From: clayton stirling bartholomew (c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Thu Apr 02 1998 - 13:48:50 EST
I decided to gather some more dubious statistics on perfects and ORAW. All of
these statistics are round numbers (very round, spherical).
It appears that perfects account for less than 7% of the verb tenses in the
GNT. This includes all forms of verbs. In the whole GNT ORAW appears in the
perfect form about once out of there (33%). So it would appear that ORAW has a
much higher probability to appear as a perfect than verbs in general.
In John (gospel) and 1 John ORAW appears in the perfect form twice as often as
all the other forms (66%). In 1 John alone ORAW appears five times in the
perfect form and only once in any other form (83%).
So the numbers run 7%, 33%, 66%, and 83%. So ORAW in 1John is 12 times as
likely to appear in the perfect tense than verbs in general in the GNT. Cap
this all off with the Apocalypse where ORAW appears seven times and not once
in the perfect.
What does this all mean? One general conclusion I would draw is that the
distribution of verb tenses is linked to lexical semantics. Why else would
ORAW be more than four times as likely to appear in the perfect than verbs in
general? A second conclusion I would draw is that the verb tense distribution
for a particular word is also linked to literary genre. This would account for
the use of ORAW in the Apocalypse.
Would anyone else like to speculate about this?
-- Clayton Stirling Bartholomew Three Tree Point P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062
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