Mark 1:3 - aktionsart versus aspect?
Jonathan Robie
jonathan.robie at datadirect-technologies.com
Sun Sep 15 20:08:10 EDT 2002
At 05:45 AM 9/14/2002 -0500, Steve Godfrey wrote:
>It seems though that much of the work being done on aspect theory is still
>very theoretical. So is all of this just replacing one form of divination
>with another?
Talking about the meaning of grammatical constructions is always very
theoretical, and it is important to remember that native speakers do not
use a theoretical framework to understand their language. Jesus and Paul
did not talk about Aktionsart and aspect, we do.
A good theory about a language will accurately account for the way that
language is used, but there can be more than one theory that does this,
just as Newtonian physics and relativity can both accurately account for
the way the physical universe operates. Regardless, we should always derive
our theory from the facts, and when we use theory to predict new facts, we
should test our predictions against real data.
That means it is always important to look at lots of Greek sentences that
use the syntactic features you are studying, and see if the meaning you are
giving a construct matches the meaning of these sentences. One of the most
valuable reasons for using theory is to figure out what syntactic features
to focus on when looking for a set of sentences that are "like" another.
>This leads then to several questions which may be of interest for
>discussion. First, would we agree that aktionsart works even less well with
>the Hebrew verbal system than the Greek one, and that aspect may be more
>prominent in Hebrew than in Greek? Second, what are the strongest arguments
>and evidences for and against aspect theory in summary form? Third, what
>resources have you found most helpful in evaluating aktionsart versus aspect
>as either contrasting or complementary approaches for exegesis of the Greek
>NT?
This is largely a question of whether you prefer older linguistics or newer
linguistics. Many of the great reference works for Greek, such as Smyth or
Robertson, are pretty old, long before most linguists spoke in terms of
aspect. I generally find Robertson's explanations totally opaque, so I like
to go to Smyth first for the explanation, at which point I can understand
Robertson's text, but I really use Robertson for his amazing lists of
examples. If you want to use these books, then understanding Aktionsart is
important. Incidentally, different scholars at that time had different
explanations of how Aktionsart worked for Greek, and some of their
explanations were better than others.
These days, students of other languages generally never learn about
Aktionsart, and they only learn about aspect in languages where it is
particularly important. English speakers who have learned about progressive
tenses have a leg up on aspect. I think it's helpful to read non-biblical
works on aspect first, and I *love* Mari Broman Olsen's book with the
threatening title "A Semantic and Pragmatic Model of Lexical and
Grammatical Aspect"
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/flex-sign-in/ref=cm_rev_write_2/002-4887379-6938456?opt=n&page=community/review-sign-in-secure.html&response=tg/stores/detail/-/books/0815328494/customer-review-form&method=GET&cont-page=cm/signed-in-continue&cont-type=add-rev&return-url-code=4&form-url-code=6).
But scholars differ on how they think aspect works in Greek. You can get a
feel for the flavor of this disagreement by looking at the archives for
B-Greek, or it might be more efficient to start with the book Stanley
Porter and D. A. Carson (eds.), Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics:
Open Questions in Current Research. Guildford: Sheffield Academic Press.
Fanning and Porter take very different approaches to the Greek verb, but
both use theories based on aspect.
I really like Fanning's out-of-print book, which uses aspect theory, but
agrees substantially with Robertson on how the Greek verb is to be
interpreted. You may be able to find this in a good library: Fanning, B.
1993. "Approaches to Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek: Issues in
Definition and Method." Stanley Porter and D. A. Carson (eds.), Biblical
Greek Language and Linguistics: Open Questions in Current Research.
Guildford: Sheffield Academic Press, 46-62. I really wish I had a copy of
this book, I have been trying to buy it for years.
A lot of New Testament Greek people seem to think of Porter when they think
of aspect. His book is "Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament,
With Reference to Tense & Mood"
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0820424234/qid=1032006297/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-4887379-6938456?v=glance&s=books).
He has substantial disagreement with the interpretation of the Greek verb
given by Smyth, Robertson, or Fanning.
I'm pretty much an advanced beginner in Greek, so my opinion on this may
not matter that much, but I personally find that aspect is a much better
way of explaining things to someone young enough to be accustomed to modern
descriptions of languages, but I also think that Smyth, Robertson, and
Fanning's explanations of how the Greek verb works makes a *lot* more sense
than Porter's. On the other hand, I find Fanning a little impure
theoretically, but Mari Broman Olsen's approach to aspect in her chapter on
the Greek verb gives a much better explanation that is generally compatible
with Fanning's conclusions.
So how do you figure out if you like Aktionsart or aspect better? To me,
it's largely a matter of what books you want to read, or if you are
writing, which approach allows you to explain your understanding of how
Greek verbs work more clearly. Personally, the books I read are more likely
to use Aktionsart, but if I were to write something, I would use aspect.
That's separate from the question of how the verb works in the first place.
The best way to get evidence on this might be to get Fanning's book or
Robertson's book and also get Porter's book, then look through the examples
and compare the way specific verses are interpreted. You want sets of
sentences that use the same linguistic features to be interpreted in
similar ways, and you don't want to force a sentence to mean something it
does not. This takes a long time to do, but Greek sentences are the real
data for figuring out if one theory is better than another. Once you know
how you think the Greek verb works, you can decide which theoretical
framework works best for you when explaining it.
Jonathan
Jonathan Robie
jwrobie at mindspring.com
EXISTANTO DE PANTES KAI DIHPOROUN, ALLOS PROS ALLON LEGONTES: TI QELEI
TOUTO EINAI; -- Acts 2:12
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