[B-Greek] Moulton, Howard & Turner (MHT) and Aspect Theory and Terminology
Bryant J. Williams III
bjwvmw at com-pair.net
Tue Sep 16 02:23:21 EDT 2008
Dear List,
Recently, Logos Bible Software published this massive tome (ca. 1500 pages) in
digital format. There were several reviews of this publishing feat. See the
following URL which then links to other URL's.
http://evepheso.wordpress.com/
Ancient Hebrew Poetry by John Hobbins (Part One Here and Part Two Here)
Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth by Nick Norelli (Posted HERE)
Εν Εφέσῳ: Thoughts and Meditations by Mike Aubrey (Posted HERE)
[Bryant]
My question for you all (yes, I am a Southerner from Memphis, TN), "After
reading the comment from Mike Aubrey, Do you agree with what he says about the
issue of terminology with regards to what MHT, Porter and Silva, et al?
I post the excerpt from the review that discusses the issue of terminology
below. Please keep in mind that there are many "little Greeks on this list that
would love to hear from the 'bigger Greeks." So when you reply please consider
that.
En Xristwi,
Rev. Bryant J. Williams III
Mike Aubrey says:
"There are some scholars who would consider much of what Moulton wrote to be
outdated now that what has become known as “Verbal Aspect Theory” has gained so
much strength in recent years. But is this the case? I think not.
As I type this review, I have MHT1 pulled up in Logos. To my right is a copy of
Stanley E. Porter’s Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament with
Reference to Tense and Mood. Throughout much of Porter’s work, we find a rather
critical view of “Aktionsart Theory,” which has been considered the traditional
model. But the true problem is less one of “theories” and more one of
terminology.
Aspectual studies originated with the examination of the Slavonic languages,
such as Russian and then applied to the study of Indo-European. And much of this
work was done in German. The result was that the German term Aktionsart tended
to be used as a synonym of Aspect much of the time. Since then, as linguistic
studies advanced eventually a distinction was made. Aktionsart is presently in
linguistic circles used as a subset of Aspect. Thus, in David Crystal’s very
handy Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics aktionsart is defined as “lexical
aspect” rather than grammatical/morphological aspect. The definition that we
often hear in NT studies, that aspect is the subjective perspective of action
while aktionsart is the objective description of an action is one I have never
heard outside of Biblical studies and neither had my advisor in my linguistic
field methods class who had written his dissertation on Aspect.
These facts are crucial to our understanding of the grammars written in the last
century, particularly those that had such a great impact such as Moulton &
Robertson. The fact is that neither Moulton or Robertson necessarily intend to
describe objective action by the term Aktionsart because it was the only term
available to them. Whether this is true of Turner’s discussion in MHT3 is less
than clear to me.
With this is mind, Moulton’s discussion in chapter six of MHT1 begins to appear
quite modern and even more so when we realize that 1) Aktionsart means Aspect,
2) Punctiliar means Perfective, 3) Durative means Imperfective and so on. This
is especially clear when we note that Moulton regularly uses the present
aspectual terminology in reference to those verbs which are derived from the
affixation of a preposition.[2]
The choice of the preposition which is to produce this perfective action
depends upon conditions which vary with the meaning of the verbal root. Most of
them are capable of “perfectivising” an imperfective verb, when the original
adverb’s local sense has been sufficiently obscured (MHT1, 111).
So then when we combine Moulton’s understanding of lexical aspect with his
understanding of morphological aspect, the result, rather than being archaic and
outdated, actually begins to look like a blend of Porter’s work on Verbal Aspect
as a morphological category and Moisés Silva’s work on Aspect as a lexical
category (see for example chapter 1 of Interpreting Galatians: Explorations in
Exegetical Methods).
All of this to say that the greatest gaps between modern grammatical and
linguistic study has more to do with terminology than content. MHT continues to
be a valuable and helpful work. Dare I say, it is even a necessary work for any
advanced student."
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