Re: Help! Can't decipher Smyth citation
Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Mon, 7 Apr 1997 14:26:18 -0500
At 1:34 PM -0500 4/7/97, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>At 12:21 PM 4/7/97 -0500, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>
>>The references in Smyth #1939 are
>>Iliad 2.113 NUN DE KAKHN APATHN BOULEUSATO, KAI ME KELEUEI ...
>>
>>and
>>
>>Iliad 3.439 NUN MEN GAR MENELAOS ENIKHSEN SUN AQHNHi.
>>
>>Smyth does have a nice harvest in this section of aorist verbs, augmented
>>and unaugmented, that do not appear to have any clear reference to past
>>time.
>
>Thanks for the references! I'm trying to compare them to this example from
>Mari's thesis:
>
>John 10:31 RABBI, NUN EZHTOUN SE LIQASAI hOI IOUDAIOI, KAI PALIN hUPAGEIS
>EKEI;
>
>Mari suggests that NUN in this context can be translated "just now": "Rabbi,
>just now the Jews were trying to stone you". She says this indicates that
>the past reference of the imperfect can not be cancelled by adding NUN - it
>still refers to a past situation.
>
>I had really wanted to see whether the NUN cancels the past reference in the
>two Homeric references, but I suspect these examples don't help - in each
>case, the aorist feels like an ingressive aorist indicating the start of a
>new state, and NUN+ingressive aorist in these two examples has an effect not
>unlike the perfect.
Yes, I think that's the case. I certainly wouldn't want to say that the
past reference is cancelled in these instances. I am beginning to wonder,
however, about the imperfects in a present contrary-to-fact condition, and
what the augment on those forms is thought to imply about the time of the
action--it certainly isn't past action.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/