Stephen H. Levinsohn, «Aspect and Prominence in the Synoptic Accounts of Jesus’ Entry into Jerusalem», Vol. 23 (2010) 161-174
Porter’s analysis of the prominence conveyed by the aorist, imperfect and present is contrasted with Longacre’s claims about the same tenseforms. Both are wrong in equating respectively “foreground” (Porter) and “background” (Longacre) with the imperfect. Relevance Theory claims that non-default forms may result in a variety of cognitive effects. This explains why imperfectives correlate with background, yet sometimes have foregrounding effects. Additional non-default forms and structures can also be accommodated, such as inchoative aorist "erxanto" and the combination of aorist "egeneto" and a temporal expression. Finally, a non-default form or structure may give prominence not to the event concerned, but to the following event(s).
166 Stephen H. Levinsohn
aorist. Elsewhere, I claim that such a combination “picks out from the
general background the specific circumstance for the foreground events
that are to follow”16.
Finally, instead of the imperfect of Mark 11,9, Luke 19,37-38 has
an inchoative aorist (ἤρξαντο), followed by a post-nuclear present
(imperfective) participle (λέγοντες).
It appears, then, that where imperfects and HPs are used in Mark for
prominence, different devices are employed in Luke, including some in
the aorist.
D) Critique
Porter’s claims about the prominence associated with the different
tense-forms seem to be built on the assumption that, if a non-default
member of a set is used, then that member will be more prominent than
the default member. Nowhere does he consider whether a non-default
member of a set could be less prominent than the default member17. Such
a position is highly suspect.
This is shown by considering stories which contain sentences with
verb phrases of the type “used to…”. When students are asked to analyse
such stories, they invariably classify the sentences with “used to…” as
background, since they describe the circumstances for the main, storyline
events18. And they do so, even though “used to…” is a non-default
imperfective tense-form.
Luke 2,41 provides an instance in which a number of English translations
render the Greek imperfect “used to…”: “Every year his parents used to
go (ἐπορεύοντο) to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover”19. Porter
would presumably classify such an imperfect as “stage”, but his claim
that staging is an act of foregrounding20 is at variance with the function
of staging since, among other things, it is “the verb form of description,
16
S.H. Levinsohn, Discourse Features of New Testament Greek: A Coursebook on the
Information Structure of New Testament Greek (Dallas, TX 22000) 177.
17
Although Westfall (Analysis of Prominence 76) recognises that prominence “is a
pragmatic effect that is achieved, for example, by the use of the marked … tense in a specific
context”, she does not suggest that a marked tense-form could be used for backgrounding,
either.
18
For discussion of such a story, see S.H. Levinsohn, Self-Instruction Materials on
Narrative Discourse Analysis (online at http://www.sil.org/~levinsohns 2010) §5.1.
19
Barclay, the Jerusalem Bible, the New American Bible and the New American Stand-
ard Bible. See also Levinsohn Self-Instruction §5.3.1.
20
See Porter Prominence 60.
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