verbal aspect (split from Beginner's Forum)

[MAubrey]

Rijksbaron is refreshing, and Aubrey's table is great. Micheal Palmer's grammar also gives simple, precise explanations. You don't need to think like a classicist from the last century to understand these things, and you don't have to know much about linguistics. Here's hoping we'll see a new generation of biblical Greek textbooks based on these approaches. I think we're at the point that it's a lot easier to teach this traditional ("Fanning") view to people who have grown up thinking like modern Americans.

But I don't think we've convinced some very good scholars like Rod Decker yet. Now that we've moved the thread, perhaps he will join the discussion. And if so, I hope we will make it a discussion rather than a debate, sometimes we've gotten a little too excited about this topic.

I'm not sure just how traditional Fanning is. His use of Vendler, in many ways, moves him out of the traditional realm.

I would, however, like to pose a couple questions to Dr. Decker with the hope that we can have a true discussion without debate.

The biggest area of disagreement relates to time and the verb. Fanning and those who follow him (e.g., Wallace) insist that time is still part of the meaning of tense in the indicative mood, though it is secondary to aspect. Porter (and those of us who follow his system) argue that time is *not* part of the semantic meanings of tense, not even in the indicative, but that time comes from a combination of tense and context. Both agree that outside the indicative time is *not* part of the meaning of tense. The other unresolved issue is what to do with the perfect tense. Fanning includes it in his 2-aspect system; Porter contends that it is a *third* aspect which he calls stative. (This is a *different* category than what are sometimes called stative verbs; though there is some similarity in meaning, they are expressed differently: one lexically and one grammatically.) There is also more diversity on the future tense (which has been classed as any of the 2 or 3 aspects, and some even a 4th!), but that is not, IMHO, as significant as the questions re. the perfect. Obviously much, much more could be (and has been!) said, but that, I think, is the heart of it. (You'll notice that this is a different approach/description than Rijksbaron whom Jonathan suggested above.)

Ironically, there are others who view the perfect as a third aspect--including most proto-Indo-Europeanists (see, Jasanoff 2005; Clackson 2007; Wikipedia: Proto-Indo-European Verbs) at least in its later stage following the splitting off of Hittite), but their definitions of the perfect have far more in common with Fanning's "a state which results from a prior occurrence" (Fanning 1990:119).

Anyway...that's really not my question--just an observation. I'm wondering, however, why you view the various approaches of Fanning, Porter and others are particularly distinct from those of Rijksbaron. Porter defines the stative differently than Rijksbaron, but Rijksbaron's definition of the perfect value is thoroughly (avoiding the temptation to say "perfectly")in line with that of Fanning: "The perfect stem signifies both that a state of affairs is completed and that as a result a state exists (stative-confective value)." (Rijksbaron 2007:1)

So the questions are:

1) Does your statement about the difference of Rijksbaron only apply to Porter?
2) If not, then how do you view Rijksbaron's as different from Fanning? (that is to say, help me to see the difference too!)

[Jonathan Robie]

Two questions about this table:

1. I suspect the historical present is the reason you use "non-past" instead of "present"? In light of Runge's paper, would it be wrong to simply say "present" here?
2. Rijksbaron has a cell for the future perfect, you don't. Comments?

[Barry Hofstetter]

Withe regard to Carl and Alex's most recent statement, I do hope that no one mistook my advice to our beginning student that there is no value in the study of these things at all. Quite the contrary, but I also think that the main focus for the beginner has to be acquiring facility in the language. If he has, as much as possible, internalized it, and seen thousands+ examples of the various forms in context, he or she is a much better position to understand and evaluate the meta-discussion on the language so internalized. To everything, there is a season...

Dat's my beef, man.

[Jonathan Robie]

Withe regard to Carl and Alex's most recent statement, I do hope that no one mistook my advice to our beginning student that there is no value in the study of these things at all. Quite the contrary, but I also think that the main focus for the beginner has to be acquiring facility in the language. If he has, as much as possible, internalized it, and seen thousands+ examples of the various forms in context, he or she is a much better position to understand and evaluate the meta-discussion on the language so internalized. To everything, there is a season...

Dat's my beef, man.

I agree. But I also think we need to tell a beginner what the difference is between Aorist and Imperfect, and whether the ε- augment indicates past time in the indicative. You don't have to get fancy, but don't you think we need to say about as much as Mike's table says? Even for a beginner?

[cwconrad]

... I also think we need to tell a beginner what the difference is between Aorist and Imperfect, and whether the ε- augment indicates past time in the indicative. You don't have to get fancy, but don't you think we need to say about as much as Mike's table says? Even for a beginner?

I honestly don't believe that there's a single ancient Greek textbook -- and there are some god-awful ones among them -- that doesn't make the distinction between the imperfect and aorist indicative clear or that doesn't clearly indicate that the augment is used only in the indicative past tenses -- imperfect, aorist, and pluperfect. We can call this fact about ancient Greek a matter of "aspect," but it's not as if this is something that we need to add to what a primer already tells a beginning ancient Greek student.

[RandallButh]

Alex wrote:
That's why I am grateful that others, better trained in linguistics, have now done so much work to address the imbalance of the aspect-only approach. In reading this Australian morning over comments from Carl, Steve, Mike, Ken, and Jonathan, I am surprised at the degree of consensus that is expressed. I'm not sure that the dust has quite settled yet.

Carl is correct that the old primers made the distinction between aorist and imperfect fairly clear, despite terminology that is no longer used in linguistics. As a linguist, I remember slowly cleaning up my own terminology in the 70's. Working in Africa, I assumed that NT Greek people would eventually come on board. Greek is one of the most highly marked aspectual languages in the world. But I could discuss 'aktionsart' with them because I knew what aspect was. I used to laugh because translation colleagues would ask about 'aspectual' Hebrew and assume good tense in Greek. I would tell them that Hebrew had both tense AND aspect inside its two or four formal categories and that Greek was the 'real' aspectual language, but of course including time in the Greek indicative. Form categories get mapped to functional usages, whether neat or sloppy. That's how languages work.

As for 'the dust settling', there is always room for tighter descriptions and different perspectives. Some people call the English future verb 'modal', but that doesn't change what can be used with the adverb 'tomorrow'. BUT--Greek 'aspect only' is not a debate, it was a mistake and has been answered. Most have recognized that. That some have not admitted it, does not deny its 'mistake' status. The question is how long do some refuse to admit the mistake? For beginners, I would simply say that if and when they hear about 'aspect only' in Greek, they should be told that it was a mistake and a passing fad within NT studies. It does not affect/infect classics, even though descriptions will continue to be refined post-Rijksbaron.

PS: the historical present purposely misrepresents aspect as well as time. Historical presents mark 'imperfectivity' and 'present' while describing 'closed', perfective(!) past events as if 'live'.

[Jonathan Robie]

... I also think we need to tell a beginner what the difference is between Aorist and Imperfect, and whether the ε- augment indicates past time in the indicative. You don't have to get fancy, but don't you think we need to say about as much as Mike's table says? Even for a beginner?

I honestly don't believe that there's a single ancient Greek textbook -- and there are some god-awful ones among them -- that doesn't make the distinction between the imperfect and aorist indicative clear or that doesn't clearly indicate that the augment is used only in the indicative past tenses -- imperfect, aorist, and pluperfect. We can call this fact about ancient Greek a matter of "aspect," but it's not as if this is something that we need to add to what a primer already tells a beginning ancient Greek student.

I think there are basically two issues here:

1. Some traditional grammars, like Robertson, use very confusing terminology for this stuff.
2. The terms used in most traditional grammars aren't the way some people think about language today

For instance, I think Robertson's description of the Aorist as "punctiliar" is both imprecise and confusing. If we're going to use a metalanguage, I'd like to be precise about it, and I also see some value in moving to terms that are used in modern discussion of other languages, it gets us out of our little ghetto. I'm not convinced that 19th century metalanguage is superior to 21st century metalanguage.

On the whole, I think beginners need much simpler explanations, and a lot more examples that illustrate how the language works. I think Mike Aubrey's table is about what they need, and keeping our descriptions as simple as possible, while still accounting for the basic phenomena, is helpful.

[MAubrey]

1. I suspect the historical present is the reason you use "non-past" instead of "present"? In light of Runge's paper, would it be wrong to simply say "present" here?

It has less to do with the HP and more to do with morphology: ἐ-stem-[secondary endings] doesn't mark an opposition between past and present. It marks an opposition between past and everything else (i.e. non-past). That is to say the present and the future both have no augment and primary endings, but express different temporal locations. The distinction between those two involve a separate morphological marker.

Its roughly the same in English: past is marked by -ed (or a phonological variant) for the most productive paradigms, but that morpheme only distinguishes the past from everything else. There is no morphological marking to separate present from future. That is only done by the addition of an entirely separate word: the future/modal auxiliary--the reason some people call "will" modal rather than future is because it aligns itself syntactically in the same position as other English modals: may, might, can, would, could, should. And whether it is used with the adverb "tomorrow" in my mind is entirely irrelevant (that's actually the case with all the English modal auxiliaries) and future meaning and modality to so tightly connected, I'm entirely sure how useful it is to distinguish them in English (...to commend on Randall's words about the English future as well).

2. Rijksbaron has a cell for the future perfect, you don't. Comments?

I could put it in. I'm not particularly confident that the future perfect was productive in Palestine in the 1-2nd centuries AD. It was used in the Asia Minor and Rome, at least in literary Greek, but its extremely rare in non-literary texts. So it depends on what you're reading, but its clear that there's dialectal variation going on here.

[RandallButh]

And whether it is used with the adverb "tomorrow" in my mind is entirely irrelevant (that's actually the case with all the English modal auxiliaries) and future meaning and modality to so tightly connected, I'm entirely sure how useful it is to distinguish them in English (...to commend on Randall's words about the English future as well).

I threw the future comment in because in Hebrew vayyiqtol and x-qatal are never used with maHar,
nor in greek are epoiei or epoihsen used with ayrion.

[Alex Hopkins]

Randall: "I threw the future comment in because in Hebrew vayyiqtol and x-qatal are never used with maHar, nor in greek are epoiei or epoihsen used with ayrion."

It's interesting. ἐποίει and ἐποίησεν cannot be used with αὔριον because αὔριον has a specific, inflexible meaning that is incompatible with verbs of the past tense. And so it is clear from the fact that αὔριον is not used with these tense-forms, that they must encode tense and not merely aspect.

But if we take another temporal adverb, one which has a more flexible meaning, we can reach the same conclusion from a different perspective. νῦν is used with indicative forms in the present, the perfect, the aorist, the imperfect, and the future. If the Greek verb in the indicative did encode merely aspect, then we would expect all temporal adverbs to have a precise, fixed meaning - such as we do see with αὔριον. Precision in the significance of the temporal adverbs would free the verb to be merely aspectual; for if the indicative verb is merely aspectual, then the weight of conveying temporal information must compel temporal adverbs to bear a precise meaning. But that's not the case with νῦν.

It could be argued that νῦν δὲ ἔγραψα ὑμῖν is an instance of the epistolary aorist, and that this is in effect a present tense; and with Ἐνέγκατε ἀπὸ τῶν ὀψαρίων ὧν ἐπιάσατε νῦν, that the fish have only just now been caught, in such an immediate past that we could almost say it was still the present; but when we get to Ῥαββί, νῦν ἐζήτουν σε λιθάσαι οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι we could only maintain that νῦν denotes the same "now" as it does in, say, καταβάτω νῦν ἀπὸ τοῦ σταυροῦ by engaging in a somewhat philosophical - and futile - argument about the nature of time.

Yet the language does not collapse into a chaos of ambiguity. Why not? The temporal reference of all these instances involving νῦν is clear because it is the indicative verb which encodes the temporal information necessary for clarity. In other words, the fact that some temporal adverbs are flexible in meaning is made possible because the indicative verb does grammaticalize tense. Or, again, it is clear from the fact that νῦν is used with a variety of tense-forms, that these tense-forms must encode tense and not merely aspect.

Alex Hopkins
Melbourne, Australia