From: Jonathan Robie (jwrobie@mindspring.com)
Date: Mon Dec 09 1996 - 09:06:41 EST
Let me try to summarize what Mari says about the aorist in "The Koine Greek
Verb: Tense and Aspect", an unpublished paper she presented at a conference
in October, 1994.
According to Mari, traditional grammars present the Koine indicative as a
tense system (use a fixed-width font to make the tables come out right):
Past Past and present Present Future
---------------------------------------------------
Imperfect Perfect Present Future
Pluperfect
Aorist
(I'm not sure that Robertson fits neatly in this schema, but Mari doesn't
cite Robertson
in the list of traditional authors which she uses. I'll have to re-read
Robertson and
make up a table for him sometime.)
She says that Fanning adds aspect in this way:
Past Present Future
---------------------------------------------------
Imperfective: Imperfect Present
Perfective: Aorist
Perfective
& stative: Pluperfect Perfect
Unmarked: Future
She says that Porter claims only aspect is relevant:
Imperfective: Imperfect, Present
Perfective: Aorist
Stative: Pluperfect, Perfect
Expectation: Future
Mari's analysis says that imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, and future act
as true tenses, but present and aorist are not tenses at all - they are
unmarked for time:
Past Present Future Unmarked
---------------------------------------------------
Imperfective: Imperfect Present
Perfective: Pluperfect Perfect Aorist
Unmarked: Future
One thing I found very convincing about her paper is that she establishes
clear principles for proof. One of the main proofs she uses is
cancellability - for instance, in the imperfect tense, an event is clearly
in the past, even if the word preceding the imperfect is NUN:
(GNT, John 11:8) hRABBI, NUN EZHTOUN SE LIQASSI hOI IOUDAIOU, KAI PALIN
hUPAGEIS EKEI;
She says that present and aorist are not true tenses, because they can be
used for past, present, or future reference. She gives examples of each.
This is a pretty quick summary, but it is a long message for B-Greek, so
I'll send off this much now and see if it sets some sparks flying...
Jonathan
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Jonathan Robie
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