[B-Greek] simple test *AURION HLQON -- "completed" and"incomplete"
Rolf Furuli
furuli at online.no
Wed Dec 14 09:12:58 EST 2005
Dear Chet,
Thank you for your references regarding the definition of Greek aspects. B.
Comrie (1976) "Aspect" discusses the nature of aspect. On p. 19 he says: "A
very frequent characterization of perfectivity is that it indicates a
completed action." He argues that this view places too much stress on the
end
of an event and that it is better to use the term "complete," thus
indicating that the situation is viewed as a whole, and the end is included.
Fanning (chapter 1) has a very interesting discussion of the different views
of Greek aspect. He shows that the opposition "completion versus
incompletion" has ben held by different writers. On pp. 90 Fanning refers to
E. Schwyzer (1950) "Griechische Grammatik, ii Syntax und syntaktische
Stilistik". Ed. A. Debrunner and shows correctly that "completed action" is
the definition of aorist in this grammar. On p. 91 Fanning comments,
"Compared with the instantaneous view, this approach is perhaps closer to
the true sense of the aorist, since some reference to an end-point seems to
be included in the meaning of the aspect." Against Comrie Broman Olsen
argues in favor of "completed at reference time," and applies this to Greek
as well.
Today Randal Buth wrote:
** no, "he will write" is perfective, it is the whole event and
includes the endpoint. "He will write a book" looks at the whole and
therefore implies completion, while "he will be writing a book" only
looks at a part of the process and therefore does not imply
completion. **
>From his words it seems that "completion/uncompletion" (not something
completed) is the basic distinction between perfectivity and imperfectivity
for him. This also seems to be the view of Donald R. Vance.
In my dissertation I argue against the opposition "complete/completed versus
incomplete," and in my previous post I should have added "complete" to
"completed". It is my impression that the old opposition
"punctiliar/durative" is no longer popular among Greek scholars, since these
are Aktionsart terms rather than aspectual terms. A word marked for
durativity will always continue to be durative regardless of whether it is
expressed by present or aorist. So the question is: How can a verb whose
Aktionsart is durative become more durative by being expressed by the use of
Greek present? And: How can a verb which is marked for durtivity become
punctiliar or instantaneous by the use of aorist? It seems to me that the
most popular aspectual opposition today is "complete/incomplete," and I will
argue against this opposition just as much as I argue against the term
"completed".
Thank you again for your post that gave me the opportunity to include
"complete" in my argument.
Best regards,
Rolf
Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chet A. Creider" <creider at uwo.ca>
To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 11:32 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] simple test *AURION HLQON -- "completed"
and"incomplete"
> Rolf Furuli wrote:
>
>> I challenge the traditional Greek aspectual definitions "completed"
> and "incomplete".
>
> I'm curious as to the tradition of the study of _Greek_ in which these
> definitions are to be found. It doesn't seem to be part of the English-
> North American tradition at all, at least not in any of the major works:
>
> BDF (p.166) writes of punctilinear (momentary) vs durative (linear vs
> progressive) and then goes on to write, with respect to the aorist, that
> "the action is conceived as a point with either the beginning or the end
> emphasized ... or the action is conceived as a whole irrespective of its
> duration"
>
> Turner (vol. 3 of Moulton, Howard and Turner, p. 59) writes much the same:
> (1) continuous (which grammarians call _linear_, and (2) instantaneous,
> which they call punctilar.
>
> Looking outside the NT Greek tradition,
> Goodwin (Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of The Greek Verb) writes (p.16)
> "The aorist indicative expresses the simple occurrence of an action in
> past
> time...this fundamental idea of simple occurrence remains the essential
> characteristic of the aorist through all the dependent moods, however
> indefinite they may be in regard to time." The imperfect indicative
> is characterized as "an action in its progress rather than as a simple
> past occurrence (like the aorist)" (p.11-12).
>
> Smyth (p.414 in the 2nd ed.) writes "The aorist ,,, is so named because
> it does not show the limitation...of continuance (expressed by the
> imperfect)
> or of completion with permanent result (expressed by the perfect).
>
> Finally, in his monograph (_On Aspect Theory and Homeric Aspect_, 1974,
> IJAL Monograph 26 = IJAL 40.4, Pt 2), the linguist Paul Friedrich writes,
> 'In traditional grammar, aorists were said to refer to "momentary action,
> the point of beginning (ingressive aorist) or end (resultative aorist)'
> [Friedrich cites Carl Buck's A Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin
> here].
> On the other hand the aorist is also used for action within specific
> limits, and for what is called "process pure and simple, an abstraction
> from any consideration of development".' (p.11)
>
> Friedrich is also known as a Slavicist, and in the same monograph, in
> writing of the infelicity of the use of the terms "perfective" and
> "imperfective" in Slavic linguistics states that "it is the opposition of
> COMPLETION/NONCOMPLETION that is fundamental in _all_ Slavic languages"
> (p.29). By implication, he feels that the terms completion/noncompletion
> have no place in Greek linguistics.
>
> It seems clear from these citations that the traditional view of the
> aspectual distinctions in Greek grammar has nothing to do with the
> opposition "completed"/"incomplete". In general the traditional
> view seems to be that each aspect has a core meaning and a variety
> of related, more specialized meanings (which are not discussed here).
> This view of the polysemy of grammatical categories is also found
> with the Greek cases and in fact in the semantics of the categories
> of the grammars of most if not all languages, just as polysemy is
> found with lexical items. It also accords well with prototype
> theory in modern cognitive psychology.
>
> Chet Creider
>
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list