[B-Greek] Aorist and Imperfect: points of consensus
Bert de Haan
b_dehaan at sympatico.ca
Fri Sep 22 19:43:24 EDT 2006
"Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
wrote:
[quote]
1. What is meant by the term "verbal aspect" with reference to the
ancient Greek verb?
2. What is meant by the term "Aktionsart" with reference to the
ancient Greek verb?
3. Is there consensus on the meaning of terms such as "perfective,"
"imperfective," "stative," etc. (what other terms belong here?)
3. How do the ancient Greek Indicative-mood forms differ in meaning
from the Non-indicative-mood forms?
4. What does the augment signify in ancient Greek imperfect, aorist,
and pluperfect Indicative-mood forms?
5. How does the ancient Greek Indicative Imperfect differ in meaning
from the Indicative Aorist?
6. Is temporal reference grammaticalized in any of the ancient Greek
Indicative "tenses"? If not, how does a speaker/hearer/reader
recognize temporal reference?
I don't think that's an exhaustive listing of questions that have
been dealt with. At least a couple others that have been at least
tangentially discussed are:
7. Does the ancient Greek Indicative future "tense" have aspect?
8. Can the ancient Greek Indicative present "tense" be adequately
characterized in terms of its aspect?
I'm not sure whether this is a helpful way of going about this effort
or not; if anyone has a better idea, please come forward and propose
a more useful interrogatory.[/quote]
(BdH)
In addition to point 4 I would like to see a related point summarized:
What do the primary versus secondary personal endings signify in the ancient
Greek verb?
And yes, I do think this will be helpful. Even without this summary the
discussion has been very helpful to me.
I am a (rather inadequate) tutor to several students of Biblical Greek.
Trying to explain things to them helps me as much as it helps them but the
issue of tense and aspect of the indicative verb I not been able to say much
about. Now I feel that I understand at least a bit of it.
Thanks to all participants.
Bert de Haan.
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