Talk:Aorist/Archive 5

Archive 1

←

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

what does "aorist tense" mean?

This has been a problem. I gather there have been several uses of the phrase, though I may be wrong here:

• "tense" as any temporal grammatical category, whether grammatical tense or grammatical aspect ("There are four past tenses in Greek")
• indicative mood ('aorist tense' = 'aorist indicative')
• inflectional paradigm ("There were originally three morphologically distinct sets of personal endings for verbs—present, imperfect, and aorist—which were used in combination with additional tense and aspect markers to form the various tenses and moods.")
• derivational verb stem ("In the Old Avestan verb system all the IE tense-aspect stems (present, aorist, perfect) are fully employed.")

Are these valid? And if so, can we agree on some wording so that it's clear what we mean when we use the word "tense"? Do we need to do the same with "aspect", or can we agree that it means grammatical aspect? — kwami (talk) 03:19, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is consciously using "tense" in the first sense. The latter three can be valid depending on frame of reference. Classicists will generally mean the third sense (inflectional paradigm), unless they've studied linguistics (and in my experience, when classicists study linguistics, it's historical linguistics, usually focusing on Greek/Latin and their IE heritage). From a "pure classicist" point of view, the ancient Greek aorist is a tense, which can be found in a variety of moods, persons, numbers, and voices—so I can turn to the appendix of my Greek book and find a few pages detailing the conjugation of a regular verb in the aorist indicative, aorist subjunctive, aorist optative, aorist imperative. The aorist passive is formed on a different stem than the aorist active/middle, so the uniting factor is not the stem(s) but their shared tense (or TAM, as it seems linguistic jargon would have it). --Akhilleus (talk) 03:34, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

For Greek, there are probably two uses, (1) a traditional one meaning "aorist verb-form family" or "inflectional paradigm", which is AFAIK the morphological flip side of the aorist aspect (i.e. the verb forms with that morphology share the aorist aspect); and (2) a reference to the aorist indicative, considered as one of a number of grammatical tenses, which also include the present, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, future, and future perfect (some of the items on that list may be classified alternately as combinations of tense and aspect, rather than tenses per se, but the word "tense" is often applied by modern linguists like Comrie to at least some of them). People following the second interpretation will say things like "There are four past tenses in Greek." -- Radagast3 (talk) 03:41, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I see you've edited your original question since Akhilleus and I answered it, which may not be entirely helpful. However, I believe that people who say Greek has "four past tenses" are using the term to mean grammatical tense, but are defining tense to have more options than simply past/present/future. This is the way in which I believe Comrie is using the word when he says that the Greek aorist indicative is "a past tense." -- Radagast3 (talk) 06:48, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

The context of Comrie is relatively clear, given how short the discussion is. He was speaking of the aorist as a past perfective; it's "a" past tense in that there is an aspectual distinction in the past tense, not in the sense of there being more than one pure tense (as you may get in other languages, with recent vs. remote past, or absolute vs. relative past). Thus the aorist is both a perfective and a past (usually); it would thus be inaccurate to simply label it a tense or an aspect. However, other sources dispute that it's a tense (past is an implicature, etc.), whereas no-one disputes that it's an aspect.

I think you're right, in that many classicists use "tense" to mean tense-aspect; Comrie, however, is not one of them, except when for convenience or familiarity he uses the traditional terminology of a particular language. He is, however, careful to define his terms, so that the reader is hopefully able to follow when he intends a term to be taken literally. — kwami (talk) 07:18, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Both the first and the third senses are "literal"; they merely belong to different branches of linguistics; the fourth is also literal, and a variant on the third - but used of "tense-stems". I do not believe in the second sense; this appears to be a garble of a statement to the effect that the indicative aorist is more likely to indicate time. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:58, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

The current version of the article states that the aorist indicative is called the "aorist tense", so I'll mark it as dubious. (It perhaps just needs to be reworded.) — kwami (talk) 07:30, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

sorry, kwami, but this is just getting worse. Imo you are being hyper-critical in an erratic way. If criticism is good, it does not always follow that more extreme criticism of everything will necessarily be better. Perhaps the article should be left to people who know what they are doing for some time. --dab (𒁳) 08:42, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

What, specifically, is worse? I figure that if I can't follow what a passage is supposed to mean, a good portion of our other readers probably can't either. — kwami (talk) 09:00, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Dbachmann, this discussion was previously derailed by incivility and personal attacks. We are being careful so that we don't go there again. I suggest that you keep comments like "Perhaps the article should be left to people who know what they are doing" to yourself. --Taivo (talk) 12:35, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I would prefer to take Dbachmann's remarks as meaning that the article needs to be written pragmatically. That is, the introduction "should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article …written in a clear, accessible style," with an understanding of what questions the most likely readers will be bringing to it. How to make it useful? Linguistics is only one field among many within 'language study,' which includes philology, rhetoric, and poetics. Cynwolfe (talk) 16:46, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

In lieu of emoticon. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:50, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Cynwolfe, linguistics is not a "subfield", but the main science, of which philology, rhetoric and poetics are subfields. --Taivo (talk) 18:33, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

• Taivo, I apologize in advance for what I know will be read as incivility, so please imagine that I'm saying it as I would in real life, while offering you a lovely glass of chardonnay and tapping you on the shoulder with my flirtatious fan: you are absolutely stark-raving mad if you think this. Are you saying that if poets haven't studied linguistics, they don't know their field? Are you saying someone trained as a linguist is more suited to read and understand the Homeric epics than a philologist who, ya know, actually knows something about the cultural context? Are you saying Cicero really didn't know anything about rhetoric, because he hadn't studied scientific linguistics? That is downright nutty. It is fringe so fringy a Vegas showgirl could make a costume out of it. I believe it to be indicative of why non-linguists' concerns about this article aren't understood. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:50, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

No, Cynwolfe, I didn't say that "poetry" or "creative writing" or "debate" is a subfield of linguistics, but the science of language and language use falls within the field of linguistics. While understanding the literary character of Homer is not linguistics, understanding the language of Homer is linguistics. Understanding the argumentative structure of Cicero is not linguistics, but understanding how he used language in a specific way is linguistics. This article is not about understanding Cicero or Homer or Xenophon as a literary subject. This article is solely about a grammatical element. That is linguistics, pure and simple. Answering the question, what does the "aorist" mean and how do I translate it is linguistics, pure and simple. Answering the question why was Achilles so enraged at Menelaus is not linguistics; answering the question why the aorist was used to mark an event is linguistics. --Taivo (talk) 19:43, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I neither agree nor disagree with that; I'll have to say what I mean in another section if I have time. Cynwolfe (talk) 20:57, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

That's true if you use linguistics to mean what Cynwolfe called "language study"; however, if you do, there can be no worry about slighting it - almsot any text containing "aorist" must belong to it. However, if you do that, there is also no specialixed linguistic terminology to worry about either.

The specialized terminology belongs to a sub-firld, "general linguistics"; whether this is a science has been doubted - on the grounds that sciences should not contain unfalsifiable assertions. It is a subfield in the same sense that category theory and the foundations of mathematics are subfields; both claim in principle to include all of mathematics, but in practice they are a field of study of their own, with terminology that may eventually spread, but for now requires explanation, at least in passing, when used in any of the other subfields. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:29, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

The falsifiability criticism is valid for all the social sciences, but they're still relevant. "General linguistics" is not the subfield, but the opposite. Thus the name. Also, we're not asking for specialized terminology, we're asking to avoid specialized terminology. — kwami (talk) 07:04, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

"General linguistics" is not the subfield, but the opposite. Thus the name. This is a point of view - and a purblind one. No more true for "general linguistics" than it is for general semantics, which makes the same claim. In both cases, a failed effort at regularization; it is probable that "general linguistics" is the lesser failure - but this is off-topic.

Perfective aspect - and its siblings - is specialized terminology - "not understanded of the people". They are useful links, perhaps - and I have left them as such; they are not useful tools (not to mention the poor choice of name, itself abominable for exposition) to cover most of the languages with which we are here concerned. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:26, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, PMA, the subfield business isn't off-topic; it lies at the heart of the difficulty, which has to do about perspective and balance and POV. If you regard linguistics as the Queen of Disciplines, any other considerations will be subordinate, such as whether 20-year-olds looking up "aorist" will find aid and comfort here, or a compounded headache. Apt terminology suitable for WP's non-specialist reader is unlikely to follow the assumption that theoretical linguistics is the pinnacle of all disciplines related to language learning. This is related to what Wareh was saying about how one reads the aorist in context, rather than as a theoretical abstraction. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:50, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Whether "general linguistics" is the Queen of the Disciplines is the heart of the question; what is off topic is whether it is less scientific - or pursued with more passion - than the studies of Alfred Korzybski.

But, if it helps, I remind you that there is precedent for this hybris; the ancient grammarians claimed that the study of Homer was the central and only science; it would be a key to all knowledge from cooking to geography - and Strabo (well-named man) shows that this is not, for once, a polemical exaggeration. So here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:00, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Cynwolfe, the 20-year-old looking for "aid and comfort" in his Greek language studies will not find comfort here, but will find a link to the appropriate place of aid and comfort--Aorist (Ancient Greek). This article is not just for Greek learners--it is a general article for the use of the term "aorist" in whatever language it is found with appropriate directions to more specific sites for those interest in specific languages. Part of the confusion here is the continual attempt to make this article solely about Greek. It isn't. --Taivo (talk) 19:47, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it should be about ancient Greek only; again, I'd prefer to start a new section below to show what I mean. For now, let me just remark that I spent a semester in grad school studying Greek and Latin metrics with one of the authors of this book; one might say the "mechanics" of metrics, though there was some consideration of how metrical structure affects rhetorical emphasis. Metrics obviously depends on the findings of linguistics — but it was not in any sense a linguistics course. With the same professor, I had an old-fashioned semester-long course in Greek composition, where we applied linguistic concepts. But it wasn't a course in linguistics, if that word has any meaning as an intellectual or academic discipline. Cynwolfe (talk) 20:57, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

This argument of Taivo's would be valid if this article were at Aorist (theoretical linguistics) - as it ought to be if it is going to be written in the obfuscations of "general linguistics"; but it isn't. As it is, the student of Greek - or equally Sanskrit or Bulgarian - should not be confronted with a feast of scraps of jargon; he should have the aorist explained to him in English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:05, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) No, PMAnderson, this article isn't "theoretical linguistics", it is General Linguistics. And there is a very appropriate place for the student of Greek aorist to find very detailed and precise information--it's called a textbook. Wikipedia is not a substitute for a proper textbook or reference grammar. But if someone is looking for information about the Greek aorist, there is a very appropriate place in Wikipedia to look--Aorist (Ancient Greek). This article before us is a general look at "aorist" cross-linguistically. As such, it is part of the realm of linguistics, not "theoretical", but "general". As a linguistics article it must conform to the proper scientific usages of linguistic terminology, not to the pedagogical tradition of a single language. --Taivo (talk) 20:12, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

This is a proposal that we should use the confusing, obscure, and unknown language of a dubious discipline rather than the usage of any of the languages concerned (for Bulgarian and Sanskrit use "aorist tense" also) - and that those who want an intelligible article should follow the hatnote. Unacceptable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:26, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

The purpose of this article is to describe the concepts that the aorist expresses (perfective or whatever aspect, past tense/time). Terms are used to label the concepts, to make explanation easier. If concepts are primary, then terms are secondary. Theoretically we can use any terms, as long as the description is correct. If the linguistic term "tense" is too confusing, what term used by classical scholars should we use instead? — Eru·tuon 20:52, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

If this article is about the functions of the aorist - in PIE and in the attested languages, then it should describe them. It should not do so in the debatable, confusing, and above all inaccurate terminology of the "perfective"; it should speak of the "narrative, ingressive, tragic ... aorist" and it should describe them; this can be done in summary - by cutting out the verbose example from Xenophon (which may belong in the article on the Greek Aorist) and the erroneous bafflegab about aspect - in no more space than we use now.

There is a similar list of actual functions for Sanskrit; there may well be for Bulgarian. When the reader has seen them, she will be able to say for herself how well this fits with perfective aspect (largely, but not entirely; it's a generalization and no more accurate than most such).

As for "tense": it would be simpler to say when the aorist usually describes past events (which, like aspect is most but not all of the time). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:20, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't know perfective aspect in Slavic languages well enough to say whether the aspectual meaning of the aorist is exactly equivalent, but isn't it accurate to say that it's similar? — Eru·tuon 20:56, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

They're all similar - not alike, not unalike, but such as sisters ought to be. But to say so - and nothing more - tells the reader nothing actual about the Slavic languages, or even the perfective, even if she knows the jargon; it's handwaving. If we say more, we can restrict that to a topic sentence - where vague generalization may actually be useful.

The way to explain the aorist - and be useful, if anybody is still interested in that - is not to assume the reader knows anybody's technical terms. Fortunately, this is not difficult, since we are discussing language, a matter of common experience; it merely needs to be done. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:16, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Draft Lead by G. Purevdorj

Good and very useful outline that you have made there, Taivo! I don't really have energy to get into this discussion, but I have tried to formulate an alternative lead, especially avoiding to use such extremely confusing terms as "aorist tense" and "aorist aspect" without quotation marks. I fancy that my suggestion is worded too technically, but you may consider using something in that vain. Establishing redirect pages would be a bad idea: who needs particular pages for idiosynchratic linguistic terminology applied to particular languages? Instead, this article might be a good means to provide explanations to the confused reader! (And a start at this: articles such as lexical aspect or perfective are in a catastrophic shape, but I fear it would take me at least one working week not only to present some appropriate model (which is not agreed upon), but to address the different linguistic conceptions of these forms. So I don't do it, at least not for the time being ...) Ok, here my suggestion:

Aorist (...) is a philological term that emerged from Indo-European studies. As such, it has been applied to a number of cognate forms that do not necessarily fit a unified semantic analysis. In the philological terminology of languages such as ..., it denotes a concept close to what is called perfective aspect in general linguistics (((that contrasts with marked imperfective and perfect forms that have a more restricted application))). In the philological terminology of ... it is applied to forms that denote a general or gnomic present tense. In this article, the use of the term “aorist” will be described for the respective philological traditions that employ it, without attempting to arrive at a unified or at least two unified definitions of what is common all aorist forms.

G Purevdorj (talk) 21:11, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

G Purevdorj, that's much closer to the lead as I think it should read than what we have now.  The current lead attempts to arrive at a single definition of aorist, but as you see, there isn't a single definition--it's a patchwork quilt and needs to be described as such.  --Taivo (talk) 21:58, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I also like this version. The only major quibble I have is that when it comes to modern languages, the aorist is either (1) past perfective (Bulgarian, Mod. Greek, Spanish, Lezgian, Georgian, etc.) or (2) an unmarked verb form or gnomic (Turkish, Ewe, Swahili, etc.). (1) is a stable usage, apart from langs like Spanish where 'preterit' predominates, but (2) is unstable: there are seldom two scholars who use 'aorist' with the same meaning for the same language, and reviewers often criticize such uses of the word. Therefore I think cases of (1) should constitute the bulk of our coverage of modern languages, whereas (2) should be a summary treatment per WP:WEIGHT. — kwami (talk) 01:44, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I think (hope) we can all agree that past perfective or something similar is one group of uses (this would include the Greek aorist indicative); perhaps an unmarked/perfective aspect or something similar is another group of uses; and a third group of uses are less clear. -- Radagast3 (talk) 02:03, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I think this may be a nice source to paraphrase somewhere:

the PIE aspectual opposition of present/aorist/perfect, indicating, respectively, imperfective, perfective, and stative aspect, was maintained to a great extent, especially in the non-indicative moods and the nonfinite forms. However, in the indicative 'tenses,' the opposition of present/aorist/perfect was combined with distinctions of time that eventually overshadowed the original distinctions of aspect so that the aorist could be used simply as a past tense and the perfect came to develop a resultative use. (Teffeteller, "Ancient Greek", in ELL2; scare quotes in the original)

— kwami (talk) 07:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Kwami again omits the elephant. The meaning of aorist in Classical Greek has been stable for two thousand years, and is neither strictly past nor strictly perfective. But I like this myself, and have adapted it; properly, however, the blanks should be filled in after the article is written. 

I have retained the statement from the existing text that the article does not cover Ewe or Turkish; if somebody wants to write sections on them, I have no objection - but the lead should summarize the article which exists.  Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:43, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Adjusted after Taivo's intervention to "not yet" cover. I think Taivo and I are heading the same place for once, and I do not really care if this minor point gets reverted; but please do consider if we want, until somebody bothers to add it, if we want to promise Turkish and not deliver. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:02, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

"is neither strictly past nor strictly perfective". This is a recurring misunderstanding. The aorist has always been perfective. It starts out in PIE as a simple perfective (or so most reconstructions seem to have it), and ends up in several modern IE languages, incl. Mod Gk, as a perfective past. Classical Greek would appear to occupy part of the transition from pure aspect to tense+aspect. — kwami (talk) 21:44, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

That's what you believe. Your only sources for this are a few hasty books which oversimplify the situation: that the aorist usually has aspect. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:46, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, no, PMAnderson, Kwami and I have provided multiple sources for this analysis of the Proto-Indo-European and earliest stages of the Ancient Greek aorist. The grammar which I have been citing (A.T. Robertson) is nearly 1500 pages long and focuses entirely on the historical development of Koine grammar from the earliest evidence in Classical Greek and Indo-European on to the second century C.E. I wouldn't call that a "hasty book which oversimplifies". The bibliography alone is 24 pages long. And your arguments are almost entirely based on Rijksbaron, whose comments were removed from the previous version of the article because they seemed to be contradictory. --Taivo (talk) 22:01, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

(left) Taivo's post above does two things:

• When losing the discussion, change the topic; with luck nobody else will notice. This thread is not about the syntax of the aorist in PIE, as the second half of Taivo's post shows; it's about the aorist in general, thoughout the history of IE languages - snd it is those assertions which depend upon the misreading of carelessly written sources.
• It is quite true that Taivo and Kwami revert-warred against the clear statements of a source they have not consulted - because it did nbot support their point of view.

Neither of these is anything to boast of. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:09, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

PMAnderson, we are working hard to be civil in this new discussion. Please do not (mis)characterize my comments for scoring points or make accusations of edit-warring that were rejected when you previously filed an edit warring report. Things have been polite up until now. Please back off from the incivility that damaged this discussion previously. --Taivo (talk) 22:20, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Proving a negative

Sep, so far we don't have any conclusive proof from you that any uses of the aorist do not express aspect. The example you gave, the past-within-past, can easily be analyzed as having perfectivity along with anteriority. Anteriority is a natural implication of perfective aspect, since an action is most easily viewed as a simple whole when it occurred in the past. Unless there's a clear example of past-within-past that is not perfective, we don't have a reason to qualify the statement that the aorist is perfective. — Eru·tuon 15:58, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

• This is false, to begin with. The past-within-past is clearly described by Rijksbaron - and it does not make any aspectual assertions - or he would say so. Your analysis is Original Research. The demand that I disprove the OR is demand for proving a negative.
• It is also special pleading; in paleontology, they call this sort of thing a "just-so story". It may work that way; it may not; without a time-machine and extensive discussion with a native speaker, there's no way to tell.
• Thirdly, I repeat the quote from Teffeteller: the PIE aspectual opposition of present/aorist/perfect, indicating, respectively, imperfective, perfective, and stative aspect, was maintained to a great extent, especially in the non-indicative moods and the nonfinite forms. However, in the indicative 'tenses,' the opposition of present/aorist/perfect was combined with distinctions of time that eventually overshadowed the original distinctions of aspect so that the aorist could be used simply as a past tense and the perfect came to develop a resultative use. Since the resultative use is the normal sense of the perfect in the earliest attested Greek poetry and prose, this is in effect another assertion that the classical Greek aorist is sometimes a past tense; it is certainly gradually ceasing to be an aspect. That's what Teffeteller is writing about. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:46, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that I was coming up with my own analysis. I don't have any examples of the past-in-the-past to analyze. Hopefully I'll be able to get ahold of Rijksbaron's book. From the very limited preview available on Google Books, it looks like he explains the past-in-the-past as derived from the aspectual meaning, but the preview is very limited. If that is how he explains it, I have no disagreement. — Eru·tuon 22:13, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

It seems like we have one area of agreement: you say that the past-tense use of the Greek aorist derives from the aspectual meaning. Taivo and Kwami would agree with that, I think; the disagreement lies in whether the past-tense meaning ever entirely supplants the aspectual meaning. Is this an accurate assessment? — Eru·tuon 21:09, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

That is an accurate assessment, Erutuon. --Taivo (talk) 22:16, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

It does not appear to be. You are insisting on making a generalization - for which there is no credible authority. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:26, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't Rijksbaron state such a thing in his section on the past-in-the-past? (Maybe he doesn't, since I've only seen the limited Google preview.) And doesn't Teffeteller above allow such an explanation, when he says that time comes to replace aspect? — Eru·tuon 22:31, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

• No.
• So what? That isolated sentence is not absolutely incompatible with any theory - even the "Greeks had nothing but aspect" extremism. But Teffeteller's sentence doesn't support either that or the thesis you put forth - and it is not the natural wording for an author who accepts either of them. That's original synthesis, another thing we're not supposed to do. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:57, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

That's not synthesis since that's nearly exactly what A.T. Robertson wrote in A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research. Kwami has listed many other sources that say the same thing as well--that the past tense meaning of aorist arose as an implicature out of the earlier perfective meaning. --Taivo (talk) 23:37, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Erutuon, given that the Modern Greek aorist is still a perfective (past perfective), it's reasonable to suppose that it never lost its aspectual meaning. I've asked several times for Sep or others to provide a source that shows it did, but they have not done so. Closest we have are discussions of it being unmarked, and a few statements that the aorist indicative can be used as a past tense, but nothing to suggest that the aspectual nature ever disappeared. — kwami (talk) 00:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I would not say any such thing, but then I know something about the complex and largely undocumented evolution of Byzantine Greek. It is likely that the fully unaspected uses of the classical aorist disappeared in ; it may also be that the new syntax of Demotic formed a novel function - as Bulgarian appears to have done; it certainly formed much completely new morphology. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:43, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

If it is undocumented then how would you know? Are you just guessing here? mark nutley (talk) 17:09, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I said, advisedly, "largely undocumented". We have much Byzantine prose; but most of it is written by people trying, more or less competently, to imitate the grammar of a thousand years before. Seeing through that to the actual evolution of the spoken language is chancy - and the one thing clear is that the process was complicated.

By the end of the period, there was a new vowel system, completely new auxiliary particles, and much new syntax; the future changed from analytic to synthetic. It is clear that there were vast changes; it is not so clear what or when they were - or how many of them; that the Demotic aorist has one principal function (not dissimilar to the ancient narrative aorist) is no sound argument that the classical aorist did not have others. 17:25, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Where to next? 19 September

I note that some editors, particularly kwami, have issues with the treatment of Greek that may never be resolved, and I suggest that we focus our attention during the next week or so on (1) adding uncontroversial sourced material on usage in other languages, and (2) putting forward for discussion suggestions for a new lead. -- Radagast3 (talk) 03:16, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't see where I'm opposed to the traditional treatments of Greek. I just don't want them presented as the definition of "tense", especially since we link that term to an article which contradicts them. There are plenty of ways of keeping the wording clear ('tense-aspect stems', 'aorist indicative', etc); the problem from my POV has been insisting that linguistics is somehow inappropriate in an article dealing with a linguistic topic, and I don't think we should have to resort to scare quotes the way some of the classicist texts have. — kwami (talk) 05:43, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

You've articulated objections that go well beyond the use of the word "tense." You've objected to the standard term "present imperative", for example. I'm suggesting we shelve those objections for now, and focus on some of Taivo's ideas -- I'm hopeful that we can get consensus on those. After that, we may all be in a better frame of mind to discuss your objections. -- Radagast3 (talk) 06:33, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

That's the same point: a traditional phrase that does not mean the sum of its component parts. The "present imperative" is no more a present tense than the "aorist tense" is a tense. We can either fill the text with scare quotes, ignore the traditional terminology, or include the traditional terminology but explain that it doesn't mean what it appears to. But simply using the trad. terms without explanation is unacceptable, as it will completely confound the reader. — kwami (talk) 06:51, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

On the contrary, the reader reading the "Greek" section will expect to see terminology used in standard classical and/or NT Greek texts. Any attempt on Wikipedia's part to invent a new terminology is what will confuse the reader. Furthermore, any such attempt is almost by definition WP:OR. In any case the term "present imperative" makes no claim to be "a present tense." -- Radagast3 (talk) 06:56, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

This is no "invention of new terminology" any more than rephrasing Galen's "evil humors in the ether" to "airborne pathogens" is inventing new terminology or OR. We rephrase traditional simple vocabulary, used for the purposes of pedagogy, into scientifically accurate terminology all the time in encyclopedic writing. That's the function of encyclopedic writing, to set out a scientific baseline for every article so that people get accuracy. No one is advocating disrespecting the traditional terms used in pedagogy, but not in scientific writing, but even scholars in the early part of the 20th century who were forced to used the traditional terms because of the time they wrote, bemoaned the fact that the traditional terms were not accurate. We will be respectful of the traditional terms used in pedagogy here and make clear to the reader what is meant, but as an encyclopedia, we have a responsibility to the science underlying the pedagogy. This is proper encyclopedic practice. This is the point of my first subpoint above--that linguistics is the science underlying all language articles just as chemistry is the science underlying all articles on elements, physics is the science underlying all articles on motion, etc. --Taivo (talk) 13:29, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

It may not be new; but it is not customary - because it does not fit (classical) Greek very well . A discussion in such terms would say that the Greek grammatical forms are not exactly temporal, and not exactly aspected, as Kwami's quote from Teffeteller suggests; but in the space required to say that, we can have the one paragraph required to summarize what the Greek aorist is. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:52, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

There's no reason we can't be explicit in our wording. That isn't going to confuse anybody, and will prevent confusion. If we mean 'aorist aspect', we can say 'aorist aspect'. If we mean 'aorist inflection', we can say 'aorist inflection'. We can mention that different scholars may call either or both of those the 'aorist tense', but since many acknowledge it is not a tense, and anyway do not appear to be consistent with each other in what that phrase means, we shouldn't call it that ourselves. Can you give me an example of where the phrase 'aorist tense' would prevent confusion? — kwami (talk) 21:49, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

In the beginning of the article, to serve the vast bulk of readers who have read any of the thousands of recent works which speak of the "aorist tense" and have never heard of "aspect". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:50, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

The way that we are trying to word the article it avoids both the exact phrases "aorist tense" and "aorist aspect" and just says "aorist" or "aorist indicative". That way the beginning reader doesn't have to worry about it--he/she sees "aorist" and knows what the article is talking about. However, you are setting up a false reader because the reader only interested in the Greek aorist isn't going to stop here to read, but is going to move on to Aorist (Ancient Greek) anyway. --Taivo (talk) 21:53, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

the reader only interested in the Greek aorist isn't going to stop here to read, That would be true if this article were under Aorist (theoretical linguistics). It is not true now - but I note this touching faith in the universal efficacy of hatnotes. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:57, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

This article, to remind you, PMAnderson, isn't about theoretical linguistics, it is about the uses of the word "aorist" cross-linguistically. As such, it is doubly necessary to use proper and correct linguistic terminology, just as it is incumbent upon all scientific articles to use proper and correct terminology appropriate to that field. --Taivo (talk) 22:08, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Insistence on the dialect of one subfield - whether it is "general linguistics" or general semantics - to the detriment of comprehensibility is the mark of a pedant. Calling it "correct" is provincialism; let us have no more of this blather. An effort to impose it - without consensus - is at the root of the late brouhaha; it remains as unacceptable now as it was a week or a month ago. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:15, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Yet another straw man. Are these purposeful?

General Semantics is the formal name of a specific model. It's not even linguistic semantics! When we say "general linguistics", we mean the general field of linguistics, not any specific model. — kwami (talk) 00:54, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

If you meant "linguistics in general", you wouldn't be demanding a particular vocabulary, not commonly used nor useful in describing most of the languages with which this article is concerned. You mean "general linguistics", a set of alleged pseudo-algebraic generalizations - and, like other attempted generalizations in other fields, a subfield clad in pretension and an artificial vocabulary. I trust it is misrepresented by the claims on this talk-page; I do not yet believe that its practitioners have yet descended to claiming to hold The Only True Science, the Only Real Terminology, or the Key to all Mysteries - those hallmarks of pseudoscience - but I am reluctantly prepared to be convinced. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:36, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with your characterization of general linguistic vocabulary. "Perfective" is a very common term in language description. It is much more common than "aorist", for example, which doesn't have a specific technical meaning, but is language-specific. For example, all five of the grammars that I referred to for the Kartvelian section, each written by a different scholar, from the U.S., Germany, and Russia, used "perfective" in describing parts of the verb morphology referring to perfective aspect. "Perfective" is common in Slavic studies and elsewhere. I don't know what specific terminology you object to, but given the fact that proper linguistic terminology is quite common in language documentation, I daresay you may be overstating how "rare" it is. In this article, where we are describing a term that is used differently in different languages and language families, it is absolutely critical that proper terminology be applied. "Perfective", "aspect", "tense" are such common linguistic terms that it's impossible to imagine a situation where they would be objected to by a mainstream scholar. However, the term "screeve" is used only by Caucasian scholars in describing something similar to what we would call "verb classes" in describing any other language or what are commonly called "conjugations" in Latin and Greek pedagogical grammars. That's a true example of "rare" linguistic terminology. None of the proper linguistic terminology that you are objecting to here, PMAnderson, even approaches that level of rarity and obscurity. --Taivo (talk) 17:50, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, no aorist, despite its limited domain of application, is more common -even in recent publications - than perfective (note that several of these hits are addressing the confusion between "perfect" and "perfective" - and others are exhibiting it). The rest of this appears to be almost equally fact-free. Spare us these claims of universal spplicability; please consider editing an article - whatever it may be, it's not this one - where rare, obscure, confusing, ill-defined, and much-misused jargon is appropriate.

As for Kartvelian, if using "perfective" is the best and clearest way to explain it, we'll use it when we get to it. But I see to reason to do so in someone so committed to non-consensus language as to expunge "conjugation" - the standard term for the verbs of Indo-European languages (and an order of magnitude more common than "perfective") - from Wikipedia. Whatever the status of "general linguistics" in the hands of actual scholars, this is a declaration of opposition to the use of English - which is policy. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:19, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, PMAnderson, but the level of invective that you marshal against civil answers is always amazing to me. I apparently wasn't clear enough in my request that you actually list the terms that you object to in this article. I am guessing that you object to "aspect" as a proper term, but what else? I'm sure it will be an easy task to show you any number of references to the languages under discussion in this article that use that term to describe the "aorist". But, to remind you, this article is not just about Greek, so just because there is a tradition of using one term or another in Greek doesn't mean that the term is inappropriate. It is vital in any cross-linguistic article to use a standard scientific terminology so that readers can correctly compare the meaning of "aorist" in Svan with the meaning of "aorist" in Sanskrit and Greek and Quenya. --Taivo (talk) 19:48, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

"Usually"

While "aorist" clearly carries aspectual content in Greek, Georgian, and Svan, the linguists who described Mingrelian and Laz are clear that "aorist" in those languages is a tense that can be combined with both perfective and imperfective aspects. So "usually" is correct in that sentence of the lead--"aorist" is usually perfective aspect (but not always). --Taivo (talk) 20:14, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

And while much of the Greek aorist is aspected, not all of it is; unless one stretches "aspect" to include relative time. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:25, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I have asked for that ref several times; it would be helpful if you responded. We have numerous refs that time is not inherent to the aorist, but only an implicature, or indeed just the normal implicature of a perfective. — kwami (talk) 20:54, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

And I have given you the reference every time:Rijksbaron, Semantics $6.3.1. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:00, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

And Rijksbaron contradicts this elsewhere. Since I don't have access to that volume, it would be helpful if you were to reproduce part of it, or if you could provide other scholars who quote or summarize R on this point. — kwami (talk) 21:05, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

No, he doesn't. You have repeatedly dragged up the same second-hand quotation, which says something different from, but not incompatible with, his own book. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:11, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Since WP is based on secondary sources, that second-hand assessment trumps what we might extract from his own work. — kwami (talk) 00:00, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Also, given the common assertion in old or in more recent but cursory treatments that the aorist is a grammatical past tense, the statement that it is not is quite relevant, and is well sourced. I had both POVs, but you objected to the argument as being overly technical. The current wording is no more technical than the rest of the article. If you have a specific objection, we can address that, but please don't just delete relevant points that you, for whatever reason, don't like. — kwami (talk) 21:01, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

If that's all you want to say, there are better sources - and less elephantine language. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:11, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Please share. — kwami (talk) 23:58, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

• By the way, there are more sides in the pointless war on what's "inherent" or "constitutive" in the aorist: Dahl's for "transformitivity". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:00, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Hardly pointless; for some this may be the whole point of coming here.

Yes, there are numerous POVs. Since you didn't like the debate here, perhaps we can address this in the Greek aorist article. — kwami (talk) 21:05, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Tense and aspect in the languages of Europe p. 141; +T is defined some chapters earlier. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:14, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma

Is this sentence necessary? Is it consensus? There is a list of sources on the other side as well; as the reverter who insists on it well knows.

Past time is not inherent in the aorist, but rather is an implicature, as is common for perfective verb forms

For that matter, is there any reason under heaven to say such a thing, when we have already said that the aorist can be used for present and future events? Does it mean any more? Does it mean anything, outside the realm of the Platonic Forms? How many readers have a hope of understanding it? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:13, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Ideally we would have both sides, but you've objected to that too. There are numerous superficial descriptions that describe the aorist as "a past tense", and even Comrie describes it as being primarily past. Many more scholarly treatments, however, deny that it's inherently past. This is certainly a potential point of confusion, so yes, I think it's appropriate to address the issue directly. If you have a better way of addressing it, by all means present it. — kwami (talk) 18:45, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes; I object to the language. If this says no more than that the aorist doesn't have to be used of the past, which is the plain meaning of the ordinary sense of these silver-dollar words, it is already worded better. If not, what is the difference? Explain it to me, and then we can both explain it to the reader. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia a device for language reform?

The frankness of this this post by Taivo reveals two roots of the difficulties here. He would like to expunge from Wikipedia not merely "aorist tense" and "tense" (in the traditional sense), but "conjugation", claiming that it is a truly rare word.

• First, no, it isn't. It's more common than "perfective"; it's more common than most of the words we've been arguing about.
• Second, it may (arguendo) have problems in highly non-Indo-European languages; it may even have problems in analytic languages like English - but this article deals primarily with synthetic Indo-European languages: Greek, Sanskrit, Bulgarian, Old Church Slavonic, where "conjugation" is unambiguous and established terminology. They're the ones that have aorists.

But the fundamental difficulty here is the purpose of Wikipedia. Are we here to communicate with our readers, in English as she exists and as they understand it? Or are we here to reform English to something quite different?

Most of us think we are here to communicate: Wareh, Cynwolfe, Akhilleus, Radagast, Dbachmann, myself. Two editors think otherwise. Suggestions for where to go from here? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid that my writing wasn't as clear as it should have been and so you misunderstood what I meant by "rare". I did not mean "conjugations", but "screeve". I simply used "verb classes" or "conjugations" as alternate terms with similar meanings to "screeve". "Screeve" is the rare term, not "conjugations". If you'll read that sentence again carefully, you'll see that was the meaning although a quick reading might lead to the misunderstanding that you got from it. The two sentences are structured, "'Screeve' is what others would call a 'verb class' or 'conjugation'. That [screeve] is a rare word." --Taivo (talk) 19:52, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

And, I'm afraid, PMAnderson, you are constantly overstating your support and understating ours. You seem to consistently forget to count Erutuon and MarkNutley when you list editors who insist on accurate terminology and focus only on Kwami and myself. Your assertion that correct terminology is somehow incomprehensible, is, well, incomprehensible. --Taivo (talk) 19:54, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Erutonon does not insist on anything; Mark Nutley also chiefly asks questions. Only you two insist on an obscure terminology which your own sources say does not fit (ancient) Greek very well; as far as I can see it doesn't fit Sanskrit or modern Bulgarian very well either. . Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:23, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what you're reading when you say "your own sources say does not fit". A.T. Robertson clearly wrote that the term "tense" does not fit Ancient Greek. Is that the term you mean? --Taivo (talk) 21:42, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

That's one statement of an extreme position, 75 95 years ago (from 1914; Robertson died in 1934) - doubtless in response to unwise claims that Greek is just like Latin, which it isn't. It isn't a simplified version of Russian, either. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:46, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

And in fact what Robertson seems to be saying - since the local copy is in deep storage, I have to rely on the net for now - is that Greek tenses don't have the same functions as English ones. This is quite true, and not at all his discovery. Since he continues to use "tense" - and even identifies it with chronos - this appears to fail verification - again. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

We have numerous citations from the past decade that say the same thing, as you know full well. — kwami (talk) 22:03, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

No, I don't know that. I know that you have cited careless statements making excessive generalizations from authors discussing something else. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:09, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

You have completely misread Robertson. He calls them "tenses", but very clearly says that he is stuck with an inappropriate term for verb forms that don't mark time. In the days before the term "aspect" came into use, that's about as unequivocal a description of aspect as one can get. And the date of his writing shows that this issue of how to describe the Greek verb forms is not a new one at all, but has been discussed by savvy linguists for nearly 100 years--long before they had the handy term "aspect" to hang their hats on. It's not an "extreme position" at all, being echoed in other works that have been cited here before--Goetchius' grammar of Koine and Morwood's grammar of Classical, to name just two of the many that have been cited by myself and Kwami. --Taivo (talk) 22:38, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

A quotation - or a section number - would be helpful. I should be able to see Robertson by Monday. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:34, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I think the page being referred to is here. — Eru·tuon 15:21, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Erutuon, that is the correct page. It clearly shows that Robertson considered time to not be an element of Greek "tense" (or at least not the primary one), so his use of "tense" corresponds to our present term "aspect" and not to our present understanding of "tense"--as a time marker. PMAnderson's deletion of the Robertson reference in the article was unjustified and I will revert his change. --Taivo (talk) 15:33, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

This looks like more research by Google. I agree with Wareh, a few sections up: this is not as decisive as it may appear out of context. The very next page makes clear what Robertson is actually talking about: the all-too-common habit of his contemporaries of saying that Euripides, for example, "used the aorist for the future"; a natural bad habit when most readers of one's book - and the ones the author expects to meet - are in training to construe Greek literally into English. What he means is correct; what he says is exaggerated. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:45, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

It may well be that there is a case that all the aorists in the limited corpus of the New Testament are aspected; it must be the case that most of them are. That's what Robertson's business - not Greek as a whole. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:09, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

The book weighs about 7 pounds and is sitting in all its 1500-page glory on my desk at home so don't accuse me of "Google research" (I bought it at Cody's Used Bookstore on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley about 1992). And I've read both the sections on aorist in their entirety (the section under "morphology" and the section under "syntax"). His quote is not taken out of context in the context of his entire treatment of the aorist. You're reading your own POV into his comments and stretching to find a "context" that fits it. His discussion is sound, and even if you think the NT has a limited view of the aorist, Robertson's work was a historical grammar, so his work encompassed all phases of Greek language history up until the 3d century CE. You can't get away from the crystal clear comment that he called "tense" in the sense of time an inappropriate connection to the meaning of aorist in Koine. You can't pull something off the next page and call that "context". --Taivo (talk) 17:56, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, I will see if it has been retrieved and the cobwebs beaten off it; and if so, I will comment further. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:35, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Still Edit Warring

This is edit warring: Here you deleted a section. Here I reverted your deletion because you had not justified it on the Talk Page. This is clear edit warring. The WP:BRD process says discuss after someone reverts your edit. Revert your reversion, PMAnderson, and discuss on Talk Page before escalating this. --Taivo (talk) 18:15, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I reverted PMA`s last edit as it was just being pointy mark nutley (talk) 18:23, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Is that hounding, or do you have a comment on the merits? I dispute the statement, since - as Kwami acknowledges - it is one-sided; I regard it as unhelpful and POV for reasons which I shall explain to him. Is the Climate Change case still open. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:16, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

You disputed it when we had both sides. Why should we take anything you say seriously? If it's biased, then propose a solution other than gutting it. — kwami (talk) 19:20, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I already have, some 18 hours ago. My questions in the section above are quite serious, not mere rhetoric, and remain unanswered. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:23, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

You are still edit warring with this revert, PMAnderson. When will you learn? --Taivo (talk) 19:33, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

When you and Kwami learn not to vandalize tags; I suppose. I'm still waiting to see if either of you can discuss this; starting with an explanation that reaches outside the web of self-referential verbiage here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:45, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

We have discussed it many times already in pages of rhetoric here. You don't recognize it because you automatically reject any argument that doesn't reflect your POV. You don't accept any of our references because they don't fit your POV. Until you reach consensus to remove the sentence, then it stays. --Taivo (talk) 19:48, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

No; because I don't accept "but we discussed that before" somewhere, somewhen as a responsive answer. But Taivo's post of 19:51 is an actual answer, almost in English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:08, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Questions

1. Does this sentence mean anything more than "the aorist doesn't have to be used about the past" which would be the normal meaning of "not inherent"?
2. If it does mean more, what?
3. if it doesn't, why repeat it from two paragraphs before? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:47, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes and yes. The sentence says that the past tense meaning that many claim is the primary meaning of aorist is actually just an implication from the perfective use and not the primary meaning. It explains why is it often equated with the English past tense. --Taivo (talk) 19:51, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't do the last very well, since the past tense is inherently past. But let me see if I can finish Englishing it; Taivo has made great strides. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:57, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Not difficult; I'm a classicist, and have met Aristotelianism before - but it's not about observables. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:08, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I reverted you for the reason i said, you were being pointy, and i also see you again accuse editors of vandalism when it is not, perhaps it is time you stepped away from this article? Just for a while mark nutley (talk) 21:37, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Dependent clauses

The article states:

In conditional and dependent clauses, the aorist is usually subjunctive or optative (see sequence of tenses); these usages have the same range as the indicative.

What does this mean? What range of meaning does the aorist in dependent clauses share with the indicative? Aspectual, temporal? — Eru·tuon 20:23, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Both. The sources say that any function expressed by the indicative is expressed by the subjunctive or optative in a conditional or other dependent clause. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:27, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I guess I don't like the statement because it doesn't distinguish between places where an aorist expresses past time (such as an aorist optative in indirect speech) and where the mood determines time instead (subjunctive in future more vivid, for example). But perhaps such distinctions aren't appropriate for a general article. — Eru·tuon 20:48, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the sources I have uniformly state that the aorist in non-indicative moods is purely aspectual. --Taivo (talk) 21:29, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Do they say anything about aorist in indirect speech? — Eru·tuon 21:48, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll keep my eyes open. But since the aorist can express either in main clauses, it should express either in dependenct clauses. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:17, 24 September 2010 (UTC)