Kimmo egrafen
...whenever you have a Vendlerian achievement and you put it in the imperfective, the event becomes iterative. This is true because only an expression capable of taking linguistic time can be looked at from the inside without repeating the action. If historical presents are really aspectually perfective, there should be nothing surprising in having a Vendlerian achievement with a historical present. If they are really aspectually imperfective, they should not exist (without the event being iterative, and thus no longer an achievement). This is how we can tell whether historical presents are a pragmatically marked use of the imperfective or a real perfective. This is the distinction I tried to ask you before. Putting this together with Rijksbaron, historical presents are all Vendlerian accomplishments, if the aspect is imperfective.
Good. Accomlishment is better. And you have raised an interesting point. Do we have iterative historical presents? I would guess few, if any, but I haven't looked. (I dug out an annotated copy of Hawkins Horae Synopticae, that I annotated sometime between 1975 and 1980. Opposite Mark's historical presents I found 66 aorist indicatives in Luke and 3 imperfects [Lu 4.1, 8.42, 23.32//Mk 1.12, 5.23, 15.27]) This in itself is interesting.
So let's look for iteratives in Hawkins' lists.
Mark 1.12 εκβαλλει seems close to a non-iterative achievement. Luke changes vocab to ηγετο (more dynamic/accomplishment).
Mark 1.30 λεγουσιν. The plural allows an iterative meaning, but as a verb of saying in Mark where the singular is frequently used it is doubtful that the iterative meaning is intended, at least not for the singular examples. Cf. 1.37-38, where the disciples speak 'historical present' and Jesus answers 'historical present.'
Mk 2.15 is humorous because γινεται is used as the functional equivalent of kai egeneto. This looks like a achievement mismatch but is softened by the continuative infinitive complement. see below 4.37
Mk 3.13 αναβαινει Another movement verb, accomplishment.
But προσκαλειται 'calls, invites' is an achievement type verb that is paralleled with a simple aorist indicative accomplishment (they came). I read this imperfectively against its lexical grain, making the verb into more of an non-iterative achievement.
Mk 4.36 παραλαμβανουσιν Again, this appears to be achievement in Greek lexis, but overridden by h.p. see more extended note below 5.40
Mk 4.37 γινεται This appears to be achievement, though the following imperfect is iterative.
Mk 4.38 εγειρουσιν This is a verb that seems to be able to mix accomplishment and achievement, partially because it is an extension from a literal movement verb 'to lift up' to a metaphorical change of state 'to wake up (both as transitive and as middle)'. The achievement side appears to be in focus and both Mt and Lk tell the same story with aorists at this point.
Mk 5.7 κραξας λεγει Assuming that the two verbs are describing the same speech, this is being marked as an aoristic h.p., even though, as we claim, the present is imperfective by definition.
Mk 5.15 θεωρουσιν This one is tricky. If the composite picture is in focus then it is an achievement, just like 'recognize', 'see the man'. See 5.38.
Mk 5.22 πιπτει Here we have a classic case. With 'at his feet' I can only read this as a non-iterative, achievement, pragmatically and surprisingly marked as open, incomplete.
**How do you read this?**
Mk 5.23 παρακαλει 'calls, is calling'. Again somewhat ambiguous between achievement and accomplishment, between iterative (many times) and intensive (many thing). This is one of the three places that Luke tells the story with an imperfect parallel to Mark's present. (PS: I assume that Luke and Mark are independent, which diminishes the weight of Luke's usage somewhat. The Gospel of Luke is not a mother-tongue interpretation of Mark, but nevertheless is a mother-tongue parallel telling of the identical story.)
Mk 5.38 ερχονται ... θεωρει. The first verb can be called an accomplishment (but completed in context, despite a potential gradual interpretation in other contexts), the second verb is difficult to analyze, like 5.15. But it is semantically similar to 'find' Mk 14.37.
Mk 5.40 παραλαμβανει appears achievement to me. It is clearly an achievement in a context like Matt 1.20. As predicted for an 'achievement' lexical item, it is extremely rare in Greek as a non-indicative continuative (aka 'present' participle, imperative, subjunctive, optative, infinitive). It does not occur in the GNT as an imperfect. Josephus appears to use it as an accomplishment, Antiq 4.94, were the 'taking possession' was gradual, though 20.229 was iterative. War 4.15 is not iterative and appears marked as 'backgrounded', Life 79 appears iterative. However, its rarity as an imperfect (6 times vs 32 aorist indicative in Josephus, and 0 vs 17 in LXX and 0 vs 17 in NT [yes, identical numbers for LXX and NT] suggests an 'achievement' verb.
Mark 10.35 προσπορευονται ... λεγοντες. The participle 'saying' makes the main verb perfective in interpretation even though it could be argued to be an accomplishment verb of movement to a goal. This illustrates the 'irony' of the tense. It marks an 'open-ended' viewpoint in an explicitly closed context.
Mark 11.1-2 αποστελλει. I take 'send' as inherently achievement and prototypically iterative when imperfective, though I can imagine situations where an author might view the sending from the perspective of a goal and say that the thing sent was in a process of arriving, treating the lexis as an accomplishment.
Mark 11.4 λυουσιν, 11.7 επιβαλλουσιν ...τα ιματια The second of these is prototypically achievement. LYEIN seems that way, too, especially with an object, but it can be viewed as a process in places like Acts 27.41 (gradual process+goal=accomplishment).
Mark 14.37 ευρισκει A classic example of achievement. The only time that ευρισκειν is imperfect in the NT is with a negative, implying the lack of achievement.
In sum, remarkably, we find cases of h.p. with non-iterative, achievement events. Mark 5.22 and 14.37 are the clearest, though several others probably fit the pattern in Mark's mind.
I do not have a problem with any of this, because I have room for pragmatic overriding of semantics in my worldview. The A-O do not allow pragmatic overriding of semantics with interpretations involving time, and they appear to look the other way (purposefully ignore this) when dealing with aspect.
So I still think that there is 'bite' in this argument. Naturally, it is strengthened when joined with details like the augment with imperfect in past contexts and the lack of *ἦλθον αὔριον.
So we do expect to find Vendlerian achievements expressed with historical presents.
If this is indeed true, then your argument will hold much better, and I was wrong that historical presents are aspectually imperfective, but that it is a marked use of the imperfective. Then they are really aspectually perfective. Then the quest is to find such historical presents (that are not used iteratively). Can someone find one?
The irony is that the historical present expresses the event as open, 'unachieved', but the context shows that it was achieved anyway.
This in itself does not prove a perfective aspect, since the end point may be outside of the scope of predication of the sentence, but still assumed to have taken place before the next sentence. This would be just a pragmatically marked use of the imperfective, used in a context where a perfective would be unmarked.