[B-Greek] Still confused on Aspect
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Feb 14 11:27:33 EST 2004
At 7:31 AM -0800 2/14/04, Mitch Larramore wrote:
>It seems like the Greeks had a way of expressing all
>three aspects (imperfective, perfective, and stative)
>in the PAST with the Imperfect, Aorist/Pluperfect, and
>Perfect respectively. And what I mean is that they had
>different FORMS for each expression. How did they
>express they same three aspects IN THE PRESENT? (The
>number of "aoristic presents" for example seems like
>an exceptional usage, not the norm like it is in the
>Past Tense.)
The stative aspect is clearly represented in present time and past time in
the perfect "tense": TEQNHKEN means most essentially (especially in
Hellenistic Greek): he/she IS dead (now) , while the pluperfect (E)TEQNHKEI
means "he/she WAS dead (at some point prior to the present or to any time
of reference)."
The imperfective is also clearly represented in the present "tense" in that
TRECEI may be understood to mean "is running (and hasn't stopped running)."
Finally, the perfective can and quite commonly is represented in the
present tense also: TUPTEI "he/she hits/strikes" by the nature of the verb
involves in normal usage the notion of a single hit. However, what you need
to realize is that the present indicative is versatile: it CAN convey
imperfective and also perfective sense. I think that when we start talking
about the aspectual distinctions in the Greek tense we tend to forget the
simple fact about the present indicative that most of us learned when we
first learned the present tense: that LUEI can mean (a) "is untying," (b)
"unties," (c) "does untie." The aspectual range of meanings that can be
expressed in the present tense in Greek (as in English) is really fairly
wide-ranging. It is surely futile to attempt to pin down by some
hard-and-fast rule the aspectual nature of the present indicative. The same
is really true of English; one must consider the context and the nature of
the verb in use (some verbs are inherently durative, others are inherently
punctual).
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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