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

yancywsmith yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Thu Sep 7 21:01:47 EDT 2006


For what it is worth:
I am fairly new to the list, but I can attest to the excitement I  
felt when I first heard and
read Porter on aspect-sine-tense theory. It had the advantage of  
creating an impression
of true foreignness in Greek and so issued a challenge for us to  
become much more conversant
in the language and culture.

After reading thousands of lines of narrative, prose, and poetry in  
Greek it becomes clear that
the Greek verb in the indicative is a tense-aspectual system and that  
augments, in conjunction with shortened, borrowed roots, or with
the tense formant S(A) may signal past time of action as well as  
aspect independently of adverbial elements.
Randall Buth's arguments, as far as I am concerned are cogent and  
have the appeal of common sense.

I also have no beef with imperfective and perfective aspects being  
the primary focus of Koine Greek "tenses."
At the same time, I think that verbal semantics and relevant context  
makes "imperfective" and "perfective" blunt
analytical instruments indeed. However effective they are for Greek  
pedagogy.

We also need to be aware of the effect on the language millions of  
speakers of Greek as a second or third language had
on the sequence and understanding of tenses.


Yancy Smith
yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
5636 Wedgworth Rd.
Fort Worth, TX 76133
817-361-7565




On Sep 7, 2006, at 7:31 PM, Dr. Don Wilkins wrote:

> 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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