[B-Greek] NT Greek verbal aspect (Joseph Justiss)
Steve Runge
srunge at logos.com
Wed Feb 23 10:32:37 EST 2011
Hi Carl,
Thanks for the heads up about the ongoing discussion, I had completely missed it other than an allusion on a blog to Buth counting coup on Porter about verbal aspect. I did indeed present a paper critiquing Porter's views on aspect, and therefore also of those who have built their model on his theoretical foundation. We agree on core things, like the basic linguistic meaning of perfective, imperfective and stative aspects, as well as on the classification of the aorist as perfective, the present and imperfect as imperfective, and the perfect and pluperfect as stative aspect. Campbell has rejected the notion of stative as really being an aspect, he'd consider it to be a type of Aktionsart. Therefore, I'd follow Buth in defining the stative as a combination of perfective and imperfective.
The paper I read at ETS is posted on my blog, www.ntdiscourse.org. It is a third the length of the full paper I am preparing for publication, so it really provides a summary of the problems. I had avoided writing on aspect because of the food fight that tends to ensue as soon as the topic comes up. However, some issues that arose in the course of writing a paper on the historical present really demanded a thorough response.
My basic argument in the critique is that sources that Porter uses to substantiate his hierarchical, prominence-based model do not support his claims. In fact when read in context, his sources actually argue against his model rather than for it. Thus my paper uses Porter's sources to demonstrate that fallacy of his claims about e.g., the perfect tense-from being the most prominent in all genres, the present being the next most prominent, and the aorist the least prominent. I will not say more; if you are interested then I'd encourage you to read the paper.
The historical present paper (posted on my publications page) tackles Decker's claims about the distribution of the tense-forms in Mark. His goal was to test Porter's claims about the tenses not conveying temporal information. He uses distributional statistics to make his point. My paper uses Decker's statistics to demonstrate that a linguistically informed, time-based understanding of the indicative mood usage better explains the distributional data than Decker's timeless explanation.
The fundamental problem with the tense-aspect debate, in my opinion, has been the willingness to uncritically accept Porter's claims without rigorously testing them against the wider linguistic literature. If that had been done 20 years ago, the landscape would look quite different. It is not that such matters went unnoticed; indeed red flags were raised by the likes of Moises Silva and Daryl Schmidt from the outset. However, they were largely unheeded in the great haste to throw out the traditional understanding of tense=time. If you read the dead grammarians on their own terms (see Mike Aubrey's posts about this), you get a far different picture than the one painted by Porter. Most grammarians like Robertson and Blass understood and honestly acknowledged the problems, but they lacked a suitable alternative framework.
I had hoped to write more about the topic this year, but it ain't gonna happen based on the current focus of my research. These papers will have to do, but my hope is that they will lay the groundwork for new research in these areas to correct the misconceptions. If this is your interest, please contact me offlist.
So let the food fight begin; I'll be leaving the cafeteria.
Regards,
Steven E. Runge
Scholar-in-Residence
Logos Bible Software
srunge at logos.com
www.logos.com
www.ntdiscourse.org
-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Carl Conrad
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 3:16 AM
To: Daniel Wilson
Cc: B-Greek; Steve Runge
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] NT Greek verbal aspect (Joseph Justiss)
On Feb 23, 2011, at 12:23 AM, Daniel Wilson wrote:
>
> Joseph,After going through this myself, reading Campbell, Porter,
> Fanning, and T. Evans on the subject, I found Steve Runge's comments
> insightful. He challenges the ideas presented by Porter and others.
> His thoughts can be read here:
> http://www.ntdiscourse.org/on-porter-prominence-and-aspect/He mentions
> that the work of Porter seems right on theoretical grounds, but his
> conclusions don't seem to work when applied to the text (no doubt, a
> reason to question the theory). Make sure and check out Runge's
> review of these approaches as it is probably the most recent
> reflection on the subject. He also writes in an unusually clear
> manner for someone who deals in linguistics. As my professor Peter
> Gentry likes to say, "Linguists are singularly unable to communicate"
> :) (I speak as one entering the field myself) Runge also delivered a
> paper this year at ETS/SBL challenging Porter on aspect. If you
> contacted him at Logos he may be able to send it to you, though all
> the informati
on
>
> he presented is in the link above.
> Hope that helps,Daniel Wilson
Actually he is a list-member of B-Greek and can speak for himself, if he wants to. He's certainly been very gracious in speaking and writing to me.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
> --Forwarded Message Attachment--
> From: jljustiss at gmail.com
> Subject: [B-Greek] NT Greek verbal aspect (Joseph Justiss)
> Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 11:26:44 -0600
> To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
>
> Who are the major players today who write on the use of tenses and
> verbal aspect in NT Greek? Who are the ones challenging and enhancing
> the traditional views in a way that is up to par with scholarly
> standards and deserves serious attention? Porter? Campbell? I'm
> looking for suggestions on what I should be reading to really enter
> the discussion and decide for myself. Are there any writers who offer
> explanation on the way the tenses interact in texts to build stories
> and discourses. Things like tense shifting, foregrounding,
> backgrounding, etc. etc. in narrative and non-narrative.
> --
> Joseph Justiss
>
> --Forwarded Message Attachment--
> From: davidabooth at comcast.net
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] NT Greek verbal aspect (Joseph Justiss)
> CC: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 17:42:10 +0000
> To: jljustiss at gmail.com
>
> Joseph,
>
> A good place to start is with Campbell's little book: Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek .
>
> Next, I would recommend the first chapter of Stanley Porter's Idioms of the Greek New Testament for the newer view along with Dan Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics for a more traditional view. Everyone working with the NT should have a copy of Wallace's syntax anyway.
>
> If you have a seminary or university library available, you can consult Buist Fanning's doctoral work on verbal aspect which was published as Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek . There are also some up to date scholarly articles on the subject in The Linguist as Pedagogue edited by Stanley Porter and Matthew O'Donnell. Both books are on the expensive side (although you can purchase Sheffield Phoenix books for half price if you buy them directly from the publisher).
>
> If you still want to read more (although it is hard to imagine why you would!), you can follow up by simply reading the footnotes.
>
> David A Booth
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joseph Justiss" <jljustiss at gmail.com>
> To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2011 12:26:44 PM
> Subject: [B-Greek] NT Greek verbal aspect (Joseph Justiss)
>
> Who are the major players today who write on the use of tenses and
> verbal aspect in NT Greek? Who are the ones challenging and enhancing
> the traditional views in a way that is up to par with scholarly
> standards and deserves serious attention? Porter? Campbell? I'm
> looking for suggestions on what I should be reading to really enter
> the discussion and decide for myself. Are there any writers who offer
> explanation on the way the tenses interact in texts to build stories
> and discourses. Things like tense shifting, foregrounding,
> backgrounding, etc. etc. in narrative and non-narrative.
>
> --
> Joseph Justiss
---
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