Re: Does the stem grammaticalize aspect?

From: Jonathan Robie (jonathan@texcel.no)
Date: Mon Jan 19 1998 - 10:07:20 EST


Maybe I should start by telling you want I want to accomplish: in "Little
Greek 101", I will need to discuss verb morphology. I would like to be able
to present the morphemes as meaningful units.

Ward Powers has done a rather good job of presenting morphemes as
meaningful units in his book, "Learn to Read the Greek New Testament". I
see this as a real strength of his book - I think that this approach makes
it much easier to learn the morphology. There are two things that keep me
from adopting his approach lock, stock, and barrel:

1. I suspect that the verb stem does grammaticalize aspect; this is not
part of Ward's system.
2. The "aspect slot" in Ward's system is the connecting vowel before the
ending. This is fine for aorist and imperfect, but not really helpful for
future and present.

I do think that the basic "morph slots" approach is a good one. My goal is
to write a beginning grammar, not to conduct extensive original research in
Greek, but I also want to make sure that the things I say are helpful and
accurate.

In the active indicative, I see these sets of markers:

1. The augment (present or absent)
2. Reduplication (present or absent)
3. The stem
4. Future time marker (sigma)
5. Endings (primary or secondary)

At 07:17 AM 1/19/98 -0600, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>Is that what the traditional approach really does point to? I would have
>thought it is traditional to understand the present, aorist, and perfect
>stems to grammaticalize aspect, but I'd be leery of going beyond that.

If that is a safe, reasonably traditional statement, then I'm already
half-way home. After reading your message, I looked up "morphology" in
Fanning, and found this statement, which I had previously read and forgotten:

"The distinction of aspect from tense was supported in the early period by
two lines of argument advanced by Curtius and others. The first support
cited was *morphology* of the Greek verb-system. The discovery that the
augment was associated with past-time value and that among the three
normally augmented forms (aorist, imperfect, pluperfect) there remained a
further distinction of aspect associated with the verbal stems was regarded
as firm evidence of this distinction." -- Fanning, "Verbal Aspect in NT
Greek", p. 16

Is this a fairly established view? If so, I can use it directly without
fear...

A footnote states:

"...the verbal suffixes (in addition to the augment) reflect a distinction
of past and non-past, which intersects in a complicated way with
indications of mood, voice, person, and number. Also, the augment was
optional in some eras of ancient Greek usage, though past-time value was
apparently retained."

The phrase "intersects in a complicated way" worries me a little...all I
want is a simple, reductionist theory that can be phrased in 25 words or
less, is completely true, accounts for all the data, and which nobody would
dispute.

To be perfectly frank, my own grasp of verb morphology is rather inadequate
- one of the reasons I am writing "Little Greek 101" is to improve my own
grasp of Greek, and one of the advantages of writing an online grammar is
that you can get people to review it and point out the mistakes before you
throw it at beginners.

>>In Greek, the future active uses the present stem, but the present passive
>>uses the aorist stem.
>
>Was this a slip? It seems to me that both these clauses are mis-statements
>as they stand--or oversimplifications.

As you point out, I was really oversimplifying. I have a reductionist
streak, if you haven't noticed...thanks for pointing out the weaknesses of
this oversimplification.
 
Jonathan
___________________________________________________________________________

Jonathan Robie jwrobie@mindspring.com

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