[B-Greek] paradigm shift in teaching aspect
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Wed Oct 26 06:23:09 EDT 2005
>"The world of scholarship about the Greek verb is in ferment, and the
outcome promises to
have a significant effect for all of us who interpret the NT. Since about
1900 there has been a
paradigm shift in understanding the Greek tenses, and, as George Guthrie has
observed on
this subject, 'We do not care for people messing with our paradigms.' Even
so, we are being
asked to reexamine some strongly-entrenched assumptions about how we
understand and
exegete the Greek verb. My purpose in this paper is to provide an
introduction to the new
paradigm, called 'verbal aspect' theory, and to survey the issues that are
involved and in need
of resolution."
For what it's worth, I don't think that there has been a paradigm shift at
all,
or will be.
(This is in disagreement with a minority thinking that there is no time in
the verb system.)
Greek readers/speakers have always known about the aspectual differences in
both the
indicative and non-indictative verb systems.
I just discussed this with two Greek teachers here on Patmos.
They understood perfectly well the correct usages of the ancient (of COURSE!
--
the basic distinctions remain today in modern Greek even if all of the
system doesn't
remain). But they used the Greek names and only described aspect but did not
'name' it. In
fact, if and when I use a 'present' verb with the modern subjunctive I am
regualrly corrected
to the 'aorist' form.
[[This is like English where "I sit alot on my job" is called "present" but
can be truthfully said
while standing, but "I am sitting" can only be said when actually sitting,
or about to be sitting.
English speakers use a misleading naming system, but use the language
correctly. "I sit"
is not an actual present in the way that "I am sitting" is present.]]
The paradigm shift for Greek concerns how foreigners talk about Greek. It
is important, but
in fact almost no one does this because MANQANE is still called 'present
imperative' by
most, instead of 'continuative imperative' 'imperfective imperative' or
PARATATIKH PROSTATIKH
I would suggest that Aspect is the correct English cross-linguistic term and
should be the only
one currently used for non-indicatives. Imperfectives and perfectives
(aorists) should then be
named without time words if teachers would have any hope that students would
remember this
after one year.
ERRWSQE
Randall Buth
--
Randall Buth
www.biblicalulpan.org <http://www.biblicalulpan.org>
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
randallbuth at gmail.com
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