[B-Greek] Histoical Present

John Sanders john.franklin.sanders at gmail.com
Mon Dec 8 01:30:08 EST 2008


I will apologize for a delayed response to your last posting, Dr. Buth.  I
always enjoy hearing from you, even if it may be criticism toward me or my
views.



I do not believe that we are that far apart in our thinking, at least I do
not think so, but I could be wrong, I have been wrong quite often.



With that introduction, let me respond to a few items of your posting.



You are quite correct in your observation that I listed the tense of
participles as well as verbs.  But my observations was on the tense itself,
and since the participles were acting in a verbal fashion, I thought best
not to disregard them.



Your comments on Cyrus's obtaining the authority over the soldiers may be
quite correct, but we do not know that for a surety.  And we do not know
that because Xenophon did not tell us.  All he told us what that it
occurred, and aorist does no more than indicate that something occurred.



Let me jump into the core of the issue itself, tense and the usage of tense.
Some time back Dr. Furuli made a posting about present tense, etc.  I do not
have the posting in front of me and I am working off my memory, which is not
quite that reliable.  He was asking some questions and posed a statement
about the present tense of  "he is working all day" or something of that
nature.  The implication was that it is difficult to understand the present
tense of that verb.  Some wrote and said that was not a present tense.  It
is a present tense, and a good example of the present tense.  I personally
did not understand Dr. Furuli's use of it as an example of a problem with
the present tense.  "What does your son do?  He works (as opposed to going
to school).  How long does he work?  He works all day (as opposed to working
part time)."   The past tense is "he worked all day" and the future is "he
will work all day".  Tense has no metric assigned to it, if one wishes to
specify some time  or circumscribe the event time wise, then one adds an
adverb or such.  He works all day, he will work next month, he worked last
year, he is working right now.  The concept is simple and easy to use.  Those
who devised a different format, such as aspect or what ever, like to use the
term "deictic center."  It is a good term, but in terms of tense it adds no
new information.  The present tense is the deictic center.  Past tense and
future tense are defined in terms of the present tense.  Those who use
aspect require a center, hence, the term.



Now, coming to my use of "indexing".  It is not an attempt to start a new
grammar or such.  Much of my life I have had difficulty in understanding
what the author intended so I recast the idea into something that was easier
for me to grasp.  I have also used this method in teaching others
mathematics and engineering, etc.  For me, the idea of tense is best when it
is kept simple.  So for the more complicated aspects of tense, I prefer to
conceptualize it in this way.  What is the difference in terms of tense
between "I will buy it" and "I will have bought it."  To me there is no
difference; both will take place in the future.  T like to keep my
understanding of tense simple.  The compound tense structure I conceptualize
as an indexing or linking to another even (which also occurs in the future).
 "I will have bought it before spring comes", "I will have bought it before
she returns ."

If you do not like the conceptualization, then do not use it.  That is not
important.



To me an aorist, and in English the perfect tense, are not a true tense in
the sense of present, past, and future.  The aorist describes the occurrence
of something.  It shares with the past tense the certitude of it's
occurrence, but nothing more.  "He crept up the stairs, clinging to the
wall, hoping the shadows would conceal his movements.  When he arrived at
the top he saw the guard, his back to him.  He quickly draws his dagger and
lunges forward, silencing the poor fellow, silencing him forever.  With is
left hand he slowly lowers the body to the floor so as not having the
clinging and clanging of armour alert the other guards."  I could have begun
this with "He is creeping up the steps…."  The perfect (and the aorist in
Greek) give just the occurrence, the present tense (or any tense) bring
attention and focus to the narrative.  That is how the story teller works,
that is how the story teller uses the language, uses the tenses.  There is
nothing radical about this, it works very well and is quite understandable.
 That is why I do not see what the issue is about in usage of the present
tense in narrative.  It is the convention of story tellers in the Greek
tradition.  There is no linkage, as I see it, to grammar or syntax.  That is
why I say it is a matter of Discourse Analysis.



Perhaps I should qualify my use of the term Discourse Analysis.  A number of
years ago I returned to the United States on holiday.  I was at the home of
one of my daughters.  It was an election season and a political debate had
just recently taken place.  It was also a Saturday.  They gave me the telly
clicker and told me to watch whatever I wish to see.  I turned to CSPAN, and
since it was a Saturday, BookTV was on.  They all found other pressing
things to do, such as clipping their nails or what not.  On BookTV was a
program assessing the recent debate with three panel members: a Professor of
Linguistics, a Journalist, and some one else.  The Professor of Linguistics
started off.  After he started talking and giving his take on the debate, I
said to myself, "ah, he is really a Professor of Rhetoric and his theory of
Discourse (Analysis) is just new term, spiffed up and such for our times,
cover Rhetoric.  So, I have decided to use that new and spiffy term to cover
old science of Rhetoric.



There is one more thing, one that I will disagree with you.  I do not
believe that there is any proof as to whether our language is understood in
terms of tense or in terms of aspect or other such concept.  That is in
terms of proof as if it were a finger print or a DNA or such thing that will
say this concept is correct and all others are not correct.  To me, these
are really conceptualizations.  So what I look for is not whether it is
correct, but how easy is it to use, how productive is it to me to use.  For
aspect, this a very complex system compared to tense.  What does it do for
me, can I learn Greek faster with better comprehension?  I see no evidence
for that (and this is evidence that can be measured).  I personally can see
no real advantage to using the aspect concept.  But others may differ.



I hope this makes my view a little clearer and more understandable.  You can
let me know whether we are in agreement or not.


-- 
John Sanders
Suzhou, China


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