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

Dr. Don Wilkins drdwilkins at sbcglobal.net
Thu Sep 7 20:31:43 EDT 2006


I wish I had more time to address this and the other aspect questions  
raised. I am one of the older veterans of the aspect wars and I won't  
repeat the stuff said years ago and long since archived. This latest  
question is interesting. There certainly are ways that a Greek writer  
can differentiate between historical events and subjective  
representations, but I don't think any of them are relevant to aspect  
issues.

Okay, one aspect-war comment: I can see that tense is still  
considered an issue, and the augment plays a conspicuous role. When  
Porter and I talked about this years ago, he felt that the augment  
was becoming meaningless in NT Greek, and I protested. My complaint  
was not over the weakening of the augment, since we clearly see its  
demise in modern Greek. The problem is that the augment is alive and  
well from classical Greek through Byzantine as a marker of past time.  
Moreover, it was absent in Homer and later added, functioning  
strongly in Classical, and I dare say NT and patristic writers. It  
did not fade in with Classical and suddenly fade out in the NT. Any  
anomaly, such as the gnomic aorist, can be explained without  
resorting to canceling the sense of the augment. Also supporting the  
value of the augment is the fact that it only occurs in the  
indicative, the only time-related mood (exceptions aside like the  
optative substituted for indicative in indirect speech). My  
impression is that those who deny the functionality of the augment do  
so because they find it incompatible with their interpretation of a  
given problematic passage. But that is just my impression, and I am  
willing to be corrected.

Dr. Don Wilkins
The Lockman Foundation

On Sep 7, 2006, at 3:58 PM, Brian Abasciano wrote:

> Dear Con and all,
>
> One more thing to add that is further clarification of my last  
> message and
> in response to Con. There is question of Aktionsart vs. aspect in  
> the field,
> is there not, at least including whether the speaker is  
> representing the
> action as actually taking place in a certain way or subjectively
> representing the action a certain way without necessarily asserting  
> that it
> actually took place in that way? I am asking about aspect theory as
> represented by Porter et al, but I would like everyone to feel free  
> to state
> exactly what they think, even if they want to reject aspect  
> altogether.
>
> God bless,
>
> Brian Abasciano




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