[B-Greek] Deixis

waldo slusher waldoslusher at yahoo.com
Tue Mar 9 10:57:27 EST 2004


--- Kimmo Huovila <kimmo.huovila at helsinki.fi> wrote:
> I was not able to do my email for a while, but I add
> some late comments 
> nevertheless.
> 
> On Wednesday 03 March 2004 23:12, waldo slusher
> wrote:
> > > "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).
> > 
> Actually both sentences have deictic elements. The
> word 'was' refers to time 
> anterior to the deicitc point. In other words, the
> existence of the word is 
> before the time of writing (though Waldo probably
> would say also before the 
> beginning, not just writing).


No. I would say that "was" is unrelated to the time of
writing and is ONLY related to the contextually
developed DC, here "in the beginning." Hence, "was" is
anterior to "in the beginning" and makes no assertion
about the time of writing. 

But notice that I said my sentence does not have a
DEFAULT deictic point. I think I would allow for a
DEFAULT DC being the time of writing as a general
rule, since we tend to construct sentences from our
standpoint, but to limit it to that one temporal point
to me has no justification or literary benefit. I
would say that narratives have a different set of
temporal presuppositions than epistles.

When the bible tells say, "The grass withers," it is
not saying that it withers in relation to the time of
writing. The proposition has no DC, and this is not
unusual. It is atemporal, not atemporal in relation to
the time of writing!!

> 
> > 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.)
> > 
> Similarly, in John 2:1 (KAI THi hHMERAi THi TRITHi
> GAMOS EGENETO EN KANA THS 
> GALILAIAS, KAI HN hH MHTHR TOU IHSOU EKEI), Mary was
> in Cana before the 
> wedding and could not have arrived late? I am not
> convinced 
> we can make the deduction from the tense. If I
> understand Waldo correctly, if 
> Mary arrived late, it should say KAI ESTIN hH
> MHTHR...EKEI. I feel Levinsohn 
> (Discourse Features of NT Greek, pp. 200-201)  is
> closer to truth when he 
> says that the historical present (as opposed to
> imperfect or aorist) 
> highlights the events to follow. Thus whether here
> is HN or ESTIN has to do 
> with what is highlighted in the narrative, not on
> whether Mary was late. I am 
> not completely sure I understood Waldo's view
> correctly, though.

I simply do not follow what you are saying or arguing
here. Mary was in Cana, and on the third day measured
from the time of her arrival, a wedding took place.
All this tells us is that from the deictic point of
the wedding, Mary arrived three days ago.

I should add that limiting a DC to the time of
writing, if this is a linguistic "rule," needs to be
abandoned. This assumes all propositions are made in
relation to the writer. This is simply not at all
true. 



=====
Waldo Slusher
Calgary, AB

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