[B-Greek] Update on Greek aspect, semantics and pragmatics
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Mon May 16 15:44:30 EDT 2011
Thank you. The brief answers are helpful
>1. I agree that the HP is an imperfective form in a perfective setting
> (as part of the mainline of a narrative) and therefore "sticks out".
> I don't think I would go so far as to say that its semantics are
> cancelled in such usage,
It's nice to hear this from you. In the past it has sometimes been
like 'pulling teeth' to get a Porter-follower (I'm not saying that you
are) to admit this obvious point. Nor would I say that its semantics
are cancelled.
That is what I have against the Porter-view.
They correctly kept the aspectual semantics for pragmatic effect, but
refuse to let the Greeks kept the temporal semantics for pragmatic
effect. Kind of inconsistent.
>2. I call it the narrative mainline. This is a pragmatic function of the
> aorist indicative in narrative, which is not restricted to this use of
> course.
Welcome to the rest of the textlinguistic world. Porter, of course,
calls it 'background'.
>3. No, I regard +past time to be a (strong) pragmatic implication of
> the spatial metaphor of remoteness.
Here, we differ. I'm with the Greeks and see Porter as a step
backward.
4. Sort of; that's why my position is much closer to yours than is
usually acknowledged.
Yes, your pragmatics are coming back in line with the rest of the language.
However, I see no semantic advantage to 'remoteness' and it is a
pragmatic contraindication, since 'foreground' to me is 'non-remote' while
imperfective backgrounding might be called 'remoteness' if one wanted to
invent new metalanguage. Unfortunately, both the aorist and imperfect are
equally 'remote' in Porter.
ἔρρωσο
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicallanguagecenter.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life
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