[B-Greek] XWRIS TELOYS vs. META TELOYS and EXEI TELOS

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Mon Sep 22 14:40:59 EDT 2008


On Sep 22, 2008, at 12:19 AM, Randall Buth wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 7:25 PM, Elizabeth Kline
> <kline_dekooning at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>> On Sep 16, 2008, at 3:20 AM, Randall Buth wrote:
>>>
>>> Goodwin says that the aorist indicative is without limitation of
>>> "completion, continuance, repetition, etc., which belong to the  
>>> other
>>> past tenses."
>>>
>>> Is it really true that the Greek aorist has no sense of COMPLETION?
>>
>> Cooper appears to disagree:
>>
>> Attic Greek Syntax v1. 53:5.0
>> "The aorist is an abstract tense which does not properly have any  
>> reference
>> to situation in time or duration in time. It simply asserts that an  
>> action
>> is attained. The indicative usually refers to past time simply  
>> because the
>> idea of attainment draws the action into that sphere."
>
>
> Cooper is just wrong here. Attainment can take place in the future and
> modern Greek specifically differentiates open-ended futures
> QA AGORAZH   'will be buying'
> from closed futures QA AGORASH 'will buy'.
> (But the ancient INDICATIVE aorist cannot be used with AYRION.)

To do justice to Cooper, we should note that he follows these opening  
remarks on the Aorist with fifteen pages of qualifications and  
citations. He points out that in narrative the aorist is used for  
events subsequent to the time of the main clause. 1.53.6.1.H "The fact  
that the past time expressed by the aorist does not properly show  
prior time relative to the context is demonstrated by the occasional  
sentence where it shows time simultaneous or even subsequent to its  
main clause. X.Hell, 1.1.3 EMACONTO ... APEPLEUSAN ".  I took a look  
at this citation ...

X.Hell, 1.1.3
ἐγγὺς δὲ γενομένων τῶν Ἀθηναίων  
ἐμάχοντο ἀπό τε τῶν νεῶν καὶ τῆς  
γῆς μέχρι οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι ἀπέπλευσαν  
εἰς Μάδυτον πρὸς τὸ ἄλλο  
στρατόπεδον οὐδὲν πράξαντες.

EGGUS DE GENOMENWN TWN AQHNAIWN EMACONTO APO TE TWN NEWN KAI THS GHS  
MECRI hOI AQHNAIOI APEPLEUSAN EIS MADUTON PROS TO ALLO STRATOPEDON  
OUDEN PRAXANTES.

Frankly, I don't see what it proves. The aorist is being used  
historically (past time) from the point of view of the narrator. We  
have a sequence of events framed with a participle EGGUS DE GENOMENWN  
TWN AQHNAIWN, main verb EMACONTO, with the termination indicated by an  
adverbial clause MECRI hOI AQHNAIOI APEPLEUSAN. The fact that  
APEPLEUSAN is future relative to EMACONTO, doesn't to my mind prove a  
thing about time and the aorist. I don't see anything special about  
this citation.


Elizabeth Kline







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