[B-Greek] 1 John 4:2

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Fri Mar 5 14:37:00 EST 2010


On Mar 5, 2010, at 2:09 PM, Yancy W Smith wrote:
> 
> YWS wrote:
>> 
>>> If there is any semantic distinction between aorist and perfect  
>>> here, it would seem to be one of emphatic affirmation.
> 
> Elizabeth wrote:
>> 
>> This is the final comment in your paragraph, placed there as a  
>> paragraph level focus constituent? You would understand the prefect  
>> as  "emphatic affirmation"; are you saying the perfect has a  
>> rhetorical function?
>> 
> 
> YWS: Yes, the placement of my statement is of the "red herring" type.  
> My assumption is, and it would need to be argued, I know, is that  
> almost anything can have a rhetorical function. In linguistic terms  
> this is a corollary of how pragmatics "interferes" with grammar/syntax.

I don't suppose this is really an instance of what the academic linguists
mean when they speak of a "cancellable" feature of morphology: that
a perfect tense may be equivalent to an aorist unless it has the final position
in the clause, when it is equivalent to a rhetorically emphatic aorist.

ELQONTA = "that he came ... " ELHLUQOTA = "that he DID come ... "

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






More information about the B-Greek mailing list