Historical present (was: Linguistics and opposite conclusions)
Iver Larsen
iver_larsen at sil.org
Sun Oct 27 23:54:27 EST 2002
> But it's a little more plausible when you think of 'default' as a synonym
> for 'unemphasized', or 'unmarked' as many linguists prefer to call it. In
> some genres, this is quite plausible. For instance, consider Porter's
> treatment of historical narrative in Idioms of the New Testament:
>
> When a Greek speaker narrated events, the Aorist,
> used alongside the Imperfect, formed the basis for
> carrying the narrative, with the historic Present
> used for selecting processes for emphasis (the
> most heavily-marked Perfect was available as
> well.
>
> I'm quite certain that this is true for some passages and perhaps
> generally
> true for some writers. But I'm not at all convinced that the way Mark's
> historical narrative uses tenses for emphasis in the same as the way as
> Luke's historical narrative. In some passages of historical narrative, I
> find that an Aorist feels more emphasized than a Present, and vice versa.
Most narratives deal with events that happened in the past, so it is normal
to use a past tense. One could therefore say that Greek aorist is the
"default narrative tense" in the sense that the aorist is the "unmarked"
choice. Similarly, if we have a prophetic text dealing with future events,
one would expect the future tense to be the "default tense". Therefore, the
analyst would be interested in describing when and why the aorist is NOT
used in a past narrative, and when and when the future is NOT used in a text
about the future. A present tense used to refer to an event in the past is
called the historic(al) present. The imperfect tense is often used in
background comments in the narrative - not part of the story-line or
"backbone" of the story.
> Is anyone aware of good work on this question?
This is a topic SIL linguists have studied quite a bit over the years. The
five main articles that I am aware of are:
Boos, D. 1984. "The Historical Present in John's Gospel." Selected Technical
Articles Relating to Translation 11:17-24.
Buth, R. 1977. "Mark's Use of the Historical Present." Notes on Translation
65:7-13.
Callow, J. 1984. "The Function of the Historic Present in Mark 1.16-3.6;
4.1-41; 7.1-23; 12.13-34." Selected Technical Articles Relating to
Translation 11:9-17.
Larsen, I. (1991) "Quotations and Speech Introducers in Narrative Texts."
Notes on Translation Vol. 5 No. 1:55-60
Levinsohn, S. 1977. "Preliminary Observations on the Use of the Historic
Present in Mark." Notes on Translation 65:13-28.
Luke hardly uses the historic present (at most 9 times in the gospel),
whereas Mark's shorter gospel has 147 according to Buth. Matthew and
especially John use it frequently.
If I were to describe the use of the historic present briefly it would be
something like the following: Writer to reader: Sit up and listen, a crucial
part of the plot is now unfolding!!!
Let me copy from Stephen's conclusion:
3. Conclusion
It is inaccurate to say that the historic present is used in Mark's Gospel
to give heightened vividness to the narrative. Rather, it is employed as a
device to give prominence to the events that lead from and build upon the
speech or event so introduced.
Its presence is very systematic. It is used to describe the arrival at the
location at which the events to be highlighted will be performed, at least
of the second and often of both the participants involved. It is used also
to introduce the speech, event, or discovery (perception) from which these
significant events develop. If the incident involves several stages of
development, the inciting event of each one is described using the historic
present. Except when the events which are being highlighted themselves are
viewed as inciting key actions, however, these events are described using
the aorist tense.
The overall effect of employing the historic present in Mark is to give
prominence within the Gospel to certain themes, so that, although the Gospel
is cast in a narrative development type, Mark's intention in recounting the
events may be discerned clearly.
Dr. Buth's article was quite preliminary, and I think he has developed his
view of the historical present considerably since then, so I won't quote the
whole conclusion. Just the last paragraph:
"Finally, Mark is able to use this construction [historical present] as a
climax marker to draw attention to the crucifixion of Jesus. Mark leaves no
doubt as to his intentions, when in Mark 15.16-28 he uses the historical
present nine times, of which three times are irregular usages and in
connection with the verb stauroun 'to crucify'."
Buth draws attention to the fact that 50% of the historic presents in Mark
are found in the word LEGW, so it is interesting to study the historical
present - and the imperfect - in speech introducers.
Since my article is later than the others, it includes a brief comment on
them. Let me quote one paragraph:
"Traditionally, the historic present has been associated with added
vividness to the narrative (cf. Buth 1977:7, Levinsohn 1977:13, and Boos
1984:18). Buth, Levinsohn, and Boos agree that the traditional description
is inadequate and set out to describe its function from a discourse
perspective. Boos briefly summarizes various theories and concludes that the
primary function of the historical present is to "highlight those episodes
which build suspense towards a climax in the plot structure and directly
relate to the author's purpose" (1984:20). A second function is "a
kataphoric reference to a following important event" (ibid., 22)... The
effect of using the present tense in a past-tense narrative is to create
suspense as Boos has noted. (Levinsohn 1977:27 also talks of the use of the
historic present in an inciting event.) The idea of creating suspense is
similar to the traditional idea of adding vividness. The suspense-creating
function also supports Boos's suggestion that it is used particularly in
"inciting incidents" or "building-up units." It may also be used in peak
episodes and occasionally in post-peak sentences when the tension is still
high."
For a fuller description, one would, of course, need to study the articles
with all their examples taken from the GNT.
Iver Larsen
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