[B-Greek] Re: Understanding Greek Verb Tense/Aspect+hist.pres.

R Yochanan Bitan Buth ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Fri Apr 9 13:13:07 EDT 2004


Shalom Kimmo,

It has been some time. It is nice to hear from you. Thank you for the
question, which properly distinguishes the Greek system from the potential
semantic analyses.

The present is open-ended, imperfective, and marked as such by morphology. 
When the "historic present" is used, it is still a present and represents
the author's forcing of the story into the present mould for literary
effect. I would argue (and I think you would agree) that it remains
"imperfective" and "present" in literary effect, which adds extra layers to
any semantic analysis. I haven't done any analysis of collocational
restrictions when used as a historic present and would appreciate a list of
any you have. One item of obvious interest is that the historic present can
be used of non-overlapping, completed events that are reported in series.
Something typically perfective in story telling.

Thus, the historic present is regularly used where another author would have
naturally chosen an aorist (perfective), as we see, e.g., when comparing
historical presents in one gospel with another gospel. Lk 23:26-33
having-seized Simon (aorist part)...they placed (aorist) ... when they came
(aor) ... they crucified  (aor). In Mark 15:21-24 they are compelling (pres)
... they are bringing (pres) ... they are crucifying (pres). The
'compelling' and 'arriving' were completed events along a series. The
crucifying could be argued to be 'imperfective', though I think Luke's
aorist shows the typical perfective presentation of the inception of the
event and Mark's 'present' is best seen as a literary "present+imperfective"
for that same inception.
The people who would try to remove 'tense' from the Greek indicative verbs
by an analysis of outside events, they run up against a problem of
"apparent" aspectual shift, too. It is best to recognize the historic
present as a literary phenomena that plays its tense-aspect purposefully
"against the grain".

Of course, for marking past imperfectivity Greek already has a verb form,
the "imperfect", built off of the continuative-stem (a.k.a. 'present-stem')
and with the beloved past-tense augment "e-" and the socalled secondary
endings.

By the way, colloquial English uses the historic present frequently with
verbs of saying:
(telling a past story) ... Stan goes, "YO, dude!"
Then Sal says, "you're the man!" And we all laughed.

I suspect that we are on the page on these things (=agree). Yes?

ERRWSO
Randall Buth

From: Kimmo Huovila <kimmo.huovila at helsinki.fi>
Subject: [B-Greek] Re: Understanding Greek Verb Tense/Aspect
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID: <200404091405.01239.kimmo.huovila at helsinki.fi>
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On Thursday 08 April 2004 23:24, R Yochanan Bitan Buth wrote:
> The present is tricky because in historical narratives it can be used
> for perfective events (the so-called historical present), even though in
> a real present situation it is imperfective/continuative.

Do you mean that historical present is (at least sometimes) perfective or
that 
it is imperfective but can be used in cases where also a perfective can be 
used? I think Mourelatos said that the same limitations for adverbials of 
count that hold for other presents (imperfectives) hold also for historical 
presents. Would that argue for the historical present to be imperfective?

Kimmo Huovila


Randall Buth, PhD
Director, Biblical Language Center
www.biblicalulpan.org
and Director, Biblical Studies in Israel
Rothberg International School
Hebrew University
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il






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