Prominence and Markedness in New Testament Discourse 9 of speaking (thus, ‘absolute time’)”20. Traditional understandings of the aorist as punctiliar action (as a kind of action) is even rejected by most modern grammarians who are stuck on Aktionsart. In the perfective aspect, then, “the action is conceived of by the language user as a complete and undifferentiated process”21. Even Fanning’s definition suffices: “the aorist represents an occurrence in summary, viewed as a whole from the outside, without regard for the internal make-up of the occurrence”22. b) Imperfective aspect. This is conveyed by the present and imperfect tense-forms, which are related by their shared verbal stem. The imperfect tense-form differs from the present primarily in the presence of the ε-augment, which may indicate some sort of formal relation to the aorist tense-form23. The imperfective aspect conveys the writer’s communication of action as occurring or in process: “the action is conceived of by the language user as being in progress”24. It is not that the verbal process is objectively occurring in the present time, but that the writer is subjectively choosing to convey a verb through imperfective aspect to “zoom in” on the action. It seems that in discussions regarding the imperfective aspect, the present tense-form is usually given more attention than the imperfect tense-form. It seems generally agreed that the imperfect tense-form appears for the most part in narrative contexts, in opposition to the perfective aspect (aorist tense-form)25. According to Campbell, “[t]he sharing of remoteness with the aorist means that the imperfect is also found in narrative proper rather than discourse. While aorists provide the skeletal structure of narrative proper, imperfects tend to provide supplemental information”26. This will be important in the second part of 20 Wallace, Greek Grammar, 555. 21 Porter, Idioms, 21. 22 Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 97. It must be understood that the language differs slightly because of Fanning’s paradigm of external/internal viewpoint (i.e., dual aspectual model), but the main point is still similar. 23 This needs to be developed more fully in my mind, but I suspect, along the lines of Porter, that the imperfect tense-form is related to the aorist tense-form due to its shared augment; it remains as an imperfective aspect but more remote than the present tense-form due to its augment. In other words, I am willing to keep the imperfect tense-form with the present tense-form aspectually, in that they both convey the imperfective aspect, but the augment may signify more remoteness than the present tense-form and hence less marked. Cf. Porter, Verbal Aspect, 207. 24 Porter, Idioms, 21. 25 E.g., Porter, Verbal Aspect, 207, 209. 26 Campbell, Basics of Verbal Aspect, 44. However, Campbell disagrees with Porter in that the former considers the imperfect less prominent than the aorist tense-form, while the latter, being more marked than the aorist, considers it more prominent. I essentially agree with Porter on this view, which will be actualized in the application portion of this paper.