[B-Greek] simple test *AURION HLQON
Rolf Furuli
furuli at online.no
Tue Dec 13 12:27:52 EST 2005
Dear Don and Ken,
First of all I think we should define our terms, for the benefit of the
whole list. I suppose that terms like "E," "R," and "S" are too technical
for many. But if we explain our points, aspectual properties need not be
difficult to grasp.
1. I challenge the traditional Greek aspectual definitions "completed" and
"incomplete". They work well in English if perfect (and not simple past) is
taken as and expression of the perfective aspect and the present participle
as an expression of the imperfective aspect. The best discussion of this
that I am aware of is Mari Broman Olsen (1997) "A Pragmatic and Semantic
Model of Lexical and Grammatical Aspect". But how do we know that the
mentioned definitions work in a dead language like Greek when informants are
lacking?
2. In order to answer the last question we need to look at the matrix of
aspect, its deep structures, so to speak. To use an a priori definition can
lead us to force ideas upon Greek that never have been there.
When we report an event, we tend to look at it from a certain vantage point,
which often, but not always is speech time or the present moment. This is
called "the deictic center", and tense (grammaticalized location in time) is
seen in relation to the deictic center. Apart from instantaneous events, an
event has a beginning and an end, and the time between the beginning and the
end can be called "event time". It is important to note that event time can
be described in its own right without anchoring it to the deictic center.
Thus, event time represent non-deictic time.
Both event time and the deictic center (speech time or another time)
represent real, objective time, but not so with the third concept called
"reference time". In order to understand this abstraction we need to
understand what communication is, that communication means, from a reservoir
of potential meaning to make something visible for the audience and to keep
the rest invisible. Please look at 1) and 2) below. Example 1) is
imperfective, and a small sequence of progressive action in the middle,
after the beginning and before the end, is made visible. Example 2) is
perfective, and the end of the event is made visible.
1) Philemon was singing in the bathroom.
2) Philemon has sung in the bathroom.
We can say that reference time in a way intersects event time, and what is
made visible of event time by this intersection is reference time. In 2)
reference time is a point and in 1) it is a small sequence.
Actions in English are expressed by the interplay of tense and aspect. The
role of tense is to place the event before the deictic center (past tense),
contemporaneously with the deictic center (present reference; no tense
here), and after the deictic center (future tense). The role of aspect is to
signal whether the action was completed or not at reference time, at the
point or area of time that is made visible. The perfective aspect signals
that the event was completed and the imperfective aspect that it was not
completed at reference time.
For the readers it is important to know whether Ken and Don use "E," "R,"
and "S" the way I (and Broman Olsen) do, or what the differences are.
The English system is rather clearcut, but instead of projecting it into
Greek, as is usually done, and which is seen in the use of the opposition
"completed/incomplete," it is much better to study how and where reference
time intersects event time in the Greek "tenses," and see if the pattern is
similar to the English pattern. The advantage of this is that we to a great
extent avoid a priori ideas, and we do not presume that all aspectual
languages are similer. Broman Olsen has an excellent description of English
tense and aspect, but she presumes that aspect is the same in all aspectual
langauges, and therefore her conclusions regarding Greek verbs have several
defects.
3. My suggestion is that those interested in Greek tense and aspect
systematically study where reference time intersects event time. Then they
will see that Greek aspect is something very different from English aspec
and what the grammars say.
4. In response to Don I would say that to differentiate between prose and
poetry when the semantic meaning of verbal "tenses" is sought, is a blind
alley. There are many differences in style, word order, effects etc. between
prose and poetry, but in which language is there a difference in the
semantic meaning of verb "tenses" in prose and poetry? Prose in Hebrew and
Ugaritic is very often narrative, which has a strict form, and where an
inductive study of the meaning of verbal "tenses" is very difficult because
of this. The reason why the use of verbs outside narratives in these
languages so often collide with accepted grammar is that this grammar is
wrong; "completed/incomplete" views are forced upon these langauges as well.
I think it is good to take the text as it stands instead of introducing
psychological explanations in Greek as is done with "prophetic perfect" in
Hebrew. Linguistically speaking the prophet is not different from anybody
else when he speaks. When a prophet utters a prophecy about the future, then
in most cases reference time comes after the deictic center. To try to
defend the "completed" definition of perfective verbs by metalinguistic
expressions is in my view a weakness and lacks evidence.
Best regards,
Rolf
Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald Vance" <donaldrvance at mac.com>
To: "b-greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2005 3:01 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] simple test *AURION HLQON
> Note that Randall's examples were in the future, not the past. Not all
> past events use a perfective form. The classic illustration of aspect
> in English underscores this: I killed the man. (perfective) I was
> killing the man when the phone rang. (imperfective) Randall's examples
> had a lexical indicator of the future (maHar) and then he asks why we
> don't get a suffix conjugation verb with that. Answer: because future
> events are, by definition, incomplete. What about a future perfect?
> Good question. That is why I am intrigued by what Rolf has proposed.
>
> In my grammar of Classical Hebrew, I went with a totally aspectual
> understanding of the verb. I am rethinking that. Are there really any
> languages which are totally aspectual with no indicator of tense? For
> that matter, are there any purely temporal languages? English is
> clearly temporal/aspectual and I suspect Hebrew is too. Nevertheless,
> though Rolf's example of Jer 50:2-3 does not work (none of the verbs
> are future in reference) there are plenty of suffix conjugation verbs ,
> that are non-past, thus indicating that Hebrew's verbal system is not
> purely temporal, in fact, not primarily so. I think it is primarily
> aspectual, but is there no grammaticalization (how the ^&$ does one
> spell that!) of time in Hebrew? I'm not as sure as I was.
>
> On the other hand, the Jude 1:14 example does not work either (and this
> is the objection to the Jer 50:2-3 example as well) since, in a
> prophetic context, one has to distinguish between the revelatory Event
> [E-r if you will] (i.e., the dream, oracle, word of God) and the Event
> portrayed [E-p] in the revelation. It is quite common in Hebrew
> prophetic texts to get the so-called prophetic perfect (i.e., a suffix
> conjugation verb with an apparent future reference) which, in fact, is
> not referring to the actualization of the prophesied event (E-p) but to
> the receipt of the revelation (E-r). For example, The Lord came with
> his angels... The past "came" is because this is in reference to the
> E-r, that is, the prophet SAW (or whatever) this earlier. The actual
> "coming," the E-p, has not happened yet, so the actualization is in the
> future. This explains the use of the aorist in Jude for an event that
> has not occurred yet. Still, there may be other clearer examples of an
> aorist finite verbs in non-past contexts that would force one to
> conclude that Greek is also not a purely temporal language, either.
>
> One more wrinkle for this discussion. In Ugaritic, it has been proposed
> that the language works differently in poetic texts than it does in
> prose texts and there is considerable data to suggest this. The poetic
> texts in the Hebrew Bible also show a difficult-to-decipher verbal
> system. In other words, in Hebrew the verbs that are problematic for
> understanding the verbal system tend to be found in poetic texts and
> some wonder if the fact that they are poetic is where the rub lies. Do
> Greek poetic texts (e.g., Homer--but this introduces a diachronic
> element into the discussion) evince a use of the verbal system that is
> different than Greek prose texts?
>
> I'm still thinking this through and I look forward to Rolf further
> explaining his ideas.
>
> Donald R. Vance, Ph.D.
> Professor of Biblical Languages and Literature
> Oral Roberts University
> dvance at oru.edu
> donaldrvance at mac.com
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