[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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