[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