[B-Greek] Semantic Features and Rhetorical Use of the Greek Perfect

yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Sun Mar 7 10:42:24 EST 2010


I apologize to the list for what may have been meaningless linguistic speak in a recent post. I am no linguist. Nor am I the son of a linguist. I mentioned semantic potentials and a rhetorical use of the Greek perfect. My thesis is that the perfect tense is used in natural language in ways that have differing semantic weight, i. e.  variable semantic content. The biggies are:

1. past + recent completed action +present results/consequences- E.g. Mat 20:6 τί ὧδε ἑστήκατε ὅλην τὴν ἡμέραν ἀργοί; Or Mat 22:4 πάλιν ἀπέστειλεν ἄλλους δούλους λέγων· εἴπατε τοῖς κεκλημένοις· ἰδοὺ τὸ ἄριστόν μου ἡτοίμακα, οἱ ταῦροί μου καὶ τὰ σιτιστὰ τεθυμένα καὶ πάντα ἕτοιμα· δεῦτε εἰς τοὺς γάμους. 
2. present action-state: Mat 6:8 οἶδεν γὰρ ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὧν χρείαν ἔχετε πρὸ τοῦ ὑμᾶς αἰτῆσαι αὐτόν.; Mat 12:47 εἶπεν δέ τις αὐτῷ· ἰδοὺ ἡ μήτηρ σου καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοί σου ἔξω ἑστήκασιν ζητοῦντές σοι λαλῆσαι

As is well known perfect tense is said to imply the completion of an action. Forgive my made-up Greek sentence: ‘συνπέπτηκεν ἡ γέφυρα’ "the bridge has collapsed" implies both something that happened rather recently and that it is still in a state of disrepair – a natural context would be in a sentence that continued ἀνάγκη οὐν ἡμῖν ἐστί περιπορεύεσθαι διὰ τὴν ὁδόν τὴν μακρότεραν  "so we will have to go the long way around’, i.e. stressing the present consequences. (This may be the way the Greek perfect was often used: to emphasize the present results/consequences of past actions.)   Cf. Mk 8:6 ὁ παῖς μου βέβληται ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ παραλυτικός, δεινῶς βασανιζόμενος.  

Now, in the NT we usually we find perfects in narrative material set in past time. Sometimes these perfects are indistinguishable from aorists, i.e. they do not realize certain semantic potentials. E.g. Mat 13:34 εὑρὼν δὲ ἕνα πολύτιμον μαργαρίτην ἀπελθὼν πέπρακεν πάντα ὅσα εἶχεν καὶ ἠγόρασεν αὐτόν.  Or, more than once, Mat 21:4 τοῦτο δὲ γέγονεν ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν διὰ τοῦ προφήτου

NT perfects are often in direct and indirect discourse. E.g.Matt 9:6 ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς στραφεὶς καὶ ἰδὼν αὐτὴν εἶπεν· θάρσει, θύγατερ· ἡ πίστις σου σέσωκέν σε. καὶ ἐσώθη ἡ γυνὴ ἀπὸ τῆς ὥρας ἐκείνης. 

The context of discourse within a narrative can do funny things to the perfect, depending on the type of discourse reported. As in this case, the statement is a performative (declaring something that by the declaration itself becomes so ipso facto, à la J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words).


Sometimes the only difference in meaning between the aorist and the perfect is that the perfect is used to contrast with the aorist for emphasis (also called markedness). Markedness can be achieved in various ways. For example: Mat. 25:6 μέσης δὲ νυκτὸς κραυγὴ γέγονεν· ἰδοὺ ὁ νυμφίος, ἐξέρχεσθε εἰς ἀπάντησιν [αὐτοῦ]. Think of it as something out of normal order or usage. It creates a demand on the reader/hearer to mentally process the difference, if even for a split second. If the the process of inferring meaning from context does result in the reader/hearer being able to add relevant extra meaning (+recent occurrence +present results), then the only relevant pay-off for the choice in using the perfect tense is to create a kind of vividness or emphasis, much like the "historic present." But of an speaker/author overuses the perfect in this way, it looses its markedness and becomes an alternate aorist or alternate present, whatever the case may be. I also wonder if the reduplicated stem is an extra phonemic element that sometimes the additional syllable may contribute to the sense of emphasis.

Of course there is also the perfect in formulaic statements like "it is written." There can be no semantic element  +recently complete action there, of course.

Yancy Smith, PhD
yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Y.W.Smith at tcu.edu
yancy at wbtc.com
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