Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

MAubrey
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by MAubrey »

cwconrad wrote: Considering the questionable dating of this Greek text (it really is questionable, isn't it? How old, in fact, is the Greek text here cited?) couldn't these perfect-tense forms (apart from the ptc. εἰδυῖα, of course), be understood as aorists?
That's a fair point, depending on the dating, it could be, though I'm inclined to view that shift as happening at least century or two later into the Byzantine period. Alternatively, I might be inclined to view this as involving the perfect to aorist shift in process, but not yet completed. That is, however we analyze this perfect here, it is precisely this kind of usage that motivated the death of the perfect and its "merger" with the aorist.
Stephen Carlson wrote: Yeah, I had no idea what it meant for a state of affairs to be aoristic. That seemed to be a category confusion.
Well, I never would have used that particular word if its nominal form hadn't already been used. Category confusion is precisely what came to my mind when you used the term "aorist" and apparently, we both misunderstood each other.
Stephen Carlson wrote:I'm getting concerned that the literature we've read on the perfect is fairly disjoint.
Agreed.
Stephen Carlson wrote:Experiential (and "universal") are fairly common terms in the literature on the perfect outside of Greek (and have been applied to Greek, too: Bentein, Haug, Gerö-von Stechow, etc.). For me, Rijksbaron's discussion of the perfect γέγραφα clearly corresponds to the experiential perfect. Yes, it's not in Wallace, Fanning, Porter, etc., but I don't find their treatments coherent.
At least in his 2004 article, Haug only talks about experiential perfects with reference to English, not Greek--with the exception of page 412 where he only treats as a possibiltiy that he then rejects. And rightly so. And most of the literature dealing with English perfects is irrelevant at best. I read several thousand pages of it a year and a half ago and tossed 95% of it. That was a waste of time.
Stephen Carlson wrote:I don't have a problem with considering both ἐξουθένηκα and γέγραφα experiential. It's a reading of the perfect that's generally available but it only becomes relevant when the resultative perfect (Haug's target state?) is not available. I haven't found situation type to be that helpful for understanding the different functions of the perfect--not as helpful as diathesis, at least.
I'd be interested in a fuller expression of what you're saying here. As it stands, I overwhelmingly disagree.
Stephen Carlson wrote:
MAubrey wrote:Why? Clearly Rijksbaron view it as existing in the Classical period. Is there a particular reason you diverge from that? As far as I can see, the system hasn't really changed from between the Classical period and the Koine...
I'm basically agreed on the continuity of the system between the Classical period and Koine, but Homer is pre-Classical. Haug's article certainly refers to it as a Homeric usage, and he even complains of conflation of the Homeric usage with later uses by some grammarians. I think that Gerö and von Stechow say the same. (I wonder if both are dependent on Chantraine or Wackernagel for this observation.)
I'm perfectly open to that being the case. But I'm yet to see evidence that demonstrates that one way or the other. There are too few state verbs that take perfects in the Koine to begin with and those that do exist are essentially useless for proving anything. The fact that Haug says that and Gerö and von Stechow say that is great. Great and useless.
Stephen Carlson wrote:We've had a decent theory of the perfect outside of Greek since the 1970s and, in my view, it transfers pretty well to Greek.
Just not decent enough that we can agree with each other either in the right categories, the meaning of those categories, or in how to interpret the secondary literature (its far less cohesive than you seem to want it to be). I do get the feeling that our starting points as so different that we're just not understanding the other. Your actual explication of how your categories relate to each other finally makes more sense of what you're saying now. But I wouldn't present the typology or the categories like that. I think it lumps where should split and splits where it should lump. Bhat's concept of perfective/imperfective idea of the perfect does not sit as neatly with the model of Bybee et al. as you want it to either. There is nothing imperfective about (what you are calling) stative perfects.

Does anyone have anything other than a "gut feeling" or intuition for why their interpretation of ἐξουθένηκα should be preferred? Otherwise, I'm not sure there's much else to say here, though I'd really enjoy picking up this discussion of the nature of the perfect in the Grammar/Syntax forum.
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by Stephen Carlson »

MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:I'm getting concerned that the literature we've read on the perfect is fairly disjoint.
Agreed.
I'm curious to learn what you think is the best and most up-to-date literature on the (Greek) perfect.
MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:Experiential (and "universal") are fairly common terms in the literature on the perfect outside of Greek (and have been applied to Greek, too: Bentein, Haug, Gerö-von Stechow, etc.). For me, Rijksbaron's discussion of the perfect γέγραφα clearly corresponds to the experiential perfect. Yes, it's not in Wallace, Fanning, Porter, etc., but I don't find their treatments coherent.
At least in his 2004 article, Haug only talks about experiential perfects with reference to English, not Greek--with the exception of page 412 where he only treats as a possibiltiy that he then rejects. And rightly so. And most of the literature dealing with English perfects is irrelevant at best. I read several thousand pages of it a year and a half ago and tossed 95% of it. That was a waste of time.
Haug's 2004 article is messed up terminologically. His "resultant state" seems to correspond to what other linguists call an experiential perfect. His definition of an "experiential perfect" as "perfects based on the complexive use of the perfective aspect" just seems to be bizarre to me. It is the concepts that are important, not a particular scholar's idiosyncratic terminology.
MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:I don't have a problem with considering both ἐξουθένηκα and γέγραφα experiential. It's a reading of the perfect that's generally available but it only becomes relevant when the resultative perfect (Haug's target state?) is not available. I haven't found situation type to be that helpful for understanding the different functions of the perfect--not as helpful as diathesis, at least.
I'd be interested in a fuller expression of what you're saying here. As it stands, I overwhelmingly disagree.
Have you read Bentein's article on the periphrastic perfect? His use of mental spaces is over-wrought, but it's generally on the right track (as I understanding). I tried to get Haug's attempt to explain the perfect based on situation type to work, but I just couldn't. Perhaps there's another treatment of the Greek perfect based on situation out there that is workable, but I haven't seen it. If you know of one, please let me know.
MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:
MAubrey wrote:Why? Clearly Rijksbaron view it as existing in the Classical period. Is there a particular reason you diverge from that? As far as I can see, the system hasn't really changed from between the Classical period and the Koine...
I'm basically agreed on the continuity of the system between the Classical period and Koine, but Homer is pre-Classical. Haug's article certainly refers to it as a Homeric usage, and he even complains of conflation of the Homeric usage with later uses by some grammarians. I think that Gerö and von Stechow say the same. (I wonder if both are dependent on Chantraine or Wackernagel for this observation.)
I'm perfectly open to that being the case. But I'm yet to see evidence that demonstrates that one way or the other. There are too few state verbs that take perfects in the Koine to begin with and those that do exist are essentially useless for proving anything. The fact that Haug says that and Gerö and von Stechow say that is great. Great and useless.
Well, the latter two cite Chantraine, and that's where the one has to go. Certainly, I've got an open mind that they could have misunderstood Chantraine (until I read him), but my money's not on that possibility for the moment, particularly in light of: (a) the changes in the perfect between Homer and Classical Greek, and (b) the lack of clear evidence I've seen that it has survived.
MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:We've had a decent theory of the perfect outside of Greek since the 1970s and, in my view, it transfers pretty well to Greek.
Just not decent enough that we can agree with each other either in the right categories, the meaning of those categories, or in how to interpret the secondary literature (its far less cohesive than you seem to want it to be). I do get the feeling that our starting points as so different that we're just not understanding the other. Your actual explication of how your categories relate to each other finally makes more sense of what you're saying now. But I wouldn't present the typology or the categories like that. I think it lumps where should split and splits where it should lump. Bhat's concept of perfective/imperfective idea of the perfect does not sit as neatly with the model of Bybee et al. as you want it to either. There is nothing imperfective about (what you are calling) stative perfects.
Well, as I don't really know what your own approach is, I can't really speak to that. Also, as I don't always agree with your characterizations of my understanding, it is kind of hard for me to address your concerns, mainly because they are not articulated explicitly, except as denials of reformulations I haven't made and not sure what you mean by them.
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by MAubrey »

Stephen Carlson wrote:Well, as I don't really know what your own approach is, I can't really speak to that. Also, as I don't always agree with your characterizations of my understanding, it is kind of hard for me to address your concerns, mainly because they are not articulated explicitly, except as denials of reformulations I haven't made and not sure what you mean by them.
Stephen, I sincerely apologize for that. I haven't intended things to go that way, but I simply do not understand your categories. Very little you have said has made sense to me either. I've been trying to grasp your statements as best I can, but every time I have tried, it has resulted in reformulations you haven't made. Your post to Alan made more sense than the rest.

As for my own approach, well, its still in process and I've only dealt with atelic predicates thus far--aside from a couple prototypical telic verbs like ἵστημι. If you're interested in perhaps giving me feedback on this particular chapter of my thesis when I've finished it in the next week, I'd definitely be interested in your opinion.
Stephen Carlson wrote:I'm curious to learn what you think is the best and most up-to-date literature on the (Greek) perfect.
Best is a difficult term. If I had the choice, I'd say none of it is "best." I prefer most of Haug, parts of Rijskbaron and parts of Sicking and Stork. If Haug went beyond merely "atelic" and telic" I'd prefer his analysis entirely--not all atelic predicates are created equal. If Sicking and Stork weren't using Rijksbaron's Functional Grammar typology of states-of-affairs and instead used the standard categories of actionality, I would prefer them over everything else. As it stands, they make some useful generalizations, but their system is more complicated than it needs to be. There are some nice things in Bubenik and Hewson (1997), but I don't care for their framework.

In the broader literature, this is what I see: Dahl 1985 (experiential are a distinct gram that overlap in their semantic space with the perfect), Bybee et al 1994 (no experiential perfect), Smith 1997 (no experiential perfect), Bhat 1999 (no experiential, and Dahl et al 2000 (experiential perfects are distinct from resultative perfects--akin to Haug's definition).
Stephen Carlson wrote:Haug's 2004 article is messed up terminologically. His "resultant state" seems to correspond to what other linguists call an experiential perfect. His definition of an "experiential perfect" as "perfects based on the complexive use of the perfective aspect" just seems to be bizarre to me. It is the concepts that are important, not a particular scholar's idiosyncratic terminology.
Well, then we're getting somewhere because what you view as bizzare makes perfect sense to me. Hmm, I don't know if that's getting somewhere or a regression...
Stephen Carlson wrote:Have you read Bentein's article on the periphrastic perfect? His use of mental spaces is over-wrought, but it's generally on the right track (as I understanding). I tried to get Haug's attempt to explain the perfect based on situation type to work, but I just couldn't. Perhaps there's another treatment of the Greek perfect based on situation out there that is workable, but I haven't seen it. If you know of one, please let me know.
I was planning on putting an ILL request for both Bentein's article and the other article by Haug that you suggested in the other thread. I don't have access to either of them off hand.
Stephen Carlson wrote:Well, the latter two cite Chantraine, and that's where the one has to go. Certainly, I've got an open mind that they could have misunderstood Chantraine (until I read him), but my money's not on that possibility for the moment, particularly in light of: (a) the changes in the perfect between Homer and Classical Greek, and (b) the lack of clear evidence I've seen that it has survived.
Just a couple comments: on (a), I'm not sure that the changes are particularly drastic. It seems to me that its little more than an analogical extension of the existing system. On (b), that's a little more convincing to me. The problem is that it could be conceived in the opposite manner: the lack of clear evidence that it has disappeared. As I've said before, there are very few state verbs that even form perfects, and yet there's strangely high number of them that could (though not unambiguously) take an intensive reading:
an incomplete list of examples wrote:(3.16) οὐ γὰρ οὗτος ὁ τόπος ἔσχηκεν (Antiquities 15.325).
(3.17) οὐχ ἑόρακας αὐτὸν οὐδὲ ἐπὶ τοῖς λεγομένοις τεθαύμακας; (LXXJob 41:1)
(3.18) τεθαυμακὼς γὰρ τοὺς ἄνδρας ὑπὲρ τὸ δέον (Letter of Aristeas 295)
(3.19) μάλιστα δὲ τῶν νομοθετῶν Λυκοῦργον τεθαυμάκασι (Against Apion 2.225).
(3.20) τεθαύμακα δὲ ἔτι μᾶλλον, ἐπειδὰν κατακούων τῶν λογίων (Philo, Heir of Divine Things 203)
(3.21) παρὸ καὶ λίαν τεθαύμακεν ὁ ἀσκητικὸς καὶ ἀνδρεῖος (Phil, Names 214).
There are more. And I've only worked through half of my list of state verbs thus far. I can update this list when I finish.
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by Stephen Carlson »

MAubrey wrote:Stephen, I sincerely apologize for that. I haven't intended things to go that way, but I simply do not understand your categories. Very little you have said has made sense to me either. I've been trying to grasp your statements as best I can, but every time I have tried, it has resulted in reformulations you haven't made. Your post to Alan made more sense than the rest.
I thought I would using fairly standard terms in the literature. For example, Comrie's book on aspect discusses the experiential perfect, and his book seems to be hugely influential and a starting point for many scholars. Though I didn't expect you to be on board with his analysis, I thought you might have been familar with his terminology.
MAubrey wrote:As for my own approach, well, its still in process and I've only dealt with atelic predicates thus far--aside from a couple prototypical telic verbs like ἵστημι. If you're interested in perhaps giving me feedback on this particular chapter of my thesis when I've finished it in the next week, I'd definitely be interested in your opinion.
Yes, I'm interested. Though I've come up with a structure for understanding the perfect that I'm fairly satisfied with now, I'm always willing to tease out how other approaches might work. If I understood your approach better, I could also try to put things in terms of that. No point in analyzing something according to a foreign system.
MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:I'm curious to learn what you think is the best and most up-to-date literature on the (Greek) perfect.
Best is a difficult term. If I had the choice, I'd say none of it is "best." I prefer most of Haug, parts of Rijskbaron and parts of Sicking and Stork. If Haug went beyond merely "atelic" and telic" I'd prefer his analysis entirely--not all atelic predicates are created equal. If Sicking and Stork weren't using Rijksbaron's Functional Grammar typology of states-of-affairs and instead used the standard categories of actionality, I would prefer them over everything else. As it stands, they make some useful generalizations, but their system is more complicated than it needs to be. There are some nice things in Bubenik and Hewson (1997), but I don't care for their framework.
OK. There are good parts of Haug, but I find his terminology confusing. Rijksbaron's treatment of telic perfect splits the analysis into active and passive, and basically gives an experiential reading for active perfects and a resultative reading for passive perfects, though without using the terminology of other scholars. Though I think diathesis plays a big role, Rijksbaron's analysis needs to be refined. It's been a while since I've consulted Sicking and Stork, but I don't recall liking them. I'll have to revisit them.
MAubrey wrote:In the broader literature, this is what I see: Dahl 1985 (experiential are a distinct gram that overlap in their semantic space with the perfect), Bybee et al 1994 (no experiential perfect), Smith 1997 (no experiential perfect), Bhat 1999 (no experiential, and Dahl et al 2000 (experiential perfects are distinct from resultative perfects--akin to Haug's definition).
OK. Dahl 1985 is more of a splitter than a lumper, but his EXPER gram type is something other than the experiential use of the perfect (in English) that he mentions on p. 132 (he mostly follows Comrie)--and it's all in his chapter on the Perfect. (In fact, most of the terminology I've been using is mentioned in Dahl. including the universal.) Bybee et al 1994 discuss the experiential as a subset of the anterior on p.62. Smith 1997 refers to an "experiential result" of a perfect on p.109 but mostly is concerned with that function in Chinese, which doesn't have a perfect. I can't find the experiential function of the perfect in Bhat, but his treatment is not detailed--he's not interested in function so much.
MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:Have you read Bentein's article on the periphrastic perfect? His use of mental spaces is over-wrought, but it's generally on the right track (as I understanding). I tried to get Haug's attempt to explain the perfect based on situation type to work, but I just couldn't. Perhaps there's another treatment of the Greek perfect based on situation out there that is workable, but I haven't seen it. If you know of one, please let me know.
I was planning on putting an ILL request for both Bentein's article and the other article by Haug that you suggested in the other thread. I don't have access to either of them off hand.
OK, They've informed my thinking. Bentein uses Comrie's terminology.
MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:Well, the latter two cite Chantraine, and that's where the one has to go. Certainly, I've got an open mind that they could have misunderstood Chantraine (until I read him), but my money's not on that possibility for the moment, particularly in light of: (a) the changes in the perfect between Homer and Classical Greek, and (b) the lack of clear evidence I've seen that it has survived.
Just a couple comments: on (a), I'm not sure that the changes are particularly drastic. It seems to me that its little more than an analogical extension of the existing system. On (b), that's a little more convincing to me. The problem is that it could be conceived in the opposite manner: the lack of clear evidence that it has disappeared.
For transitive verbs, the perfect acquired a more systematic morphological distinction between actives and passives. As a result, many second perfects (the older ones) change diathesis in Homer, an approach that's no longer productive in classical Greek. I consider that drastic, but your mileage may vary. It is the rise of active transitive perfects that seems to have encouraged the creation of the experiential perfect (= Haug's resultant state, cf. Rijksbaron treatment of γέγραφα, though Bentein thinks he can detect some in Homer). My hypothesis is that this experiential function of the perfect has started being applied to states in Hellenistic Greek but that might not be in the literature.
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I split off the discussion of the perfect πέπρακεν in Matt 13:46 for its own thread.
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by MAubrey »

Stephen Carlson wrote:I thought I would using fairly standard terms in the literature. For example, Comrie's book on aspect discusses the experiential perfect, and his book seems to be hugely influential and a starting point for many scholars. Though I didn't expect you to be on board with his analysis, I thought you might have been familar with his terminology.
Well, you are using fairly standard terms. But the manner in which you're using it looks very odd to me. You say Haug's use of the term experiential perfect is wrong. But I look at it and then I read Comrie's definition and to my mind they coincide exactly. If anything, from my point of view you seem to have extended Comrie definition of the experiential perfect well-beyond its intended purpose.

In fact, by Comrie's definition, I'm simply not convinced that there are any experiential perfects in Ancient Greek. I would argued that in terms of Bhat's typology, the experiential category is one that coincides with tense prominent languages like English and not aspect prominent languages like Greek. That is to say, Comrie my be hugely influence for many scholars, but thoroughly question its relevant for Greek on the basis of the work of Bybee et al.
Stephen Carlson wrote:OK. There are good parts of Haug, but I find his terminology confusing. Rijksbaron's treatment of telic perfect splits the analysis into active and passive, and basically gives an experiential reading for active perfects and a resultative reading for passive perfects, though without using the terminology of other scholars. Though I think diathesis plays a big role, Rijksbaron's analysis needs to be refined. It's been a while since I've consulted Sicking and Stork, but I don't recall liking them. I'll have to revisit them.
Like I said, there is no "best." I didn't care for Sicking and Stork either on my first (and second) read, but recently I realized that there's are a few things in them that is useful as compared to Haug, but they still regularly frustrate me.

As for Rijksbaron, his analysis is excellent for what it is: short. Its a practical one for a practical book. The right concepts are there, but they're not sufficiently nuanced as they could be because of the space constraints.
Stephen Carlson wrote:OK. Dahl 1985 is more of a splitter than a lumper, but his EXPER gram type is something other than the experiential use of the perfect (in English) that he mentions on p. 132 (he mostly follows Comrie)--and it's all in his chapter on the Perfect. (In fact, most of the terminology I've been using is mentioned in Dahl. including the universal.) Bybee et al 1994 discuss the experiential as a subset of the anterior on p.62. Smith 1997 refers to an "experiential result" of a perfect on p.109 but mostly is concerned with that function in Chinese, which doesn't have a perfect. I can't find the experiential function of the perfect in Bhat, but his treatment is not detailed--he's not interested in function so much.
Here again we have a situation where your use of the terminology doesn't fit mine. To my mind, once more, Dahl's definition of EXPER gram is precisely the definition of the experiential perfect in English--hence his statement that the experience gram over laps with the perfect gram in its semantics (page 142). By the way, Dahl has moved on in terms categories and terminology since his 1985 book in a manner that he layout nice and clearly in his introductory article in Dahl 2000 Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe.

But there's a bigger issue. I think you're missing an important point in Dahl and Bybee. You note that Bhat's treatment isn't interested in function so much. Are you sure Dahl and Bybee are as much as you think they are? They not talking about functions either their talking about individual grammatical forms in specific languages. Grams aren't grammatical categories. A gram is a specific grammatical morpheme. That is, an Anterior in a language is a specific grammatical form. A Resultative in a language is another semantically distinct (albeit related) grammatical form. English has an Anterior, but Ancient Greek does not have an Anterior. That's precisely the point that Haug (2004) is arguing, in my view, as do many of the old grammarians (Philipp Buttman is the clearest example of this)--contrary to Haspelmath (1992).
Stephen Carlson wrote:For transitive verbs, the perfect acquired a more systematic morphological distinction between actives and passives. As a result, many second perfects (the older ones) change diathesis in Homer, an approach that's no longer productive in classical Greek. I consider that drastic, but your mileage may vary. It is the rise of active transitive perfects that seems to have encouraged the creation of the experiential perfect (= Haug's resultant state, cf. Rijksbaron treatment of γέγραφα, though Bentein thinks he can detect some in Homer).
Indeed, but the rise of the morphological distinction between active and passive was already in process from Proto-Greek and PIE, if I understand Clackson (2007) and Jasanoff (2003) correctly and was a logical result of the division of the PIE stative verb class into separate Middle and Perfect paradigms. The changes between Homeric and Classical are both regular and predictable within the existing system. Even the extension from telic to atelic predicates is a simple analogical generalization of the basic sense of the Homeric perfect.
Stephen Carlson wrote:My hypothesis is that this experiential function of the perfect has started being applied to states in Hellenistic Greek but that might not be in the literature.
Perhaps. I think I might be open to the development, but I'd need to see less ambiguos examples than what we've looked at so far.

But aside from that...One final comment on "intensive" perfects. There's a terminological problem going on here. Rijksbaron's "intensive perfects" are not the same as the old intensive perfects of Homeric Greek as described by Gero & Stechow. I only just discovered this a few hours ago. Gildersleeve's syntax makes it quite clear:
Gildersleeve, Syntax, 100 wrote:Intensive perfect.--Not to be confounded with this use, which has many English analogies, is the survival of the old intensive perfects, chiefly in verbs of sound and verbs of emotion.
Coincidentally, this not only parallel's Rijksbaron precisely, but his verb types are precisely what I had already recognized on my own:
examples wrote:τεθαυμακὼς γὰρ τοὺς ἄνδρας ὑπὲρ τὸ δέον
For I was astonished beyond measure (Letter of Aristeas 295)

μάλιστα δὲ τῶν νομοθετῶν Λυκοῦργον τεθαυμάκασι
They espeically admire Lycurgus the lawmaker (Against Apion 2.225).

παρὸ καὶ λίαν τεθαύμακεν ὁ ἀσκητικὸς καὶ ἀνδρεῖος
Wherefore also, the practice of virtue and courageous man marveled greatly (Phil, Names 214).

τεθαύμακα δὲ ἔτι μᾶλλον, ἐπειδὰν κατακούων τῶν λογίων
And I marvel still more when listening to the sacred oracles (Philo, Heir of Divine Things 203)

οὐχ ἑόρακας αὐτὸν οὐδὲ ἐπὶ τοῖς λεγομένοις τεθαύμακας;
Have you not seen it nor marveled at what it said? (LXXJob 41:1)

ἐγὼ δʼ οὐ τεθαύμακα
But I am not surprised (Philo, Drunkenness 198).

καὶ γὰρ τεθύμωντο πρὸς τὴν ὕβριν εἰρχθέντες τῆς πόλεως
For they were also furious from the insult of being shut out of the city (Josephus, Wars of the Jews 4.284).

τίς δὲ τιμῆς ἢ ἀρχῆς καταπεφρόνηκε;
But who despises honor and authority? (Philo, On Drunkenness 57).

καὶ ἡ δύναμις αὐτοῦ παρέχουσα θᾶττον αὑτὴν εὔψυχον εἶναι δοκεῖν τότ ̓ ἀπηλέγχθη πεφοβημένη
And his army … was then found to be completely terrified (Josephus, Antiquities 4.89).
The only verb-type I would add are those state verbs that naturally involve a sense of degree, such as to be drunk or to be tired and the intensive reading of the perfects fits with these as well.
examples wrote:Καὶ τότε δʼ Ἰσραὴλ μεμεθυσμένος οὐχὶ νοήσει
And then Israel, completely drunk, will have no ability to think (Sibylline Oracles 1.360)

ἐκεκμήκει γάρ
for he was exhausted (Josephus, Antiquities 14.462).
I would suggest that this sense of the perfect is directly accessible from the nature of the perfect according to Haug. It also happens in English with telic adverbs such as "totally," "completely," or "thoroughly" as in these two sentences:
English examples wrote:Rachel completely devoured the sandwich.
Rachel is completely exhausted.
The adverb shifts from denoting telicity and the total achievement of the resulting state to having an intensive meaning when used with a state predicate. This is a more natural interpretation that follows the already established semantics of the system without the need for positing a new development. It's also one that's been established in the literature since at least 1902.
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Thank for your reply, Mike. I hope it's not devolving to a dispute over definitions when the meanings are clear. But I'm not sure yet. When I read the descriptions of the classical perfect in Rijksbaron, as well as Sicking & Stork, I see the experiential function as clear as day. That's why I'm confused to see you state:
MAubrey wrote:In fact, by Comrie's definition, I'm simply not convinced that there are any experiential perfects in Ancient Greek.


Comries's definition is as follows:
Comrie, Aspect, p. 58 wrote:The experiential perfect indicates that the given situation has held at least once during some time in the past leading up to the present.
How are you understanding this definition? If anything, Comrie's definition is too broad, not too narrow. Compare this with Sicking and Stork:
Sicking & Stork, p. 146 wrote:In Chantraine's description of the history of the Perfect two-place Actions which involve a human agent are of crucial importance -- the (semantic) difference between Active Aorist and Active Perfect forms supposedly being that the Perfect denotes, not the State of the subject, but the continuing effect of the Action upon the object. A closer look at the actual distribution of Aorist and Perfect forms suggests, however, that in this category too, the Perfect describes the present State of the subject, the Agent of a previous Action being (permanently) characterized by what he/she has done in the past.
How does what S&S describes as "the Agent of a previous Action being (permanently) characterized by what he/she has done in the past" not fall under an experiential perfect per Comrie's definition?
MAubrey wrote:A Resultative in a language is another semantically distinct (albeit related) grammatical form. English has an Anterior, but Ancient Greek does not have an Anterior. That's precisely the point that Haug (2004) is arguing, in my view, as do many of the old grammarians (Philipp Buttman is the clearest example of this)--contrary to Haspelmath (1992).
Well, Haug must have changed his tune by 2008, for 4th century BC Greek:
Haug 2008:302 wrote:But the agent of the event of destroying is not at all a participant in the resultant state at all; only the theme is. Therefore, the perfect of ἔφθαρκα cannot refer to a resultant state at all, but only to a more loosely defined state of current relevance.
***
The expansion of the category perfect to verbs and voices where it cannot express resultant state means that these new forms get Anterior-like semantics: they are simply not interpretable as Resultatives.
Note that on p. 292, Haug classifies the "experiential" as one of the "meanings of the Anterior," and on the following page, "the combination of the resultative and experiential use is considered the defining feature of the gram: persistence and recent past are less universal and will be ignored below."

I should make clear that there is one aspect where I'm a little different from Bybee et al. and Haug. My scheme splits off the experiential function and nestles it between the Resultative (acquired state) and the Anterior (current relevance) functions, so that my presentation is actually agnostic (or even ambiguous) whether the experiential function is a special kind of Resultative (as with S&S, but note they mean something different by "resultative") or a kind of Anterior (as per Bybee, Haug 2008, Bentein 2012) or its own thing. In other words, even if you think that everything can be labeled a "resultative," there are still different nuances in the different kinds of states being referred to, and they need to be distinguished. Regardless of how one wants to lump it, however, this experiential function is pretty clear and well described in the literature for active transitive perfects. Whether it expanded beyond active transitives to other active verbs is another issue, though.
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by MAubrey »

Stephen Carlson wrote:Thank for your reply, Mike. I hope it's not devolving to a dispute over definitions when the meanings are clear. But I'm not sure yet.
I think its been that for a while.
Stephen Carlson wrote:Haug's 2004 article is messed up terminologically. His "resultant state" seems to correspond to what other linguists call an experiential perfect. His definition of an "experiential perfect" as "perfects based on the complexive use of the perfective aspect" just seems to be bizarre to me. It is the concepts that are important, not a particular scholar's idiosyncratic terminology.
This is the fundamental point here where we're miscommunicating. This is the fundamental point is terminological divergence. Comrie's definition is only two broad if you read it outside of the context of his examples. And Haug's definition only makes sense if you read it in light of Comrie's examples. And within the context of those examples Sicking and Stork's definition cannot be experiential. According to Comrie the experiential perfect does not involve permanence, a feature that is central to Sicking and Stork's definition.
Comrie, 1976, 59; my emphasis wrote:Bill has gone to America is perfect of result, and implies that Bill is now in America, or is on his way there, this being the present result of his past action of the going to (setting out for) America. In Bill has been to America, however, there is no such implication; this sentence says that on at least one occasion (though possibly on more than one) Bill did in fact go to America.
This is precisely why Carlotta Smith limits here discussion of experientials to the Mandarin particle guo (note Comrie statement about it also on page 59) and precisely why Haug 2004 consistently calls the atelic perfect a perfect of result, while talking about how the English translation gives the appearance of an experiential perfect (as for the difference between Haug 2004 and 2008, I sent him an e-mail this asking about it).

Or to put it in Buttmann's terms (unfortunately his sentences are contrived). the aorist is used in cases where we would use an English experiential perfect and the perfect is used where we would use an English resultative.
1833, 350-1 wrote:It will always be found that the pure perf., such as it has particularly maintained itself in Greek, is used only when the consequence of the performed action, or even of its ceasing are still connected with the present time. He who says, I have known it, says at the same time, I do not know it any longer. He who says, οἶκον ᾠκοδόμηκα, conveys the idea of the house is being still standing; but if he says, ᾠκοδόμησα, he leaves it at least undecided, and he uses the same expression, when he positively knows that the house is no longer standing.
Rijksbaron makes the very same point in his Aristotle, Verb Meaning and Functional Grammar on pages 42-50.

All that to say:

I agree that there is a shift taking place from the Greek perfect being a resultative gram to being an anterior gram. To that extent I was pleaesd by Haug's 2008 article--thank you so much for sharing it with me. However, I am not convinced that the process was even remotely completed by the Koine or even if it was ever completed. I am more inclined to believe that the synthetic perfect died before the transformation was finished. With that said, I'm completely open to the possibility that there are the beginnings of anterior semantics starting to appear during the Koine and perhaps even in the Classical period. It is precisely these beginnings, I think that motivate the "merger" of the perfect with the aorist.

By the way, in my schema, "current relevance" isn't a feature the Anterior. It is, instead derived (surprise, surprise) from the historical relationship between the perfect and the middle. You might say that it is to the perfect what "subject affectedness" is to the Middle.
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Hi Mike, just a couple of points:

1. If your objection about the experiential function is about the impermanence of the state, you really need to make that specific point sooner. In my scheme, I prefer classifying a perfect as resultative or persisting ("universal") if the state resulting from the change designated by the verb continues through the present. But the original objection has not been framed in terms of misapplying the criterion of permanence. Had it been made, I would have reconsidered my classification.

2. The notion of permanence depends on the state under consideration (cf. Haug 2004's resultant state vs. target state). In Comrie's example Bill has been to America, the fact that "Bill did in fact go to America" is permanent ("resultant state" sensu Haug 2004), even if his presence in American is no longer true ("target state" sense Haug 2004). It will always be true that Bill once went to America. So one has to be careful about what state is permanent.

3. I don't find the notions of "object resultative" or "quasi-resultative" to be helpful. I think they inordinately complicate the notion of a proper resultative, which should be about the state resulting from the change designated by the verb. For object resultatives, I follow McKay's line that the perfect is about the state of the subject, not the object. For quasi-resultatives, I think they do not really involve the state resulting from the change designated by the verb, but something else. Rather than propose an ad-hoc quasi-resultative state for these cases that seem to vary from verb to verb, I favor an experiential state as analytically cleaner. Indeed, I feel that complicating resultatives with object resultatives and quasi-resultative is really an attempt to avoid recognizing anterior semantics for the perfect, which is the next, natural step on the grammaticalization cline.

4. Buttmann's analysis οἶκον ᾠκοδόμηκα is that of an object resultative. That is exactly the analysis of the perfect that S&S dispute in the passage I quoted from. On this point, I favor S&S over Buttmann. Rijksbaron's book on Aristotle is not to be found in Scandinavian university libraries, but his book on verb syntax rejects the object resultative on p. 37 n.4 (third ed.). BDF still talks about object resultatives (though not in those terms), but I consider it out of date on that score (same with Wallace).

5. I agree that the Greek perfect never completed the transition from the resultative to the anterior before it died out, nor was it close to doing so. In my view, non-resultative (anterior-like) interpretations of the perfect are the result of an expansion of the perfect into contexts where the resultative does not fit. But old resultative perfects stayed resultative. For mere current relevance, Koine Greek still overwhelmingly preferred the aorist. For the universal function, the present was preferred. This is another way in which the Koine perfect is much more restricted than the English perfect.

6. I am confused about the statement "why Haug 2004 consistently calls the atelic perfect a perfect of result" when the term "perfect of result" only occurs once on p. 398 and it's in connection with Dahl not with atelic or other Greek verbs.
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by MAubrey »

Stephen Carlson wrote:1. If your objection about the experiential function is about the impermanence of the state, you really need to make that specific point sooner. In my scheme, I prefer classifying a perfect as resultative or persisting ("universal") if the state resulting from the change designated by the verb continues through the present. But the original objection has not been framed in terms of misapplying the criterion of permanence. Had it been made, I would have reconsidered my classification.
I would have loved to, but up until around 11:00PM last night, I hadn't recognize that was the point of contention. All I knew what you thought Haug's definition was "bizarre" but you never gave any explanation of why. Though I'm not sure I like Sicking and Stork's term permanence either. I wish Comrie had defined the actual feature of the contrast beyond the lack of "such [an] implication."
Stephen Carlson wrote:2. The notion of permanence depends on the state under consideration (cf. Haug 2004's resultant state vs. target state). In Comrie's example Bill has been to America, the fact that "Bill did in fact go to America" is permanent ("resultant state" sensu Haug 2004), even if his presence in American is no longer true ("target state" sense Haug 2004). It will always be true that Bill once went to America. So one has to be careful about what state is permanent.
I prefer Comrie's conception, but in the context, you asked specifically about Sicking and Stork so I gave an answer with reference to their definition.
Stephen Carlson wrote:I don't find the notions of "object resultative" or "quasi-resultative" to be helpful
Neither do I. I don't use those terms.
Stephen Carlson wrote:4. Buttmann's analysis οἶκον ᾠκοδόμηκα is that of an object resultative. That is exactly the analysis of the perfect that S&S dispute in the passage I quoted from. On this point, I favor S&S over Buttmann. Rijksbaron's book on Aristotle is not to be found in Scandinavian university libraries, but his book on verb syntax rejects the object resultative on p. 37 n.4 (third ed.). BDF still talks about object resultatives (though not in those terms), but I consider it out of date on that score (same with Wallace).
Okay. That's fine. That particular debate (which didn't exist in the 1820s) is immaterial. As Haug (2004, 407f) notes, "The nuances are so fine that we shall probably never get an exact answer."

Personally, I'm of the opinion that transitive atelic predicates are ambiguous as to what argument the state refers to--often in terms of information structure. Pilate's statement, "What I have written, I have written" surely refers to the object. It does not mean Rijksbaron's "X is an author." But Papias' words, "We must add a tradition concerning Mark, who is the author of the Gospel" clearly refers to Mark as an author rather than the state of a written gospel.
Stephen Carlson wrote:5. I agree that the Greek perfect never completed the transition from the resultative to the anterior before it died out, nor was it close to doing so. In my view, non-resultative (anterior-like) interpretations of the perfect are the result of an expansion of the perfect into contexts where the resultative does not fit. But old resultative perfects stayed resultative. For mere current relevance, Koine Greek still overwhelmingly preferred the aorist. For the universal function, the present was preferred. This is another way in which the Koine perfect is much more restricted than the English perfect.
I do hope, then, that we make our way through this terminological quagmire since we are in full agreement on this point. ;)
Stephen Carlson wrote:6. I am confused about the statement "why Haug 2004 consistently calls the atelic perfect a perfect of result" when the term "perfect of result" only occurs once on p. 398 and it's in connection with Dahl not with atelic or other Greek verbs.
The answer is that I was paraphrasing without explicitly looking at the article. I meant "resultant state" in his contrast between "resultant state" and "target state." Sorry about that. I didn't mean to make this terminological problem worse!
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