[B-Greek] atelic histrocal present

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Thu Apr 9 14:43:35 EDT 2009


On Apr 6, 2009, at 8:20 AM, Randall Buth wrote:

> Rijksbaron's book. At 7.3 in the sections on
> 'historic present', note 1, he points out that "the historic present
> is only found with terminative (telic), not with stative (atelic)
> verbs (cp. sec. 2). Thus, the present indicative of verbs like
> βασιλευω, ειμι, εχω, οιδα, ρεω is never used as  
> a historic present."
> This is a profound observation that lines up with a claim

I have looked into this a little, seems like this proposition is  
perhaps something just a little bit short of a tautology. If you find  
a present indicative, e.g., BASILEUEI (Matt 2:22, Eurip. Electra 12)  
it will represent an on going state of affairs from the perspective of  
the speaker and for that reason cannot be an historical present. Is it  
possible make up an example of BASILEUEI functioning as historical  
present?

The point needs some clarification, it is a little too profound for me  
to unpack it.


Elizabeth Kline








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