At 10:26 AM 11/8/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Dear Mark,
>
>One of the main criticisms of Fanning is that he doesn't distinguish between
>semantics and pragamatics. That is, he doesn't distinguish between what the
>essential meaning of the aorist (semantics) and how the aorist can function
>in the with lexus, context and temporal indicators (pragmatics).
My reading of his work must obviously differ a little from yours, since I
thought he actually did a good job this. My recollection of his text,
which I read through a couple of times while working on my thesis, was that
he deals with semantics in the first section of the book, before turning to
deal with pragmatics in the latter half of the text. Perhaps I'm
misunderstanding you, but that was my impression of the layout of his book.
For what it's worth, I felt that Porter did a very poor job in making the
distinction you mention, and the generally "untidy" layout of his text left
much to be desired. (That's a personal opinion, which doesn't have to
become fodder for a spate of Porter vs. Fanning messages!)
>Carson,
>Silva and Schmidt evaluated both Fanning and Porter in "Biblical Greek
>Language and Linguistics".
Yes, I have read these reviews as well, and I must say that they seemed a
little skittish about the whole thing... in a sense, particularly Schmidt
(if I recall correctly), seemed to basically be saying that we don't know
enough at this point, so we'd do best to avoid talking about aspect at all
at this point. Perhaps that's an over-simplistic analysis, but that's the
distinct impression I gained.
>Fanning's observations about the ingressive
>aorist belongs under the category of pragmatics.
Absolutely... but his discussion of all this does occur in the section of
the book where he is noting the various patterns that interactions of
certain types of verbs have with the aspectual categories he has proposed.
His discussion of the semantics of the aspectual categories themselves
occurs prior to this in the first part of the book.
>In the rudimentary
>examinations I have made, applying the principle can cause the system to
>drive the interpretation. A very good example of that is Matthew 23:2.
However, I think it would be fair to say that Fanning is not being
prescriptive in his noting these patterns, but simply describing what
actually seems to regularly occur. I say this simply because in my own
personal discussions with him, he is *extremely* tentative about saying
anything absolutely! He is very cautious about not only the work of
others, but also most particularly about his own findings.
Anyway, that's the way I see it, but I'm quite open to the opinions of
others on this. I'm sure that Rolf or Don would be far more able to speak
up on this.
Regards,
M.
-----
"When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it
means."
-- Brother William of Baskerville
(Umberto Eco, "The Name of the Rose")
-----
Rev. Mark B. O'Brien
Assoc. Pastor, Subiaco Church of Christ, Western Australia
Lecturer, South Perth Christian College, Western Australia
markus@upnaway.com