A Review of Campbell’s “Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek” (Pt 1)
Introduction
“Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek” by Constantine Campbell
This will be the first in a series of reviews going chapter by chaper through Con Campbell’s book “Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek.” There are a lot of problems with the book, and I want to give it a detailed review – not to bash Campbell, but to help students.
I believe Campbell and I are on the same team. We want to help others understand the Bible better. So the point of these reviews is not to make the Greek grammatical studies field still more divided. I think we should be more united than we are, but we also need to sharpen one another. We have to engage with the linguistics literature meaningfully.
I will also be very direct in this series for the sake of clarity. Again, I mean no offense to Campbell, but when something is wrong, I will not beat around the bush. I will say it is wrong. It is very difficult for students to understand the differences between two scholarly positions without this kind of bluntness.
Aspect
“The Parameter of Aspect” by Carlota Smith
Chapter 1 begins with the wrong definition of aspect. Campbell makes a distinction between viewpoint aspect and a temporal definition of aspect, which he attributes to Bernard Comrie’s book on aspect published in 1976. The term viewpoint aspect goes back to Carlotta Smith’s 1991 book, “The Parameter of Aspect.” On page 1 of the book, she defines the term “viewpoint aspect” as follows: “Viewpoint aspect gives temporal perspective to a sentence.” In other words, the term “viewpoint aspect” as used in linguistics refers to temporal perspective. As we will see, Campbell wrongly associates viewpoint with spatial notions, which I will return to in a later episode.
I address some of the issues regarding Campbell’s definition of aspect in my forthcoming textbook on New Testament Greek, and I illustrate what linguists mean by “viewpoint aspect.” As Smith says, the term refers to the speaker’s temporal perspective on a given event or state. For example, let’s say Mary traveled from Magdala to Capernaum from the 9th hour to the 11th hour (which I will refer to as simply 9 and 11). When describing this event, the speaker may “view” only part of the event temporally, let’s say from 9-10, and I would describe this as “Mary was traveling from Magdala to Capernaum between 9 and 10.”
In this case, I am only referring to part of Mary’s entire traveling to Capernaum event, and I use the progressive form ‘was traveling’ to make explicit that the event continued beyond the time period specified, namely 9-10. This is the basic idea in imperfective aspect. If I wanted to view the entire event in time, I would say “Mary traveled from Magdala to Capernaum from 9-11.” You would understand this to mean that Mary actually reached Capernaum at 11. The event has ended. This is the basic idea of perfective aspect.
“Time and the Verb” by Robert Binnick
Let me again be forthright: there is no debate about the meaning of aspect within the semantics literature–it is universally regarded as temporal. Robert Binnick’s book, “Time and the Verb” surveys views on aspect from ancient times to the present, and he never gives the spatial theory as an option because linguists and philosophers simply have not believed that. Again, aspect today is universally regarded as temporal within linguistics.
Campbell does define tense in terms of temporality. He explicitly says that “it normally refers to a verb’s temporal reference (pg. 11).” We will return to this definition of tense, but notice at the outset that Campbell has not told us which two things are related in time. He suggests that there are counterexamples where a present tense refers to an event that occurs in the past, but this is only a counterexample if tense relates the time when the event took place to the time when the utterance was made. Again, this is not the standard definition of tense within linguistics, but we will return to this in a later episode.
Actionsart and Pragmatics
The next definition given is aktionsart. As Campbell does, I will return to this concept after he distinguishes semantics and pragmatics. This is an important distinction, and I am totally in favor of distinguishing these two ideas, even if there are fuzzy areas. When we are discussing the meaning of a particular verb form, we are asking ourselves what that verb form contributes to the sentence. In other words, we want to know the meaning encoded by a verb form. Campbell’s definition of semantics is correct here. You can check out my video on basic semantics concepts for more on what semantics is.
His use of the term pragmatics is not quite correct. Pragmatics does include contextual readings, but it is not the same as the particular interpretation of a verbal form, which is how he defines it when he says, “pragmatics refers to how it all ends up–the way language is used in context” (pg. 13). The range of interpretations a verb form may have would actually fall under the category of semantics. That is the entire challenge in semantics: how do we figure out what a verb form encodes when we have a range of interpretations? Pragmatics is more concerned with how semantic meanings are used in particular situations. A classic example is that a question might be used to make a request instead of actually asking a question, as in “Can you please pass the salt?” Again, you can check out my video on basic pragmatics concepts for more on this linguistics sub-field.
Returning to aktionsart, Campbell also defines this notion wrongly. He says it is the final interpretation of a sentence and, therefore, falls within the domain of pragmatics (under his definition of pragmatics). Campbell states, “When asked, ‘What do you do, aorist?’ the answer is, ‘Well, I do many things. I have many possible Aktionsart outcomes’” (pg. 14). No one within the field of linguistics would define aktionsart as a pragmatic notion. It is semantic. Aktionsart is the situation as described by the verb and its arguments before it combines with aspect. This is universally accepted within linguistics. To illustrate, a verb phrase like ‘build a house’ has a telic aktionsart value. This means that a building-a-house-event has a natural endpoint. We do not have to refer to this endpoint, however, depending on the viewpoint aspect used. Both sentences ‘Joseph was building a house’ and ‘Joseph built a house’ have identical aktionsart values (namely they are what is called accomplishments, meaning they are telic and are protracted over time), but they have different interpretations. When we say ‘Joseph was building a house’ we are not referring to the end of the building-a-house event. When we say ‘Joseph built a house’, we do refer to the end of that event. In one case, the house hasn’t been completely built, and in the other case, the house has been completely built. These are different interpretations, but because aktionsart is not about the final interpretation, they can still have identical aktionsart values.
Conclusion
“Aspect” by Bernard Comrie
The only scholar cited in the field of linguistics proper in chapter 1 is Bernard Comrie, and Campbell critiques his book about aspect from 1976. Linguistics terms are used, but they are not used how linguists use them, and the result is that there are many wrong definitions given. As we will see in future installments of this series, this will lead to wrong analyses of the Greek verb forms as found in the New Testament.