Linguistics and opposite conclusions

Ron Fay roncfay at hotmail.com
Mon Oct 28 15:30:19 EST 2002




>I would suggest that this is a misunderstanding/misrepresentation of
>Porter's argument for the aorist serving as the unmarked form in many
>contexts. He incorporates several factors, including morphology,
>distribution, and frequency. He also distinguishes use in various genre.

The way I came to my conclusion was by taking an advanced grammar course 
with D.A. Carson, Porter's mentor.  in that class he stated that 
statistically it was the default case.  However, if you could provide 
counter examples from Porter's work, I would love to learn.

At the same time, it seems unlikely that a form with an augment would ever 
be the default case, morphologically speaking.  Admittedly, I am biased 
against his case in this respect, but at one point in time I was convinced 
by it.  Perhaps I should go talk to Carson about this a little more and see 
what he says.

The bulk of Porter's arguments stem from pp. 178-181 in his book "Verbal 
Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood," 
SBG 1, (NYC: Peter Lang, 1989).  Other than number, which he himself does 
say is dubious (pg. 181), his other arguments are as follows:

b) Implicational Markedness (pg. 180): this argument is that the aorist has 
specific forms of active, middle, and passive, making it less mkarked than 
the present.  However, I would argue the exact opposite.  It would seem that 
if the lines of meaning between voices (e.g. deponant verbs) is weakened, 
this would make the tense form less marked rather than more.

c)  Distribushional Markedness:  statistics, covered this already.

d)  Semantic Markedness:  He relies on chapter 2 of his book to prove this 
point.  However, his argument rests on taking the perfect and the imperfect 
together, which makes nominal sense.  In contrast, he argues elsewhere only 
against the present.  Thus, one must question whether this lumping together 
of present and imperfect is a valid way to rule it out.

I did not understand the point he was trying to argue in a) Material 
Markedness.  Perhaps one of you more learned in linguistics (Porter's Ph. D 
is in linguistics) could decipher his point there and relate it to me.  He 
seemed to list a bunch of catagories from Goodwin's grammar without arguing 
for them other than by authority.  this seems to be the argument from 
morphology, but it is just a listing of catagories without a conclusion or 
summary statement.

Let me know what you think.  Perhaps I am being unfair to him.
________________________________________________
Ron Fay
Ph. D. student and New Testament Teaching Fellow
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Deerfield, IL.
roncfay at hotmail.com



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