Prominence and Markedness in New Testament Discourse 11 from which one can watch a parade. The perfective aspect may be analogous to watching the parade from a helicopter viewpoint. The parade is seen as complete and whole without reference to its progress. The imperfective aspect may be analogous to participating in the parade as a spectator, directly involved in it, viewing the event in progress. The stative aspect, finally, may be viewed from the perspective of the events coordinator or manager, the viewpoint of state. In other words, the event is viewed as a state and condition of affairs in existence. So simply put, the “Perfect is used to grammaticalize a state of affairs, the Present a process in progress, and the Aorist a process seen as complete, with the Perfect the most heavily marked”35. d) Aspect and Prominence. Another relationship that these aspects have to one another that is particularly important for this study is related to prominence. The perfective aspect (aorist tense-form) is the least marked in the Greek verbal system, the imperfective aspect (present and imperfect tense-forms) is more heavily marked, and the stative aspect (perfect and pluperfect tense-forms) is the most heavily marked36. This is quite easily observed for students of the Greek New Testament, where the aorist tense-form is most frequently used by the authors, while the present tense-form is less used, and perfect tense-form is the least frequent of the three forms. So while the primary function of aspect is to convey the subjective choice of the writer’s conveyance of the progress of action, the resulting secondary function of aspect is to convey prominence in the discourse. In fact, Reed notes that one of the functions of aspect is to indicate prominence in the discourse37. 2) Mood. Another way of conveying prominence in the Greek of the New Testament is in the writer’s choice of mood. In fact, Porter contends that next to verbal aspect, mood may be the most important semantic choice that a writer/speaker of Greek makes38. Mood is often defined as: “the feature of the verb that presents the verbal action or state with reference to its actuality or potentiality”39. A more precise definition may be helpful: “the mood-forms are used to grammaticalize the language user’s perspective on the relation of the verbal action to reality”40. There 35 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 258. 36 Porter, Verbal Aspect, 180; Porter, Idioms, 23. 37 Reed, Philippians, 113. 38 Porter, Idioms, 50. 39 Wallace, Greek Grammar, 443. 40 Porter, Idioms, 50.