Re: Aorist Aspect

From: Mark O'Brien (markus@upnaway.com)
Date: Wed Jan 07 1998 - 23:52:01 EST


At 08:35 AM 1/7/98 -0500, you wrote:
>At 12:02 PM 1/7/98, Mark O'Brien wrote:
>
>>we compared the use of the HP in the
>>synoptic gospels with that found in the parallel passages in the other
>>gospels and found that most of the time the HP is replacing the aorist
>>form found in the parallel passages, and usually appears to be functioning
>>in the same way as the aorist in the narrative.
>
>We now seem to be in that swamp I mentioned...just about anything that
>anybody says about tense or aspect will be disputed by somebody else.
>

I certainly have no desire to enter any swamps!

>For the sake of Dr. Ted, who asked the first question in this thread, let
>me point out that the view I expressed is what Fanning calls "the commonly
>accepted explanation":
>
>"The commonly accepted explanation of the Greek historical present (as for
>similar presents in other languages) is that the present is used to bring a
>past occurence into immediate view, portaying the event as though it occurs
>before the reader's eyes. Although the historical present appears in
>different specific patterns of usage through ancient Greek literature, it
>does appear that vivid or dramatic narration of past events is the common
>characteristic of the use". Fanning, _Verbal Aspect_, p.226.
>
>He cites 12 grammars to support his statement that this is the commonly
>accepted explanation, including Robertson, Moulton-Turner, Smyth,
>Blass-Debrunner-Funk...
>
>There are, of course, other views. Kiparsky, for instance, has argued that
>the historical present has zero tense and zero aspect, and serves primarily
>as a way of avoiding needless repetition of the past tense, much as a
>careful writer may choose to avoid repeating words repeatedly. I don't buy
>this view, largely because careful writers do, in fact, use the aorist
>tense repeatedly in narration of past events, and this is the most common
>way to describe such events.
>
>So now that I've framed this discussion a little, back to Mark (who knows
>all this):
>
>I'm not sure what you mean by "the other gospels"; I thought that the
>synoptics were Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and that John was the other gospel.
>But more to the point: are you saying that your main evidence is that the
>historical present is used in the synoptics, but other writers use the
>aorist to describe the same event? Suppose I tell you the joke that I used
>as an illustration:
>
>"So yesterday I was sitting in the bar* (footnote 1) and this woman comes
>in wearing a duck costume and walks up to the bartender..."
>
>*footnote 1: is this an attributive or referential use of "the bar"?
>
>Now you go and tell your wife the same joke:
>
>"Yesterday a man was sitting in the bar, and a woman walked in and went up
>to the bartender..."
>
>When describing the same event, one speaker chose to use the past tense,
>the other chose to use the present tense. However, that does not mean that
>there is no difference in nuance between the two narrations, or that the
>present tense is completely equivalent to the past tense in this case. The
>difference is this: when using the present tense, the speaker is portraying
>it from the time of the event; when using the past tense, the speaker is
>portraying it from a time after the event. This lends greater vividness to
>the present tense.
>

This English example doesn't quite take into account the role that the
aorist often takes in Greek narrative, which is Kiparsky's point, if my
memory serves me accurately.

>So EMOI, parallel uses in the aorist vs. the historical present would not
>be much evidence. Unless there is more that I am missing?

If the parallel passages have the same verb, carrying the narrative in the
same way, but using the aorist tense instead of the historical present, it
seemed quite plausible that its aspect was not what one would normally
expect. Added to this, we found very few examples of HPs that clearly
portrayed the kinds of "progressive/continuous/internal/etc." action one
would expect a present tense verb to display. This did not seem to be
emphasized at all. I don't have the research at hand, but I don't think we
found even a handful of clear examples. So, whatever you want to say about
the historical present, and what it doing to "colour" or make the action
more vivid, I don't think it is acting in the normal way you would expect a
present tense to behave (assuming tenses are given to behaviour, of course
<G>).

Anyway, I didn't intend to make a federal case out of this... your use of
the historical present just happened to run counter to my work in the area,
and I thought the point worth raising. We can let this dog lie in the
mangrove to die, if you wish.

Regards,

M.

-----
"When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it
means."
                -- Brother William of Baskerville
                        (Umberto Eco, "The Name of the Rose")
-----
Rev. Mark B. O'Brien
Assoc. Pastor, Subiaco Church of Christ, Western Australia
Lecturer, South Perth Christian College, Western Australia

markus@upnaway.com



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