Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

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Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by MAubrey »

Here's another odd looking perfect. It's another state verb used in the perfect. Any thoughts?
Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 wrote:καὶ πεπίστευκα αὐτοῖς καὶ πεπλάνημαι καὶ ἐξουθένηκα τὸν ἐκλεκτόν σου Ἰωσὴφ καὶ λελάληκα περὶ αὐτοῦ πονηρά, μὴ εἰδυῖα ὅτι υἱὸς σοῦ ἐστι.
I believed and I was wrong, and I (began to?) despised Joseph, your chosen one, and I spoke evil of him, not knowing that he is your son.
Another ingressive? ἐξουθενέω elsewhere only appears in the Perfect as a participle--and only in the Koine.
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I'm not sure what you mean by "ingressive"; I usually reserve the term for aorists. To the extent that perfects imply an aorist (Haug, I think), then with states, of course there's ingression (Haug would call it realization).

This perfects look experiential to me. They refer to the fact that she experienced these states and these experiences are relevant to her current situation (i.e. they establish her guilt/reasons for repenting).
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by MAubrey »

Stephen Carlson wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by "ingressive";
By ingressive, I wonder whether this perfect focuses on the initiation of a state more than on the state itself.
Stephen Carlson wrote:I usually reserve the term for aorists.
Really?

What about when you wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:
Eeli Kaikkonen wrote:If I would translate it somehow, I would use "I have come to believe" or something like that.
I think that's a valid translation strategy for English (using the present perfect with an ingressive construction). The idea is to cover an interval from some undefined point in the past to the present.
Surely both my translation and "I have come to believe" function similarly so as to "place the emphasis" (for lack of a better phrase) on the entering into the state denoted by the perfect.
Stephen Carlson wrote:To the extent that perfects imply an aorist (Haug, I think), then with states, of course there's ingression (Haug would call it realization).
I surely hope Haug never said that. Perfects imply a previous telic state of affairs, whether its aoristic or not is irrelevant.
Stephen Carlson wrote:This perfects look experiential to me. They refer to the fact that she experienced these states and these experiences are relevant to her current situation (i.e. they establish her guilt/reasons for repenting).
Under that reading, what would you say is the reason why the author chose the perfect over another form? The problem with stative verbs is that technically this is already true of other forms...which is why most state predicates don't form perfects. In this case, there is the only indicative perfect there is for this verb in Perseus and Logos and the other handful are substantive participles (which have their own baggage).

Other options, I see as possible:
Intensive perfect: I despised Joseph completely
"Totalizing" perfect (Rijksbaron, 37): I despised Joseph (where the state of despising explicitly resulted from "a series of occurrences of the preceding the state of affairs.")

I'm inclined toward either intensive or my initial suggestion, so far, but I really have no idea.
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by Stephen Carlson »

MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by "ingressive";
By ingressive, I ask whether this perfect .
I think your sentence lost something after "perfect" in the editing.
MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:I usually reserve the term for aorists.
Really?
Yes, that's why I said "usually." ;) What I was probably thinking of in the next section is that the verb ἔγνων is a root aorist and best glossed as an ingressive "came to know," which in the perfect becomes "have come to know."
MAubrey wrote:What about when you wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:
Eeli Kaikkonen wrote:If I would translate it somehow, I would use "I have come to believe" or something like that.
I think that's a valid translation strategy for English (using the present perfect with an ingressive construction). The idea is to cover an interval from some undefined point in the past to the present.
Surely both my translation and "I have come to believe" function similarly so as to "place the emphasis" (for lack of a better phrase) on the entering into the state denoted by the perfect.
For both Greek πεπίστευκα and English "I have come to believe", I think that both forms are about the present resulting state. I understand them both as persisting (universal, etc.) perfects, so it is a state that has persisted from some time. I don't see emphasis on the entry into the state, but on the continuing results.
MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:To the extent that perfects imply an aorist (Haug, I think), then with states, of course there's ingression (Haug would call it realization).
I surely hope Haug never said that. Perfects imply a previous telic state of affairs, whether its aoristic or not is irrelevant.
I don't understand the last part of your sentence. I can't make sense of it. Here's what I was thinking of
Haug 2004:394-395 wrote:We therefore espouse the view that the perfect denotes a present state resulting from a former event that can be expressed by the VP in the aorist. The perfect, therefore, has a double reference: a present state and a past event that culminated.
As he goes on to explain. Telic situations are realized / culminated when the end is reach, but atelic situation are realized when they are begun, just like an ingressive aorist.
MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:This perfects look experiential to me. They refer to the fact that she experienced these states and these experiences are relevant to her current situation (i.e. they establish her guilt/reasons for repenting).
Under that reading, what would you say is the reason why the author chose the perfect over another form?

Other options, I see as possible:
Intensive perfect: I despised Joseph completely
"Totalizing" perfect (Rijksbaron, 37): I despised Joseph (where the state of despising explicitly resulted from "a series of occurrences of the preceding the state of affairs.")

I'm inclined toward either intensive or my initial suggestion, so far, but I really have no idea.
Rijksbaron's "totalizing" perfect is a lot like the experiential (aka, existential, whatever), except that a plural series is not actually necessary for the latter. His explanation of γέγραφα on the previous page is basically that of an experiential perfect. I think an experiential perfect fits the context is because her having despised Joseph is relevant to her repenting before God.

As for the intensive, with the kind of gloss you're giving it, my reading leads me to believe that this is a Homeric usage.
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by MAubrey »

Stephen Carlson wrote:I think your sentence lost something after "perfect" in the editing.
Yeah, I corrected that while you were responding...
Stephen Carlson wrote:I don't understand the last part of your sentence. I can't make sense of it. Here's what I was thinking of
Well, I don't know how to make it clearer. It means what it means. Could you hazard a guess as to what causes the incoherence?
Haug 2004, 395-6 wrote:We therefore espouse the view that the perfect denotes a present state resulting from a former event that can be expressed by the VP in the aorist. The perfect, therefore, has a double reference: a present state and a past event that culminated.
That's very different than what you said, as I read it. Nothing in this part of this article suggests that a perfect implies an aorist.

But let me try to rephrase what I'm suggesting:
Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 wrote:καὶ πεπίστευκα αὐτοῖς καὶ πεπλάνημαι καὶ ἐξουθένηκα τὸν ἐκλεκτόν σου Ἰωσὴφ καὶ λελάληκα περὶ αὐτοῦ πονηρά, μὴ εἰδυῖα ὅτι υἱὸς σοῦ ἐστι.
I believed and I was wrong, and I began to despised Joseph, your chosen one, and I spoke evil of him, not knowing that he is your son.
When I say "ingressive" perhaps I should be saying, using Haug's terminology, that this text represents a perfect where we have a past event culminated. That is to say, the entrance into the state (i.e. ingressive semantics) is precisely the culmination of the past event. They are one and the same.
Stephen Carlson wrote:Rijksbaron's "totalizing" perfect is a lot like the experiential (aka, existential, whatever), except that a plural series is not actually necessary for the latter. His explanation of γέγραφα on the previous page is basically that of an experiential perfect. I think an experiential perfect fits the context is because her having despised Joseph is relevant to her repenting before God.
Well, I think part of the problem here in our communication failure is that I simply do not have this set of well-defined categories in my mind as you do. The idea of his example of γέγραφα as being "experiential" makes no sense to me. If that's an example of the category, then do I understand that you view every resultative state (in Haug, 2004's terminology--the contrast be between a target state from a telic verb and a resultative state from an atelic verb) as "experiential"? And even if I should accept the category, its difficult for me to accept "experiential" as the category for both ἐξουθένηκα and γέγραφα when one is a state predicate and the other is an activity. They definitely don't function the same. There's a clear difference in distribution. State verbs that form perfects are fundamentally different than Activity verbs that form perfects.
Stephen Carlson wrote:As for the intensive, with the kind of gloss you're giving it, my reading leads me to believe that this is a Homeric usage.
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...
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by Stephen Carlson »

MAubrey wrote: Well, I don't know how to make it clearer. It means what it means. Could you hazard a guess as to what causes the incoherence?
Yeah, I had no idea what it meant for a state of affairs to be aoristic. That seemed to be a category confusion.
MAubrey wrote:
Haug 2004, 395-6 wrote:We therefore espouse the view that the perfect denotes a present state resulting from a former event that can be expressed by the VP in the aorist. The perfect, therefore, has a double reference: a present state and a past event that culminated.
That's very different than what you said, as I read it. Nothing in this part of this article suggests that a perfect implies an aorist.
Maybe "implies" means something differing for us, but "a former event that can be expressed by the VP in the aorist" was pretty much what I was referring to. But the idea that the perfect has both a perfective component and an imperfective component is not something I (or Haug) concocted on the spot. It's in the literature. For example, one cross-linguistic explanation of the perfect (Bhat, Prominence of Aspect, p.170) is that is notion is of a "completed (perfective) event with continuing (imperfective) relevance" in aspect-prominent languages
MAubrey wrote:But let me try to rephrase what I'm suggesting:
Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 wrote:καὶ πεπίστευκα αὐτοῖς καὶ πεπλάνημαι καὶ ἐξουθένηκα τὸν ἐκλεκτόν σου Ἰωσὴφ καὶ λελάληκα περὶ αὐτοῦ πονηρά, μὴ εἰδυῖα ὅτι υἱὸς σοῦ ἐστι.
I believed and I was wrong, and I began to despised Joseph, your chosen one, and I spoke evil of him, not knowing that he is your son.
When I say "ingressive" perhaps I should be saying, using Haug's terminology, that this text represents a perfect where we have a past event culminated. That is to say, the entrance into the state (i.e. ingressive semantics) is precisely the culmination of the past event. They are one and the same.
OK.... Haug thinks that both (telic) events and (atelic) states and activities can be realized for purposes of his notion of the perfect. Telics are realized at the end, at their culmination, while atelics are realized at their ingression. Of course, ingression is a perfectly fine ('xcuse the pun) perfective view of a state. This is how the aorist works with telics and atelics, respectively, hence the analogy. The perfect refers to the state that comes from this culmination in some sense; hence Haug's confusing talk about target states, etc.
MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:Rijksbaron's "totalizing" perfect is a lot like the experiential (aka, existential, whatever), except that a plural series is not actually necessary for the latter. His explanation of γέγραφα on the previous page is basically that of an experiential perfect. I think an experiential perfect fits the context is because her having despised Joseph is relevant to her repenting before God.
Well, I think part of the problem here in our communication failure is that I simply do not have this set of well-defined categories in my mind as you do. The idea of his example of γέγραφα as being "experiential" makes no sense to me. If that's an example of the category, then do I understand that you view every resultative state (in Haug, 2004's terminology--the contrast be between a target state from a telic verb and a resultative state from an atelic verb) as "experiential"? And even if I should accept the category, its difficult for me to accept "experiential" as the category for both ἐξουθένηκα and γέγραφα when one is a state predicate and the other is an activity. They definitely don't function the same. There's a clear difference in distribution. State verbs that form perfects are fundamentally different than Activity verbs that form perfects.
I'm getting concerned that the literature we've read on the perfect is fairly disjoint. 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.

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.
MAubrey wrote:
MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:As for the intensive, with the kind of gloss you're giving it, my reading leads me to believe that this is a Homeric usage.
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.)
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by cwconrad »

MAubrey wrote:Here's another odd looking perfect. It's another state verb used in the perfect. Any thoughts?
Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 wrote:καὶ πεπίστευκα αὐτοῖς καὶ πεπλάνημαι καὶ ἐξουθένηκα τὸν ἐκλεκτόν σου Ἰωσὴφ καὶ λελάληκα περὶ αὐτοῦ πονηρά, μὴ εἰδυῖα ὅτι υἱὸς σοῦ ἐστι.
I believed and I was wrong, and I (began to?) despised Joseph, your chosen one, and I spoke evil of him, not knowing that he is your son.
Another ingressive? ἐξουθενέω elsewhere only appears in the Perfect as a participle--and only in the Koine.
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?
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by Alan Patterson »

I really feel like I've not understood something about the above discussion, and would like to ask for one clarifying point.

To me, a Perfect Tense says nothing about the past event, only that there was a past event. Is either of you saying that the past event can further be define with some aspectual category. If one is to draw conclusions as to the aspectual nature of the past event, I don't think this is related to the Perfect Tense, but some other "intrusion," such as contextual development. Assuming that I am not following this discussion, is anyone arguing that the past event, embedded, better implied, in a Perfect Tense, can further be broken down to an aspectual category? Sorry for repeating myself here, but I'm trying to zero-in on the gist of my question.

The past event MAY cover a series of events, or just one event, either way, the Perfect Tense says nothing more than some past event occurred (it would be illustrated as [ x ] + current state (of the DC). HOW it occurred is not stated.

Perfect Tense* "diagrammed" as"
(past event) + current state
( x ) + current state

but can not be diagrammed as:
(( x ) [i.e., ingressive x]) + current state


* Surely I should have put this question in a different Topic, and not with Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα. But I wanted to related it to this discussion... sorry.
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Thanks for your question, Alan. My understanding of the perfect in an aspect-prominent language such as Greek is that refers to a complete situation with continuing relevance. (Your "past event + current state" is a decent tense-prominent definition, which works for English.)

So there are two facets of the perfect, a perfective, complete situation and an imperfective, continuing relevance--but perfects differ on how strong each part is. Thus, they can be put on a spectrum, from more imperfective to more perfective, which happens to fit the grammaticalization cline that Bybee et al. have noticed for the perfect. In summary, many linguists classify perfects along a spectrum, from more imperfective to more perfective, as follows (though with many differences in terminology):

1. Stative perfects, which simply express a state at the DC, e.g. οἶδα, "I know"; ἕστηκεν, "I am standing"; cf. American English, "I've got." (There may have been a reference to an event in the ancestral language, but it's gone for Greek.)
2. Persisting (universal) perfects, where the subject entered into a state and remained so until the DC.
3. Resultative perfects, where the situation changed the state of the subject, who/which remained in that state to the DC.
4. Experiential (existential) perfects, where the relevant state is the fact that subject had performed the event or entered into the state. The subject's state need not persist, but its relevance does.
5. Anterior perfects, where the fact that the event happened is currently relevant (e.g., hot news,"the Pope has resigned").
6. Perfectives: At the end of the spectrum, it's basically equivalent to an aorist where no relevance to the current discourse context can be detected.

These categories are configured somewhat differently in the grammatical tradition, but there are substantial overlaps. Robertson has the following present perfects, for example: (a) intensive perfect, which corresponds to 1, 2, and some 4; (b) extensive perfect, which corresponds to 3, 4, and maybe 5; (c) broken continuity, which corresponds to 4; (d) dramatic historical present perfect, which corresponds to 4 and 5; and (e) "aoristic" present perfect, which corresponds to 5 and 6. Other gramamarians add more categories such as a "perfect of allegory," which to me is simply adding categories without a theory to back it up. 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.
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Re: Joseph and Aseneth 13.10 ἐξουθένηκα

Post by Alan Patterson »

Stephen,

I will reread your excellent post, but I want to first thank you for such a detailed answer. To give me a head start, are there any unambiguous examples of 6, which partially reads:
it's basically equivalent to an aorist where no relevance to the current discourse context can be detected.
Thanks again Stephen.
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