MAubrey wrote:Carl, your cutting wit is always a pleasure. Randall's explanation is more or less in line with what I would have said. I'm always thinking cross-linguistically because that is my focus..
Indeed, there is a difference between thinking cross-linguistically and thinking specifically about Greek. The question, however, is what word/term should we use for the morphological category whereby we distinguish λαμβάνω from λή(μ)ψομαι, ἔλαβον,εἴληφα, εἴλημμαι, and ἐλή(μ)φθην -- in English -- or in Greek?
MAubrey wrote:Nevertheless, I'm not sure I would have said "in the abstract." I think my view has just as much credibility as an emic one for two reasons:
(1) Tense and Aspect are distinguished in the morphology. Temporal reference (=tense) is determined by the status of the ἐ- prefix in conjunction with the secondary endings (which are complicated morphemes since they involve extended exponence in their semantics). Aspect appears closer to the verb root in a combination of prefixed reduplication and a suffix that directly follows the verb root. It is because tense and aspect are realized distinctly in their morphological structure, I do not subsume them under a single category. Granted, whether morphological distinctions are "abstract" or not is a question of philosophy of linguistics....
What is "exponence"? (Our new rule requires clarification of gobbledygook). More to the point, what is the term that you would prefer to use for the category of morphological forms that "grammaticalize" (i.e., change a 'content' word into a 'function word) what we call "tense" and "aspect"? Is there a term that has replaced "tense" -- whether 100 years ago or more recently?
MAubrey wrote:(2) Ancient grammarians recognized that distinction. It is certainly clear that the stoic grammarians saw a need for distinguishing tense from aspect as distinct morphosyntactic categories when they chose the terms: παρῳχειμένος παρατατικός, ἐνεστώς παρατατικός, παρῳχειμένος, συντελικός, ἐνεστώς συντελικός.
(a) When you wrote παρῳχειμένος, did you mean παρῳχημένος (this is from παροίχομαι, is it not?)?
(b) We should assume, should we not, that these masculine descriptive adjectives and participles are in agreement with an implicit noun χρόνος. But that's talking about the ancient grammarians; what Greek term would you propose to designate this morphological category for forms distinguishing time/tense and aspect? Is there something preferable to χρόνος, and if so, what?