Aspect & Aktionsart: One More Time – Part II
We began by looking at a couple of quotes from Porter in the Handbook to Exegesis of the New Testament on the history of the study of the Greek verbal system over the past two centuries. In those quotes, we saw that Porter makes a distinction between what he calls Aktionsart Theory and Aspect Theory. And this is precisely why I don’t care for the term.
If we were talking about Aspect Theory with respect only to Porter’s view of the Greek verb, that is, if Aspect Theory was referred to an Aspect only perspective, I’d have no problem with it. But its clear when we read these quotes that is not the case. As a technical term, “Aspect Theory” is more all-encompassing than that. Let’s look at the next quote from what Porter describes as the third era of progress in studying Greek verbal semantics.
The third and final stage in discussion of Greek verbal structure is a logical continuation from that of Aktionsart theory, and recognizes that verbs are not primarily concerned either with time or with objectified action, but with a subjective perspective on action. This has come to be called aspect theory.
Porter, Handbook to exegesis of the New Testament, 116-17; my emphasis.
The clause marked in bold is key here and it would be helpful to go back to the quote from the previous section so that we can compare these statements about the period of “Aspect Theory” and the period of “Aktionsart Theory.”
Aktionsart theory made a distinctive contribution to Greek grammatical study in that it frees the tense-forms from strict reference to time, especially promoting the recognition by most grammarians that non-indicative verb forms did not refer to time. However, this theory also had severe limitations. The first was in its attempt to objectify a conception of how events transpire, and then to equate these conceptions with particular grammatical forms. It was soon seen that action is multifarious, and that there is no such thing as a punctiliar action or a linear action in and of itself, only insofar as a given observer chooses to describe it as such, and certainly no easy way to equate this to tense-forms.30
30 See F. Stagg, ‘The Abused Aorist’, JBL 91 (1972), pp. 222–31, who brought this to vivid attention; cf. also C.R. Smith, ‘Errant Aorist Interpreters’, GTJ 2 (1981), pp. 205–26.
Porter, Handbook to exegesis of the New Testament, 116; my emphasis.
So these two quotes together make it clear that Porter views the verbal studies of the late 1800s through the 1960s as being representative of this major flaw “Aktionsart Theory,” that is, viewing the action expressed as the objective occurring of an event rather than the subjective portrayal of that event by the author or speaker. Grammarians he places in this category include, Brugmann, Blass, Moulton, Robertson, Moule, and Turner.
But is this actually the case? In a previous post, I argued that Moule’s description of the verb is much closer to Porter definition of “Aspect Theory” even though he uses the terminology of Aktionsart (HERE). I also argued that Moule also implies that this is the correct interpretation of Moulton’s description of the Greek verb in his Prolegomena as well (again, HERE). That leaves us with Brugmann, Blass, Robertson, & Turner. Let’s discuss these grammarians in reverse order.
Turner’s description of the verb may very coincide with what Porter claims. His description of the verb is probably the most likely candidate for paralleling Porter’s view of the history of research. But even still, in light of the discussion of the other grammarians coming below, I would suggest it would be unwise to assume such a view.
Robertson is the grammarian that most recently read and found statements completely contradicting Porter’s words. And its entirely possible that Porter has not even read these words. They appear in the Addenda to the Second Edition:
Perhaps a word more should be said as to the point of view of the speaker or writer. The same action can be viewed as punctiliar or linear. The same writer may look at it now one way, now the other. Different writers often vary in the presentation of the same action.
Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, 1380; my emphasis.
Now remember what Porter said is the primary different between his “Aktionsart Theory” and his “Aspect Theory": “[V]erbs are not primarily concerned either with time or with objectified action, but with a subjective perspective on action” (117).
Porter claims in the Handbook to Exegesis of the New Testament as well as in his monograph/dissertation Verbal Aspect that Robertson advocates that verb-forms express objective action. And yet, in this quote from Robertson’s second edition addenda, he explicitly states, “The same writer may look at it now one way, now the other. Different writers often vary in the presentation of the same action” (1380; my emphasis).
Thus, Robertson, along with Moule and Moulton (again, discussed HERE), cannot be placed into Porter “Aktionsart Theory” category. He explicitly does not view the aorist, present, or imperfect verb-forms as expressing the objective action a given verb describes.
So what about Blass?
This past winter, I picked up a copy of the 1898 edition of Thayer’s translation of Blass’ Grammar of New Testament Greek (by the way, its extremely different that what you find in BDF today). And on page 187, he writes,
The present denotes therefore an action (1) as viewed in its duration (its progress), (2) as taking place in present time (bold is his, italics are mine).
Now, this is the only statement of its kind that I could find, but I still think that his view is sufficiently clear for making my point. The key words of this quote are, “as viewed in its duration,” which suggests to me that Blass also did not consider Greek verb-forms as expressing “objective” action, but rather the subjective perspective of the author/speaker with regard to how they viewed the action.
So that leaves us with Brugmann, who was one of the main forces behind the introduction of Aktionsart from the study of Greek – and unfortunately, I do not have access to his grammar. I did a year ago at GIAL, but not today at TWU. Even still, I’ve now covered all the authors except him and I think the conclusions are fairly obvious. And as soon as I can locate a copy of Brugmann, I’ll write about what I read.
Second Language Acquisition
In light of the relatively recent discussions on the subject on a variety of blogs, I’d like to point you a recent book review on the Linguist List:
Meaning in the Second Language
AUTHOR: Slabakova, Roumyana
TITLE: Meaning in the Second Language
SERIES: Studies on Language Acquisition [SOLA] 34
PUBLISHER: Mouton de Gruyter
YEAR: 2008
The book sounds very interesting. Perhaps I’ll keep an eye out for it at the UBC library – its $100 on Amazon.
…which reminds me: I still have a half written post waiting in the wings on my thoughts on the practicality of learning Modern Greek for studying Hellenistic Greek.
I’ll see about finishing that this weekend.
Acts 10:34-35 – Formal or Frank?
Daniel & Tonya have written a post on Acts 10:34-35 (Comparing Acts 10.34-35), looking at the Greek & a few other translations along with their own.
What jumped out at me as the phrase Ἀνοίξας δὲ Πέτρος τὸ στόμα and their discussion of it.
They write:
1. Some translations try to hammer out this more formal speech introduction (”opening the mouth”), most do not. Why is it that the NET Bible can have awful translations and fantastic notes?
Now I’m not necessarily against the idea that the phrase is a formal one, but I am somewhat skeptical. I looked through a few commentaries, did a few searches across texts, looked at the context, and I really think that this is an idiom and less than a formal introduction to a speech.
Why?
Well, for one, I’m always skeptical of this sort of thing because foreign sounding phrases always sound formal in English. I’m not saying that this is the case here. I’m just saying that’s always my initial gut reaction. So I dug through the lexicons. Louw & Nida say that it a formal Semitic idiom. Perhaps.
But BDAG and LSJ are interesting here.
BDAG cites the verse in question in its definition 5, but in definition 7, we’re given this little tid-bit:
to be candid, be open, intr. (s. 6 beg. for grammatical ref.; s. also 5a) τὸ στόμα ἡμῶν ἀνέῳγεν πρὸς ὑμᾶς our mouth is open toward you, i.e. I have spoken freely and openly 2 Cor 6:11 (cp. Ezk 16:63; 29:21 and ἄνοιξις).
Incidentally, its important to note that the 5a referenced in definition 7 is exactly the place where our reference to Acts 10:34 appears. This caught my attention.
So then, I turned to LSJ. Not much there. But more helpful was LSJ’s entry for ἄνοιξις.
ἄνοιξις, εως, ἡ, opening, πυλῶν Th.4.67, 68; πόρων Thphr.Od.13; χειλῶν Plu.2.738c, cf. PMag.Lond.46.274 (iv a.d.): pl., Porph.Antr.27; ἄ. τοῦ στόματος, Hebraism for παρρησία, LxxEz.29.21, 2Ep.Cor.6.11, Ep.Eph.6.19, etc.
And now my Greek studying friends, what does παρρησία means?
If you said, outspokenness or frankness, then you’re on the right track.
And that is why I do not think that Ἀνοίξας δὲ Πέτρος τὸ στόμα is a formal expression.
Besides, I think it fits the context, what Peter says in the following verses wasn’t planned or at least not completely. I’m sure Peter had a planned message or speech, but what Cornelius told him about the events of the previous several days changed things. And that’s why he says ἐπʼ ἀληθείας, which I think makes more sense as an adverbial usage (cf. BDAG ἐπί, definition 5).
Greek Word Order and Other Stuff
Michael Whitenton over at Ecce Homo has linked to a very interesting PDF/power point on word order in Greek and Indo-European by Dag Haug. The PDF is pretty good, though I wouldn’t subscribe to all the conclusions. Do check it out: For the Über-Nerds Among Us.
As for Dag Haug, himself, I didn’t recognize the name, so I did a google search for him and the word Greek. I got some very interesting hits. The Google Books result (third below) in particular looks interesting and I think I’ll be reading through that chapter. The last one, the BNET article on the Greek Perfect might be worth reading through as well. Finally, his project site looks incredibly interesting: HERE.
Making the Most of the Data: the PROIEL Corpus of Old Indo …
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View as HTML
How do OCS objects correlate with Greek definite and indefinite objects? Hanne Eckhoff, Dag Haug, Marek Majer (UiO). PROIEL: Making the Most of the Data …
www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/proiel/publications/palc.pdf – Similar -
Pragmatic Resources in Old Indo-European Languages
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View as HTML
1 Jun 2008 … Pilot: the Gospel of Mark in Ancient Greek and Latin. Ca. 13000 words (10% of the New Testament). Dag Haug and Marius L. Jøhndal …
www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/proiel/publications/Marrakechslides.pdf – Similar -
More results from www.hf.uio.no »
Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory: The Rosendal Papers – Google Books Result
by Thórhallur Eythórsson – 2008 – Language Arts & Disciplines – 441 pages
CHAPTER 10 From resultatives to anteriors in Ancient Greek On the role of … in semantic change Dag Haug University of Oslo This chapter discusses the …
books.google.ca/books?isbn=9027233772… -
Dag Haug | Find Articles at BNET
Find Articles results for Dag Haug. … Aristotle’s kinesis/energeia-test and the semantics of the Greek perfect. Abstract The purpose of this article is …
findarticles.com/p/search/?qa=Dag%20Haug – Cached – Similar -
Aspect Theory & Aktionsart Theory One More Time
My readers are probably growing incredibly tired of my writing on this topic. I can’t helpful. I keep reading old grammars. And the old grammars keep confirming my view that Porter’s historical survey of the Greek verbal system is wrong.
What is it this time?
Here are a few quotes from Handbook to the Exegesis of the New Testament. Porter delineates three periods in the modern study of the Greek verb. The first is Winer:
This period, perhaps best represented by the influential grammarian G.B. Winer, analyzed Greek verbal structure in terms of a logical framework. In this framework, tense-forms were said to be equated with temporal values. … However, a moment’s reflection will show that this framework is inadequate to explain what actually occurs in the language. For example, Winer cannot adequately account for instances of the historic present, such as in Mark’s Gospel where the present tense is used in a narrative context, that is, where a present form appears to have past reference (e.g. Mark 14:12–25); neither can he account for the gnomic use of the aorist tense, where the aorist is used for events that are not, strictly speaking, past but are recurring events of nature (e.g. Jas 1:11). Winer’s grammar is of limited use in terms of understanding the Greek verbal system.
Stanley E. Porter, Handbook to Exegesis of the New Testament, 114-5.
Now, I’m less concerned with the so-called first period and more interested in the second, though there are issues (As a side note, you’ll be wanting to keep an eye out for Steve Runge’s SBL paper on the Historical Present. I think it’ll be an important one). Porter continues in his discussion his second historical period being that of Brugmann. Blass, Moulton, Robertson, Moule, & Turner:
One of the most important of these grammarians was Karl Brugmann, who elucidated the theory of Aktionsart. This theory stated that verb structure is related not only or exclusively to temporal categories, but to the kind of action or the way that an event occurs. Aktionsart theory stated that a language has various means, including the use of verb tenses, verbal roots, and affixing of prepositions, to express the ways in which action occurs.
…
Aktionsart theory made a distinctive contribution to Greek grammatical study in that it frees the tense-forms from strict reference to time, especially promoting the recognition by most grammarians that non-indicative verb forms did not refer to time. However, this theory also had severe limitations. The first was in its attempt to objectify a conception of how events transpire, and then to equate these conceptions with particular grammatical forms. It was soon seen that action is multifarious, and that there is no such thing as a punctiliar action or a linear action in and of itself, only insofar as a given observer chooses to describe it as such, and certainly no easy way to equate this to tense-forms.
Stanley E. Porter, Handbook to Exegesis of the New Testament, 115-6; my emphasis.
Let’s focus on the words in bold. I’ll be writing a part two to this post where I’ll discuss my frustration with this description. Many of you can probably guess, but there’s more to it than my pass rants on this subject. As I’ve been reading some dead grammarians and have found some juicy evidence that I would suggest contradicts these words here.
But in the meantime, how do you feel about these quotes and the words in bold?
Do you think that they accurately represent this particular period of Greek scholarship?
Why or why not?
Or perhaps do you feel as if you don’t have the background or framework for judging these words?
We’ll discuss Porter’s third period of Greek verbal studies and then make some comparisons with his words here using quotes from a number of the grammarians he refers to.
SBL Rome this week
While many of you are enjoying the great ancient city of Rome, I’ll be summitting a mountain on the BC coastal range.
Bibleworks 8 Give Away
Fill out the Form, subscribe to their RSS feed, answer a few questions and you might win a copy of Bibleworks 8:
Cal.vini.st First Anniversary Giveaway
Its not a bad deal.
Not bad at all…
Unusual Wordforms
I was perusing through a variety of texts this morning looking to see whether all of the wordforms I’m using in my morphological analysis/database are attested in the texts that I have on my computer: Josephus, Philo, LXX, NT, Apostolic Fathers, and the Pseudepigrapha.
Thus far, I’ve found all of my wordforms.
But in the process, I’ve come across some unusual forms that I really don’t know what to do with – all from the Greek Pseudepigrapha:
ἀγαθοῖσιν and ἀγαθοῖο
I’m guessing that its dialectal difference, but I know too little about Greek dialects to say for sure and I’d be curious if anyone has any suggestion. The first form is quite obviously a Dative Plural, either masculine or neuter (in this case its masculine, modifying ἀνδράσι; Sibylline Oracles 5.69).
As for the second, form, it appears to be a genitive since it follows a genitive preposition (ἀντ’ – Sibylline Oracles 1.46).
If anyone has any comments on these forms themselves and their origins, I’d be interested. There are numerous examples of “normal” genitive and dative forms throughout the texts.
Summer Reading
I’ll be reading through the entirety of A. T. Robertson’s Big Grammar
I’ve read 250 pages of it thus far.
Syntax as Dependency Relations: Another Look at Opentext.org
Stanley Porter and Andrew Pitts describe Opentext.org’s approach to syntax as follows, “Syntax is understood in terms of dependency relations, clause types and complementation structure.” [1] Dependency Relations are relatively self-explanatory. In a given phrase, such as “the man,” the article “the” is in a dependency relationship with the noun “man.” In of itself, there is no problem with such an approach since such relationships tend to be expressed in all syntactic frameworks.
The challenge and problem for Opentext.org’s implementation of such relationships is the larger problem. Opentext.org divides syntactic constituents based on grammatical relations: Subjects, Objects (which they refer to as Complements), Predicators, and Adjuncts. Each of these four categories then provides the bases through which dependency relations are described. The dependent modifiers are divided into several more categories, including four types of modifiers: Specifier, Definer, Qualifier, and Relator.[2]
From these labels for the Opentext.org analysis, it becomes clear rather quickly that the syntactic distinctions being made in the database are purely semantic in nature. What is disturbing about this is that distinctions being made by these semantic labels say nothing about the structure and ordering of the phrases in which they appear. It is impossible to make distributional predictions about, say, where a Specifier can or cannot occur.
Little can be said about what binds the various words labeled with a given modifier type. What do Articles have to do with Prepositions? What about different types of Definers? The distribution of an adjective like κακός is markedly different than that of πάς. And yet no distinction is made between them in Opentext.org.
The problem can be seen even more clearly when we attempt to examine the distribution of the various semantic categories provided by Opentext.org Can Specifiers appear before Definers? Yes. Can they occur after Definers? Yes. The same is true of Specifiers and Relators, Specifiers and Qualifiers, and every other pair of modifier types.
To put it quite frankly, there is no empirical basis in the Greek language for these categories as defined and implemented by Opentext.org to describe the word order or structure of Greek phrases.
So exactly how is this a beneficial way of describing Greek syntax when the categories used say nothing about Greek syntax?
[1] Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts, “New Testament Greek Language and Linguistics in Recent Research,” Currents in Biblical Research 6(2008): 214-55, 234.
[2] The Opentext.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament Glossary provides the following definitions for these terms (abbreviated here). A Modifier is “any word contained in a word group that is not a head term.”
“A Specifier is a modifier that classifies or identifies the word it modifies. Common examples of specifiers are articles, e.g. ἡ ἀδελφή, and prepositions, e.g. ἐν δόξη. In a prepositional phrase such as εἰς τὸν λόγον, both εἰς and τὸν are specifiers of λόγον.
A Definer is a modifier that attributes features to or further defines the word it modifies. Common examples of definers are adjectives (both attributive and predicative structure), appositional words or phrases, and adjectival clauses.
A Qualifier is a modifier that in some way limits or constrains the scope of the word it modifies. Common examples of qualifiers are words in the genitive and dative case, and also negative particles functioning at the word group level.
A Relator is a modifier which is specified by a preposition (i.e. the Relator is the object of a preposition) that modifies another element within the word group. For example, in the word group τὸ κατʼ ἐμὲ πρόθυμον, the term ἐμὲ is in a relator relationship with the head term πρόθυμον. This relationship only applies to prepositional phrases within word groups and not when the prepositional phrase functions as a clause component” (Stanley Porter, Matthew B. O’Donnell, Jeffery T. Reed, Randall Tan, and OpenText.org, The OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament Glossary (Bellingham, Wash.: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2006), n.p.
