Aspect and Prominence in the Synoptic Accounts of Jesus' Entry into Jerusalem 169 that many linguists have observed. Luke 19,28 (sec. C) provides an example. When an imperfect occurs towards the end of a narrative unit and seems to be the most relevant way of portraying the event concerned because it is readily perceived as ongoing or not completed at the point of reference, then the situation changes, especially if it is preceded by an aorist in the same sentence, as in Mark 10,52 (sec. B). In such a context, it is much more likely to be a foreground event with the imperfect selected to bring out its ongoing nature. We also have to take the author’s style into account. The Greek reader of Luke-Acts may well become aware that the author consistently selects the imperfect when it is the most relevant way of portraying the event concerned.33 The Greek reader of Mark, in contrast, may well gain the impression that the author likes to use the imperfect for peak events, even when it is not readily apparent that it is the most relevant way of portraying the event concerned34. This leads to an association of the imperfect with foregrounding as the peak of an episode is approached --- an association which the reader of Luke-Acts is unlikely to make. As for instances of the imperfect when it is NOT the most relevant way of portraying the event concerned, the added implicatures will again vary. In Mark 11,5, I have already suggested that, because the event had already been predicted, the effect is likely to be that of backgrounding. Contrast this example with John 8,31-32: “Jesus was saying (Ἔλεγεν) to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free’ ”. Because this speech is not readily perceived as ongoing at the point of reference, the effect of using the imperfect is likely to be that of foregrounding, because it “incites or provokes the conversational exchange of the rest of the chapter”35. One advantage of the Relevance Theory approach to markedness is that it allows the inchoative aorist of Luke 19,37 to have a similar effect to the imperfect in the parallel passage in Mark’s Gospel. The imperfect of Mark 11,9 was judged to foreground what the crowd started and 33 Barnard (Prominence Indicator 29) concludes for Luke’s Gospel, “It is possible, if not probable, that verbal aspect communicates aspect in these instances and has nothing to do with the indication of prominence”. 34 When Campbell (Basics 31) refers to Decker’s work on aspect in Mark’s Gospel (R.J. Decker, Temporal Deixis of the Greek Verb in the Gospel of Mark with Reference to Verbal Aspect, Studies in Biblical Greek 10 [New York 2001]), he raises the issue as to the compre- hensiveness of the results. 35 Levinsohn Self-Instruction §5.3.3. The use of the imperfect to introduce an initial question in Mark 10,17 (ἐπηρώτα) is similar.