[B-Greek] Campbell and Aktionsart

Randall Buth randallbuth at gmail.com
Sun Apr 5 10:08:41 EDT 2009


from a webblog comment by Campbell:
>Finally, I should mention another distinction between aspect and Aktionsart.
Most Greek scholars now agree that aspect is built into the verb (it
is semantic),
while Aktionsart is not built into the verb (it is pragmatic). This means that
whenever you see an aorist, it will convey perfective aspect, because
perfective
aspect is built in. But only some aorists will be punctiliar. Others
will be iterative.
And others still will be ingressive. These Aktionsart descriptions are
not built
into the aorist, but are worked out from what the aorist is ‘doing’ in
the context.>

Wow, Campbell really was as far off the mark as had been presented in the
previous thread, where I assumed that Campbell himself had not called
Aktionsart "pragmatic". AKtionsart is not pragmatic but is the inherent lexical
meaning of a verb being interacting with aspectual choice. Pragmatics deals
with the communicative value of a choice of a structure and is NOT usually
used to refer to aktionsart by linguists.
For example, an 'iterative aorist' is just funny to think about. The
aorist is NOT
iterative (repeating). If the lexical meaning of the verb includes
iteration, then
that iteration remains under the surface of the aorist view, which looks at the
whole iteration as a single set. But that iteration is not a pragmatic feature
that is added to the communicative presentation. Eeeks! אכסא

For the record: lexical meanings of a verb include things like whether
a verb is
inherently durative (rings) or having a goal (arrives) or once-occurring (like
'sneeze, 'knock'). Features of durativity and telicity are typically
labelled 'lexical
aspect' and aktionsart by linguists. They are part of the semantic, lexical
meaning of the verb. They are not "pragmatic" usages, that is
aktionsart is not a discourse application of an aspect as Campbell suggests.
On the other hand, choosing an imperfect past verb to background an event
with a group of aorist past verbs is a PRAGMATIC choice. And it signals
something about the communicative value and how to process the discourse.

So not only is Campbell misleading on the nature of tense and Greek, he has
scrambled aktionsart, too. I had assumed that Campbell couldn't be that far
off on aktionsart. But I was wrong. He is that far off.
Greek students without a linguistics background should probably not be given
the book at all, because they will not recognize the miscategorizations and
may even try to mislearn some linguistics from the book.

Randall Buth

PS: Aktionsart (lexical aspect) is not critical for a beginning Greek student
because it is a formal, technical categorization of the "lexical meaning" of a
verb. That is, aktionsarts distinctions can be conveyed to a student
by carefully
describing the meaning and use of the verb and without abstract Aktionsarts
jargon. This is also related to Disposition (Voice) as Carl also remarked,
because the voice is regularly made with common Greek verbs as an idiomatic,
semantic picture of a verb rather than a subjective choice of a
writer. A writer
chooses whether to talk about ELQEIN or ERXESQAI (that is an aspectual
choice). [PSS: i.e., the choice of semantic aspect is a pragmatic choice, just
like the choice of semantic tense is pragmatic.]
But there is no choice about *ELQESQAI (?!) or *ERXEIN (?!). Those are
inherent to the verb and may be considered lexical. These latter Voices
marked here with * do not exist for ELQEIN/ERXESQAI and were worked
out in proto-Greek as the AKTIONSART and DISPOSITION of a lexical verb
sometimes lead to a certain fixing of an idiom/meaning. And once that took
place you have a lexical word with all of its internal characteristics. Those
characteristics, of course, may only become visible as someone sees a
verb used in tens or hundreds of contexts.

We even see some surprising pairings, like YPAGEIN 'go away,depart' active
(yet almost 'middle' in the sense that it develops from a transitive verb and
is used intransitively) and basically used when imperfective (PARATATIKH
open-ended) aspect is desired and paired with APELQEIN active 'go away'
depart, for aorist marking, in the Koine.
Imperfective/open-ended APERXESQAI becomes rare.

-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth at gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life



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