[B-Greek] simple test *AURION HLQON

Rolf Furuli furuli at online.no
Thu Dec 15 02:30:08 EST 2005


Dear Randall,

Perhaps the lengthy and expressive silence is caused by the nature of your
questions. How in the world can we decide that a use of a verb form in a
dead language is ungrammatical?  There can be several reasons why a
particular form is not used in a particular context, for example taste,
linguistic convention, and that other forms are more natural. We also
possess just a fraction of the Greek writings in ancient times.

I believe that Greek imperfect is a combination of past tense and the
imperfective aspect and that future is future tense. Regarding aorist my
view is that it has no tense but is an expression of the perfective aspect.
If your example shows a temporal restriction in the use of aorist, that it
expresses non-future time, how do you explain Jude 1:14?
 Is the use of aorist in this verse ungrammatical?  Or is the reference 
non-future?


Best regards,

Rolf

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


When we speak of ungrammatical forms in a dead language, what about the
perfect of PROSFERW in hebrews 11:17?  Is it
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Randall Buth" <randallbuth at gmail.com>
To: "b-greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 5:45 PM
Subject: [B-Greek] simple test *AURION HLQON


> After twenty or so posts on the original question, a summary or
> refocussing
> might be in order.
>
>> Here is a simple test for aspect-only-ists
>>
>> *AURION HLQON
>> *KAI AURION EGRAPSA
>> Is this good Greek? If not, why not?
>>
>> Ditto for Hebrew:
>> *maHar ba-ti
>> *umaHar katavti.
>> Is this good Hebrew? If not, why not?
>
> It appears that no one wants to argue that *KAI AURION EGRAPSA is
> grammatical.
> Stated the otherway, everyone agrees that, e.g.,
> *KAI AURION EGRAPSA BIBLION is ungrammatical.
>
> That is quite remarkable unanimity, (though it is an argument from
> lengthy and expressive silence.)
>
> What remains is to state an explanation. So far the only one on the
> table is that the verb form-meaning category of EGRAPSA has something
> in it that blocks its co-occurrence with AURION 'tomorrow', and the
> obvious name for that antigen is non-future time. Of course, that
> would mean that EGRAPSA is not a pure aspect. That is why the question
> was originally posed for "aspect-only-ists".
>
> [PS: This email could be re-stated in a more formal metalanguage, but
> that will not change the underlying reality and might even hide its
> impact from most readers.]
>
> ERRWSQE
> Randall Buth
>
> --
> Randall Buth, PhD
> www.biblicalulpan.org
> ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
> randallbuth at gmail.com
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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>




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