Re: tense & aspect
Jonathan Robie (74144.2360@compuserve.com)
09 Sep 96 07:31:15 EDT
> Interesting points Carl... Here is where Richard Young differs
> markedly from your own perspective in his grammar. He does
> *not* approach grammar at all from a historical perspective.
> Instead he argues strongly that in the end *usage* of the language is
> all that really matters.
But the historical perspective is also based on usage, it just draws from a
larger sample in order to gain more data. If Attic Greek usage strongly shows a
characteristic found also in Modern Greek, odds are pretty good that we can
interpret it the same way for Hellenistic Greek, even if there is less data to
demonstrate this fact.
Jonathan