Verbs of saying in the Imperative

[David Lim]

[...]

This is still a confusion of meaning and reference. John and Mark don't need to agree. The event itself is neither imperfective or perfective. It's an external reality. John and Mark simply need to decide how they're going to conceptualize it. Grammarians have been saying this for at least 100 years:

Perhaps a word more should be said as to the point of view of the speaker or writer. The same action can be viewed as punctiliar or linear. The same writer may look at it now one way, now the other. Different writers often vary in the presentation of the same action.

The fact that both writers use a different aspectual form says nothing about the overlap between the two forms. Rather, it says something about how each of the writers conceptualizes the predication. Beyond that, such an analysis still doesn't account for the morphological difference of the two forms. That is the biggest problem with your view and I really don't see how you can get around it. And I would say that continues to be the problem with all the other texts we're looking at. What you would need to do is provide an adequate account or explanation of why two distinct morphological forms would coalesce semantically while maintaining their morphological difference through the history of the language.

Since you say that the event itself is neither imperfective nor perfective, but only the writers' views of it can be classified as such, then I have one remaining question: Would a reader who reads both accounts in John and Mark think to himself that there is a difference in the way they viewed the same event described in the quote? When I said "semantics" I was actually referring to what the audience obtains from the communication. In the case of "nations" and "peoples", I was not saying that they have the same meaning but rather that the order is insignificant. The use of both in conjunction creates the same final mental representation of the reference; I never meant that one or the other could be omitted and still leave the representation unchanged.

With that said, I should probably make a couple comments on 1 Peter 2:17...

[...]

If "τον θεον φοβεισθε" and "τον βασιλεα τιματε" (and what if the original text says "την αδελφοτητα αγαπησατε" and not "την αδελφοτητα αγαπατε"?) both involve habitual action, why is "honour all [men]" not also in the present? Are you saying that Peter (not Paul) does not quite consider "honouring all men" as regular or on a constant basis, so he chose not to mark it, resulting in an aorist imperative?

The difference between τὴν ἀδελφότητα ἀγαπᾶτε & τὸν θεὸν φοβεῖσθε compared to πάντας τιμήσατε is, as I said before, an instance of general vs. specific. The generalized command "honor everyone" is in the aorist and the more specific commands are imperfective. "Everyone" is more general than "the king" or "the community of believers" or "God." The general nature of πάντας correlates well with the perfective aspect. Since it makes no reference to internal temporal structure, it is more naturally suited to non-specific commands than the imperfective aspect.

At first you said that the imperfectives are used because the actions are supposed to be regular or on a constant basis, but "honouring all [men]" is presumably also meant to be a habitual injunction, which is why I disagreed with your argument. Now you say that it is simply because the rest are more specific, but then that does not explain the tense because "honouring God" still makes no reference to any temporal structure that is different from "honouring everyone". The reader was exhorted to do both equally habitually, so it has nothing to do with perfective or imperfective aspect.

As for the variant, the aorist variant αγαπησατε is too easily explained as an instance of dittography to be worth considering, not to mention its late appearance in the manuscript tradition.

Why would it be introduced and retained in the manuscript tradition if it was not suitable unlike the present? Is it not possible that both were almost equally suitable?

But it is untenable to say that "πρωτον λεγετε ειρηνη τω οικω τουτω" in Luke 10:5 is imperfective!

But it is imperfective.

David, what's your first language?

Why is it imperfective? It is in a very specific situation, εις ην δ αν οικιαν εισερχησθε, in which the action is performed only once. It is exactly like the situation in Luke 10:10 with the imperative "ειπατε", εις ην δ αν πολιν εισερχησθε και μη δεχωνται υμας. I cannot see any difference in aspect between the two injunctions. Anyway my first language is English. Thanks for taking time to answer my queries!

[Scott Lawson]

Well I am finding Mr. Kendall's link to Baugh's work on aspect in the oblique moods very helpful! He evidently draws heavily from Fanning's work. The work is designed for students and is bringing me up to speed on aspect and it's terminology.

David have you gotten a chance to look at it? What do you think of it if so?

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

Well I am finding Mr. Kendall's link to Baugh's work on aspect in the oblique moods very helpful!

I very much agree with that. As far as I can see, Baugh has understood something very, very important. He has both common sense and linguistic sensibility. (As always, I would like to hear opinions of those who have actually studied linguistics.)

[David Lim]

Well I am finding Mr. Kendall's link to Baugh's work on aspect in the oblique moods very helpful! He evidently draws heavily from Fanning's work. The work is designed for students and is bringing me up to speed on aspect and it's terminology.

David have you gotten a chance to look at it? What do you think of it if so?

Yes I did look through it, especially the first parts and the part on the imperative. He does caution against over-generalisations, saying that it would be inaccurate in not an insignificant number of cases. Also he seems to have a different view as compared with Mike's, because he mentions a lot of different factors which interact in complex ways that cannot be easily identified, in the following rough order of importance:
(1) Certain verbs have only one form and nothing can be said about the meaning of its tense
(2) Verbs of motion occur almost always in the present
(3) Atelic verbs tend to occur in the present while telic verbs tend to occur in the aorist
(4) General injunctions (behavioural, iterative) tend to call for the present while specific injunctions (situational) call for the aorist
(5) Prayers tend to use the aorist
Also, he says that it is only when the expected form does not occur that we may be able to say that there might be some nuance intended, otherwise we cannot conclude anything. I hope I have summarised his views accurately enough. I would disagree with some examples of nuances that he "identified", and I would want to see how someone might explain Luke 10:5,10 because none of his five criteria apply as far as I can see.

[Scott Lawson]

I would disagree with some examples of nuances that he "identified", and I would want to see how someone might explain Luke 10:5,10 because none of his five criteria apply as far as I can see.

Baugh goes along fine with the infinitive and the subjunctive but then he comes to the imperative and everything blows apart. His method seems weak for determining aspect in imperatives, but that is probably due to the nature of the imperative not necessarily his schema.

Applying his method to Luke 10:5,10 we come to realize that with λέγετε and εἴπατε there is no clear aspectual significance in this instance. I believe this supports David's assertion. The lexeme λέγω seems to be both atelic and telic but may tend more toward telic while λαλέω could also be both but tending toward atelic. David's comments from Funk come to mind that imperatives have to be judged individually according to their context or words to that effect.

Baugh says;
“These samples illustrate that tense form analysis in the non-indicative moods is a fine art which requires particular care and sensitivity to the underlying tendencies governing form selection. It is also part of a process of interpretation of forms in their contexts, not a rigid or mechanical application of statistically proven norms to every possible occurrence. Ancient Greek is not mathematical symbols, but a language once very much alive and refined!”

With Baugh's method I feel like I'm being instructed to drive a car for the first time and a stick shift at that! Buckle up, right foot on the brake now with the left push in the clutch...you can put the car in neutral before you start it but you don't have to. Okay good...now ease up on the clutch pedal slowly and give it some gas...nooooo! Slowly! Ah you popped the clutch! So I'm not sure if I've applied his method properly to Luke 10:5,10 especially since he describes his method as a "fine art."

Baugh's description of aspect puzzles me. He seems to use terms for aspect that both Robertson and Smyth are using for Aktionsart but he goes on to take Nigel Turner to task for confusing the terms of Aktionsart and aspect. Who's the culprit here or what am I missing?

"Author’s Descriptive Choice
If you have considered the factors sketched out above (i.e., the atelic/telic
character of the event; the situation; prayers), and you are satisfied that a form you are examining is not the default form, then you can confidently interpret the form as conveying some aspectual nuance. The progressive, iterative, conative, inceptive, resultative, etc. ideas are sometimes conveyed in imperatival forms as in the other moods. It takes a certain sensitivity to and experience with Greek to perceive these nuances in many cases, especially when you are aware of the important but subtle role of the factors which control the selection of default imperatival tense forms. But the nuances are there in some cases!"

"9For example, Nigel Turner: “For Greeks of all periods, a present imperative was an order to do something constantly or to continue. . . . The Aktionsart of the present must be clearly distinguished from that of the aorist, which is not durative or iterative and expresses no more than one specific instance of the action of the verb, involving usually a single moment of time. One will readily appreciate that an aorist command does not envisage a general precept but is
concerned with conduct in specific instances. . . . The same principle holds in negative commands. If the tense is the present, prohibition will be against continuing an action which has already begun. If it is aorist, prohibition is against beginning it” Turner, Grammatical Insights Into the New Testament (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1965): 29-30. Notice how Turner uses the term Aktionsart as roughly synonymous with “aspect”; this is not its proper meaning, and such
incautious use of terms has contributed to significant confusion in the whole discussion of Greek verbal aspect."

[Scott Lawson]

Mike,
It seems to me that your views are much along the lines expressed by Baugh or am I wrong? I'm beginning to think that when I feel I understand what a linguist is saying that I've probably misunderstood him. A linguist's clarification/analysis is presented cryptically just like the nature of language.

Now these are just my musings. I have no doubt things are more complicated than that and I've never studied, but its always better assume that morphological contrast means something. Otherwise the language users would have gotten rid of it long ago.

Mike, how does Baugh's following comments pertain to your thoughts?:

"There are a few imperatives (e.g., ἰδέ, ἰδού, “look,” “behold,”; second aorist active and middle imperative of βλέπω) which have lost their verbal nature to the point that they are considered as particles and not as verbs anymore (cf. BAGD, p. 370). There are not many of these forms, and they tend to be stock expressions, so this is not a very important factor for imperativals."

[David Lim]

Mike,
It seems to me that your views are much along the lines expressed by Baugh or am I wrong? I'm beginning to think that when I feel I understand what a linguist is saying that I've probably misunderstood him. A linguist's clarification/analysis is presented cryptically just like the nature of language.

Now these are just my musings. I have no doubt things are more complicated than that and I've never studied, but its always better assume that morphological contrast means something. Otherwise the language users would have gotten rid of it long ago.

Mike, how does Baugh's following comments pertain to your thoughts?:

"There are a few imperatives (e.g., ἰδέ, ἰδού, “look,” “behold,”; second aorist active and middle imperative of βλέπω) which have lost their verbal nature to the point that they are considered as particles and not as verbs anymore (cf. BAGD, p. 370). There are not many of these forms, and they tend to be stock expressions, so this is not a very important factor for imperativals."

I think Mike's view is concerning the common morphology and not the somewhat fixed morphology found in idiomatic phrases, so these examples are as irrelevant to him as to me. His argument is that in general many verbs still have both morphological forms and that indicates that their function did not coalesce. However I think his view about the generalness and specificity of commands is the opposite of what Baugh mentioned that I listed as (4). I just went through the old B-Greek emails and found one that might be of interest: The Three Alphas. The author, Warren, supports Mike's assertion that there has always been some distinction between the present and aorist imperatives (when the word has both forms), but his example agrees with Baugh's view, that specific injunctions ("Beware that jellyfish!") call for the aorist while general injunctions ("Beware of jellyfish!") call for the present. But then in 1 Pet 2:17 or Luke 10:5,10 neither explanation seems to me to work. The only thing Baugh says about 1 Pet 2:17 is:

In contrast, while considering three passages where various tense forms are found in verbs of various moods (1 Pet. 2:17: John 7:24; 15:16), G. C. Neal cautioned against this type of oversimplification:
There are many factors which might have led a Greek writer to choose one or other tense of these moods of the verb. Certainly one of them might have been the analogy of the imperfect and aorist tenses of the indicative... But considerations of euphony, the predominant tense of the passage, differences in style, and other criteria could have had equal weight. To a great extent also I suspect the choice was arbitrary.

I was also hoping others (such as Carl, Iver, Louis...) might chime in also.

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

In contrast, while considering three passages where various tense forms are found in verbs of various moods (1 Pet. 2:17: John 7:24; 15:16), G. C. Neal cautioned against this type of oversimplification:
There are many factors which might have led a Greek writer to choose one or other tense of these moods of the verb. Certainly one of them might have been the analogy of the imperfect and aorist tenses of the indicative... But considerations of euphony, the predominant tense of the passage, differences in style, and other criteria could have had equal weight. To a great extent also I suspect the choice was arbitrary.

We have to remember that Baugh quoted Neal there and then continued:

To think that “to a great extent” the choice of tense form could be arbitrary would be, to say the least, bothersome if true. What other points of Greek grammar are merely arbitrary as well? And what are these “other criteria” which might govern tense form choice? And even more basic, how do we know when the choice was arbitrary making the form itself semantically insignificant and when was it not?

[David Lim]

In contrast, while considering three passages where various tense forms are found in verbs of various moods (1 Pet. 2:17: John 7:24; 15:16), G. C. Neal cautioned against this type of oversimplification:
There are many factors which might have led a Greek writer to choose one or other tense of these moods of the verb. Certainly one of them might have been the analogy of the imperfect and aorist tenses of the indicative... But considerations of euphony, the predominant tense of the passage, differences in style, and other criteria could have had equal weight. To a great extent also I suspect the choice was arbitrary.

We have to remember that Baugh quoted Neal there and then continued:

To think that “to a great extent” the choice of tense form could be arbitrary would be, to say the least, bothersome if true. What other points of Greek grammar are merely arbitrary as well? And what are these “other criteria” which might govern tense form choice? And even more basic, how do we know when the choice was arbitrary making the form itself semantically insignificant and when was it not?

Yes of course, but he didn't explain any of those examples under his framework, and I do not see how 1 Pet 2:17 would fit either. Also note what he said just before the part you quoted:

I find Neal’s suggestions that an author chose a particular tense form because of euphony or because of his style very suggestive, and I readily heed his caution and the warnings of others against oversimplification of the Greek tenses. But we study the Greek of the New Testament to find “nuggets” of interpretation, and Greek tense forms have been a very profitable mine for us to date.

This is precisely why I cannot accept almost any such frameworks without careful scrutiny, because the people involved admit that they do indeed look at Greek tense forms to find "nuggets" of interpretation, which is not at all what we should be doing in the first place, in my opinion. Now I do not want to argue about what we should be doing, which is subjective, but I find Neal's statement the most accurate, objectively. He did not say that it must be arbitrary, and neither do I, but we do suspect that it is in many cases so, though we would all agree that in some cases it is clearly not arbitrary, such as fixed idiomatic forms such as "ιδε" and some verbs like "υπαγε".

[MAubrey]

Mike,
It seems to me that your views are much along the lines expressed by Baugh or am I wrong? I'm beginning to think that when I feel I understand what a linguist is saying that I've probably misunderstood him. A linguist's clarification/analysis is presented cryptically just like the nature of language.

From what I've read, absolutely.

Now these are just my musings. I have no doubt things are more complicated than that and I've never studied, but its always better assume that morphological contrast means something. Otherwise the language users would have gotten rid of it long ago.

Mike, how does Baugh's following comments pertain to your thoughts?:
"There are a few imperatives (e.g., ἰδέ, ἰδού, “look,” “behold,”; second aorist active and middle imperative of βλέπω) which have lost their verbal nature to the point that they are considered as particles and not as verbs anymore (cf. BAGD, p. 370). There are not many of these forms, and they tend to be stock expressions, so this is not a very important factor for imperativals."

Nick Bailey's dissertation gives an excellent discussion of how these particles function in the Koine period. I view them as particles, rather than imperatives.
http://dare.ubvu.vu.nl/bitstream/1871/15504/4/4727.pdf

I think Mike's view ... However I think his view about the generalness and specificity of commands is the opposite of what Baugh mentioned that I listed as (4)

(4) General injunctions (behavioural, iterative) tend to call for the present while specific injunctions (situational) call for the aorist

Well, yes and no. I'd like to revise my thoughts in light of what Baugh has said here--at least partially. I also think that Baugh's discussion has more in common with my (tentative) suggestions than you suggest, but I would also say that my initial suggetions were based on too small of a data sample (i.e. specifically the texts you were asking about). I would be inclined to say that the terms "general" and "specific" are not categories themselves, but results of the aspectual features themselves. So generalized commands *can* be imperfective when they refer, as Baugh notes, to repeatable actions. And when an action should only be done once in a very specific situation, the perfective imperative also makes perfect sense. But it seems rather clear to me that in light of examples like 1 Peter 2:17, Baugh would also need to revise his view. The very nature of the perfective as making no reference to an action as a whole makes it ideal for imperatives that commands that are general at a far more abstract level. "Honor everyone" is more general than "Honor the king." This is also clear in Romans 13:7 ἀπόδοτε πᾶσιν τὰς ὀφειλάς.

But again, I should say that I haven't studied imperatives very closely, but I do know a thing or two about aspect. My larger point is that whether general or specific, whatever reason a command is in the aorist or the present is going to arise from a combination of the lexical features of the verb in question and the nature of the aspectual category itself. The tendency toward general vs. specific however they work out in specific examples is a result of that combination.