[B-Greek] Fwd: Imperfect and Aorist Aspects
Rolf Furuli
furuli at online.no
Sun Sep 10 10:12:03 EDT 2006
Dear Randall,
I agree that our approach to language is very different. And since there is
no superior authority that can decide which approah is the best, we can only
respect one another´s work - as we do. I do not think the listmembers will
benefit from hairsplitting linguistic arguments. But to understand the
frames of our different approaches can be beneficial.
The tendency in much modern linguistic work on dead languages is to lean to
the side of discours analysis, i.e., to deal with units lanrger then the
clause and the sentence. I have gone in the opposite direction - the way of
the natural sciences - by dealing with the smallest linguistic units. This
means that my quest is for the rather few linguistic units of a language
whose semantic meaning (uncancellable meaning) can be established with a
great deal of certainty. In other words, semantic meaning (uncancellable
meaning) is sought in contrast with conversational pragmatic implicature;
quality is sought rather than quantity. Past is the most common reference of
the aorist in NT Greek. Why? The reason can be that the aorist represents
grammaticalized past tense, that it represent the perfective (or even the
imperfective) aspect, or that it represents the combination of past tense
and the perfective aspect. How can we know? In my view the only way to draw
a well reasoned conclusion is to analyse ALL the NT aorists (as well as the
other finite verbs). We need parameters by which we can sort out the factors
that definitely show that a particular verb is a tense or is not a tense, is
an aspect, or is not an aspect. Discourse analysis and similar methods are
completely impotent in achieving this; we need instead to deal with much
smaller linguistic units.
Allow me one example from Hebrew: The imperfect consequtive (WAYYIQTOL) is
by most scholars believed to have a meaning opposite to imperfect (YIQTOL).
A morphological distinction believed to signal a semantic distinction is
that the imperfect consecutive prefers the short form of the verb while
imperfect prefers the long form. My analysis of all the WAYYIQTOLs show that
73% of them have long forms and only 27% have short forms. Yet, I agree with
those who say that the imperfect consecutive prefers the short form, because
the nature of most of the 73% (but not all) prevents them from using the
short form. It is really fallacious to say: "Aorist has in most cases past
reference, and therefore it must represent past tense." This can only be a
pragmatic and not a semantic conclusion! We must find out WHY so many
aorists have past reference, and should not decide the answer in advance.
snip
>
> Rolf EGRAPSE
>>I accept exceptions. But each of them
> must be shown to a special case. Jude 14 is hardly a special case. We do
> not
> know whether the verse is a quote, and even if it were a quote (from
> another
> language than Greek), Jude was the one who chose the aorist. Therefore,
> in
> Jude´s mind an aorist with future reference would be perfectly
> acceptable.>
>
> We radically differ here. I see the HLQEN as causing a change of
> speaker viewpoint. It is looking back to the past, but since it is
> talking about something that has not happened in our world
> view/encyclopedic knowledge, the reader and speaker are taking a view
> from the future. The context supplies the 'future' here, the aorist
> indicative supplies a past viewpoint. And I would argue that this is
> highly marked and very rare. (If one seriously wanted to argue with
> that, then just show me some *AURION HLQEN examples. See below.) Greek
> marks default future reference with the FUTURE verb system. Jude was
> happy with both default futures and rare pragmatics. But I
> differentiate an aorist being used in a future context from an aorist
> having future reference, and the former does not rule out its carrying
> a '+past feature'. It does not have future reference/marking. Just
> like a French future can be used in a past narrative. the French
> future does not mark the past, but it is used in the past even though
> it marks future. (Thus, absolute non-cancelability is often an
> unattainable ideal for human languages. Sometimes one needs to go
> beyond Euclidean geometry and build non-Euclidean geometries in order
> to deal with the real world.)
Your words above illustrate one important difference between our approaches.
You have already decided many things before you start your analysis; one
decision evidently being that aorist cannot have future reference. This is
shown by your words that you "differentiate an aorist being used in a future
context from an aorist
having future reference, and the former does not rule out its carrying a
'+past feature'." It is of course your privilege to make such decisions. My
system does not accept such decisions. I accept that some writers have a
retrospective viewpoint; they place themselves at a point in the future and
look back. My system requires that the context must explicitly show that
this is the case in a particular passage; I cannot claim so just because my
view of the verb does not allow another interpretation. There is nothing in
the context of Jude 1:14 suggesting that the aorist "supplies a past
viewpoint," but this is based on your preconceived grammatical view. I even
see the possibility that the two verbs in aorist indicative in 1:15 have
future reference. I have already analysed these as future perfects,
something which is likely, but if Jude focuses on the short time of
judgement when the Lord comes, he may focus on the ungodly acts people (will
/form his vantagepoint/) do at that time and the words that the sinners
(will /from his vantagepoint/) speak.
snip
>
> 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
> ---
Best regards,
Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
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