From: Kimmo Huovila (kimmo@kaamas.kielikone.fi)
Date: Wed Dec 20 2000 - 02:22:09 EST
CWestf5155@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 12/19/2000 1:41:44 AM Mountain Standard Time,
> kimmo@kaamas.kielikone.fi writes:
>
> > Thanks, Cindy, for clarification. This is what I meant when I said that his
> > view of aspect is too subjective. He calls the aorist perfective. If he
> says
> > that perfective does not say anything about the situation, if it is
> > completely subjective and related only to grounding and perhaps other text
> > linguistic matters, then here I must part company (this is how I understood
> > his dissertation, please correct me if you think I understood him wrong). I
> > know he is not the first to espouse such a view, but I prefer the
> denotative
> > view of the meaning of aspect. As a matter of fact, I have not heard of an
> > aspect language where aspect does not regularly affect truth conditions (
> > Vendler's classic illustrates this with English). Why would ancient Greek
> > aspect be different? Would it still be aspect?
> >
> > I do appreciate his meticulous study, but some of his presuppositions and
> > methodology I find unconvincing.
> >
>
> I see what you are saying. Forgive me if I'm getting it wrong, but your
> objections seem to be drawn from Porter calling the Aorist 'background',
> whereas others may refer to it as the 'backbone' of the discourse, in that,
> for instance, it gives the main storyline of the discourse.
In my thesis I did refer to this point, though this is not so much what
I was thinking when I wrote the above.
Earlier you wrote:
> Just to clarify, none of this discussion has really articulated Porter's view
> on the aspect of the Aorist. He would say that the use of the aorist is
> making the most general statement possible without elaboration--God loved the
> world--without any information coded in the verb about when it started or
> stopped, or whether it was punctilliar or repeated, or whether it could be
> counted or not.
This I took, apparently with Randall Buth, to mean that he goes with
those who ascribe absolute 'subjective' status to aorist. His actual
dissertation seemed to me to be quite compatible with this view. It is a
while since I read it, so please correct me, if I misrepresent him. I
have not read much of his comments on the matter since he wrote his
book, but I think 1993 in his evaluation of Fanning he did not criticize
him for his analysis of the interaction between aspect and Aktionsart.
So I am not quite sure where he now stands. He does not really get into
truth conditions in his dissertation. But I tend to classify his
dissertation into the camp of totally, or at least extremely,
'subjective' aspect as he criticizes Comrie's view of aspect as too
objective. Perhaps he has changed his view.
>
> Actually, Porter also believes that the Aorist gives the main storyline of
> the discourse, and that it does contribute truth propositions--in fact, he
> describes it that way.
OK. His main application (in his dissertation) related to the storyline
of the discourse, but I do not remember him commenting on truth
conditions.
> This problem comes from a difference in the definition
> of background--and I do believe that we may see some vocabulary shift (but
> not an ideological shift) here at some point in the future.
I would welcome the vocabulary shift. It would be confusing indeed if
general linguists and Greek scholars used
the opposite terminology for the same thing!
>
> Porter calls the aorist the default tense--it is used most often for the main
> story line or for description. It is the 'unmarked' tense--what is normally
> expected.
Pragmatically yes, but semantically often it conveys more information
than an imperfective aspect. Therefore I would say it is often
semantically marked.
> That is what he means as background, and I actually would like to
> stick to the word 'ground' rather than background, which are really two
> different concepts.
This is what text linguists tend to call foreground.
> That is, you could tell a whole story in the aorist tense
> and it would not be marked. The use of the aorist 'grounds' the other
> tenses, so that when they occur in story telling, they stand out as forming
> some function.
Such as backgrounding :-)
> Of course, you could tell a whole story in the present, but
> that would be marked--emphatic. It is emphatic because it isn't the aorist.
> If you told a whole story in one of the other tenses, it would be
> stranger--unexpected--marked.
True.
>
> So the aorist will often form the storyline of a pericope. In that sense,
> the aorist forms the backbone of the storyline. But at the discourse level,
> you look for the ''point"/high level clause/ of the story in marked places.
> Markedness goes far beyond the verbal system, so it could be marked by
> occurrences other than a shift in tense.
Yep.
>
> At the discourse level (global), what some call the backbone or the figure
> occurs in those marked places.
Yes.
>
> So, to summarize, in vocabulary, Porter has called ground or grounding
> background and has called figure frontground--and then there is the middle
> foreground.
But this in analyzing discourse peak. The very point is that at peak the
normal discourse markers change. The normal backgrounding devices, such
as the imperfective aspect, can be used of foreground at the peak. But
this occurs also with other linguistic phenomena. Longacre described
discourse peak as a zone of turbulence.
> All of this describes markedness and grounding rather than the
> literary concepts that most people associate with those terms.
I do not know much about literary concepts most people associate with
these terms. My background is in general linguistics, including some
text linguistics of different stripes. From my background Porter's
terminology seems quite unique (with no claim to have read very much of
the vast general linguistics literature on discourse) and confusing.
>
> Now with apologies to Mark, who I wrote off list, and anyone else who wants
> to interact, I'll resume lurker status. I'm sure that no one will be
> 'satisfied' with this 'little' bit, but I do like to clarify when I can.
Thanks for your input. This got me a little bit off topic from
aspect into text linguistics, but your response shed light on the
terminological
problem that I mentioned in my thesis, and confirms somewhat what I
suspected then.
Kimmo
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