[B-Greek] Re.. Imperfect and Aorist Aspects!
cwestf5155 at aol.com
cwestf5155 at aol.com
Thu Sep 7 11:24:05 EDT 2006
Elizabeth, Bill, Paul and all
I just read this thread this morning, and though I'm not sure that you'll all feel that I do a better job of explaining, or that I'll settle the issue for you, I'm glad to make a "few" comments about aspect, and apologize for the length of the post.
First, I follow Porter's argument closely with the exception of the imperfect, and Levinsohn and I are quite close in how we think the imperfect functions, though we would describe it differently.
Incidentally, Porter's work is the result of an interdisciplinary doctoral thesis with the linguistics and the biblical studies departments at Sheffield, backed with an MA in English at Claremont--and I say this to clarify the thorougly linguistic foundation of the approach. More recently, a close associate (Matt O'Donnel--the creator of OpenText.org) has received a two year appointment to work with Michael Hoey (one of the most prominent systemic functional linguists) on his lexical priming theory.
In SFL aspect theory as Elizabeth and others have indicated, the aorist is simple, undefinied and default action. Like William Ross has so aptly observed, there are so many examples of the aorist referring to continual, gnomic, repeated, present and future, that time would fail me to list them to say nothing of space. See Porter's work on aspect. Therefore past is not considered to be part of the minimal semantic contribution of the aorist.
How do we know the aorist is present, future, etc. in those cases? The context supplies the temporal information. How do we know if an aorist is past? The context supplies the temporal information. Fact: the aorist does occur (collocate) with the past the most, hence the common assumption that it is past. When it doesn't, people make up cute categories such as "the gnomic aorist" as if that has explanatory power. Just look in the back of Wallace for all the categories that the aorist has to be qualified with if we retain a traditional approach.
As far as Mounce goes, I would not advise you to use most first grammars as a source for an intermediate or advanced understanding of grammar such as verbal theory. We've all found that some of our first year assumptions don't hold up, but hopefully they got us by without too much damage. Mounce is aware of at least some of the discussion on aspect, but doesn't really buy it or process it--he tries to incorporate it with his more traditional understanding of grammar. And no, he didn't just do an etymological trick to come up with his statement. But I doubt that Mounce would have used the term "default" to describe it either.
Paul Evans made some insightful statements about the importance of mood--and those who work out of a systemic functional linguistics framework (Porter, Reed, O'Donnell, Black, Levinsohn and a growing number of SIL linguists, me, etc.) would say that every grammatical choice effects/reflects meaning. As far as the use of the default aorist in statements that are theologically significant, that is consistent with this grammatical theory when one understands that one may use an important and profound theological point to ground the point one is making in the text (and ultimately, the "main point" of the text does not have to be more theologically important than its support material). In other words, one may cite a huge theological principle (such as Jesus was raised from the dead) to make a specific application that only applies to one point in time--but in the instance of communication, the application is the emphatic point, not the resurrection--the resurrection would be a given that doesn't need to be proven or emphasized. And speaking of resurrection, look at how tense is used with EGEIRW in 1 Cor 15 (especially around 15:15). Aspect theory would suggest that the author's aspect is changing, not the nature of the action--that a switch from perfect to aorist (present too) reflects a change in the status of the action in emphasis/focus/prominence. Of course it can't be a different kind of action (actionsart) when both tenses refer to the same action of Christ's resurrection.
The use of the imperfect is for remote undefined action, and the perfect is close undefined action--I agree that the imperfect is "marked" but for the special function it serves of marking background/support rather than emphasis--and here is where I part with Stan Porter. In narrative, it is the ongoing contextual backdrop to a scene in which the discourse action line occurs in the aorist, as in your example in John 8:30. On the other hand, if a scene is set up with one or more imperfects, that sets the table more emphatically than a scene without background detail--so markedness theory wills out after all. The genitive absolute functions in a similar way, but is formally linked to a sentence rather than the higher level of discourse.
This is more than enough space used, and I haven't yet added many examples. But you do see the theory, I hope.
Cindy Westfall
Assistant Professor
McMaster Divinity College
-----Original Message-----
From: kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
To: pastorpaul1957 at bellsouth.net
Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Wed, 6 Sep 2006 10:27 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Re.. Imperfect and Aorist Aspects!
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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