[B-Greek] Fwd: Imperfect and Aorist Tense-Aspects

Rolf Furuli furuli at online.no
Sun Sep 17 04:24:59 EDT 2006


Dear Randall,

See my comments below.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Randall Buth" <randallbuth at gmail.com>
To: "b-greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 16, 2006 10:48 AM
Subject: [B-Greek] Fwd: Imperfect and Aorist Tense-Aspects



>
> 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

You did not present my approch in a correct way. In my first post in this
thread I said that I have not analysed all the verbs of the NT as I have
done with classical Hebrew. Therefore I only presented my preliminary
conclusion that aorist expresses the perfective apect but not past tense. A
final conclusion can only be drawn when all verbs are considered. I do not
see any circularity in my model, but I admit that any analysis of verbs
entails subjective judgements.

The main point is that the deictic center (C) in spoken and written clauses
in modern and ancient languages is speech time/the time of writing.
Therefore, my model requires that in order to postulate a shift in C, there
must be something in the context that signals this. You postulate a shift in
C in Jude 1:14 because you have decided that the aorist represents past
tense. This is circular reasoning, and such an approach will prevent any 
meaningful research
into Greek sentences to find the true nature of the aorist, since the answer
is given before the research starts. The requirement of my model is not
circular, but will include subjective judgements regarding the context.

Several factors influence the use of verbs among native speakers, so we
cannot conclude that because the majority of instances of the use of a
particular form have past reference, this form represents past tense. We 
must distinguish between temporal reference and tense.
Here we encounter the problem of induction: If someone claims that all swans 
are white, a
demonstration of thousands of white swans does not prove the claim, but one
or two black swans will falsify it  (provided that they are nyt dyed
or have been through a fire). I do not conclude that two examples of aorist
witht future reference falsify the view that aorist represents past tense.
But a reasonable number of non-past examples (present, present perfect, and
future), will falsify the tense view.

I joined this thread because you used Hebrew examples (in my view) wrongly, 
and I will illustrate
my points with one such example as well. Of the 14,536 occurences of
imperfect consecutive (wayyiqtol)I analysed,  I found 997 examples (6.9%) 
with non-past
reference. These occur in normal contexts and they represent a reasonable 
number. Therefore they falsifiy the view that
imperfect consecutive represents past tense. In addition to the presentation 
of these 6.9% a
natural explanation must be given why so many imperfect consecutives are
used with past reference. My analysis will be based on subjective
judgements,as all analyses are, but it is open for any conclusion, and the
answer is not decided before the start of the analysis.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo.





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