[B-Greek] Fwd: Imperfect and Aorist Tense-Aspects
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Sat Sep 16 05:48:31 EDT 2006
We need to deal with a couple of separate details so that the
discussion stays on track.
Con Egrapse
>and the overlap of usage between the future and the aorist indicative
is, I suggest, stronger than has been recognized. ...the connections
are strong. >
I would support Con on the ASPECTUAL semantic overlap. when someone
says, "he will come" the default interpretation is that 'he will
arrive' not that 'he will be in the midst of his coming'. The 'coming'
defaults to 'whole' 'complete'.
I am also glad that Con accepted '+future' as part of the so-called
Greek future. (I believe that that will lead him to recognize the
wider implications for the system, in the future.) Aorist indicative
and Future indicative are close to a complementary distribution. As
Con argued, Greeks had an Aorist Future in the "Future" so they had no
need to use an Aorist Indicative. Correct. (though I would also allow
a non-default incompleteness.) And that sets up a categorial
opposition Aorist Ind vs. Future. (You can already see where I'm going
here.) The meaning of a piece of a closed system is not just itself,
but it also entails "not the other(s)". For the aoristic system, that
means that part of the meaning of the aorist indicative is "not the
Future". if the Future has time as part of its meaning, then the
aorist indicative picks up time within its systemic meaning, too, as
"minus-Fut". this could be rebutted, of course, by claiming that the
aorist indicative and future do not form a generic subsystem.
(marginal cases are excepted, in any case.) But in both cases, whether
the Aorist Indicative is in an opposition to Future or whether it is
totally independent, the fact remains that Greeks felt free to use the
Future with AURION 'tomorrow' and they did NOT feel free to use the
aorist indicative with AURION. However, they did feel free to use the
aorist indicative for EXQES 'yesterday', even 'today'. 'Proximity' can
only explain this when it becomes a metaphor with a time element
included.
Rolf egrapse
>2) In each case make an analysis of whether the action/state comes before or
after the deictic center or is contemporaneous with it. (Remember that the
default position of the deictic center is speech time, and that evidence is
necessary to account for another position).>
Rolf is aware of the circularity here, though he is willing to live
with it as a minimal necessity. He would not consider an aorist
indicative to be 'evidence' of a deictic shift. He would say that some
inconsistencies in aorist indicative usage make it inadmissable as a
device for marking a deictic centre change. I would say that the
overall system, and lack of occurrence of aorist indicative with an
explicitly marked clause with AURION shows that +past is part of the
aorist indicative and allows for it to signal a change in deictic
centre. His Point 3's "reasonable amount" of irregualrities ends up in
the eye of the beholder. I find them reasonable, Rolf finds them
unreasonable. I find no aorist indicatives with AURION, Rolf (silently
agrees) but points out that his methodology is 'tight'. I would say
that his point 2 filters the evidence in a way that is similar to
constructing a math proof that "2+2=3". These proofs are doable and
look 'tight' on the surface, until it is realized that one of the
surface forms actually requires 'dividing by zero', invalidating the
proof. So is Rolf dividing by zero or am I (and the whole field of
classical studies and history of Greek studies) dividing by zero?
Rolf's theory predicts AURION + aorist indicative. That does not seem
to occur. I therefore claim that there is enough 'time' in the aorist
indicative to serve as a deictic centre shifter, and Rolf has divided
by zero by claiming that Jude 14 is a clean, unambiguous aorist
indicative REFERRING to the future. (Refer is a technical term. We
both agree that the event is future. I claim that Jude 14 refers to
the future event AS A PAST. Hence the change in deictic centre. And
hence my happiness with its rarity and special circumstances, which my
theory predicts. ('My' is only used for argumentation. I would claim
that this is the way Greek children have read and understood Greek
throughout historical times.)
ERRWSQE
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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