[B-Greek] historic present as irrelevant to aspect/tense
R Yochanan Bitan Buth
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Mon Aug 29 12:41:50 EDT 2005
I forget how people might try to deal with 'historic present' from a
perspective that "Greek has aspects, not tenses." Here is a chance for
an update.
My claim is that the 'historic present' can be proven to be a special
rhetorical/literary usage in Greek and therefore is not relevant to
the discussion of whether or not ancient Greek has indicative tenses.
Yes, this interacts with and/or repeats a plethora of archival
anecdotes. [[E.g., Olsen, "According to this view, the "historical
present" is expected: if a form is not marked for tense [she does
claim it is markded for +imperfective-RB], it may be used equally
felicitously to refer to a past situation. Under a tense analysis of
this form, a careful account would need to explain why the apparent
meaning of the account fails to apply in certain contexts."
http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/test-archives/html4/1995-10/11173.html]]
But humor me, I think there is something fundamentally illicit in the
old discussion. See below after "Background".
Background [not the point of this email though possibly of helpful
orientation]: I'm into "mapping" and "system definition" for meaning.
That is, meaning is based on mapping situations to morph-syntacitc
classes. Meaning is also determined or restrained by the options that
were not chosen. (Thus, a two-value system like Biblical Hebrew is
inherently unlikely to be purely tense or purely aspect since choice
of 'A' entails 'not B' and the verbs have to be used within the same
closed space for all languages equally of 'all events'. Aspects or
Moods or Tenses will probably have to be used for marking the other
dimensions of TMA. See Bickerton, Roots of Language, 1981, "We must
note a particular characteristic of TMA [tense-mood-aspect-RB] systems
which, though seemingly obvious, has been ignored by virtually all
work up to and including Comrie's (1976) influential study of aspect.
... what each marker of modality, tense, or aspect means will be
largely determined by how many markers of these things there are in
the system and by what each of the others mean. Facts such as these
are, however, ignored by most scholars in the field, who strive to fit
all phenomena into the same conceptual straitjacket." For details of
application to Hebrew see Selected Readings, BLC 2005. Hebrew is
ambiguous to tense-aspect, though it does show that a time component
is included in its basic meaning and specificially contradicts an
'aspect-only' approach. Greek is one of the most aspectual languages
that I know, much more strongly aspectual than Hebrew, though
ironically traditional biblical studies saddle these horses backwards.
Again, even Greek archives express this error. See Moore
[http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/test-archives/html4/1995-10/11186.html]
: "Let's make a comparison at this point. Just about everyone today is
agreed that Hebrew is practically tenseless. If one compares Greek to
Hebrew on this point, it appears that Greek represents an advance (if
that's the right word to use) from Hebrew in terms of
grammaticalization of time (Bl-DeB, #318). Since Greek expresses,
through grammatical form, certain time factors where Hebrew expresses
none, how can we say that Greek does not grammaticalize time or tense?
Could we say, "Greek is unmarked for tense, and Hebrew is even more
unmarked"? Wouldn't that be an oxymoron?" [RB 2005: Greek is highly
marked for aspect, BH is undermarked for a composite tense-aspect.)
[end of background]
Skewing is part of the fun of language. A morpho-syntactic structure
can be used for something against itself for rhetorical/literary
effect.
E.g., using ERXOMAI for otherwise contextually perfective, past
situations.
(NB: the term below for this complete/whole aspect is 'perfective'. It
is a synonym for 'aorist' for those who recognize that aorist is both
"not imperfective" and "not perfect" [Perfective is not a synonym for
some who might claim that aorist means "not marked for any aspect
whatsoever"]. Also, perfective is not a synonym for 'perfect'.)
Thesis:
The 'historic present' usages do not just conflict with tense theory,
they conflict with aspect, too, because they can list sequential,
complete events AS THOUGH they are on-going. It is the 'as-thoughness'
that is a rhetorical feature of Greek and is not definitive for its
meaning. That is, both its aspectual meaning and its temporal meaning
are being CONTRAVENED for rhetorical effect. [Olsen's statement quoted
above is thus misleading/wrong by only showing the temporal
incongruity without including its aspectual incongruity.]
I would claim that a movement verb at the beginning of a pericope is
inherently perfective (its real world reference is complete) if the
following events can only take place after the movement verbs that
"set the stage" have happened.
E.g.
Mk 1:12 KAI EUQUS EKBALLEI ...KAI HN (imperfect, but after 'being
thrown out')
Mk 1:21 KAI EISPOREUONTAI ... KAI EUQUS ELQWN (perfective)
Mk 3:18 KAI ERCONTAI KAI LEGOUSIN ... KAI EIPEN (perfective)
Mark 9:2 KAI PARALAMBANEI ... KAI ANAFEREI ... KAI METEMORFH
(perfective)
Mk 10: KAI EKEIQEN ANASTAW ERXETAI EIS TA ORIA THS IOUDAIS
All of the above 'present' tenses are inherently perfective in their
context BUT they do not encode that perfectivity. They are being used
rhetorically, 'across the grain' as it were.
If so, then it would be inadmissable to use them as evidence against
indicative verbs encoding time. If aspect can be contravened for
rhetorical effect, then so can time be contravened for rhetorical
effect. Thus, the 'historic present' (or "Perfective Imperfective" to
coin a comparable aspectual oxymoron) must remain as a special usage
on ALL accounts. It is 'outside' the normal/basic semantic affairs of
the TMA system of Greek, interacting on another level.
Is everyone agreed on this? If not why not?
ERRWSQE
Randall Buth
Randall Buth, PhD
Director, Biblical Language Center
www.biblicalulpan.org
and Director, Biblical Studies in Israel
Hebrew University, Rothberg International School
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
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