[B-Greek] simple test *AURION HLQON
Rolf Furuli
furuli at online.no
Wed Dec 14 03:42:11 EST 2005
Dear Ken,
See my comments below.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Penner" <pennerkm at mcmaster.ca>
To: "'Rolf Furuli'" <furuli at online.no>; <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2005 6:35 PM
Subject: RE: [B-Greek] simple test *AURION HLQON
> Rolf wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> In the interests of clarity for non-technical readers, I would prefer to
> dispense with the label "deictic centre" and use "speech time" if that is
> what is usually meant. It seems to me that the deictic centre is rarely
> shifted from speech time, and usually under specific circumstances, e.g.,
> delayed communication: "I have sent you this letter..." when at the time
> of
> writing the letter is not yet sent.
> So when I read the following, I will substitute "speech time" for "deictic
> centre". If you think it is important to retain "deictic centre" in your
> description instead of "speech time," you could make a case for it. I was
> not convinced by Olsen's.
When you tell that you use "speech time" instead of "deictic center" the
readers can understand your terminology. In my model that will create
confusion. Speech time is always the time of speaking or writing, but that
is not always the vantage point. In 1) below the vantage point is not speech
time but "tomorrow". Comrie would call 1) "relative tense". In order to
distinguish between these situations I use "deictic center".
1) When I come tomorrow, Rita will already have arrived.
>
> 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.
>
> I'm not sure event time can be totally detached from speech time in
> English
> clauses using finite verbs. I don't see any advantage in calling event
> time
> "non-deictic".
I think you are right as far as English is concerned. But it is important
that we do not think "English" but that we think linguistics. This is my
basic criticism against Greek and Hebrew aspectual definitions. The
grammarians think "English" (though Curtius thought "Slavic") and not
linguistic.
My approach to Semitic and Classical languages can be compared with that of
the natural sciences, namely, to find the smallest possible units and
analyse these. Event time is the time from the beginning to the end of an
event. It is possible for the human mind to ascertain event time without
connecting it with the deictic center, i.e., "walking home=one hour". True,
in good idiomatic English it is required that you choose a time frame, thus,
making the expression deictic. But the clause "It took me one hour to walk
home" consists of two elements, 1) the walking event which lasts one hour
and which is non-deictic,
and the expression of the fact that the event is past which is the deictic
element. In my view, a failure to distinguish between event time as
non-deictic time and tense as deictic time, will inevitably confuse tense
and aspect.
>
>> 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".
>
> I'm not sure I understand what you mean by claiming that "reference time"
> is
> not "real, objective" time. Do you mean that when I say "I had eaten
> breakfast" an outside observer could note at which time I spoke and at
> which
> time I ate breakfast, but could not know at which point I was referring to
> having eaten breakfast (perhaps I meant, "BY SUNRISE, I had eaten
> breakfast.")
Here you again think "English". Both Reichenbach and Comrie are ambiguous in
their discussion of reference time, but Broman Olsen is very clear. All
three agree that aspect is a viewpoint, and that reference time plays an
important role to express the viewpoint. Tense is real time, because, what
is described by tense happens before or after a vantage point. Event time is
also real time because it can be measured. But reference time is not real
time but an abstraction, since it does not have an independent existence or
can be measured. Please look at 2) and 3) again. In 2) the tense (the
deictic time) is past. By the use of the participle I make visible a small
sequence of progressive action after the beginning and before the end. Is
this some kind of real, objective time distinguished from tense and event
time? Not at all! I am making visible a small sequence of event time. I have
a purpose with the use of the imperfective aspect, namely, to signal that
this past singing action had not reached its end when I "pointed my finger
at it" and intersected it. And similarly with the perfective aspect. When I
intersect the singing event at its end, thus indicating that the event has
reachead it end, what I am making visible is the end of event time, and I am
not creating a new kind of time. So, reference time is an abstraction. It
has no
existence in itself, but it makes visible something which already is there.
Reference time can be compared to the lense of a camera threough which we
focus on a part of a sitution.
In English the signals given by the interplay of the tenses and aspects are
clear. Thus 4) is a combination of past tense and the perfective aspect.
This means that the event occurred before the deictic center, which in this
case coincides with speech time, and that it was completed at reference
time.
2) Philemon was singing in the bath room.
3) Philemon has sung in the bathroom.
4) I had eaten breakfast
>
>> 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.
>
> Let me try to unpack what I think you mean by making part of the event
> visible to the audience. It seems to me that the part of the event "made
> visible" is simply the time covered by the reference frame R.
I am not sure what you mean by "reference frame". Could you please define
what you mean by "reference frame R". The visibility principle works on
different levels of communication. The single word (letters; sounds) has no
intrinsic meaning, but it signals a concept (or occationally two or more
concepts) in the minds of people having the same presupposition pool. In
lexicons we do not find lexical meaning, only glosses indicating how a Greek
word has been used or translated into English. Lexial meaning is found in
the minds of living people in the form of the mentioned concepts. A concept
is rather broad and often has a great meaning potensial. To be able to
communicate, an author forms a clause consisting of words that each signals
a concept and a potential. The author and his or her audience have the same
presupposition
pool, and on the basis of lexical meaning, grammar, syntax, linguistic
conventions, word order, etc the author makes visible a small part of the
meaning potential of each word in the clause, and the rest of this meaning
potential is kept invisible.
Thus, the context does not generate any new lexical meaning, but it makes
visible a part of what already is there.
The backbone of a language is its verbal system. This system in aspectual
languages (Norwegian does not have aspects at all) has a visibility tool
separated from the context, namely the aspects. A verb has, apart from its
lexical meaning, another meaning potential. By the use of Greek aspects
different nuances can be made visible to the audience. For example, the
Greek imperfective aspect can make visible situations that are conative,
inceptive, progressive, egressive, resultative, and factitive, and it can
exhort the reader to continue to do something, etc. This can be expressed in
English as well, but only by circumlocution (except progressiveness), and
not by the imperfective aspect alone. Greek aspects are very different from
their English counterparts, and reference time has many more functions in
Greek.
>
>> 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.
>
> In 1), R covers a small part of the middle of E.
>
> In 2), R is at speech time (S), after E.
>
>> 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.
>
> Good; I think I understood you correctly above.
>
>> In 2)
>> reference time is a point and in 1) it is a small sequence.
>
> Right.
>
>> 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).
>
> I'm a bit confused by an apparent contradiction. Did you not indicate in
> an
> earlier message that tense was the R:S relationship rather than the E:S
> (event and "deictic center") relationship?
You have got it correct. Event time can be rather long, it can start before
the deictic center and continue after it. Therefore, only the part of event
time
tht is made visible by reference time should be used to express a tense
relationship. My words above made visible only the broad sitution without
details; I used "event" rather than "event time".
>
>> 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.
>
> Here I disagree. What you describe here is a precedence relationship
> between
> the end-point of E and (the beginning of?) R. That would be relative
> tense,
> in my view, not aspect.
I do not understand what you mean. It seems that you use "relative tense"
different from what comrie and I do. Perhaps I have not made visible enough
information to give a clear picture of this particular side of my model. I
will again use the same clauses as above, now as 5) and 6). Example 5) is a
combination of past tense and the imperfective aspect. The verb "was" makes
visible that the event is past related to the deictic center (here, speech
time), but what does the participle make visible? A small part of singing in
progression. Comrie defines relative tense as a situation when the deictic
center is another time than speech time (as is the case in 1) above. There
is no shift of deictic center in 5), but my intersection of event time by
reference time reveals an event that continues. Thus, in English (but not in
Greek), tense relates an event to a deictic center and aspect signals
whether the event was in progression or not at reference time. There is no
shift of
deictic center in 6), but the perfective aspect signals that the event was
completed at reference time.
5) Philemon was singing in the bath room.
6) Philemon has sung in the bathroom.
In order to give a full description of the interplay of tense and aspect in
NT Greek, one has to study all the verbs of the NT and a reasonable portion
of classical texts as well. I have not done this yet, but the excerpts I
have made has led me to believe that the general pattern of Greek aspect is
similar to the Hebrew pattern. In order to give the list-members an idea of
the result when the definition "completed/incomple" is discarded, and
aspects are defined solely on the basis of the relationship between
reference time and event time, I give a sketch of my results regrding the
Hebrew aspects.
1. Both aspects make a part of a sitution visible, but the perfective aspect
can make the whole situations visible.
2. The imperfective aspect makes details visible, but not so the peerfective
one.
3. The imperfective aspect makes a small part visible, while the perfective
one makes a greater part visible.
4. The imperfective aspect can include either beginning or end, the
perfective aspect can include both beginning and end.
5. Both aspects can be bounded and unbounded.
6. The imperfective aspect can make visible a part before the beginning
(conative situtions), and a part of a resultant state (resultative
situations), but not so the perfective aspect.
> Ken
> Ken Penner, M.C.S. (Greek), M.A. (Hebrew),
> Ph.D. (cand.), McMaster University
> Coordinator, Funk's Grammar Digitization Project
> pennerkm at mcmaster.ca
> Greek vocabulary software: http://s91279732.onlinehome.us/flash or
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flash_pro/join
>
Best regards,
Rolf
Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
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