This is a point worth pondering. DE may be the most common conjunction in the
book of Galatians but that alone does not make DE "unmarked". DE may appear in
a context where it's position within the semantic structure indicates an
adversative sense which is a "marked" usage of the word in Galatians.
I bring this up because I keep reading the statement that the "aorist" is the
unmarked tense. I think statements like this are misleading because they imply
that the form of the word alone determines it's marked/unmarked status. The
aorist can be used in contexts where it is "unexpected" by the experience
reader and in these contexts the aorist would be semantically marked.
-- Clayton Stirling Bartholomew Three Tree Point P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062*Silva, Moises, Explorations in Exegetical Method: Galatians as a Test Case, Baker, 1996.