Could you please find the section you are talking about? I would be
interested in knowing more precisely what Porter says about this, since I'm
interested in the interaction of syntactic aspect and verbal aspect. Mari's
thesis and her book are very good on this. Fanning's book is the only one I
know of that gives lists of verbs by category (Mary quotes his lists in an
appendix, but does not develop her own.)
I don't remember if Porter says that imperfective aspect implies
continuation, at least not in the sense of ongoing states. Consider Matthew
8:9: KAI LEGO TOUTWi POREUQHTI, KAI POREUETAI, KAI ALLWi ERCOU, KAI ERCETAI,
KAI TWi DOULWi MOU POIHSON TOUTO, KAI POIEI. "and I say to this one, 'Go!'
and he goes, and to another, 'Come!' and he comes, and to my servant, 'Do
this!' and he does it." POREUETAI, ERCETAI, POIEI (Go! Come! Do this!) are
all in present tense, with imperfective aspect, but as I read this, there is
instantaneous obedience, not a continuing process of coming, going, and
doing. What imperfective aspect conveys is the view from within (Look! There
he goes!). This aspect stuff gets really tricky, and a lot of what has been
written on it isn't that easy to read, so it is easy to get confused about it.
> I inferred when I read it last year that this applied
> even if that verb is EIMI. I understand the above as saying that EIMI
> (and by extension some forms of other stative verbs like GINOMAI,
> hUPARCW) cannot have imperfective aspect since it is a stative verb.
I'm confused by this statement. The imperfect and present "tenses" both have
imperfective aspect; HN and EIMI are quite common in New Testament Greek.
You are right in saying that EIMI is a stative verb, and there is no problem
at all with using a stative verb with imperfective aspect.
Stative verbs are verbs that do not involve change; in linguistic works they
are often referred to as [-dynamic] or sometimes as [-change]. GINOMAI means
to become, to arise, to happen, to take place, etc., and has a very strong
element of change. And GINOMAI can also, of course, be used with
imperfective aspect, e.g. Matthew 1:22 TOUTO DE hOLON GEGONEN hINA PLHRWQHi
TO hRHQEN hUPO KURIOU DIA TOU PROFHTOU ktl. "all this happened so that what
the Lord spoke through the prophet might be fulfilled". Again, the
imperfective aspect of GEGONEN (happened) does not imply that this was
continuously happening. "All this" probably refers to the appearance of the
angel, and we should not infer that the angel was continuously appearing to
Joseph.
Hope this helps,
Jonathan
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