[B-Greek] Speaking clearly: grammatical aspect, lexical aspect
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Jul 6 08:48:33 EDT 2007
On Jul 6, 2007, at 8:41 AM, Eric Weiss wrote:
>> Matthew S. Demoss, _Pocket Dictionary for the Study of New Testament
>> Greek," offers this for "Aktionsart": "The feature of the Greek
>> language whereby the quasi-objective quality of the verbal action is
>> indicated (duration, repetition, momentary occurrence, etc.), both
>> morphologically by tense forms and lexico-syntactically according to
>> contextual features. Some older grammars used the terms synonymously
>> with aspect."
>
> I have that dictionary at home. For comparison/contrast, how does
> he define "aspect"?
>
> The above is "all Greek to me," though, and I'm not sure how best
> to simplify and
> explain it to my class when it comes time to discuss verbs and
> aspect. That's one
> thing I found from my brief perusal of this Pocket Dictionary -
> i.e., sometimes the
> definitions presume a level of language understanding that a
> newbie to NT Greek
> might not have.
Demoss re: "Aspect":
"The feature of the Greek language inherent to the tense-system thata
denotes the speaker/writer's subjective viewpoint or portrayal of the
verbal action, whether progressive ("internal," "imperfective"),
summary ("external," "perfective") or perfect/stative."
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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