Jonathan responded:
>
> Could you please find the section you are talking about? I would be
> interested in knowing more precisely what Porter says about this,
> <snip >
Here is the quote from Porter's Idioms, 1994, p.25, 1.2 Time and the Tense-Forms, par. 1:
Temporal values (past, present, future) are not established in Greek by the use of the verbal aspects (or tense-forms) alone. This may come as a surprise to those who, like most students of Greek, were taught at an elementary level that certain ... <snip> A more viable category is 'relative tense' This presupposes that in Greek the temporal ordering of events is not measured in relation to a fixed point (absolute time), but by the relations established among the involved events with regard to each other and to the context. This relating ... blah, blah, blah....
par.2 ... The imperfective aspect (expressed by the present form), with its perspective of seeing progressive development of an action, was apparently felt to be compatible with continuing examination; hence its frequent use in description or exposition. ...
I will note that Porter, on pp. 22,24,25 describes stative *aspect* as the perfect and pluperfect, but not with EIMI nor does he distinguish stative verbs from the above anywhere that I could find.
As a result from my first introduction to aspect from Porter (and giving my Mari thesis to Jonathan), I think Porter's view of the John 1:1 HN is imperfective aspect as I cannot find where he discriminates stative verbs.
> > 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"
<snip >
> element of change. And GINOMAI can also, of course, be used with
<snip>
Thanks for pointing out that I mentioned GINOMAI in the context of stative verbs. This is of course in error. My brain was thinking "stative" while my fingers were thinking "copulative."
Still, the point stands that I do not see where Porter discriminates stative verbs from "imperfective aspect." Now, Porter could be in error or I am in error if I read him wrongly, which I will freely admit if shown. I do not think it makes any real difference in John 1:1, but accuracy of statement is valuable. At this point I need to see evidence of the contrary, i.e. that EIMI does not imply continuance or "progressive" existence (from the speaker's viewpoint internal to the existence = Porter's "imperfective" aspect).
Sincerely,
Wes Williams