[B-Greek] Constantine Campbell / Basics of Verbal Aspect

Michael Aubrey mga318 at yahoo.com
Wed Apr 1 23:07:17 EDT 2009


Stephen:

The main issue has less to do with aspect and more to do with tense. That is, its more accurate to talk about the mean detractors of the "aspect-only / no tense" view. The detractors in that case are: Buist Fanning, Moises Silva, Chrys Caragounis, Randall Buth, William Mounce, and a variety of others. Silva and Fanning do not find it reasonable to make such a decision based on what they view as exceptions (i.e. the historical present and future referring aorists are not normal usage). Caragounis and Buth (who can speak for himself here) argue that it is significant that historically native Greek speakers have already acknowledge Tense as being part of their verbal system and that they have a long history of a well-developed grammatical tradition. I don't know about Mounce, though I'd guess he's in the same camp as Fanning and Silva.

There are others but I cannot remember their names (I want to say "Evans"...).

Then the other controversial point with Campbell book deals with the meaning of the Perfect form - since basically everyone claims it means something different - Campbell roughly follow George Curtius from the 1800's but uses different terminology. Porter is actually more "traditional" here with the term Stative (along with McKay). Fanning prefers to have the Perfect be Perfective Aspect.

Campbell's distinction between Aspect and Aktionsart is good ****as long as you keep it in focus with his historical discussion.**** That is, Campbell rightly asserts (following Fanning) that past grammarians such as Moulton, Robertson, and others knew and recognized both Aspect and Aktionsart, but use only one word (Aktionsart) to describe both. This can make it confusing when we talk about Aktionsart being pragmatic since historically the word has only been partially used in that way -- and has also caused Porter to misconstrue the whole issue on a number of occasions (e.g. his historical literature survey in his monograph is terrible IMHO).

Mike Aubrey
http://evepheso.wordpress.com




________________________________
From: Stephen Baldwin <stbaldwi at hotmail.com>
To: Dr.Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
Cc: B- Greek <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 1, 2009 7:47:14 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Constantine Campbell / Basics of Verbal Aspect

Hello Carl:

Thanks for your comments.
Who are the main "published" detractors of aspect? (i.e. where can I read their criticisms? [apart from b-greek!!]).

And what are the alternatives to aspect? And are they any better? In my [limited] experience, aspect is always presented in comparison with aktionsart. Is e.g. the "once and for all" aorist a product of aktionsart? Campbell mentions it, quotes Carson "Fallacies" who is also skeptical and also skeptical of the temporal properties of indicative verbs...

What do you think of Campbell's placement of aspect wrt aktionsart? [aspect being semantic, aktionsart being pragmatic?]. It was such utterances from various pulpits about "the greek aorist tense shows that a,b,c" that was one of the reasons that got me into this in the first place!

As for consensus, is there a consensus on anything in this area? He does mention some consensus on non-indicatives being aspectual and non-temporal at the semantic level [p68]. But I thought that the controversy surrounding the subject was admitted -- esp. chapter 2 "History..."?

I must confess, in reading the book, it was of course presented as a theory that held water. After all, one would not put pen to paper in the form "this is a flaky theory and I'm not very sure about it but I'm going to try and convince you [and me] anyway". I never got the impression that the book was trying to be the final word but rather, a framework.

In reading it, I did wonder whether there are any GNT passages that detract from aspect as thus presented by CC. None have been metioned so far in my reading.

In closing, I can't help but notice a pattern in eminent greek scholarship is to have initials CC with Con somewhere. ;-). 

Best Rgds
Steve

Stephen Baldwin
stbaldwi at hotmail.com








> CC: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> From: cwconrad2 at mac.com
> To: stbaldwi at hotmail.com
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Constantine Campbell / Basics of Verbal Aspect
> Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 05:31:50 -0400
> 
> 
> On Mar 30, 2009, at 10:24 PM, Stephen Baldwin wrote:
<<snip my note on the book >>

> 
> The book is well-written, the material well-presented, and some very 
> basic terminology is nicely explained and illustrated. The complaint 
> that I, at least, have raised about it is that much of what is 
> presented "Basics of Verbal Aspect" is still in the area of theory 
> that is open to question: the view of the perfect tense as 
> imperfective in aspect, the application of spatial metaphor to 
> explanation of aspectual distinctions. I question whether what 
> purports to be a beginner's textbook should represent much that is 
> theoretical as if it were consensus perspective.
> 
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
> 
> 
> 


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