From: Richard Lindeman (richlind@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Thu Jan 15 1998 - 15:51:09 EST
>As the verb in question here is a second aorist active indicative, it
cannot
>be a "timeless aorist" but must be a genuine aorist denoting an event, now
>finished, in the past.
If language were always spoken "by the rules" then I might be inclined to
agree with you.
However, it is the other way around. We form the rules by the way that
language is spoken
and those rules are then always in flux and completely dependent upon the
ways that people
happen to speak the language. Therefore, since the perfect tense is in
decline and since the aorist
tense is in many instances taking over the former uses of the perfect... I
do not have any trouble
in seeing at least the possibility here of EXESTHMEN taking on the
perfective aspect and so
being called a "timeless aorist".
Rich Lindeman
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