[B-Greek] Imperfect and Aorist Aspects
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Fri Sep 8 07:16:19 EDT 2006
Con egrapsen
>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.>
The problem with 'remoteness' as an analysis is that it is an admitted
spatial metaphor for something that is not spatial. the metaphor
allows people to hide from reality. It doesn't explain why people
don't/didn't say
*AURION HLQON as in
A: DEI SE ELQEIN KAI OUK HLQES SHMERON! you need to come and did not come today.
B: *AURION HLQON *I came tomorrow.
The reason the above is unacceptable is because there is a time
component within the aorist indicative that contravenes co-occurence
with AURION. (alternatively, 1, one could claim that the Greek is
good. [Please present more than one good example! I can't imagine the
context but it should be a humdinger.] Or 2, one could define
"tomorrow" as non-remote, but that just plays the same metaphor trick
from the other direction, using a spatial metaphor to define a time
word. You can say equally non-remtote EXQES HLQON, just not *AURION
HLQON.)
As Cyndy pointed out in the thread between her lines, the reason that
some NT Greek folk have dropped time out of their description of the
verb is because they apriori demand a "unique always true single
meaning" for aorist indicative. But only artificial languages have
"unique always true single meaning" structures. Hey, the French can
use the future in a past tense narrative. Does that mean that the
future is not the future? Absolument pas. the French just invent a
category called "historic future".
But the point of this note is that when we see language use
constraining the verbs in regards to time, then we need to find a
theoretical way to include a time component in the affected verb
categories. A corollary of this, is that people need to recognize that
language use always produces fuzzy boundaries with their systems.
Every language I've ever learned sufficiently well, and I've learned a
few.
I also believe that one of the biggest problems with ancient Greek and
dead languages is that the analysts don't try to use the language or
the system they are proposing. There is a phenomenon of a language
self-correcting the learner if it is used. You don't even need
speakers to correct you, just eyes. I remember once in Hebrew thinking
that I should be able to use a phrase and then follow with the vav
hahippux. I started to find examples in both the Hebrew Bible and
Moabite stone. So I know the structure fits the language, even though
I've later heard otherwise very knowledgeable scholars try to amend
such "ungrammaticality". (See Is 6:1, Gn 22:3)
But I've never run into *AURION HLQON.
This should send red flags up to those who advocate an absolute
removal of time from the Greek aorist indicative. (PS: I truly hope
your dissertation is approved ASAP, and your're probably happy that
I'm not on your committee :-). There is life after a dissertation and
people are allowed to change their views. they are even more free to
do so. Get your drivers license, then enjoy the ride.)
So I constrain the metaphor of "remoteness of the augment" (or of the
aorist) to include a time component in the indicative. (this is what
McKay does, too, at some point if I'm not mistaken, though he may not
want to highlight that.) If the SPATIAL metaphor (for something
without space!) is defined to include a temporal component, then
"remoteness" becomes a fine metaphor. If the time component is masked
in certain unreal and habitual environments, so what? C'est la langue.
In my eyes this is a tempest in a teapot. having said that, I am very
grateful that some exegesis based on brittle application of
kinds-of-action (a semantic property of a word) metaphors has been
exposed by the discussion of aspect (a subjective category of
presentation). Students need to be careful with their metaphors.
ERRWSO
Randall Buth
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη πληθυνθείη
שלום לכם וברכות
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
randallbuth at gmail.com
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