[B-Greek] Campbell and Aktionsart
jerry
gerald_davis at hotmail.com
Sun Apr 5 16:05:51 EDT 2009
As a beginning student, I appreciate the discussion, and the post script.
Whatever the outcome, these are good ideas to tuck away in the back of my
mind.
jerry
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Randall Buth" <randallbuth at gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 05, 2009 10:08 AM
To: "B Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [B-Greek] Campbell and Aktionsart
> 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
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
> B-Greek mailing list
> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
>
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list