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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