Aspect and Prominence in the Synoptic Accounts of Jesus' Entry into Jerusalem 173 But the chief priests incited (ἀνέσεισαν) the crowd to have Pilate 15,11 unmarked release Barabbas instead. Pilate in response was again saying (ἔλεγεν) to them, backgrounded in relation 12 “What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?” to 13 13 They again shouted (ἔκραξαν), “Crucify him!” unmarked backgrounded in relation 14a Pilate was saying (ἔλεγεν), “Why? What crime has he committed?” to 14b 14b But they shouted (ἔκραξαν) all the louder, “Crucify him!” unmarked Pilate, wanting to satisfy the crowd, released (ἀπέλυσεν) Barabbas 15a unmarked to them. and handed Jesus over (παρέδωκεν), having flogged him, to be 15b unmarked crucified. G) Conclusions This paper has shown that both Porter and Longacre are sometimes correct when they claim respectively that a Greek imperfect foregrounds or backgrounds the event concerned. However, it has argued that they are both mistaken in proposing a one-to-one relationship between the tense-form and the prominence or dynamicity associated with it. The paper has also shown the value of distinguishing between the “meaning” of a tense-form such as the imperfect, which remains basically unchanged, and the “overtones” associated with it, which vary with the context. A related distinction was made between occasions when the tense-form is the most relevant way of portraying an event and those in which it is not. Such distinctions explain why the effect of using the same tense-form may at times be to foreground and at other times be to background. The problem with Porter’s and Longacre’s approaches is that they attempt to incorporate the “overtones” and marked usages into the inherent meaning of the tense-form --- the same problem that Zegarač’s paper on the English progressive addressed47. The paper concluded by pointing out that prominence-giving devices such as the HP often give prominence not so much to the event or speech encoded with the HP, as to what results from it. This paper has concentrated on the use of the aorist, imperfect and HP in narrative. It has not addressed the issue of the prominence of the perfect in narrative, although studies in other languages suggest that, like the imperfect, it will be used both to background and to frontground48. 47 Zegarač English progressive 19-20. 48 See Levinsohn Self-Instruction §5.3.3.