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

Rolf Furuli furuli at online.no
Mon Sep 18 14:28:01 EDT 2006


Dear Kimmo,

While I have nothing against cognitive grammar, I do not see how it can help 
us answer the basic questions of Greek grammar. It is my experience that 
modern grammatical theories and theoretical linguistics tend to disturb the 
study of dead languages rather than being helpful tools. These are helpful 
for modern languages where the native speakers already know how tense and/or 
aspect are expressed in their language. But they are of very little use when 
informants are lacking. The basic question in this discussion has been: Is 
the Greek aorist a past tense or not? In order to work towards an answer I 
have an even more fundamental question: How do we distinguish between past 
tense and past reference? Is the only criterion our gut feeling, or can we 
work out scientific parameters by which we can make a systematic test of the 
language?


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kimmo Huovila" <kimmo.huovila at helsinki.fi>
To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Cc: "Randall Buth" <randallbuth at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, September 18, 2006 6:08 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Fwd: Imperfect and Aorist Tense-Aspects


>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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