[B-Greek] Deixis

waldo slusher waldoslusher at yahoo.com
Wed Mar 3 16:12:26 EST 2004


Penner

On this...

> "In September I will have written my dissertation"
> (and will therefore be
> available for employment).

Notice how different your sentence is to the following
one:

"In the beginning was the word and the word was with
God..."

Do you see immediately a "temporal" difference in
these two KINDS of sentences/propositions? Your
sentence has a default Deictic Point as the time of
writing because you are making a statement IN RELATION
TO THE TIME OF WRITING. (Other wise, you could have
said, "In September I had already written...)

My sentence clearly has no default Deictic Point; that
is, there is no statement being made about the
relationship of the sentence to the time of writing. I
am simply making a factual statement. If a temporal
element is to be discovered, the author will have to
develop one (known as contextually developed DC).

So, in my sentence (actually, John's), the Deictic
Point is said to be CONTEXTUALLY DEVELOPED. The DC is
"In the beginning." From this point, the Imperfect
takes us BACKWARD to a place PRIOR TO the DC. (The
Imperfect does not take us backward FROM THE TIME OF
JOHN'S WRITING, although that happens to be true.)

In your sence, the temporal reference presupposes the
time of writing. That is why you had to choose the
future tense.

What has to be done FIRST when analyzing sentences is
to determine what KIND of proposition it is. When we
read in the bible, "The grass withers (Aorist)," we
are not reading a proposition having any temporal
connection. There is no DC. Hence, the Aorist does not
stand in relation to any DC. Without a DC, you have a
non-temporal proposition. (I think some grammarians
call this Gnomic or something. The Aorist is NOT
Gnomic; the PROPOSITION is Gnomic.) (Check archives on
this passage.)

When the bible says, For God so loved (Aorist)..., we
are not given a full blown description of God's love,
only a particular instance (the love exhibited in his
giving of his son). Hence, the context develops a DC,
not by the use of a finite verb, but by the KIND of
proposition being made.

As an author develops his ideas over, for example,
many paragraphs, he will keep shifting the DC as the
story unfolds. Like the relation of participles to
finite verbs, temporal features will stand in relation
to a DC. Once that conceptual unit of thought is
complete, the author begins another unit of thought,
and will develop another DC from which point temporal
features (deixis) will stand in relation to it.

I would put more stock in this Kimmo guy as far as
this discussion, for he appears to have formal
linguistic training. I am describing my understanding
of the Greek language, fumbling with my terms.




=====
Waldo Slusher
Calgary, AB

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