[B-Greek] Rewrite of Mounce 2nd ed ch. 20 by Decker

furuli at online.no furuli at online.no
Thu Jan 22 16:49:14 EST 2004


Dear Waldo,

I use Olsen's cancelability principle as a point of departure in my 
Hebrew studies, but I am open for exceptions that can be explained, 
and for special cases. Language is not mathematics!  I have for 
example a list of 998 examples (6.9 % of all occurrences) of 
WAYYIQTOLs with non-past reference, but in order to use these against 
the traditional view that WAYYIQTOL represents past tense or the 
perfective aspect, I have been very careful to check that the text is 
certain and that they do not occur in hypothetical conditional 
sentences and the like, or that they have strange characteristics. 
So I agree that we need a reasonable number of aorists with non-past 
reference in order to cancel its supposed past tense. We can not make 
the final verdict before all, or most verbs have been systematically 
analyzed. So I look forward to see your results with Aorist 
Indicative.


Best regards

Rolf



>Rolf
>
>I agree with your assessment here with a few
>exceptions (nothing major). I have not found but 2
>non-past referring Aorists in my studies. And I am not
>so sure these 2 cannot be explained. I think Wallace's
>explanation of Romans 8:30 makes perfect sense. The
>reason I disagree with Olsen's "cancellability"
>concept is because I can cancel an adverb
>(pragmatically) by making it function as a noun, but
>the adverb still remains an adverb (semantically). It
>wouldn't surprise me if an Aorist's inherent past
>tenseness could be cancelled (pragmatically) without
>cancelling its inherent temporal nature
>(semantically). What surprises me is that I can't find
>hardly any Aorists whose relation to the deictic
>center isn't anterior. I would have expected to find
>much more, just like in English. I have done little
>study on the presentness of the Present Tense in
>relation to the deictic center, something I plan to do
>shortly.
>
>My hat is off to your accomplishment concerning the
>Hebrew verb!! I am nearing a completion of such a task
>with the Aorist Indicative.
>
>Waldo
>



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