The form κέκραγεν

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Ken M. Penner
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Re: The form ἐκέκραγον

Post by Ken M. Penner »

MAubrey wrote:Am I missing something? Exactly what makes this so abnormal to be a perfect? The semantics looks like a perfect; the form looks like a perfect; if it quacks like a duck...
The subject line was misleading. I've changed it for this post. I'm interested in the forms of κράζω in Isaiah.
The forms with ξ are clearly aorist and future. What are ἐκέκραγον and κεκραγέτωσαν?

Isa 6:3: καὶ ἐκέκραγον ἕτερος πρὸς τὸν ἕτερον καὶ ἔλεγον Ἅγιος ἅγιος ἅγιος κύριος σαβαωθ, πλήρης πᾶσα ἡ γῆ τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ.
Isa 6:4: καὶ ἐπήρθη τὸ ὑπέρθυρον ἀπὸ τῆς φωνῆς, ἧς ἐκέκραγον, καὶ ὁ οἶκος ἐπλήσθη καπνοῦ.
Isa 14:31: ὀλολύζετε, πύλαι πόλεων, κεκραγέτωσαν πόλεις τεταραγμέναι, οἱ ἀλλόφυλοι πάντες, ὅτι καπνὸς ἀπὸ βορρᾶ ἔρχεται, καὶ οὐκ ἔστι τοῦ εἶναι.
Isa 15:4: ὅτι κέκραγεν Εσεβων καὶ Ελεαλη, ἕως Ιασσα ἠκούσθη ἡ φωνὴ αὐτῆς· διὰ τοῦτο ἡ ὀσφὺς τῆς Μωαβίτιδος βοᾷ, ἡ ψυχὴ αὐτῆς γνώσεται.
Isa 19:20: καὶ ἔσται εἰς σημεῖον εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα κυρίῳ ἐν χώρᾳ Αἰγύπτου, ὅτι κεκράξονται πρὸς κύριον διὰ τοὺς θλίβοντας αὐτούς, καὶ ἀποστελεῖ αὐτοῖς κύριος ἄνθρωπον, ὃς σώσει αὐτούς, κρίνων σώσει αὐτούς.
Isa 26:17: καὶ ὡς ἡ ὠδίνουσα ἐγγίζει τοῦ τεκεῖν καὶ ἐπὶ τῇ ὠδῖνι αὐτῆς ἐκέκραξεν, οὕτως ἐγενήθημεν τῷ ἀγαπητῷ σου
Isa 31:4: ὅτι οὕτως εἶπέ μοι κύριος Ὃν τρόπον ἐὰν βοήσῃ ὁ λέων ἢ ὁ σκύμνος ἐπὶ τῇ θήρᾳ, ᾗ ἔλαβε, καὶ κεκράξῃ ἐπʼ αὐτῇ, ἕως ἂν ἐμπλησθῇ τὰ ὄρη τῆς φωνῆς αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἡττήθησαν καὶ τὸ πλῆθος τοῦ θυμοῦ ἐπτοήθησαν, οὕτως καταβήσεται κύριος σαβαωθ ἐπιστρατεῦσαι ἐπὶ τὸ ὄρος τὸ Σιων, ἐπὶ τὰ ὄρη αὐτῆς.
Isa 42:2: οὐ κεκράξεται οὐδὲ ἀνήσει, οὐδὲ ἀκουσθήσεται ἔξω ἡ φωνὴ αὐτοῦ.
Isa 65:14: ἰδοὺ οἱ δουλεύοντές μοι ἀγαλλιάσονται ἐν εὐφροσύνῃ, ὑμεῖς δὲ κεκράξεσθε διὰ τὸν πόνον τῆς καρδίας ὑμῶν καὶ ἀπὸ συντριβῆς πνεύματος ὑμῶν ὀλολύξετε.
Isa 65:24: καὶ ἔσται πρὶν ἢ κεκράξαι αὐτοὺς ἐγὼ ἑπακούσομαι αὐτῶν, ἔτι λαλούντων αὐτῶν ἐρῶ Τί ἐστι
Ken M. Penner
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Ken M. Penner
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Re: The form κέκραγεν

Post by Ken M. Penner »

Am I reading you aright, Randall: your main point is that morphologically perfect forms of what lexica call κραζω are used for semantically present functions?
Then when the semantic value of an imperfect was called for, (some) writers derived that form by putting an augment and imperfect endings on the seemingly-present reduplicated form, rather than using standard pluperfect endings? (Something similar happened for the future, at least in Isaiah.)
Ken
Ken M. Penner
Professor and Chair of Religious Studies, St. Francis Xavier University
Co-Editor, Digital Biblical Studies
General Editor, Lexham English Septuagint
Co-Editor, Online Critical Pseudepigrapha pseudepigrapha.org
RandallButh
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Re: The form ἐκέκραγον

Post by RandallButh »

Yes, you are reading me correctly, as long as you put quotation marks around "semantically present". Verbs like οἲδα and ἕστηκα fit patterns as "present", but someone may legitimately call them perfects. Similarly, though with growing inconsistency in the Hellenistic age, κέκραγε may be used in contexts where other items are "present/continuative." In past imperfective contexts the verb becomes ἐκεκράγει. Isaiah Greek goes one stem further than standard Greek by putting the imperfect endings on what would have been pluperfects in standard narrative Greek.
MAubrey
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Re: The form ἐκέκραγον

Post by MAubrey »

Ken M. Penner wrote:The forms with ξ are clearly aorist and future. What are ἐκέκραγον and κεκραγέτωσαν?
There's nothing clearly anything in any of these examples. All of these exist either at the nexus of perfective and perfect semantics or imperfective and perfect semantics and as such.
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RandallButh
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Re: The form ἐκέκραγον

Post by RandallButh »

MAubrey wrote:
Ken M. Penner wrote:The forms with ξ are clearly aorist and future. What are ἐκέκραγον and κεκραγέτωσαν?
There's nothing clearly anything in any of these examples. All of these exist either at the nexus of perfective and perfect semantics or imperfective and perfect semantics and as such.
Michael, it helps to start from recognizing the restriction against the "aorist" in standard Greek. Josephus has zero aorists. Is that accident or pattern? And if pattern, then it must inform the discussion and the recognition of neologisms in LXX and Isaiah. The pink and red examples on the last page help explain why Josephus has no aorists. I looked at LSJM and they start the entry by cryptically mentioning "κράζω, not common in present." Another piece of the picture. Those Aesop examples are quite revealing as to what was/is going on inside Greek.
MAubrey
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Re: The form κέκραγεν

Post by MAubrey »

RandallButh wrote:Michael, it helps to start from recognizing the restriction against the "aorist" in standard Greek. Josephus has zero aorists.
Indeed. I'm quite aware of that.
RandallButh wrote:Is that accident or pattern?
There are no accidents in language change. There's always a motivation.
RandallButh wrote:And if pattern, then it must inform the discussion and the recognition of neologisms in LXX and Isaiah. The pink and red examples on the last page help explain why Josephus has no aorists. I looked at LSJM and they start the entry by cryptically mentioning "κράζω, not common in present." Another piece of the picture. Those Aesop examples are quite revealing as to what was/is going on inside Greek.
That's all well and good. I'm just saying there's nothing non-perfect about the semantics or usage of any of the morphosyntactic forms mentioned thus far. They're all quite normal for their verb-type.
RandallButh wrote:I'm not saying that they are not ducks, just pluperfects being used idiomatically where an imperfect is expected
But that's just it. I don't expect an imperfect there--or at least I don't expect an imperfect there any more than I expect a past perfect...which is why I said that the morphological patterning is fairly predictable: these examples exist at the boundary of past perfect / past imperfective semantics.
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Scott Lawson
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Re: The form κέκραγεν

Post by Scott Lawson »

Some of ya'll had a related discussion a little over a year ago. Future Perfect forms in LXX?
by RDecker » March 23rd, 2012, 6:32 am


I remember wondering then, if the different forms κραζω and κεκραζω weren't due to being onomatapoetic. Could it be a parrot impersonating a duck?
Scott Lawson
RandallButh
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Re: The form ἐκέκραγον

Post by RandallButh »

michael wrote

But that's just it. I don't expect an imperfect there--or at least I don't expect an imperfect there any more than I expect a past perfect...which is why I said that the morphological patterning is fairly predictable: these examples exist at the boundary of past perfect / past imperfective semantics.
Well, from my side those are surprising expectations.

a. Like the Aesop story: the events come in a simple order. 1. the crow sees travellers 2. then crow goes to nearby tree 3. then crow crows 4. then people say 'O, don't worry, it's only a crow.
Why would the author reset the time in number three as if it was before number 2, as if to say 'previously the crow crows'? That is certainly not the commonplace expectation.

b. LXX Isaiah was translating a descriptive repetitive scene in 6:2-3, that was marked as imperfective in Hebrew. Assuming that the translators understood the Hebrew, and that's always the best first assumption, one would expect imperfectives in the Greek. The form ἐκέκραγον appears to accomodate that imperfectivity by creating a "mixed form" with the idiomatic pluperfect stem and the imperfect endings. But even the pluperfect endings would have fit imperfectivity for this particular verb.
RandallButh
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Re: The form ἐκέκραγον

Post by RandallButh »

PS: maybe another try at clarifying the incongruency would help.
or at least I don't expect an imperfect there any more than I expect a past perfect...
"What is wrong with this picture?" What is incongruent in that statement? The pairing is a mismatch, either the wrong aspects are being paired, or for a small subset of verbs (related to ἐκεκράγει), the opposition doesn't normally exist**.

On the one hand, the opposite of an imperfect is an aorist indicative. The imperfect is a past marked for imperfectivity while the aorist is a past marked for perfectivity. An author can subjectively take a particular verb and move in and out of the modes of presentation, choosing an imperfect ('e.g. was singing') or an aorist ('sang'). That is plain-vanilla narration, provides relational information to the flow of the story and can be used for additional pragmatic effects. It is commonplace in Greek, (but rare in Hebrew). So one may not expect an imperfect any more than an aorist at any one point in a narration. However, in a chronological succession of single sequential events (telic), A, B, C, D, one would not expect imperfectives. Doing so would lead an audience to frequentive interpretation (see Gen 29: 1-3 used to water: ... used to gather sheep, used to roll away, used to water, used to return the stone, ).

The incongruency in the quoted statement is the pairing of imperfect with past-perfect. That is not a normal or expected opposition. However, in Greek there is a small subset of verbs where the pluperfect is used in parallel with the imperfect, as an extension of the imperfect. When one of those subset verbs is used, the aspectual opposition may be nullified and only a temporal opposition remains, present vs. past. This is what happens with οἶδα ἤδειν I "know" I "knew", which are formally an opposition of perfect vs. pluperfect. NB: the imperfect of such a verb is not normally used and typically doesn't "exist."** In a past context the pluperfect is chosen and the imperfect/aorist opposition is nullified. Some verbs in that subset allow the imperfective opposition by having a pluperfect/aorist opposition like εἱστήκει 'he was standing (took a stand)' ἔστη 'he stood', or ἐμεμνήμην 'I was remembering (in a state of recollection)' ἐμνήσθην 'I remembered'. The verb ἐκεκράγει is one of that subset of verbs where the pluperfect is used as an extension of the imperfect. The imperfect is not normally used. That is what was illustrated in the Aesop examples. Again, that is why the natural reading of Isaiah 6:2-3, where the source text is already marked as imperfective, is as a pluperfect with imperfect endings. The (plu)perfect stem is lexically normal for this verb for an imperfective context, the innovation is to actually add the imperfect endings.

**As a PPS: notice in Josephus how the pluperfect ἐκεκράγει functions with imperfects:
Antiq 10.117 ... ἐκεκράγει καὶ ἐκήρυσσε (were proclaiming)
War 2.280 ... ἱκέτευον (were imploring) ... ἐκεκράγεσαν
War 2.295 (ἔνιοι) ... ἐκεκράγεσαν ... ἀπῄτουν (were soliciting).
War 2.599 ...(τὸ πλῆθος) ἀνεβόα (crowd was crying out)... (οἱ δε) ἐκεκράγεσαν (others were "having-cawwed"-ing) παρώξυνεν δὲ τοὺς πολλούς ὁ Ἰωάννης (was provoking).
War 5.458-459 ... ἐβλασφήμουν (were blaspheming) ... ἐβόων (were shouting) ... ἀναμίσγοντες (mixing these words with reproaches) ἐκεκράγεσαν (were "having cawwed"-ing).
War 6.308 μάλιστα δ' ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς ἐκεκράγει (especially in the feasts he used to "having cawwed") ... οὔτ' ἤμβλυνεν τὴν φωνήν ([and for 7 years and 5 months] was not dulling his voice).

NB: Josephus does not use the imperfect (e.g., ἔκραζε). The commonplace imperfect of this word is a seemingly colloquial development that occurs in the NT 13 times.
Stephen Carlson
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Re: The form κέκραγεν

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Randy, can you tell what you think is going on then in John 1:15 Ἰωάννης μαρτυρεῖ περὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ κέκραγεν λέγων? The first verb looks like a historical present, so do you think that κέκραγεν is one too? Wouldn't this go against the grain of telic or punctual verbs in the historical present (or morphological perfect)?
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