Re: Does the stem grammaticalize aspect?

From: Micheal Palmer (mwpalmer@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Jan 29 1998 - 20:41:25 EST


At 10:07 AM -0500 1/19/98, Jonathan Robie wrote:

>. . . . After reading your message, I looked up "morphology" in
>Fanning, and found this statement, which I had previously read and forgotten:
>
>"The distinction of aspect from tense was supported in the early period by
>two lines of argument advanced by Curtius and others. The first support
>cited was *morphology* of the Greek verb-system. The discovery that the
>augment was associated with past-time value and that among the three
>normally augmented forms (aorist, imperfect, pluperfect) there remained a
>further distinction of aspect associated with the verbal stems was regarded
>as firm evidence of this distinction." -- Fanning, "Verbal Aspect in NT
>Greek", p. 16
>
>Is this a fairly established view? If so, I can use it directly without
>fear...

Well, that depends on what all is covered by your "this". Fanning's
statement that early theorists saw the Greek verbal system as demonstrating
the necessity for the category 'aspect' (since the augment was seen as
marking past time, yet there were other differences between imperfect,
aorist, and pluperfect which all use the augment) is fairly
uncontroversial. The claim that the augment does in fact necesarily mark
past time has been more debated.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Micheal W. Palmer mwpalmer@earthlink.net
Religion & Philosophy
Meredith College

Visit the Greek Language and Linguistics Gateway at
http://home.earthlink.net/~mwpalmer/
You can also access my online bibliography of Greek Linguistics at
http://home.earthlink.net/~mwpalmer/bibliography.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:39:00 EDT