Present with Perfect Force?

Jonathan Robie
Posts: 4158
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:34 pm
Location: Durham, NC
Contact:

Re: Present with Present Force?

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Eeli Kaikkonen wrote: August 11th, 2021, 6:27 pm "Perfect force" shouldn't be confused with "Present of Past Action Still in Progress", they are two different things. The topic subject line talks about the former, while most descriptions quoted from grammars are about the latter. The Bible references in the first post are very clearly PPAs (Present of Past Action).
Based on what I have seen so far, I agree - "Perfect Force" is the wrong description. I suspect "Present of Past Action" isn't that great either. "Present tense for events or states that began in the past" would be more accurate.

I modified the title in this post to "Present with Present Force".
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
MAubrey
Posts: 1090
Joined: May 6th, 2011, 8:52 pm
Contact:

Re: Present with Perfect Force?

Post by MAubrey »

Another voice against these kinds of labels.

There are verbs whose inherent lexical semantics are "perfect-like". This isn't a category of tense/aspect, just an the idiosyncratic realization of meaning in individual lexical items.
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
SIL International
Koine-Greek.com
Eeli Kaikkonen
Posts: 611
Joined: June 2nd, 2011, 7:49 am
Location: Finland
Contact:

Re: Present with Perfect Force?

Post by Eeli Kaikkonen »

Stephen Carlson wrote: August 12th, 2021, 2:59 am This is such a strange category to use in a Greek grammar (though textbooks may want to point it out).
This is an interesting and important point. I have handled it (PPA or whatever it is called) as a category. I have never thought if it should be handled as a category of the present tense. I agree it's a natural use of the present, nothing special. But still I think what has been noticed by grammarians is something real. Be it a grammatical-syntactic-semantic entity or complex or whatever. Maybe that's why I came to the conclusion that it doesn't make sense to talk about this phenomenon if there isn't an explicit time indicator. The present tense with such an indicator is something which is used for some purpose, the present tense alone isn't used for that purpose. The present tense in itself doesn't convey a time which continues from the past in that strict sense, i.e. it doesn't draw any attention to the time span or doesn't tell anything about it. Therefore this entity "stretches" the time of the present verb explicitly.

This can also create some discourse effects because the duration is added to the present. It's like underlining the event.

I took Wallace's description as problematic. Another problem (or a feature of his work which may raise some problems) is that his descriptions are meant for English speaking exegetes who need to translate a passage before doing the rest of the exegesis. In this case it leads to this:
The key to this usage is normally to translate the present tense as an English present perfect. Some examples might not fit such a gloss, however.
Why some examples don't fit? I have an explanation, and ironically this problem with English gloss can reveal something real in the Greek (or maybe some other language) use of the phenomenon. This is something I have considered in my essay. Thanks to these threads it becomes more and more tempting to publish it in some form, but I should find time to revisit it first. Our discussions here have given much new to think about.
Eeli Kaikkonen
Posts: 611
Joined: June 2nd, 2011, 7:49 am
Location: Finland
Contact:

Re: Present with Perfect Force?

Post by Eeli Kaikkonen »

MAubrey wrote: August 12th, 2021, 3:49 pm Another voice against these kinds of labels.

There are verbs whose inherent lexical semantics are "perfect-like". This isn't a category of tense/aspect, just an the idiosyncratic realization of meaning in individual lexical items.
You are apparently talking about "Present for Perfect" here, not "Present of Past Action Still in Progress", because the latter isn't about individual lexical items at all.
MAubrey
Posts: 1090
Joined: May 6th, 2011, 8:52 pm
Contact:

Re: Present with Perfect Force?

Post by MAubrey »

Eeli Kaikkonen wrote: August 12th, 2021, 4:44 pm
MAubrey wrote: August 12th, 2021, 3:49 pm Another voice against these kinds of labels.

There are verbs whose inherent lexical semantics are "perfect-like". This isn't a category of tense/aspect, just an the idiosyncratic realization of meaning in individual lexical items.
You are apparently talking about "Present for Perfect" here, not "Present of Past Action Still in Progress", because the latter isn't about individual lexical items at all.
Oof. I confess that I just couldn't bother myself to read through the whole thing! I didn't realize another category got picked up! :o

Yes. Of course.

Though I'm also against that label, too. By definition any event that is still in progress at speech necessarily began in the past. This category just groups the places where a quirk of English tense/aspect splits the temporal pie differently than Greek. It isn't a Greek category inherently.

My sense is, also, these are contexts where a Greek perfect probably wouldn't be grammatical because Greek doesn't have an progressive perfect the way English does.
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
SIL International
Koine-Greek.com
Stephen Carlson
Posts: 3351
Joined: May 11th, 2011, 10:51 am
Location: Melbourne
Contact:

Re: Present with Perfect Force?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

MAubrey wrote: August 12th, 2021, 5:14 pm Oof. I confess that I just couldn't bother myself to read through the whole thing! I didn't realize another category got picked up! :o
Yeah, verbs like ἥκω and ἀπέχω whose presents normally get translated into English perfects are a-whole-nother ball of wax (but sometimes confounded in the grammars).
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Post Reply

Return to “Syntax and Grammar”