154 Francis G. H. Pang its peculiar position in the aspectual system135. Therefore, although the Future has “distinctive yet tense-related morphological features” and is related to a way of viewing the action, it is not fully aspectual or aspectually vague since no paradigmatic choice is offered136. Thus on the one hand it shares the environment of other fully aspectual tense-forms but on the other hand it lacks formally a meaningful opposition within the verbal network, thus the Future is explained under the aspectuality system but not fully aspectual. Thus to summarize, Porter’s approach to the aspect of Future tense is truly abductive. He tries to come up with an intelligent explanation, a hypothesis, regarding the place of the Future in the Greek verbal system from the available data, i.e. its paradigm. Before moving on to the discussion of the semantic feature of the Future, a brief note concerning the theory-driven criticism towards Porter’s model is necessary. Campbell argues that Porter should consider the future periphrasis as a possible opposition to the Future Indicative. He criticizes Porter’s approach as circular, arguing that since both the aspect of the Future and its opposition are unknown, Porter should not use one to advance his argument for another137. This is where the theory-driven argument is used once again to go against Porter’s model. Campbell concludes that Porter’s model “may be regarded as an instance in which adherence to a linguistic model becomes overbearing”138. Campbell’s suggestion of using the future periphrasis as an opposition is perhaps possible on the theoretical level, but practically impossible to apply and verify since the Future Periphrasis is too rare in the NT139. The theory-driven criticism has already been touched on in the above section. One has to remember that practically there is hardly a pure theory-neutral method. If Porter’s insistence on finding a meaningful opposition is accused of being theory-driven, the same can be said about 135 Porter stresses that the most important dictum for constructing a linguistic model is that where there is a difference of form there is a difference in meaning or function. Evans opposes and argues that the dictum is flawed. However, his example of differences in verb ending (form) between thematic and athematic verbs is not valid since the difference in verb endings between these two types of verbs is not a difference in form, but a difference in paradigm. See Porter, “Defense”, 34 and Evans, Verbal Syntax, 41. 136 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 413. For vagueness see R. Kempson, Semantic Theory (Cam- bridge 1977) 123-38. 137 He considers Kimmo Huovila’s approach under the same assumption and thus vul- nerable to the same mistake. Huovila, “Aspectual Nesting”, 62-5 and Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 136. 138 He also rejects McKay’s proposal of using [+intention] in favor of the accepted aspec- tual oppositions (perfective and imperfective). Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 136, 139. 139 Even he himself admits that the future periphrasis is not a synthetic tense-form and thus difficult to compare with the Future Indicative. Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 136.