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

furuli at online.no furuli at online.no
Fri Jan 23 11:47:02 EST 2004


Dear Waldo,

From your comments below it appears that I have not stated my case 
clearly enough. In English, there is a definite connection between 
the action and the aspect. When the imperfective aspect is  used, we 
can draw the conclusion that the action was not completed at speech 
time, and when the perfective aspect is used, it signals that the 
action was completed at speech time.  I argue in my thesis that this 
is *not* the case in Hebrew (and neither in Greek), because any 
Hebrew event, past, present or future, completed and uncompleted, 
indicative and injunctive can be expressed by both aspects (though 
there are clear preferences). There are only two exceptions: Conative 
events, and events of the kind "when Eve read the paper, John entered 
the room" can only be expressed by the imperfective aspect. So I am 
just as interested as you to stress that aspects are only viewpoints 
and that they say nothing about the nature of the action, except in 
combinations with other factors (e.g. a semelfactive verb may when it 
is imperfective express iterativity (I do not call this Aktionsart 
but "procedural traits"; I refer Aktionsart to the lexical meaning of 
each verb).





>--- furuli at online.no wrote:
>
>>  I will illustrate the problem of circularity by some
>>  English examples:
>>
>>  1) Eve has reached the peak
>>  2) Eve is reaching the peak
>>  3)*Eve REACH the peak.
>>
>>  Assuming that the English participle codes for the
>>  imperfective
>>  aspect and perfect for the perfective one, we can
>>  understand 1) and
>>  2). Because 1) is perfective, the only possible
>>  interpretation is
>>  that the event is completed, and RT intersects ET at
>>  the "coda" (
>>  this is not strictly true, because "reach the top"
>>  is an
>>  instantaneous event, but my words illustrates the
>>  case).
>
>I may be misunderstanding you here. Whether the event
>takes time to complete or is instantaneous is not
>relevant to perfective aspect (or imperfective).

Evidently I have not stated my case clearly. I agree that the time an 
event takes has nothing to do with aspect. However, the clearest 
example for most members of the list that I could think of, was the 
phrase "reach the peak". But this is an "achievement" according to 
Vendlerian terminology and has no event time, because it is 
punctiliar. But in 1) we may say that it has a "pseudo-event time". 
So I used it to illustrate my point, because it is a good example, 
while I at the same time tried to illustrate the methodological 
problem.

>
>
>We know that
>>  2) is imperfective, so we expect to see "a small
>>  sequence of
>>  progressive action with details visible" somewhere.
>>  The only place
>>  where we can find this is before the
>>  "reaching"-event - Eve was on
>>  the point of reaching the peak, and RT intersects ET
>>  before the end
>>  (=the punctiliar event of reaching the peak). But
>>  what about 3) which
>>  is marked neither for aspect nor for tense, where
>>  does RT intersect
>>  ET in this case? As long as we cannot tell the
>>  aspect we have no
>>  answer. The same is true with tense, we cannot know
>>  by the unmarked
>>  form whether the tense is past or future.
>
>Eve, REACH the peak 3) is Future Tense, since one
>cannot command a past action. This is why many see a
>close aspectual relationship between the Future and
>Aorist in Greek.

Here you misunderstand, because 3) has a star, indicating that it is 
not a grammatical clause and there is no comma. In grammatical 
sentences in English the verb must be marked in one way or another. 
To put the verb in capital letters without any other mark is the 
standard linguistic way (at least in Scandinavia) to indicate that we 
only think of the unmarked verb (no aspect, tense, modality etc.). 
If we can imagine that unmarked verb, we can also understand that 
without deciding the aspect we cannot know where reference time 
intersects event time in Hebrew.
>
>>
>>  Let us now apply this to Greek.
>>
>>  Heb 4:4 (NIV) says: "And on the seventh day God
>>  rested from all his
>>  work" This is a quote from Gen 2:2 where we find a
>  > WAYYIQTOL (v. 3
>>  has  QATAL). All WAYYIQTOLs are imperfective
>>  according to my
>>  analysis, and this means that the state of rest may
>>  have continued
>>  after the deictic point - the state was open, to use
>>  a metaphor. The
>>  LXX, which very often translates the WAYYIQTOL with
>>  the aorist,  uses
>>  the aorist of KATAPAUW in this case. The same is
>>  true in Hebrew 4:4.
>>  In Psalm 95:8-11 it is argued that God's rest still
>>  continued when
>>  the Psalm was written, and in Hebrews 4 the argument
>>  seems to be that
>>  the rest still continued, and would even continue
>>  into the future.
>
>Just a quick clarification on this. The Aorist does
>not address issues of whether or not the event
>ACTUALLY continued (thought this is normally a Perfect
>tense aspect, it is unaddressed in the Aorist). The
>Aorist is used to PORTRAY how the author wants his
>readers to view it FOR THIS PARTICULAR INSTANCE. The
>author may PORTRAY the same event using a different
>aspect on another occasion. (Beware to distinguish
>Aktionsart from Aspect!)

I agree that the length of an event is irrelevant as far as aspect is 
concerned, and I am just as concerned as you to distinguish aspect 
and Aktionsart ( I have many times on this list argued in favor of 
that).

>
>>
>>  We therefore have two pieces of information, 1) God
>>  rested, or
>>  started to rest when everything had been created,
>>  and 2) the rest of
>>  God continued a long time after creation was
>>  finished. After
>>  reviewing the context in this way, I would ask: Why
>>  do translators
>>  use simple past for KATAPAUW? My point is not to
>>  introduce an
>>  alternative translation, but to illuminate the
>>  reasons for the
>>  traditional translation. In order to find these
>>  reasons I will pose
>>  another question: Are there reasons why we should
>>  not render the
>>  clause "And on the seventh day God has rested from
>>  all his work"?
>
>Here again you appear to be departing from the
>authorís PORTRAYAL; your question (and again I may be
>misunderstanding you) seems to be wondering how did
>(or does) this rest ACTUALLY take place. The Aorist
>does not address this concern. Translating "rest" as a
>simple aorist should be done because thatís what the
>author wrote. You may be trying to answer questions
>the author had no intention of resolving.
>
>>
>>  I suppose that there are three basic reasons for the
>>  traditional
>>  rendering, 1) aorist is believed to code for past
>>  tense, 2) aorist is
>>  believed to code for the perfective aspect, and 3)
>>  the perfective
>>  aspect is defined as "completed" (or at least
>>  "complete").
>
>Be very careful here. Better to say that the Aorist
>codes for the action to be CONCEIVED by the reader (or
>PORTRYED by the writer) as perfective, regardless of
>how the action ACTUALLY obtained. The author does NOT
>want to draw the readersí focus to a specific location
>on the time line with the Aorist (in fact, it's
>purpose is to avoid that). Rather, that is what the
>imperfects do!


Agree

>
>>
>>  So back to my question: Why not translate "And on
>>  the seventh day God
>>  has rested from all his work"? That translation
>>  would not necessarily
>>  presuppose that the aorist KATAPAUW was
>>  imperfective, it would only
>>  presuppose that the English definition "completed"
>>  for the perfective
>>  aspect was wrong. States expressed by perfective
>>  verbs can just as
>>  well as states expressed by imperfective verbs
>>  continue up to the
>>  present moment and even beyond that. It seems to me
>>  that Heb 4:4 is
>>  such an example.  But the consequence of using
>>  perfect in English in
>>  this context is to signal a shift of KATAPAUW from
>>  past to present
>>  reference, because the stress (what is made visible)
>>  in English
>>  perfect is the present moment and the continuance of
>>  the state.
>
>However you want to translate this, be sure to convey
>the original authorís PORTRAYAL of the event. If you
>are trying to allow for the Aorist to not imply the
>event must be completely over with in the past then
>you are on the right track. The author of Hebrews is
>simply highlighting that aspect for whatever purpose.
>
>Waldo
>
>

My purpose of using  Hebrews 4:4 was to illuminate possible circular 
reasonings. And I will elucidate it this way:  When a person analyzes 
Greek aorists in order to find past and possible non-past references, 
to which degree is his or her conclusions colored by his or her ideas 
about aorist? Take Hebrews 4.4 as an example. This aorist is normally 
translated with simple past, thus it is put in the box "past 
references". But is this the only possible interpretation? Why could 
it not be translated with English perfect, something which would 
assign it to the box of "non-past references"? In order to answer 
these questions, the nature of the event (in this case a state) and 
its length may be one factor to consider. In no way is this a 
confusion of aspect and Aktionsart.



Best regards
Rolf

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo



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