[B-Greek] Re.. Imperfect and Aorist Aspects!

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Wed Sep 6 12:27:38 EDT 2006


On Sep 6, 2006, at 8:39 AM, Paul F. Evans wrote:

> In other syntactical contexts does the aorist have a "native"  
> aspectual
> significance ...

Cindy Westfall could do a better job on this question and probably  
has if you look in the archives.

The native aspect of the aorist is perfective, i.e. completed  
action.  My source for this is S.Levinshon, Discourse Features of New  
Testament Greek 2nd Ed., SIL 2000 pages 172-176. The aspect of the  
imperfect is imperfective, i.e. uncompleted action.

In some narrative the imperfective aspect is used to mark background  
information where the main story is carried along by the aorist. This  
is not a hard and fast rule. Exceptions abound.

There are also cases where the imperfect appears to function like an  
aorist which, in other words it appears to have perfective aspect.  
Levinshon (page 175) cites John 8:31 where ELEGEN (imperfect) appears  
to function as if it had perfective aspect. This looks like it  
creates problems for Machen's rule that the aorist/imperfect are  
always aspectually distinct. Levinshon calls this a marked use of the  
imperfect which means that this imperfect is notable and draws  
attention to itself because it violates the expectations of the  
competent reader.

JOHN 8:30 TAUTA AUTOU LALOUNTOS POLLOI EPISTEUSAN EIS AUTON.  31  
ELEGEN OUN hO IHSOUS PROS TOUS PEPISTEUKOTAS AUTWi IOUDAIOUS: EAN  
hUMEIS MEINHTE EN TWi LOGWi TWi EMWi, ALHQWS MAQHTAI MOU ESTE  32 KAI  
GNWSESQE THN ALHQEIAN, KAI hH ALHQEIA ELEUQERWSEI hUMAS.

BTW, marked and unmarked when used without qualification refer to  
semantic marking not morphological marking. It would be trivial to  
say that the pluperfect is morphologically marked in relation to the  
aorist.

Elizabeth Kline







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