>. . . . When I talk about marking I usually
>mean semantic marking. Note also that I use the word semantic in it's more
>traditional sense, not in the way the Systemic Functional people do.
>
>I will illustrate with DE in Luke/Acts. When I started studying Luke, several
>years ago, I was convinced that KAI was the conjunction of continuation and DE
>was the adversative conjunction. But in Luke I encountered DE used over and
>over again as a conjunction of continuation. I realized after awhile that this
>was normal usage of DE and stopped thinking "adversative" every time I saw
>it.
>
>Therefore, speaking in terms of semantic marking, DE functioning as a
>continuative conjunction in Luke/Acts is semantically unmarked. If DE is
>encountered where the context demands an adversative function it is the marked
>use of DE (in Luke/Acts). All of this might change in John's Gospel or
>elsewhere.
>
>Now when it comes to the aorist, I would say that when the aorist is used as
>the narrative tense it is probably semantically unmarked. But there are other
>ways that the aorist is used and to the extent that these more unusually uses
>of the aorist call attention to themselves and add meaning the to the context
>they should be considered semantically marked.
>
>I can predict that explanation of marking will probably drive some folks up
>the wall. I got this idea reading Silva but I am not claiming that Silva would
>explain it in the same manner.
>
>It is also quite possible that I am just hopelessly confused. This is often
>the case.
You are not hopelessly confused. The way you are explaining marked/unmarked
here is a fairly accepted view. Of course, there are other views, but the
one you are using is pretty well established in the linguistics literature.
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Micheal W. Palmer mwpalmer@earthlink.net
Religion & Philosophy
Meredith College
Visit the Greek Language and Linguistics Gateway at
http://home.earthlink.net/~mwpalmer/
You can also access my online bibliography of Greek Linguistics at
http://home.earthlink.net/~mwpalmer/greek.linguistics.bibliography/bibliography.
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