[B-Greek] An Accessible Brief Introduction to Greek Verbal Aspect

Randall Buth randallbuth at gmail.com
Thu May 12 04:48:09 EDT 2011


<llsorenson at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Randall,
>
> Could you give several comments on which areas of the PDF on Greek
> Verbal Aspect are inadequate.

Yes, I can. The problem to be avoided, though, is to avoid turning the
PDF into the basis of discussion. The PDF is fundamentally flawed and
would need to be completely rewritten. A few brief examples follow.

Naselli (author of PDF):
"Linguists and grammarians who adhere to verbal aspect theory are
not unanimous on all the nuances (especially with reference to the future,
perfect, and pluperfect tense-forms), but the following distinction
between semantics and pragmatics is fundamental: aspect concerns
semantics, and Aktionsart and time concern pragmatics."

some comments:
First of all, 'verbal aspect theory' is a misnomer. Earlier in the
paper the subject was correctly called 'verbal aspect'. Verbal aspect
is a feature of verb systems around the world. It is not a 'theory'
but a morphological category of many languages and the category of
aspect has roles to play within syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

Secondly, linguists do not 'adhere to verbal aspect theory'. All
linguists understand that 'aspect' is a part of a verb system. All
linguists, not "some". The problem here is that Doctorandus Naselli
(an editor's[?] footnote in the article: "Dr. Naselli is currently
pursuing a Ph.D. in New Testament") has adopted Porterite views, which
is why he adds the word 'theory' to aspect and talks about 'those who
adhere'. Actually, I don't know any linguists who 'adhere' to the
'theory' that Naselli explains. See next point.

Thirdly, and more importantly, Naselli works from the following misconception:
"aspect concerns semantics,
and Aktionsart and time concern pragmatics"
This is misleading and a very bad 'starting point', but it becomes the
foundation the undergirds the rest of the paper.
In fact, aspect, Aktionsart, and time
are ALL semantic and are ALL pragmatic.
(Yes, aspect is also used "pragmatically" in Greek, while tense and
aktionsart are also "semantic" in Greek.)

For example, Naselli failed to mention that Aktionsart is also part of
the semantics of an individual verb. Verbs can be broken down into
lexical semantic features of Aktionsart like '+telic', and
'+durative'. These of course interact with the other parts of the
verbal syntax and within a context. But individual lexical verbs also
bring their own semantic 'Aktionsart' to that situation. Fanning has a
long chapter in his book where he discusses this interplay of the
semantics of Aktionsart and its pragmatic application. [PS:
'Aktionsart' was sometimes used 100 years ago as a synonym for
'aspect', readers should be cautioned that these are normally
separated today.]

'Aspect', as is widely recognized, can be used pragmatically 'against
its semantic meaning'. This is regularly seen in the "historic
present" constructions. The 'present tense' is also 'open-ended' in
aspect, that is, it is 'imperfective' in aspect as linguists name it.
However, a Greek author may begin to describe a scene with a 'present'
indicative, even though the event has an end and is completed before
the next event in the story. The 'incomplete' semantic presentation of
the first event is done for pragmatic effect. (There are some
restrictions on 'historic present', too. See Albert Rijksbaron,
"Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek", 3rd ed, 2002,
p. 24 "The historic present is only found with terminative (telic),
not with stative (atelic) verbs.")

'Time and tense', as is widely recognized, can be used pragmatically
'against its semantic meaning'. This is regularly seen in the
"historic present" constructions. The 'present tense' in the
indicative is 'non-past' in its semantics, yet it can be used within
past narratives for pragmatic effect.

Further basic problems can be seen in Naselli's general description of
various views of the Greek verb.

He claims that the major view before the end of the 19th century was:

'absolute time': "Tense-forms grammaticalize (i.e., indicate by their
morphology) absolute time (aorist = past time, present = present time,
etc.)"
That, of course, is pure gibberish. Has anyone who knows and
reads/speaks Greek ever believed that an aorist subjunctive, aorist
infinitive, aorist imperative, and aorist optitive marked the absolute
past? True gibberish. Charabiyya. (French for 'gibberish', other
French would be offlist.)

He then distinguishes 'aktionsart' views from 'aspect+tense' views,
but failed to see or point out that they were basically the same view,
just using different metalanguage. When older authors mention 'kind of
action' in these contexts they were not talking about Aktionsart
[Naselli: "(i.e., Aktionsart)] but about what we call 'aspect'. Older
authors sometimes used words like 'duration' for today's
'imperfective' or 'continuative', PARATATIKH.
(e.g., Goodwin [1879 (new edition 1894)], p.272: "the present
expresses an action in its duration, that is, as 'going on' or
'repeated', while the aorist expresses simply its 'occurrence', the
time of both being otherwise precisely the same.")

Naselli's Aktionsart: "Tense-forms grammaticalize (1) the kind or type
of action (i.e., Aktionsart [sic--RB]) in all verbs and (2) absolute
time in indicative verbs and relative time in participles."
Naselli's Aspect+time: "Tense-forms grammaticalize (1) the way an
author or speaker subjectively portrays an action and (2) absolute
time in the indicative mood and relative time in participles, although
tense is only one element among others such as lexis and context in
determining time."

My conclusion is that the author of the article does not understand
linguistics or Greek verbs well-enough to be a reliable introduction
to either.

Students would be better off sticking to their beginning pedagogy
books and then consulting something like Rijksbaron mentioned above
for a reliable linguistic introduction to Greek verbs. Fanning is
quite long, but also reliable.
(This would be my answer for Barry's brief question, too.)

For Pragmatics, the student will want to consult Steve Runge's new
book Discourse Grammar of the GNT. Yes, go Steve!
On the other hand, students trying to work within Naselli's
'introduction' and Porter's 'pragmatics' will end up with alot of
things backwards and inside-out, attributing 'prominence' to things
that are not prominent and 'background' to things that are part of the
'foreground', ignoring genre, and generally messing up the whole
system and inverting metalanguage as is used in general linguistics.

My two lepta and a drachma. So do I get a cup of coffee?

ERRWSQE
IWANHS

PS: One would wish the author of the PDF success in his PhD studies,
hopefully getting beyond the views of his PDF.



> I have not read it yet. My next intensive study is going to
> be into
>  (1) Greek Voice and (2) the Aspect aspect of the aorist tense (time
> encoding, etc).
>
> I've got to read Porter's Book Verbal aspect in the Greek of the New
> Testament.
> Does verbal aspect mean both aspect and tense (I suspect Yes)?

No. Porter redefines 'tense' to mean 'aspect-only'.

> What is the book
> that answers Porter's position(s) (that may not be a fair comparison as I
> have yet to read his book).
>
> Where should students look to understand the Greek Verb?

As mentioned above Rijksbaron is generally reliable with up-to-date
linguistics as regards syntax and semantics and with many comments on
contextual application. Some good pragmatics and discourse can be
extracted from the work but they are not discussed systematically and
'discourse/textlinguistic' terminology is generally lacking. See above
on pragmatics.


> Louis Sorenson
>
> Brian referred to the following PDF:
>
>>An Accessible Brief Introduction to Greek Verbal Aspect>
>
> I found the PDF to be unreliable and a caricature of what linguists think
> about Greek, or aspect, or actionsart, or tense. It is not the place
> to send a student to understand the Greek verb.
>
> My two lepta.
>
> --
> Randall Buth, PhD
> www.biblicallanguagecenter.com
> Biblical Language Center
> Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
>



-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicallanguagecenter.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life


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