Re: Grammatical Tense, LEGW,

From: Stephen Carlson (scc@reston.icl.com)
Date: Thu Oct 26 1995 - 16:40:48 EDT


Karen Pitts wrote:
> What I should have said, is that Mark uses imperfect
>FAR more than any of the other Gospel writers. My snail-pace class learns
>imperfect in lesson 3 and aorist in lesson 12 (which is sometimes separated by
>a year or more), so I search widely for Biblical examples of imperfects. They
>are almost always in Mark. Therefore, I don't know that I would place that
>much interpretation on his use of imperfect vs. the aorist. I'd have to study
>this in depth to support my intuition, which I'm not prepared to do right now.

For LEGW/EIPON, Mark actually uses the aorist more than the imperfect.
He does use the imperfect more than the others, but it's pretty popular
in John as well. Here's a chart:

        Form Matt Mark Luke John
        ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
        LEGEI 54 62 14 123
        LEGOUSIN 23 16 4 9

        EIPEN 119 59 231 115
        EIPAN 16 9 28 26

        ELEGEN 3 31 20 13
        ELEGON 8 19 4 35

        LEGWN 49 18 47 8
        LEGOUSA 8 1 4 2
        LEGONTES 47 15 36 10

        LEGEIN 5 8 12 1
        EIPEIN 2 2 7 0

Stephen Carlson

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