Re: Rosetta Stone of Verb Aspect

Mark O'Brien (markus@upnaway.com)
Sun, 03 Aug 1997 20:56:19

At 11:45 AM 8/3/97 +0000, you wrote:
>Thanks to Jonathan for the Rosetta Stone. Looking it over, one thing
>jumps out at me. Most of the recent models seem to have relegated the
>*future* to a kind of orphan status. This gives me reason to doubt the
>general validity of these models. If you have to send a major component
>of the verb system into permanent exile to make your model work then it
>is time to go back to the drawing table and start over. This is where I
>think we are headed. I think we are going to discover that Porter and
>Fanning are simply wrong, not about details but their basic approach is
>wrong.
>
>I know that the *future* issue has been talked about frequently but it
>has not been solved.

This is a very good point, and the primary reason I chose to work on the
aspectual value of the future tense in my just completed thesis. For what
it's worth (and I don't want to be seen as pushing my own barrow), my
conclusion, based on a comparison with the usage of the aorist, is that the
future shares the same aspectual value as the aorist. As far as I could
tell from my research, no-one has done any substantial work on the aspect
of the future. The very fact that Fanning only gave it a few pages before
dismissing it as "non-aspectual" prompted me to delve deeper. I think
Clayton's point is a good one.

Regards,

M.

-----
Rev. Mark B. O'Brien Grad. Student, Dallas Theological Seminary
3909 Swiss Ave #1092 Adj. Prof., Dallas Christian College
Dallas, TX 75204

markus@upnaway.com
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