Stanley E. Porter - Matthew Brook O’Donnell, «The Greek Verbal Network Viewed from a Probabilistic
Standpoint: An Exercise in Hallidayan Linguistics», Vol. 14 (2001) 3-41
This study explores numerical or distributional
markedness in the verbal network of the Greek of the New Testament. It
extends the systemic analysis of Porter (Verbal Aspect in the Greek of
the New Testament, 1989), making use of the Hallidayan concept of
probabilistic grammar, which posits a typology of systems where features
are either "equiprobable".both features are equally distributed
(0.5/0.5).or "skewed".one feature is marked by its low frequency of
occurrence (0.9/0.1). The results confirm that the verbal aspect system of
the Greek of the New Testament is essentially independent of other verbal
systems, such as voice and mood.
Stanley E. Porter and Matthew Brook O’Donnell
38
Of the eleven interactive systems analyzed, in only one set of semantic
choices does it appear that choice of verbal aspectual semantic features is
affected by other verbal semantic choices. In interactive system test 6, the
choice of +projective results in a skewed distribution of +perfective over
–perfective, whereas system 2 for ASPECT1 on its own has an equiproba-
ble distribution. Other than this one instance, there is no statistical evi-
dence that choice of semantic features regarding verbal aspect are affected
by other verbal semantic choices in the Greek verbal network.
6. Conclusions
This study has accomplished a number of goals. The first is that it has
introduced Hallidayan statistical analysis into study of the Greek of the
New Testament, in particular statistical analysis of the Greek verbal net-
work. Halliday’s suggestive comments have proved a fertile ground for
developing a set of statistical tests for the Greek verbal network, as de-
scribed and graphically displayed in the Greek verbal network of Porter in
his Verbal Aspect. The second accomplishment is that this study has led to
further development of this verbal network, by adding sets of systems for
CAUSALITY, NUMBER and PARTICIPATION, and their respective sub-systems
(Appendix B, below, names these sub-systems for the sake of clarity,
although they are not all so designated above or in the system network in
Appendix A). These add important dimensions to the network and ena-
ble this diagram to represent the complete Greek verbal network.
Although some of the systems may require further development in the
light of subsequent research, at least at this point they can be entered into
discussion as part of an integrated verbal system network. The third
accomplishment is to study the statistical probabilities that attach to the
various systems within this network of Greek verbal structure. The
Hallidayan framework, with necessary modifications, has been used, label-
ling the statistical frequencies in terms of equiprobable or skewed distri-
butional results. These systems have been studied and analyzed from seve-
ral different perspectives. The most obvious perspective is to analyze the
distributional probabilities of each of the individual systems over the
whole of the Greek of the New Testament. Another is to analyze these dis-
tributional patterns over the various sub-corpora that make up the Greek
New Testament. The results of these studies have indicated that initial
predictions made on the basis of Porter’s previous analysis have in vir-
tually all instances been confirmed through this statistical study. The last
accomplishment is to select for further analysis a number of interactive
systems in the network, especially those that involve choice regarding
semantic features of the aspectual systems, to determine how choice of
verbal aspect may or may not be affected by selection of other semantic
features within the Greek verbal network. The results have indicated that