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

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Mar 9 07:42:47 EST 2010


On Mar 9, 2010, at 7:20 AM, yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net wrote:
> The key term is "interpreted." The use of the perfect makes a demand upon the hearer or reader to employ an inferential process to define the nature of the present implication (not just a direct result!). The hearer or listener must use an inferential process to arrive at the optimally relevant interpretation according to the context as one perceives it. The range of interpretive possibilities is large, which makes the perfect a difficult but fun tense to use in the right place. In terms of rhetoric, it invites audience participation by setting in motion a presumed anticipation of present relevance.

This is another of those assertions to which I find myself reacting with discomfort. Clearly enough there's truth in it, but it gives the impression that the speaker/writer and listener/reader both do a lot of conscious mental processing of perfect tense forms. I doubt that's true when one is using simplex or compounded forms of OIDA and hESTHKA I doubt not at all that it's true in the case of the Johannine TETELESTAI, hO GEGRAFA GEGRAFA -- but I'm just not so sure that it's true in the case of a difference between ELHLUQOTA and ELQONTA. Much as we like (or some grammarians like) to think about NT Greek usage in synchronic terms, I can't help thinking that there's a process of linguistic change going on in this period, a process leading to the conflation of the Greek aorist and perfect tenses (a process that had been completed in Latin before Latin became a literary language). I think that some speakers and some writers (sometimes) are careful in their employment of aorist and perfect in nuanced ways while at other times they may confound them with abandon.


> I note that in the Georgian language the perfect is also an inferential tense with the added implication that the speaker ONLY has evidence of what has happened from observable effects but was NOT an eyewitness, otherwise the Georgian aorist is used. While that is not the case with the Greek perfect, I am intrigued by the similarity my twisted mind perceives.

I suppose you are talking about the people in that former SSR down by the Caucasus mountains, but while reading what you wrote here I did a double-take or two: I thought of my neighbors down below the the SC border who are often called Crackers, and then I wondered whether you might be talking of tense usage in the writing of Jane Austen.

Carl Conrad

> 
> 
> 
> On Mar 9, 2010, at 6:03 AM, Mark Lightman wrote:
> 
>> <Randall said:
>> There is a present implication to be interpreted.
>> 
>> YWS: That is the perfect way of framing the issue. Simply marvelous.>
>> 
>> Except, if I understand what Elizabeth, Carl, and even you, Yancy, are
>> saying, you would have to modify Randall's "perfect" statement to
>> 
>> "There is a present implication to be interpreted except when there isn't."
>> 
>> Let's get back to what started all this 1 John 4:2.  Don't all three (four?)
>> of you guys agree that you can NOT state that John intends to emphasize
>> the present status of Jesus being arrived, period, let alone arrived in the flesh?
>> 
>> And what about 2 John 7 where the same thing is said, but this time
>> with the progressive, not the perfect
>> 
>> οι μη ομολογουντες Ιησουν Χριστον ερχομενον εν σαρκι
>> hOI MH hOMOLOGOUNTES IHSOUN CRISTON ERCOMENON EN SARKI
>> 
>> Does John mean here NOT to stress the present implication?  What is
>> the point of having a rule about the perfect if you can never apply it?
>> 
>> I've gone a complete circle on this passage several times and I now
>> don't know what to think.  I think if you asked John what he had in
>> mind he would not put it in terms of any grammatical or linguistic
>> understanding of the perfect that we could come up with,
>> although I also think what Randall (and you) said about the perfect
>> is marvelous (although you are saying two
>> different things, are you not?)
>> 
>> I sometimes think that all Greek NT writers, if you laid before them
>> our grammatical and linguistic formulations and said, "what do
>> you think?" they would all say what Pilate said on a different occasion:
>> ο γεγραφα γεγραφα hO GEGRAFA GEGRAFA  "What I have written,
>> I have written." (John 19:22)
>> 
>> But wait, why did Pilate use the perfect here?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Mark L
>> 
>> 
>> FWSFOROS MARKOS
>> 
>> --- On Tue, 3/9/10, yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net <yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> 
>> From: yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net <yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net>
>> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Semantic Features and Rhetorical Use of the Greek Perfect
>> To: "B Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
>> Date: Tuesday, March 9, 2010, 4:04 AM
>> 
>> Randall said:
>> There is a present implication to be interpreted.
>> 
>> YWS: That is the perfect way of framing the issue. Simply marvelous.
>> 
>> 
>> Yancy Smith
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ---
>> B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
>> B-Greek mailing list
>> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
>> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
>> 
> 
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
> B-Greek mailing list
> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek






More information about the B-Greek mailing list