[B-Greek] Re.. Imperfect and Aorist Aspects!
Con R. Campbell
con.campbell at moore.edu.au
Fri Sep 8 03:15:57 EDT 2006
On the issue of the augment, I totally agree that it is a weakness in
Porter's analysis. However, I think it grammaticalizes remoteness rather
than past time. Remoteness is a spatial category that can accommodate past
time in its pragmatic usage, but also other types of remoteness, such as
logical remoteness, which we see in the protasis of second class conditional
sentences expressing unreality.
McKay first posited remoteness as the possible meaning of the augment back
in his 1965 article. It think it was footnote 22 from memory. Porter built
on the idea of remoteness, but did not connect it to the augment.
This I think deals with all of the objections put by Don, including the
absence of the augment outside the indicative mood. The spatial value of
remoteness is only expressed in the indicative mood, just as other analyses
claim of past tense.
Con Campbell
Lecturer
Moore College
On 8/9/06 10:34 AM, "Dr. Don Wilkins" <drdwilkins at sbcglobal.net> 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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