[B-Greek] Fwd: Imperfect and Aorist Aspects
Con R. Campbell
con.campbell at moore.edu.au
Mon Sep 11 02:19:21 EDT 2006
I still don't understand why appealing to silence is a good argument
Randall.
Also, I think you misunderstand the non-tense position (at least mine). I do
not believe in "aspect only" either, but in aspect + remoteness (in the case
of the aorist and imperfect). Remoteness simply replaces past tense in this
analysis. Of course the aorist has a default past time reference. But this
is due to its perfective aspect AND remoteness. Past time is remote time.
Remoteness will often be expressed as remote time. The point is that it can
be expressed in other ways too: i.e. logical remoteness, unreality,
potential, etc.
Rather than trying to explain the absence of a feature, how about trying to
explain what IS there? The tense-based theories are still incapable of
explaining why only aorists, imperfects, and pluperfects are found in the
protases of second class conditions, even when PRESENT time reference is
intended. Why use an imperfect when present time is intended in such
contexts? Can tense-based analyses EXPLAIN that? Not so far as I can see.
But a proper understanding of remoteness is capable of explanation. In such
cases, remoteness is not being expressed as temporal remoteness but as
logical remoteness. Hence the use of the imperfect, aorist, and pluperfect
in second class conditions. They express remoteness, which will usually
translate into temporal remoteness, but when it does not it expresses other
kinds of remoteness.
I would rather go with an analysis that is capable of EXPLAINING what is
there, rather than one than cannot. And I would rather base the discussion
on what is THERE rather than what is not.
Con Campbell
Lecturer
Moore College
On 11/9/06 3:53 PM, "Randall Buth" <randallbuth at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hmm. It seems something irregular is going on with the list server. A
> couple of hours later I don't see this response so i am double posting
> via a different email. Please ignore the question on double posting
> should the original post below appear.
>
> [delete]
> From your double posting I am assuming that you would like a comment on
> Jude 14.
> [continue]
>
> 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.)
>
> In the meantime, I am waiting for ***AURION HLQEN. That is what I
> claim is non-Greek, because the AURION sets the speakers viewpoint
> before "tomorrow" and thus the HLQEN is blocked, not being able to
> refer 'back' (aorist ind.) and 'forward' (AURION) simultaneously .
> I've never seen one of these.
>
> The fact that I've never seen one of these tells me that if I ever do,
> it will definitely be a very special context. Since you "accept
> exceptions", you will probably even grant me such exceptionality with
> a smile, SHOULD ONE EXAMPLE EVER BE FOUND. (folks, the difficulty of
> finding such, should signal that something is wrong with absolute
> tense-less analyses. I would argue that only some kind of mixed valent
> analysis will ever work in the real world). In the meantime, as I've
> said, I can only say that aorist indicatives have something in them
> that block their co-occurence in a clause with an explicit future word
> like AURION. I call that a feature of TENSE.
>
> I would link '+past' with AUKSHSIS "augment" [E-] and recommend that
> any learner do the same. Otherwise, you will enter a neat, but
> non-real world, and difficult to leave. ("aspect-only" is subjective
> by definition and potentially unfalsifiable if one only looks at
> aspect and then demands "unique, always valid" meanings for any
> features that are measurable. That's called a stacked deck. Hotel
> California.) The lack of *AURION HLQEN is not a stacked deck, just a
> waving, flashing red flag.
>
> ERRWSO
> Randall Buth
>
> Randall Buth, PhD
> www.biblicalulpan.org
> ?
>
> ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
> randallbuth at gmail.com
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