capable of holding political ideologies. When NT Greek students discuss
> categories like this they are talking about "nothing at all" since the
> "Gnomic Aorist" is a non-existent animal.
I think the above snippet was taken out of context and a conclusion was
drawn that was never intended by the author. Note some of Wallace's
earlier comments on the aorist tense (emphasis in caps mine):
"...often the choice of a tense is made for a speaker by the action he
is describing. At times the tense chosen by the speaker is the *only*
one he could have used to portray the idea. Three major factors
determine this: lexical meaning of the verb (e.g., whether the verb
stem indicates a terminal or punctual act, a state, etc.), contextual
factors, and other grammatical features (e.g., mood, voice,
transitiveness, etc). This is the difference between aspect and
Aktionsart: Aspect is the basic meaning of the tense, unaffected by
considerations in a given utterance, while Aktionsart is THE MEANING OF
THE TENSE AS USED BY AN AUTHOR IN A PARTICULAR UTTERENCE, AFFECTED AS
IT WERE BY OTHER FEATURES OF THE LANGUAGE.
"The use of the aorist in any given situation DEPENDS, THEN, ON ITS
COMBINATION WITH OTHER LINGUISTIC FEATURES" (p. 556).
"There are two errors to avoid in treating the aorist: saying too
little and saying too much.
"First, some have *said too little* by assuming that nothing more than
the unaffected meaning can ever be seen when the aorist is used. This
view fails to recognize that the aorist tense (like other tenses) DOES
NOT EXIST IN A VACUUM. Categories of usage are legitimate because THE
TENSES COMBINE WITH OTHER LINGUISTIC FEATURES TO FORM VARIOUS FIELDS OF
MEANING.
"Second, many NT students see a particular category of usage
(Aktionsart) as underlying the entire tense usage (aspect). This is the
error of *saying too much*. Statements such as 'the aorist means
once-for-all action' are of this sort. It is true that the aorist may,
under certain circumstances, describe an event that is, IN REALITY,
momentary. But we run into danger when we say that this is the aorist’s
unaffected meaning, for then we force it on the text in an artificial
way. We then tend to ignore such aorists that disprove our view (and
they can be found in every chapter of the NT) and proclaim loudly the
'once-for-all' aorists when they suit us" (p. 557).
Whatever else one may think of the above statements, it should be clear
that Wallace DOES NOT and COULD NOT think or mean that "timelessness is
... a FEATURE of the Aorist form," or that it is "communicated to the
reader/listener by verb inflection," as you say above. This should be
clear even from the quote you proffer above. He does not say the aorist
tense intrinsically contains the idea of timelessness; rather he says
that the aorist indicative is occasionally USED to PRESENT a timeless,
general fact. These comments must be understood in conjunction with his
earlier general discussion of the aorist (and his even earlier
discussion of tense).
Finally, it should be said that the kinds of clarifications and caveats
I pointed out above are not rare; the book is replete with them. You
said in an earlier post that you "suspected" that Wallace "knew
better." There is no reason to "suspect"; he makes the point explicitly
over and over.
============
Steven R. Lo Vullo
Madison, WI
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