[B-Greek] Fwd: Imperfect and Aorist Aspects
Rolf Furuli
furuli at online.no
Sun Sep 17 13:15:20 EDT 2006
Dear Eddie,
Your understanding of the clause "Rita was running." is very fine, but I
think you have misunderstood the concept "deictic center".
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eddie Mishoe" <edmishoe at yahoo.com>
To: "Rolf Furuli" <furuli at online.no>; <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 16, 2006 2:21 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Fwd: Imperfect and Aorist Aspects
> Rolf wrote:
>
>> 1) Consider all the aorists of the NT and a
>> represantative number of
>> classicl texts.
>>
>> 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).
>
> Here Rolf is where I see our fundamental difference
> You say that the deictic center (DC) is the time of
> speech or writing. I simply do agree with this
> assumption and see no linguistic basis for such a
> conclusion. (I also consider your statement circular
> reasoning, since it assumes DC is the time of speech
> and/or writing and then concludes such). Which leads
> me to this next observation...
When I say that in most cases the deictic center is speech time/time of
writing, this is not an assumption but an observation! You yourself can make
exactly the same observation if you like. When we in English use present or
we use future tense or simple past, in the majority of cases our vantage
point is "the present moment" (speech time). We look at the future or the
past from the time when we speak. A shift of deictic center is seen in
pluperfect and future peerfect. Please consider the examples below. In 1)
and 2) the deictic center is speech time; in 3) and 4) the deictic center is
Ann´s coming yesterday and tomorrow respectively.
1) Yesterday Ann arrived at my home six o´clock.
2) Tomorrow Ann will arrive at my home six o´clock.
3) Yesterday, when Ann came to her flat, I had already arrived.
4) When Ann will come tomorrow morning, I have already arrived.
The test you can make is very simple: Pick up a book in normal English and
count all verbs in present, future, and past, and compare their number with
verbs in pluperfect and future perfect. If you find that very few
pluperfects and future perfects, you must conclude that the deictic center
in the great majority of cases is speech time/time of writing.
Since a shift of deictic center is relatively rare in modern languages, a
claim of a shift of deictic center in ancient Greek should only be accepted
when this is suggested by the context. To claim such a shift in order to
save one´s theory is very weak indeed.
>
> Please consider the examples below: In
>> example 1) it is signaled
>> by the adverb and "was" that the action was
>> completed before the deictic
>> center.
>> 1) Yesterday Rita was running.
>
> We don't have much context to determine the DC yet,
> but let's go with Yesterday. Rita's running is seen as
> 'in progress' at the time of the DC. The only thing I
> can conclude with "was running" is that she indeed
> "was running." And there is no implication that she
> "completed" this running. And she certainly could have
> been running BEFORE Yesterday as well. Like Forrest
> Gump who ran for about a month straight without
> stopping :o ) Forrest was running Tuesday, and
> Wednesday, Yesterday, and still running today!
>
> But, IF you require a DC to be the time of
> writing/speech, then your system follows BY
> DEFINITION, regardless of usage. No usage can
> contradict your starting point, and all usages are
> subsumed under the all-encompassing assumption. There
> really is not need for further analysis. But, this
> also applies to my assumption that DC's are literary
> creations. (I am willing to entertain the notion that,
> like in English, we write differently than we speak.
> Here, Dr. Buth may very well disagree with me, but
> I've never met a person who speaks the same way they
> write. Is there something inherent in speech and
> writing that results in two different modes of communicating?)
>
> Eddie Mishoe
> Pastor
Please substitute "BY DEFINITION" in your last paragraph by "BY
OBSERVATION". The your conclusion will be very different.
Best regards,
Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo
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