[B-Greek] Present & Aorist of general & abstract verbs

Ken Penner pennerkm at mcmaster.ca
Mon Dec 12 10:10:01 EST 2005


Hi Chet,

Rolf may be following Marion Johnson on the labels for the relations among
the three times: Speech, Reference, and Event. Robert Binnick discusses this
on page 115 and 400-401 of _Time and the Verb_ (1991).

A couple of quotes from Binnick will serve to show that the Rolf's view is
in accord with "modern linguistic literature" (i.e., more modern than Comrie
1976 and Lyons 1968): "Tense is a matter of how R relates to S"; "What the
relationship of E and R has to do with is, roughly, aspect (and/or relative
tense)" (both from page 115). According to Binnick, the relation between S
and E is termed "status" in "recent theories" (namely Johnson's).

I don't know of any question as to Binnick's authority on these matters; do
you?

Ken Penner
Acadia/Greek
Dissertation: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in Qumran Hebrew.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org 
> [mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Chet 
> A. Creider
> Sent: December 12, 2005 10:19 AM
> To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Present & Aorist of general & abstract verbs
> 
> Just in case Rolf doesn't catch the error in his correction 
> for some time:
> 
> Rolf Furuli wrote:
> 
> > A correction: Tense is the relationship between the deictic 
> center and
> > reference time, not between the deictic center and event time.
> 
> The original posting was correct in terms of the meaning of 
> the term in
> the modern linguistic literature:
> 
> "The essential characteristic of the category of tense is 
> that it relates the
> time of the action, event or state of affairs referred to in 
> the sentence to
> the time of utterance..." (John Lyons, _Intro to Theoretical 
> Linguistics_, 1968)
> 
> "Tense relates the time of the situation referred to to some 
> other time,
> usually to the moment of speaking." (Bernard Comrie, _Aspect_, 1976)
> 
> This definition was first formulated with some rigour by Hans 
> Reichenbach
> (_Elements of Symbolic Logic_, 1947).  Reichenbach uses three 
> temporal points
> E ("point of the event"), R ("point of reference") and S 
> "point of speech"
> in order to handle the perfect, past perfect and future 
> perfect tenses in
> addition to the past, present and future, but inspection of 
> his diagrams
> shows that R (reference time) is only needed for the perfect 
> tenses.  This
> means that for Reichenbach tense (meaning the distinctions among past,
> present and future) is the relationship between the deictic center and
> event time.  Thus Furuli's original formulation was correct as given.
> 
> Furuli defines aspect as "the relationship between event time 
> and reference
> time".  He may be referring here to the perfect tenses (NB 
> _not_ perfective
> aspect), but in terms of the standard aspectual distinction 
> of perfective
> vs. imperfective, it is difficult to see how this definition 
> could possibly
> work.  It may be the point of Furuli's research to show that 
> it does, but
> it is not a standard definition of aspect (e.g. Comrie 
> (1976:3) writes,
> "aspects are difference ways of viewing the internal temporal 
> constituency
> of a situation"; this definition requires neither event time 
> or reference
> time).
> 
> (Please note that I am not criticizing Furuli's definition of 
> aspect as
> applied in his dissertation.  It may be successful in that 
> context.  I only
> wish to point out that it is not a standard definition of aspect.)
> 
> Chet Creider




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