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

Kimmo Huovila kimmo.huovila at helsinki.fi
Mon Sep 18 13:08:18 EDT 2006


I have followed this discussion somewhat passively, but I think the two 
approaches can be viewed as complementary if we look at this from the 
viewpoint of cognitive grammar. Randall is saying that the aorist is a past 
tense and even though in a conditional sentence protasis it does not signal 
past (just as in English), it does not mean that it is not a past tense (in 
other contexts). Con is saying that since it does not always signal past 
tense (conditionals), it signals something else (remoteness). Both are in a 
way right.

In cognitive grammar it does not have to be an either-or situation. We can 
look at the past tense aorist as a prototypical category. Another 
prototypical category is the use of the aorist in conditional sentence 
protases. These are basic level categories as far as the language user is 
concerned. But we can look at the schema of which these categories are 
elaborations (to use Langacker's terminology). In other words, we can 
abstract what the two categories have in common. This would be what Con is 
after. He looks at the more abstract category (schema), and claims it is not 
tense. That's right, but it includes tense as a subcategory.

There are other prototypical uses of the aorist besides conditionals and past 
tense (such as gnomic), but that does not affect the theoretical point I am 
making. To say that Greek has no tense misses out half the picture (or more). 
To say that the aorist is a tense misses out the other half (or less than 
half, since most aorists are past tenses).

The issue of interest is to determine when the aorist functions as a past 
tense and when not. Whenever it is not in a gnomic context or in a 
conditional sentence protasis or whatever contexts can be shown by data, it 
is not necessarily a past tense. There are severe constraints on non-past 
aorists, and it is the linguist's job to figure out what they are. I think 
this is what Randall has been saying.

I leave open the question of whether EI HLQON AURION is grammatical. Either 
way we answer that does not affect the theoretical point I am making.

We could say that the aorist is a tense, but not always. Just like the English 
past tense. Sentences of the type "If he went home" are just examples of the 
cases when the imperfect functions as something else. In these cases it is 
not a past tense. This happens to be a case where English and Greek are quite 
close.

Cognitive grammar gives some nice tools for semantic analysis.

Con wrote:
"I agree that a purely spatial conception of aspect (and remoteness) is not
immediately easy to grasp for users of English (at least this one). However, 
many scholars would agree that the verbal system of Greek evolved from 
spatial categories."

What does spatial mean here? I assume it must be a metaphor. What is it a 
metaphor for?

Kimmo Huovila



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