From: Rodney J. Decker (rdecker@bbc.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 09 2001 - 10:18:02 EST
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At 09:07 AM 1/9/01 -0800, you wrote:
once-for-all"). When I first learned Greek, I learned that the perfect
tense indicates "completed action with abiding results." As I've studied
further, I find Stanley Porter saying, "the action is conceived of by the
language user as reflecting a given (often complex) state of affairs"
You will probably get a diversity of answers in this forum. The traditional
view is as you have summarized it. Personally, I don't think that is
adequate and it clearly doesn't work in many instances. A newer approach is
that argued extensively by K. L. McKay in a number of journal articles and
in his two grammars. It is McKay's explanation that Porter has adopted. It
is not adequate to stop with just the def. that you have cited without
adding some of the other qualifications that McKay discusses. It is very
important to realize that this def. is a *semantic* one, not a *pragmatic*
one. That is, it argues that the semantic force of the perfect form by
itself, without any contribution of the context, carries only the force of
an existing state/condition. This means that the traditional def. has gone
too far and read pragmatic factors into the semantic value. Any reference
to a previous action (which produced the state) must come from the context.
Such factors are very often present, so the statements often made are in
many cases true, but the claim that this is because of the perfect form is
an overstatement.
You can find most of McKay's articles listed in my bibliography:
<http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/rd_dbib.htm>. Porter has an entire chapter
on the subject in his larger work (*Verbal Aspect...*), as do I as applied
to Mark <http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/deixis.htm>.
****************************************************
Rodney J. Decker, Th.D. Baptist Bible Seminary
Assoc. Prof./NT PO Box 800, Clarks Summit, PA 18411
rdecker@bbc.edu http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/
XNS Universal Address: =RodDecker
The *Resources for NT Study* site is accessible at:
http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/rd_rsrc.htm
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