Porter, Stanley E. & O'Donell, Matthew Brook

7/27/2019 Porter, Stanley E. & O'Donell, Matthew Brook

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THE GREEK VERBAL NETWORK VIEWEDFROM A PROBABILISTIC STANDPOINT:

AN EXERCISE IN HALLIDAYAN LINGUISTICS

STANLEY E. PORTER AND MATTHEW BROOK ODONNELLThis study explores numerical or distributional markedness in the

verbal network of the Greek of the New Testament. It extends the systemicanalysis of Porter (Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, 1989),making use of the Hallidayan concept of probabilistic grammar, whichposits a typology of systems where features are either equiprobableboth features are equally distributed (0.5/0.5)or skewedone featureis marked by its low frequency of occurrence (0.9/0.1). The results con-

firm that the verbal aspect system of the Greek of the New Testament isessentially independent of other verbal systems, such as voice and mood.

1. Introduction

The use of numerical methods in both traditional grammar andmodern linguistics has a chequered history within this century 1. Earlyfield studies by such anthropologists and linguists as Boas emphasizeddata-gathering as of paramount importance, with recognition of the dif-ferences in the structures of languages 2. This approach developed into a

1 This paragraph is dependent upon P.H. Matthews, Grammatical Theory in theUnited States from Bloomfield to Chomsky (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 67;Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), esp. pp. 5-48. For histories of the ear-lier period, see J.T. Andresen, Linguistics in America 17691924: A Critical History(London: Routledge, 1990); K.R. Jankowsky, The Neogrammarians: A Re-Evaluation of their Place in the Development of Linguistic Science(Janua Linguarum, Series Minor, 116;The Hague: Mouton, 1972); and R.H. Robins, A Short History of Linguistics(LLL;London: Longman, 2nd edn, 1979), esp. pp. 164-240. For a contrasting history of thedevelopment of linguistics in Britain, see R. Harris (ed.), Linguistic Thought in England19141945 (London: Duckworth, 1988), where it is obvious that there was far lesssystematic development, at least in part explaining why American linguistics has come

to dominate linguistic discussion. A better overview is G. Sampson, Schools of Linguistics(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980).2 F. Boas, Introduction, in Handbook of American Indian Languages, I (Washington,

DC: Government Printing Office, 1911; repr. Washington, DC: Georgetown UniversityPress, n.d.). The most noteworthy proponents of recognition of the differences in lan-guages, and their relation to how humans think and speak, are E. Sapir, Language: AnIntroduction to the Study of Speech (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1921); and B.Malinowski, The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages, in C.K. Ogden and I.A.Richards, The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought andof the Science of Symbolism (New York: Harcourt, 1923), pp. 296-336. Malinowski had asignificant influence on J.R. Firth (e.g. Papers in Linguistics 19341951 [Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1957]), and Firth on M.A.K. Halliday (see below), and what has beco-me known as the London School of functional linguistics.

Filologa Neotestamentaria- Vol. XIV - 2001, pp. 3-41Facultad de Filosofa y Letras de Crdoba (Espaa)


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more universalistic analysis of the constituent structures of observed lan-guage and their relation to meaning, such as performed by Bloomfield in

the 1930s

3

. However, it was not until the post-Bloomfieldians of the1950s era that quantification of the empirical results of such study beganto take place in a concerted and serious way. This resulted in what hasbeen widely recognized as descriptivist linguistics, although to a largeextent at the expense of meaning. These descriptivist efforts, led by Harrisin his distributional method 4, were relatively short lived, with the deve-lopment and subsequent dominance of Chomskyan thought in the1960s 5 (what some have characterized as a revolution) 6. Although buil-ding upon the analysis of predecessors, Chomskyan linguistics soon cameto be equated with theoretical linguistics, grounding linguistic theory informal rules and emphasizing deductive as opposed to inductive discovery

procedures. Since the early numerical studies did not progress far beyondanalysis of the level of the phoneme, and to some extent the morpheme,

4 Stanley E. Porter and Matthew Brook ODonnell

3 L. Bloomfield, Language(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1935). On the relationbetween Boas, Sapir and Bloomfield, often overlooked in discussion of these significantscholars, see M.R. Haas, Boas, Sapir, and Bloomfield, in W.L. Chafe (ed.), AmericanIndian Languages and American Linguistics(Lisse: de Ridder, 1976), pp. 59-69; repr. asBoas, Sapir, and Bloomfield: Their Contribution to American Indian Linguistics, in

A.S. Dil (ed.), Language, Culture, and History: Essays by Mary R. Haas (Stanford:Stanford University Press, 1978), pp. 194-206.

4 See Z.S. Harris,Methods in Structural Linguistics(Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1951; repr. as Structural Linguistics[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960]);and his Papers in Structural and Transformational Linguistics(Formal Linguistics Series,1; Dordrecht: Reidel, 1970). Other important work in this area includes C.C. Fries, TheStructure of English: An Introduction to the Construction of English Sentences(London:Longman, 1952); H.A. Gleason, An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics(New York:Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1955; rev. edn, 1961).

5 Some of his most important works are N. Chomsky, Syntactic Structures (JanuaLinguarum, Series Minor, 4; The Hague: Mouton, 1957); idem,Aspects of the Theory ofSyntax (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964); idem, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory(Janua Linguarum, Series Minor, 38; The Hague: Mouton, 1964); idem, Topics in theTheory of Generative Grammar (Janua Linguarum, Series Minor, 56; The Hague:Mouton, 1966); idem, Language and Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1968; 2nd edn, 1972); among others.

6

See N. Smith and D. Wilson, Modern Linguistics: The Results of ChomskysRevolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979). Those not conquered by the Chomskyanrevolution include tagmemics (K.L. Pike, Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of theStructure of Human Behavior[Janua Linguarum, Series Maior, 24; The Hague: Mouton,2nd end, 1967]), stratificational and relational grammars (e.g. L. Hjelmslev, Principes degrammaire gnrale[Copenhagen: Hoest, 1928; ET Prolegomena to a Theory of Language(trans. F. Whitfield; Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953)] and S. Lamb,Outline of Stratificational Grammar [Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press,1966]), and the London School (e.g. Firth and M.A.K. Halliday, Halliday: System andFunction in Language [ed. G. Kress; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976]). For asynopsis of Firths work, much of it in Firths own words, and Hallidays work, againmuch of it in his own words, see R. De Beaugrande, Linguistic Theory: The Discourse ofFundamental Works(LLL; London: Longman, 1991), pp. 187-222, 223-64, respectively.


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they were easily disregarded by Chomsky as irrelevant to his major con-cernthat of syntactical structures, especially at what soon came to

be called the deep structure

7

. From this point on

8

, in many if notmost mainstream linguistic circles, numerical language studies have beenlooked down upon, with the resulting tendency to characterize them assimply counting exercises or mere data collection, representative of aprevious generation of linguistic study. However, this is more a reflectionof the influence of a particular school of thought, Chomskys, on thequestions of linguistic investigation, rather than an accurate picture of thesituation of the time. Already in 1965, Ivic devoted a chapter of his workon trends in linguistics to what he called mathematical linguistics, inwhich he discussed quantitative or statistical linguistics 9. Although Ivicsaw the closest ties between statistical linguistics and such areas as infor-

mation theory and machine translation, other grammarians, especiallythose with functionalist interests such as Firth, had also continued tostudy language numerically10. In fact, the major development of nume-rical language studies, bringing the descriptivist agenda back into theforefront of discussion although this time not as an area in itself but as amethodological basis for linguistic research, has been in the field of cor-pus linguistics 11. Nevertheless, it is only fairly recently that such studieshave become recognized, although not widely and in all linguistic circles.

The Greek Verbal Network Viewed from a Probabilistic Standpoint 5

7 In his first major work, Syntactic Structures, Chomsky wrote, Despite the unde-

niable interest and importance of semantic and statistical studies of language, they appearto have no direct relevance to the problem of determining or characterizing the set ofgrammatical utterances. I think that we are forced to conclude that grammar is autono-mous and independent of meaning, and that probabilistic models give no particularinsight into some of the basic problems of syntactic structure (p. 17).

8 Chomskyan linguistics and its offspring have developed in many different direc-tions, especially in terms of the question of meaning. Some of the recent differences ofopinion are chronicled in R.A. Harris, The Linguistics Wars (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1993); G.J. Huck and J.A. Goldsmith, Ideology and Linguistic Theory:Noam Chomsky and the Deep Structure Debates(London: Routledge, 1995).

9 M. Ivic, Trends in Linguistics(trans. M. Heppell; Janua Linguarum, Series Minor,42; The Hague: Mouton, 1965), esp. pp. 212-24; cf. J. Whatmough, Language: AModern Synthesis(New York: New American Library, 1956), pp. 179-97.

10

See M. Stubbs, British Traditions in Text Analysis: From Firth to Sinclair, in M.Baker, G. Francis and E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds.), Text and Technology: In Honour of JohnSinclair (Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1993), pp. 1-33; rev. to include Halliday in M.Stubbs, Text and Corpus Analysis: Computer-Assisted Studies of Language and Culture(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 22-50.

11 See G. Leech, Corpora and Theories of Linguistic Performance, in J. Svartvik(ed.), Directions in Corpus Linguistics: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 82 Stockholm, 48August 1991 (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs, 65; Berlin: Mouton deGruyter, 1992), pp. 106-22. Other useful introductions to corpus linguistics, besidesthose cited above, are J. Sinclair, Corpus, Concordance, Collocation (Describing EnglishLanguage; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); D. Biber, S. Conrad and R. Reppen,Corpus Linguistics: Investigating Language Structure and Use(Cambridge Approaches toLinguistics; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).


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The history of numerical language studies of the Greek of the NewTestament does not follow the same path of development, but the results

are not significantly different in many ways. In the study of the Greek ofthe New Testament, and biblical studies in general, it is evident, as manyhave recently pointed out, that most of the grammatical reference toolsare pre-linguistic and thus have been unaffected by the major develop-ments within modern linguistics, several of which have been tracedabove 12. These tools are instead shaped by both traditional grammar,which traces its way back to the ancient Greek grammarians, and nine-teenth-century comparative philology13. Roberstons gigantic,A Grammarof the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, is perhapsthe most comprehensive example of the application of comparative phi-lology to New Testament grammar 14. Roberston attempts a detailed clas-

sification of features of the Greek of the New Testament, listing numerousexamples, but without specific numerical figures in the main body of hisgrammar. For example, discussing the use of the, so-called, declarativeo{ti, he states, the verbs that use declarative o{ti in the N. T. are verynumerous 15. The grammar is full of statements such as in general,usually, the most frequent use of X, and so on. A number of charts,compiled by a Mr H. Scott, were appended to the third edition, but theseare essentially tables that simply chronicle instances 16. The same situationholds true for most of the other standard grammars, including Moulton 17,BlassDebrunner 18, and Turner 19. As desirable as it might be to havemore complete and precise information, it is probably better to have nonethan have inaccurate information. Turner includes a number of charts in


12 See, for example, D.D. Schmidt, Hellenistic Greek Grammar and Noam Chomsky:Nominalizing Transformations(SBLDS, 62; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1981), esp. pp. 3-13;S.E. Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense andMood(SBG, 1; New York: Peter Lang, 1989), pp. 50-65; cf. idem, Studies in the GreekNew Testament: Theory and Practice(SBG, 6; New York: Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 39-48.

13 See S.E. Porter and J.T. Reed, Greek Grammar Since BDF: A Retrospective andProspective Analysis, FN 4 (1991), pp. 143-64; cf. S.E. Porter, Studying AncientLanguages from a Modern Linguistic Perspective: Essential Terms and Terminology,FN2 (1989), pp. 147-72.

14

A.T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of HistoricalResearch (Nashville: Broadman, 4th edn, 1934).15 Robertson, Grammar of the Greek New Testament, p. 1034.16 Robertson, Grammar of the Greek New Testament, pp. 1385-1431.17 J.H. Moulton,A Grammar of New Testament Greek. I. Prolegomena(Edinburgh: T.

& T. Clark, 3rd edn, 1908); idem and W.F. Howard, A Grammar of New TestamentGreek. II.Accidence and Word-Formation (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1929).

18 F. Blass and A. Debrunner,A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other EarlyChristian Literature(trans. R.W. Funk; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961); F.Blass and A. Debrunner, Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch (ed. F. Rehkopf;Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 17th edn, 1990).

19 N. Turner, A Grammar of New Testament Greek. III. Syntax(Edinburgh: T. & T.Clark, 1963).


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his syntax of the Greek New Testament, but it has been shown that anumber of his statistics and analyses are in fact wrong 20.

The one area of New Testament studies where numerical methodshave been used has been in stylistic studies. The standard New TestamentGreek reference grammars contain references to stylistic features, andoften include some numerical figures for specific linguistic elements. Themost comprehensive work of this kind is Turners Style, which com-pletes the grammar started by Moulton 21. In his treatment of the stylisticfeatures of the New Testament documents and comparisons of differentbooks, Turner includes counts of vocabulary and grammatical items. Amore specific branch of stylistics, sometimes referred to as stylometrics,is concerned to describe the stylistic features of a given author, often withthe application of these findings to determine the authorship of dispu-

ted documents. Here linguistic features, such as word frequency (parti-cularly the number of hapax legomena), word-order, the number andposition of grammatical words (such as kaiv), and other similar factorsare counted and compared for the documents under investigation. Anumber of early stylometric studies argued for non-Pauline authorship ofthe Pastoral Epistles from the fact that they contain a higher number ofhapax legomena than the main Pauline epistles 22. Recent studies haveargued in the opposite direction, however 23. One must simply note here,however, that for most of these studies, as currently undertaken, the sam-ple sizes do not allow for the kinds of analyses made, and clearly not forthe certainty of conclusions that are often drawn 24.

During the past two decades, as already noted above, there has beena gradual re-emergence of numerical linguistic studies, and the question-


20 See G.H.R. Horsley, New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity. V. LinguisticEssays (New South Wales: Macquarie University, The Ancient History DocumentaryResearch Centre, 1989), pp. 49-65, esp. pp. 52-55.

21 N. Turner,A Grammar of New Testament Greek. IV. Style(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,1976). In volumes 3 and 4, Turner took Moultons grammar in a very different directionthan was originally conceived by Moulton (see n. 17 above), arguing for a SemitizedGreek, over the Greek of the New Testament being that of the koine. Schmidt, in hisoverview of the history of Hellenistic Greek grammar, refers to Turners contribution to

Moultons grammar as a definite linguistic regression (Schmidt, Hellenistic GreekGrammar and Noam Chomsky, p. 9). See also A.B. Spencer, Pauls Literary Style: AStylistic and Historical Comparison of II Corinthians 11:1612:13, Romans 8:9-39, andPhilippians 3:24:13 (Lanham: University Press of America, 1998).

22 A.Q. Morton and J. McLeman, Paul, the Man and the Myth: A Study in theAuthorship of Greek Prose(New York: Harper & Row, 1966).

23 See A. Kenny,A Stylometric Study of the New Testament(Oxford: Clarendon Press,1986).

24 For a critical survey and linguistic evaluation of such studies, see M.B. ODonnell,Linguistic Fingerprints or Style by Numbers? The Use of Statistics in theDetermination of Authorship of New Testament Documents, in S.E. Porter and D.A.Carson (eds.), Linguistics and the New Testament: Critical Junctures (JSNTSup, 168;SNTG, 5; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 206-62.


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ing of Chomskyan methodological priorities. Advances in computertechnology and the availability of powerful and relatively inexpensive

desktop machines have acted as a catalyst for this revival. This area of lin-guistics, called corpus linguistics due to the central role of machine read-able corpora of real language serving as the databases for grammaticalstudy25, is in many ways ideally suited to the study of the Greek of theNew Testament. In most forms of contemporary linguistic analysis,judgments are made on the basis of the intuitions of native speakersregarding the grammaticality of utterances. For the study of the GreekNew Testament, there are no native speakers of the language available toverify the grammaticality of constructed sentences, so one must relyupon the corpus of available texts. In addition, the New Testament cor-pus with grammatical (part-of-speech) annotation is available in ma-

chine readable form with a number of software tools to access it, such as theGRAMCORD and BibleWorks programs. The grammarian of the GreekNew Testament is now able quickly to compile results from searches fornumerous combinations of words and grammatical constructions. Thispresents exciting options for future grammatical work, but it also haspotential pitfalls, with the real danger of an increase in the number ofunstructured numerical studies that lack a theoretical grounding26.

The ability to collect and collate vast amounts of linguistic data means lit-tle without a theoretical framework in which these results can be evaluated 27.Attempts to apply syntactical theories, such as various forms of Chomskyanderived grammar, to the Greek of the New Testament have achieved onlymodest success 28. However, a number of recent studies applying models of


25 On the history and theoretical basis of corpus linguistics, see G. Leech, The Stateof the Art in Corpus Linguistics, in K. Aijmer and B. Altenberg (eds.), English CorpusLinguistics: Studies in Honour of Jan Svartvik(London: Longman, 1991), pp. 8-29; J.Svartvik, Corpus Linguistics Comes of Age, in Svartvik (ed.), Directions in CorpusLinguistics, pp. 7-13.

26 On the use of annotated corpora for the study of the Greek of the New Testament,see M.B. ODonnell, The Use of Annotated Corpora for New Testament Discourse

Analysis: A Survey of Current Practice and Future Prospects, in S.E. Porter and J.T.Reed, Discourse Analysis and the New Testament: Approaches and Results(JSNTSup, 170;SNTG, 4; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 71-117.

27

There is obviously a need for interaction between theoryand data, in that the datatest and, if necessary, correct the theory, while the theory provides limits and structureto the collection of data. There can be no such thing as an entirely inductive approach,one that begins with no theory, but instead aims to construct one only on the basis ofthe data. See K.R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of ScientificKnowledge(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963; 4th edn, 1974), esp. pp. 3-59; I.Lakatos, Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, in I.Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Proceedings ofthe International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, London, 1965, volume 4(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 91-196, as well as other essays inthis volume.

28 Examples are Schmidt, Hellenistic Greek Grammar and Noam Chomsky; R.Wonneberger, Generative Stylistics: An Algorithmic Approach to Stylistic and Source


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functional grammar, particularly Hallidays systemic functional grammar,have shown the descriptive power and flexibility of a functional linguistic

approach for analyzing the Greek language of the New Testament

29

. It isinteresting to note that Halliday, unlike Chomsky, has never dismissed thestatistical approach to linguistic investigation. On the contrary, he states:

It has always seemed to me, ever since I first tried to become a gramma-rian, that grammar was a subject with too much theory and too little data30.

In a number of recent studies, Halliday has begun to investigate the proba-bilistic nature of grammar, and how the relative frequency of grammatical ele-ments in a corpus of naturally occurring language can be incorporated into theparadigmatic system networks that form the basis of systemic linguistics 31.


Data Retrieval Problems Based on Generative Syntax, in W. Vandemeghe and M. Vande Velde (eds.), Bedeutung, Sprechakte und Texte: Akten des 13. LinguistischenKolloquiums, II (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1979); idem, Syntax und Exegese: Eine generativeTheorie der griechischen Syntax und ihr Beitrag zur Auslegung des Neuen Testaments, dar-gestellt an 2. Korinther 5.2f und Rmer 3.21-26(Beitrge zur biblischen Exegese undTheologie, 13; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1979); J.P. Louw, Semantics of New TestamentGreek (Philadelphia: Fortress Press; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982); R.A. Young,Intermediate New Testament Greek: A Linguistic and Exegetical Approach (Nashville:Broadman Press, 1994); M.W. Palmer, Levels of Constituent Structure in New TestamentGreek(SBG, 4; New York: Peter Lang, 1995).

29 For example, see Porter, Verbal Aspect; idem, Idioms of the Greek New Testament

(BLG, 2; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 2nd edn, 1994); J.T. Reed, A Discourse Analysis ofPhilippians: Method and Rhetoric in the Debate over Literary Integrity (JSNTSup, 136;SNTG, 3; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997); G. Martn-Asensio, HallidayanFunctional Grammar as Heir to New Testament Rhetorical Criticism, in S.E. Porter andD.L. Stamps (eds.), The Rhetorical Interpretation of Scripture: Essays from the 1996 MalibuConference(JSNTSup, 180; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 84-107; idem,Foregrounding and its Relevance for Interpretation and Translation, with Acts 27 as aCase Study, in S.E. Porter and R.S. Hess (eds.), Translating the Bible: Problems andProspects(JSNTSup, 173; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 189-223; idem,Transitivity-Based Foregrounding in the Acts of the Apostles: A Functional-GrammaticalApproach to the Lukan Perspective (JSNTSup, 202; SNTG, 8; Sheffield: SheffieldAcademic Press, 2000); and various essays in Porter and Reed (eds.), Discourse Analysisand the New Testament.

30

M.A.K. Halliday, Language as System and Language as Instance: The Corpus as aTheoretical Construct, in Svartvik (ed.), Directions in Corpus Linguistics, pp. 61-77,quotation p. 61.

31 See Halliday, Language as System and Language as Instance; idem, TowardsProbabilistic Interpretations, in E. Ventola (ed.), Functional and Systemic Linguistics:Approaches and Uses(Trends in Linguistics, 55; Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter,1991), pp. 39-61; idem, Corpus Studies and Probabilistic Grammar, in Aijmer and

Altenberg (eds.), English Corpus Linguistics, pp. 30-43; idem, Quantitative Studies andProbabilities in Grammar, in M. Hoey (ed.), Data, Description, Discourse: Papers on theEnglish Language in Honour of John McH. Sinclair(London: HarperCollins, 1993), pp. 1-25; idem and Z.L. James, A Quantitative Study of Polarity and Primary Tense in theEnglish Finite Clause, in J.M. Sinclair, M. Hoey and G. Fox (eds.), Techniques inDescription: Spoken and Written Discourse(London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 32-66.


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In this article, we build on the theoretical work by Porter in VerbalAspect in the Greek of the New Testament that systemically analyzed the

Greek verbal network, focusing particularly on the morphological fea-tures of tense-form and mood. Presenting his findings in terms of marked-ness theory, he introduced, but did not pursue in the kind of detailcurrently achievable, the area of distributional markedness 32. In thisstudy, we take the systemic verbal network developed in Verbal Aspect33and add frequency information to the systems, both individually (forexample the ASPECTUALITY system) and in combination (for example FI-NITENESS andASPECT1). We test our findings against Hallidays hypothesesabout the two main types of system in language, and his viewpoint onlanguage as both a system and an instance (see below). We also present atentative analysis of the voice-system in Greek from a distributional

standpoint, pending future work on voice34

. The study demonstrates theintegration of empirical and theoretical linguistic analysis, and aims toprovide a suggestive paradigm for future numerical studies of the Greekof the New Testament.

2. Theory: Probabilistic Lexicogrammar

Recent work by Halliday has stressed the fact that grammar isinherently probabilistic 35. He contends that this has always been hisview, but that the counting and analysis of sufficient amounts of lin-guistic data has only recently become available with the advent ofaffordable computer equipment, and, more importantly, access tomachine readable corpora 36. He is somewhat mystified by the factthat linguists are comfortable with the counting of words (lexicalitems) and with assigning probabilities of occurrence to these words,but they often object when the same task is attempted for grammati-


32 See Porter, Verbal Aspect, pp. 178-81, esp. p. 181.33 See Porter, Verbal Aspect, p. 109.34 See S.E. Porter, Voice in the Greek of the New Testament(in preparation).35

Halliday, Language as System and Language as Instance, p. 65.36 In a 1961 article, Halliday stated that It is not simply that all grammar can be sta-ted in probability terms, based on frequency counts in texts: this is due to the nature ofa text as a sample. But the very fact that we can recognize primary and secondary struc-turesthat there is a scale of delicacy at allshows that the nature of language is not tooperate with relations of always this and never that (M.A.K. Halliday, Categories ofthe Theory of Grammar, Word 17 [1961], pp. 241-92, quotation p. 259; repr. inHalliday: System and Function, pp. 52-72, quotation p. 63). Elsewhere he observes that:It seemed to me clear in 1960 that useful theoretical work in grammar was seriouslyhampered by lack of data; we depended on the corpus as a resource for further advance.Moreover it would have to be computerized, in the sense that some part of the workwould be performed computationally to permit large-scale frequency studies (Halliday,Language as System and Language as Instance, p. 64).


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cal features and classes 37. People, according to Halliday, have littledifficulty accepting that they use the word go more often than the

word walk, and walk more often than stroll to describe motion.However, when the same understanding is applied to grammatical fea-turesthat a person is more likely to use an active construction thana passive, or a positive rather than a negative clauseHalliday hasobserved that many people object very strongly, and protest that theyhave a perfect right to choose otherwise if they wish 38.

In order to apply a probabilistic understanding to the grammar of alanguage, one must adopt a paradigmatic view of grammar. Such a modelarranges grammatical categories (aspect, voice, person, gender, etc.) intocombinations ofeither/orchoicesfor instance a noun is eithersingularorplural. The language user is most often completely unaware that such

choices are being madeand thus the choices are unconsciousyet thelanguage system requires that such choices be made 39. Each grammaticalcategory in a particular system is given meaning by its relationship to theother categories within the system. Nesbitt and Plum state that: A systemis defined as an entry condition together with a set of mutually exclusiveoptions or features, one of which must be selected 40. So, for instance,plurality has little semantic value unless it is viewed as a choice against (orinstead of) singularity. The use ofsystem in this technical, linguistic sense


37

Halliday, Corpus Studies and Probabilistic Grammar, p. 31; idem, QuantitativeStudies, p. 2. There has been a considerable amount of investigation into numericalbehaviour of lexis in language, resulting in a number of vocabulary measures, such asZipfs Law (G.K. Zipf, The Psychobiology of Language [Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1935]) and various forms of the Type-Token ratio. These measures have often been uti-lized in authorship attribution studies (e.g. G.U. Yule, The Statistical Study of LiteraryVocabulary [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1944]; A. Ellegrd, A StatisticalMethod for Determining Authorship: The Junius Letters, 17691772[Gteborg: ElandersBoktryckeri Aktiebolag, 1962]). See ODonnell, Linguistic Fingerprints, pp. 215-16,230-39.

38 Halliday, Quantitative Studies, p. 3. Halliday suggests that: The resistance seemsto arise because grammar is buried more deeply below the level of our conscious aware-ness and control; hence it is more threatening to be told that yourgrammaticalchoices

are governed by overall patterns of probability.39 See Porter, Verbal Aspect, p. 9, on conscious and unconscious choice in terms ofsystemic linguistics.

40 C. Nesbitt and G. Plum, Probabilities in a Systemic-Functional Grammar: TheClause Complex in English, in R.P. Fawcett and D. Young (eds.), New Developments inSystemic Linguistics. II. Theory and Application (London: Pinter, 1988), pp. 6-38, quota-tion p. 7. They continue: The entry condition of a system is itself an option in a priorsystem. So the environment of choice is always that of choices already made. In this waysystems form networks of systems organized according to the logical priority of certainoptions over other options. See also R.P. Fawcett, Cognitive Linguistics and SocialInteraction: Towards an Integrated Model of a Systemic Functional Grammar and the OtherComponents of a Communicating Mind(Heidelberg: Julius Groos and Exeter University,1980), pp. 19-25; Porter, Verbal Aspect, pp. 7-16.


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can be traced back through Halliday to the work of Firth 41. Firths workapplied the theory ofsystem (paradigmatic choices) and structure(syntag-

matic choices) primarily to the phonological level of language42

. Hallidayhas extended Firths work to include both grammar and lexis. In fact,systemic linguistics rejects the traditional distinction between lexis (lexi-cal semantics treated in a lexicon) and grammar (morphological patternsdiscussed in grammar books). Instead, systemic theory talks about thelexicogrammarof languagethat is, a continuum (or cline) of paradig-matic systems, with grammar (as traditionally described) at one end andlexis at the other 43. The fundamental concept of a system as a choice be-tween semantic features is present throughout the lexicogrammatical con-tinuum. Nevertheless, the systems at the grammatical end consist of asmall, finite number of feature selections, and can thus be described as

closed-systems, while systems at the lexis end consist of numerous sub-systems (consider, for instance, how many verbs of motion there are), andare described as open-systems. An example of a closed-system is the aspec-tual system in Hellenistic Greek (see section 3). There are at most fourchoices to be made by the language user who wishes to speak of a process,with the choice from a previous system becoming the entry condition forthe next systemic choice: (1) a choice must be made with regard to thesystem ofASPECTUALITY(+expectational or +aspectual), (2) if the choice is+aspectual then the ASPECT1 system is the entry condition for the nextchoice (+perfective or perfective), (3) if perfective is selected then twofurther co-ordinated systems must be entered: (a) ASPECT2 becomes theentry condition for one set of choices (+imperfective or +stative) and (b)REMOTENESS for the other (remote or +remote). It is clear how at eachpoint an either this or that selection must be made, and that there areonly a finite number of such choices, thus the aspectual system can bedescribed as a closed-system.

It should not be difficult to see how probabilities could be incorpo-rated into a systemic model of language 44. Given that for each system in anetwork a (usually) binary choice is made, then it is simply a matter of


41 See J.R. Firth, A Synopsis in Linguistic Theory, 19301955, in J.R. Firth et al.,

Studies in Linguistic Analysis(Special Volume of the Philological Society; Oxford: BasilBlackwell, 1957), pp. 1-32. He notes that the discussion of grammatical categories inclosed systems for any given language highlights the fact that meanings are deter-mined by their inter-relations in the systems set up for that language (Synopsis, p. 22).

42 See Firth, Synopsis, pp. 17-22.43 Halliday, Corpus Studies and Probabilistic Grammar, p. 32; idem, Language as

System and Language as Instance, p. 63. Cf. R. Hasan, The Grammarians Dream:Lexis as Most Delicate Grammar, in M.A.K. Halliday and R.P. Fawcett (eds.), NewDevelopments in Systemic Linguistics. I. Theory and Description (London: Pinter, 1987),pp. 184-211.

44 Nesbitt and Plum suggest that with choice as the basis of our theory of language,grammar can be modelled as sets of possibilities, as a potential for making meaning(Probabilities and a Systemic-Functional Grammar, p. 7).


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assigning a probability to each potential outcome (either A or B). If it isequally likely that either outcome will occur, then each will be given a pro-

bability of 0.5. If outcome A is expected to occur 9 times out of every tenchoices, then A will be assigned a probability of 0.9 and B will be oneminus the probability of A, thus 1 - 0.9 = 0.1. These probabilities shouldnot be viewed as operating in a predictive manner, in saying the next choi-ce should be A with odds of nine to one, but rather as providing an inter-pretative framework for choices once they have been made 45. Considersystem X, in which the probabilities of outcomes A and B are 0.9 and 0.1respectivelythat is, A is nine times more likely to occur than Bif B ischosen, then we can define B not only as not A, but not A against oddsof nine to one. These probabilities not only provide information aboutgeneral patterns of grammatical features within a language, but they can

also be used to help define the semantics of these features.In the introduction we noted the influence of Chomskys syntacticaltheory upon linguistics in the past nearly forty years, and particularly howhis negative view of probabilistic modelling has discredited the use ofnumerical methods in theoretical linguistics. In addition, his restatementof Saussures langue and paroledistinction in terms of linguistic compe-tenceand linguistic performancehas resulted in the consignment of dataobtained from real texts to the realm of applied linguistics, while theore-tical linguistics has concerned itself with logical and theoretical conceptssuch as grammaticality46. De Beaugrande has counted the number of sen-tences which are found in Chomskys early works, Syntactic StructuresandAspects of the Theory of Syntax, and found that only twenty-eight inven-ted sentences in SS [Syntactic Structures] and twenty-four in AT[Aspectsof the Theory of Syntax] are analysed 47. It is not therefore surprising thatChomsky not only rejected the value of naturally occurring language forthe study of syntactic structure, but concluded that probabilistic modelscould bring little insight to this task48.

In his work, Halliday rejects the Saussurian langueparoledualism, andespecially Chomskys competenceperformance division, and instead offers


45 Halliday, Corpus Studies and Probabilistic Grammar, pp. 32-33.46

A standard introduction to theoretical linguistics is J. Lyons, Introduction toTheoretical Linguistics(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968). An examina-tion of this work fails to uncover a single textual example larger than the individualsentence, and all of these examples are invented instead of being drawn from texts orinstances of speech. As Stubbs indicates, another influential work by Lyons, his twovolume Semantics(2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), does notanalyse a single authentic text or text fragment (Stubbs, Text and Corpus Analysis,p. 30).

47 De Beaugrande, Linguistic Theory, p. 176. Halliday suggests that Chomskys sar-castic observation that I live in New Yorkis more frequent than I live in Dayton Ohiowas designed to demolish the conception that relative frequency in text might have anytheoretical significance (Corpus Studies and Probabilistic Grammar, p. 30).

48 Chomsky, Syntactic Structures, p. 17.


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the complementary ideas of language as system and language as instance.These are not two different entities, but rather two viewpoints upon one

phenomenon, that is, the phenomenon of language. Viewing language as asystem involves taking a long-term view on multiple instances of languageuse and making generalizations, whereas viewing language as an instance isan examination of just one occurrence of language in use. Halliday offersthe illustration of examining the weather in terms of climate (weather viewedas a system over an extended period) and in terms of day by day weatherpatterns (weather viewed as an instance). He suggests that:

There is only one set of phenomena here: the meteorological processesof precipitation, movement of air masses and the like, which we observe inclose-up, as text, or else in depth, as system. But one thing is clear: themore weather we observe, as instance-watchers, the better we shall performas system-watchers when we turn to explaining the climate 49.

Halliday began simple frequency counts for the Chinese language(Mandarin) in the early 1950s (he completed his work on Chinese in1955, just before the publication of Chomskys Syntactic Structures), andassigned probabilities to the terms in the grammatical systems 50. Fromthese frequency counts and probabilities, he wanted to discover the extentof the association between different systems 51. One such associationinvestigated by Halliday was negative interrogatives, where there is a com-bination of a choice from the polarity (negative vs. positive) and the indi-cative (declarative vs. interrogative) systems 52. From this early work, andfrom later work carried out on small samples of English, he developed atypology of systems. He noticed that when probabilities where appliedto the grammatical systems he studied, the systems generally fell into oneof two groups: (1) those where the two terms in the system have equal pro-bability of occurring (0.5), and thus there is no marked or unmarked term,and (2) those where there is an unmarked term with a probability ofroughly 0.9, and a marked term with a 0.1 probability. These two types ofsystem are referred to as equiprobableand skewedsystems, respectively53.Halliday further suggests that the fact that a language will primarily pos-


49

Halliday, Language as System and Language as Instance, p. 66. Cf. idem, A BriefSketch of Systemic Grammar, in Halliday: System and Function, pp. 3-6, esp. p. 3.50 M.A.K. Halliday, The Language of the Chinese Secret History of the Mongols

(Publications of the Philological Society, 17; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1959), esp. pp. 207-26.51 Halliday, Quantitative Studies, p. 3.52 He wondered whether it was possible to predict the number of instances of nega-

tive interrogative by intersecting the probabilities of negative (versus positive) with thoseof interrogative (vs. declarative) (Halliday, Quantitative Studies, p. 3).

53 Halliday, Language as System and Language as Instance, p. 65. He notes that thistypology of systems arose initially out of his work on Chinese and was then confirmedby later work on a small corpus of English. He also notes that Svartviks work on voicein English (J. Svartvik, On Voice in the English Verb [Janua Linguarum, Series Practica,63; The Hague: Mouton, 1966]) provided further support for his theory.


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sess equiprobable and skewed systems is supported by the semiotic func-tion of language. If all of the systems where equiprobable, there would be

no redundancy in the language and any interference (noise) would ham-per effective communication. On the other hand, if systems fell into awhole range of distributions, from 0.5/0.5 all the way up to 0.99/0.01then the semiotic systemwould be virtually impossible to learn 54. Thelanguage learner soon recognizes, and is thus able to master, systems wherethere is no unmarked term (equiprobable [0.5/0.5]) or where one term ishighly marked in comparison to the other (skewed [0.9/0.1]) 55.

Halliday uses the concept of markedness, as noted above, but does notdefine these categories, apparently opting for an intuitive understandingof the concept 56.As we have noted above, distributional markednessalong with material (morphological) markedness, implicational marked-

ness and semantic markednesswas introduced and defined in PortersVerbal Aspect as a means of describing tendencies in Greek tense-formusage, although this was not pursued in detail. The concept of marked-ness was first introduced by Trubetzkoy 57, and then extended byJakobson 58, in Prague-school linguistics to describe binary distinctivephonemic features or, by extension, distinctive conceptual features.According to this model, an item is marked if it displays this distinctive


54 Halliday, Corpus Studies and Probabilistic Grammar, p. 36.55 Halliday was given a chance to test this theory in a computerized language genera-

tion project called the Penman project. He developed a grammar of English based on anetwork of 81 systems each with a probability attached to the individual terms(Halliday, Language as System and Language as Instance, p. 65). He designated eachsystem in the network as either equiprobable (probabilities 0.5/0.5) or skewed (0.9/0.1).This grammar was later named the Nigel Grammar, after his son Nigel, who was thesubject for his bookLearning How to Mean: Explorations in the Development of Language(London: Edward Arnold, 1975). Describing the results of the grammar implementedin the Penman project, Halliday notes: It was run as a random generator, without theprobabilities attached; and it produced garbage as unconstrained grammar generatorsalways do. But when it was run with the probabilities also being implemented, then (asthe Director of the project, Bill Mann, expressed it to me afterwards) it produced gar-bage that now actually looked liked Englishit bore some family resemblance to possi-ble human language (Halliday, Language as System and Language as Instance, p. 65).

56

See M.-L. Kean, Markedness: An Overview, in W. Bright (ed.), InternationalEncyclopedia of Linguistics(4 vols.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), II, pp. 390-91, esp. p. 390: In some work one finds precise definitions of markedness; elsewhere, theconcept is taken as being antecedently well defined, or at least intuitively well understood.

57 N. Trubetzkoy, Die Aufhebung der phonologischen Gegenstze, Travaux du CercleLinguistique de Prague6 (1936), pp. 29-45; repr. in J. Vachek (ed.),A Prague School Readerin Linguistics(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), pp. 187-205. For an analy-sis of the fundamental concepts within their larger programme, see J. Vachek, TheLinguistic School of Prague(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966), esp. pp. 55-56.

58 R. Jakobson, Zur Struktur des russischen Verbums, in Charisteria G. Mathesio(Prague: Cercle Linguistique de Prague, 1932), pp. 74-84; ET Shifters, VerbalCategories, and the Russian Verb, in his Selected Writings. II. Word and Language(TheHague: Mouton, 1971), pp. 130-47.


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feature. Although this model is still utilized by some linguists 59, it hasproved ineffective in a number of ways: it depends upon successful exten-

sion of phonological features to other, more abstract notions, such as caseand aspect; it is not necessarily true that every opposition can be de-scribed in terms of the presence and absence of a given feature the way thiscan be used in phonology, but there may be degrees of its appearance; thismodel is based on a hierarchy of linguistic structures that proceed fromsimple to complex, neglecting many of the interconnected and context-dependent features of language; and it neglects other factors such as howthe linguistic item is distributed in the language. Thus, most linguists,and we follow this line of reasoning, build upon the Prague concept ofmarkedness and use what has been called a cross-linguistic distributionalanalysis first pioneered by Greenberg60, and developed further by many

others since then61

. This form of markedness does not require a singlefeature notation, but is able to take into account a cline of combined fac-tors, including morphology, semantics, and, most importantly here, dis-tribution. Distribution might at first seem to be inappropriate as a meansof determining markedness, since it does not appear at first related toeither morphology or semantics, but what might be seen as simply ran-domness. However, Givn has developed the concept in terms of what hecalls iconicity. He believes that substantive grounds, such as varying con-textual, socio-cultural, cognitive and communicative factors, determinethe distribution of a given linguistic item, such that The marked cate-gory (figure) tends to be less frequent, thus cognitively more salient, thanthe corresponding unmarked one (ground) 62. Thus, one is justified in


59 See, for example, E. Battistella,Markedness: The Evaluative Superstructure of Language(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990); E. Andrews, Markedness Theory: TheUnion of Asymmetry and Semiosis in Language(Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), esp.pp. 9-43, 136-39; Martn-Asensio, Foregrounding and its Relevance, esp. pp. 209-10.

60 J.H. Greenberg, Language Universals: With Special Reference to Feature Hierarchies(The Hague: Mouton, 1966), esp. chaps. 3 and 4.

61 See, for example, B. Comrie, Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspectand Related Problems(CTL; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 111-

22; A.M. Zwicky, On Markedness in Morphology, Die Sprache24 (1978), pp. 129-43; C. Bache, Verbal Aspect: A General Theory and its Application to Present-Day English(Odense: Odense University Press, 1985), pp. 60-73, where he shows that Jakobson pro-vides a half-way point in the discussion, as well as having difficulty in defining verbalaspect; T. Givn, Markedness in Grammar: Distributional, Communicative andCognitive Correlates of Syntactic Structure, Studies in Language15 (1991), pp. 335-70;idem, Functionalism and Grammar(Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1995), esp. pp. 25-69.

62 Givn, Markedness in Grammar, p. 337; cf. idem, Functionalism and Grammar, p.28. On figure and ground, see S. Wallace, Figure and Ground: The Interrelationships ofLinguistic Categories, in P.J. Hopper (ed.), Tense-Aspect: Between Semantics and Pragmatics(Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1982), pp. 201-23; P.J. Hopper, Aspect and Foregrounding inDiscourse, in T. Givn (ed.), Syntax and Semantics. XII. Discourse and Syntax(New York:

Academic, 1979), pp. 213-41; assessed and modified in Porter, Verbal Aspect, pp. 92-93.


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using the terminology of markedness on the basis of distribution, with themore heavily marked term the one that is less frequent than the less heavily

marked term.In summary, Hallidays work provides three theoretical constructs thatpresent themselves in support of the use of quantitative data in linguisticanalysis: (1) grammar as paradigmatic choice, that is, the view of lan-guage as a network of systems, (2) language as both system and instance,and (3) the typology of systems as either equiprobable (both of the termsare equally likely to occur) or skewed (one of the terms is unmarked andthe other is marked). In the remainder of this paper we will utilize thesethree concepts for the quantitative analysis of the Greek verbal network.

3. The Greek Verbal Network

The verbal network of the Greek of the New Testament lends itself toparadigmatic modelling, as has been illustrated at length elsewhere 63. Thediagram in Appendix A is a system network that contains 14 systems andcaptures the semantics of the Greek verb. Networks must contain realiza-tion statements, which show how selection of particular semantic features(selection expressions) are translated into the formal substance of the lan-guage itself (realization). The terms of each system of the verbal networkfind realization in verbal forms 64. The original network presented inVerbal Aspectcovered only the systems for aspectuality and aspect realizedby tense-forms, and for finiteness and attitude, realized by mood forms.There was also the major sub-system for remoteness, realized by present,imperfect, perfect and pluperfect indicative forms. All of this was in linewith the major thesis of the work65. The remaining three verbal systemshave now been added to the network: CAUSALITY, NUMBER, and PARTICI-PATION. CAUSALITY is one of the three major systems in the Greek verbalnetwork, and involves a set of simultaneous choices with the other two,leading to two further sub-systems, realized by the Greek voice system.The first system requires choice between +active (realized by the activevoice form) and active. The choice of active is the entry condition for

the required choice of +passive (realized by the passive voice form) or+ergative (realized by the middle voice form) 66. The NUMBERsystem, rea-lized by singular and plural forms, requires that one have chosen either


63 See Porter, Verbal Aspect, esp. pp. 89-90, 93-97, 109.64 Porter, Verbal Aspect, p. 13. Cf. Fawcett, Cognitive Linguistics and Social Interaction,

pp. 50-53, 115-24; C.S. Butler, Systemic Linguistics: Theory and Applications(London:Batsford, 1985), pp. 59-62.

65 Porter, Verbal Aspect, p. 109.66 The concept of ergativity and the middle voice is being developed in Porter, Voice

in the Greek of the New Testament.


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the +finite or the +factively presuppositional features as a singular entrycondition (i.e. factively presuppositional, realized by the infinitive, does

not lead to theNUMBER

system). TheNUMBER

system is realized by sin-gular and plural forms. Lastly, the PARTICIPATION system, realized by per-sonal reference, has the entry condition of +finite, and is a system on thesame level as attitude. The participation system has two sub-systems, thefirst requires choice of included (realized by the third person form) or+included, and the second requiring choice of +direct (realized by the firstperson form) or direct (realized by the second person form). We havealso taken the opportunity to refine the labelling system of the entire net-work. The names of the terms for each system are now consistently statedas English adjectives, which describe their semantic feature; and thenames of the systems are nouns (eg. ASPECTUALITYand REMOTENESS). For

the purpose of this study, the systems of the network have been numbered;however, there is no significance in the number which has been assignedto each system.

The network chart in Appendix A also contains predictions for eachsystem as to whether its terms are equiprobable (E) or skewed (S). Thesefollow the typology of systems suggested by Halliday, and are based uponPorters previous study as indicated in his Verbal Aspectand his Idioms ofthe Greek New Testament, where statements regarding markedness havebeen made on the basis of a variety of factors, including elementary analy-sis of distribution, as well as morphology and semantics 67. We have then


67 It is worth noting that no major work on what we define as verbal aspect has ap-peared since Porters Verbal Aspectthat has developed this method of analysis, so far as weknow, except for Y. Duhoux, Le verbe grec ancien: lements de morphologie et de syntaxehistoriques(BCILL, 61; Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 1992), esp. pp. 497-505; idem, Ladynamique des choix aspectuels en grec ancien, CILL 18.2-4 (1992), pp. 45-66; idem,tudes sur laspect verbal en grec ancient, 1: Prsentation dune mthode, BSL 90(1995), pp. 241-99, although he deals with a different time period, and does not treatthe interactive verbal systems as we do. Works to consult that have appeared in the lastten years include the following (there are, of course, other works that treat verbal aspect,but they are often speaking in terms of lexis or what is better categorized as Aktionsart):D. Cohen, Laspect verbal(Linguistique nouvelle; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,1989); H.B. Thelin (ed.), Verbal Aspect in Discourse(Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1990); S.

Fleischman, Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction(Croom Helm Romance Linguistics Series; London: Routledge, 1990); R.I. Binnick,Time and the Verb: A Guide to Tense and Aspect (New York: Oxford University Press,1991), C.S. Smith, The Parameters of Aspect(Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, 43;Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991); H.J. Verkuyl, A Theory of Aspectuality: The Interaction be-tween Temporal and Atemporal Structure (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 64;Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); idem,Aspectual Issues: Studies on Timeand Quantity(Center for the Study of Language and Information Publication LectureNotes, 98; Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 1999); W. Klein, Time in Language(Germanic Linguistics; London: Routledge, 1994); C. Bache, H. Basboell, and C.-E.Lindberg (eds.), Tense, Aspect and Action: Empirical and Theoretical Contributions toLanguage Typology(Empirical Approaches to Language Typology, 12; Berlin: Mouton deGruyter, 1994); C. Vet and C. Vetters (eds.), Tense and Aspect in Discourse(Trends in


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tested these predictions by actually counting the occurrences of each ofthe forms that realize the features of the systems. For instance, we have

predicted that, in theREMOTENESS

system (system 4), there will be a skewedprobability that the form that realizes the semantic feature of remote willbe far more frequent than the form that realizes the semantic feature of+remote. To test this prediction, we have counted the number of presentand perfect indicatives (remote) and the number of imperfect andpluperfect indicatives (+remote) in the Greek New Testament. From ourcalculations these figures are 11138 and 1245 occurrences, respectively.This results in probabilities of: 11138/12383 = 0.899 for remote and1245/12383 = 0.101 for +remote 68. The prediction that the form thatrealized the semantic feature of +remote (imperfect and pluperfect tense-forms) would be more frequent than that realizing the semantic feature of

remote (present and perfect tense-forms) has been proved correct, andthe semantic feature of +remote, realized by the imperfect and pluperfecttense-forms, is the marked member of the opposition.

Hallidays typology of probabilities works with the simple set of calcu-lations in which distributions are either equiprobable (0.5/0.5) or skewed(0.9/0.1). Before beginning the calculations, it was optimistic to thinkthat every opposition would fall to either of these results. However, itsoon became obvious, both after further reflection and after a few of the


Linguistics, 75; Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994); C. Bache, The Study of Aspect, Tenseand Action: Towards a Theory of the Semantics of Grammatical Categories(Frankfurt: Peter

Lang, 1995); R. Bartsch, Situations, Tense, and Aspect: Dynamic Discourse Ontology andthe Semantic Flexibility of Temporal System in German and English (Groningen-Amsterdam Studies in Semantics; Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995); Y. Tobin,Aspect inthe English Verb (LLL; London: Longman, 1994); C.M.J. Sicking and P. Stork, TwoStudies in the Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek(Mnemosyne, 160; Leiden: Brill,1996), esp. pp. 3-118; N. Bermel, Context and the Lexicon in the Development of RussianAspect(University of California Publications in Linguistics, 129; Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1997); M.J.A. Olsen, A Semantic and Pragmatic Model of Lexical andGrammatical Aspect(New York: Garland, 1997); L.A. Michaelis,Aspectual Grammar andPast-Time Reference (Routledge Studies in Germanic Linguistics; London: Routledge,1998); R.J. Decker, Temporal Deixis of the Greek Verb in the Gospel of Mark with Referenceto Verbal Aspect(SBG, 10; New York: Peter Lang, 2001).

68 These figures have been calculated from theAnalytical Greek New Testamentprepared

by Timothy and Barbara Friberg. It is a grammatically annotated text of the UBS 4thEdition Greek New Testament. The figures were calculated by a number of specially writ-ten scripts and may show certain discrepancies from searches carried out using searchprograms such as acCordance and BibleWorks. Given the scope of this article, we hasdiscounted all occurrences of aspectually vague verbs (eijmiv/ei\mi [and prefixed forms],h\mai [prefixed forms], kei'mai and fhmiv; on aspectual vagueness, see Porter, VerbalAspect, pp. 442-47). We have checked many of our figures using these programs andthough there is slight variation for some counts this does not affect the systemic classifi-cation used (skewed/equiprobable) for any of the systems studied. The variations are par-tially due to the searching method used, but primarily a result of the different machine-readable texts and annotation schemes they utilize. For a discussion of existing machine-readable texts of the Greek New Testament with warnings of potential pitfalls of theiruse, see ODonnell, The Use of Annotated Corpora, pp. 93-95.


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calculations were done, that such was not entirely realistic, language beingwhat it is. We will draw attention to any systems that reveal distributions

that do not fall within the parameters that Halliday has outlined. For thesake of our discussion we consider any ratio of greater than 0.7/0.3 to beskewed, and any ratio less than that to be equiprobable. In other words,for a distribution to be skewed, it must be a significantly higher distribu-tion than simply a slight numerical advantage of one term over another.There is, as a result, a significant possibility of a distribution that is closeto this dividing line, rendering judgments as to markedness on the basisof distribution alone tentative.

4. Predicted and Actual Results

a. Predicted Results

The chart in Appendix A shows the revised system network, with thepredictions for each system indicated. Here we summarize how we ar-rived at these predictions, drawing upon information already discussed inPorters Verbal Aspectand Idioms of the Greek New Testament. System 1:In the ASPECTUALITY system, the +expectational/+aspectual oppositionis realized in the formal choices between future forms and other verbaltense-forms (e.g. aorist, present and perfect). The future form is mor-phologically restricted in its forms, but is morphologically and seman-tically, as well as syntactically (e.g. conditional statements), closely rela-ted to non-indicative forms, as well as having syntactical and functionalrelations to the indicative forms. Rather than place it in the category ofthe already-established indicative or non-indicative forms, that is, as atense-form or as a mood, or even as an aspect, it is better considered apart of the Greek verbal system but is not fully aspectual (that is, noparadigmatic choice is offered). On this basis, we predicted that thefuture form, realizing the semantic feature of +expectational, wouldhave a skewed distribution in relation to the +aspectual forms 69. System2: In the ASPECT1 system, the perfective opposition, realized in aorist

and non-aorist (i.e. present [imperfect] and perfect [pluperfect]) tense-forms, was predicted to be equiprobable, on the basis of distributionalfigures and other criteria, such as semantics, already known from pre-vious study70. System 3: In theASPECT2 system, the +imperfective/+sta-tive opposition, realized in present (imperfect) and perfect (pluperfect)tense-forms, was predicted to be skewed, with the +imperfective term to


69 Porter, Verbal Aspect, pp. 94-95, 97, 404-16.70 Porter, Verbal Aspect, pp. 89-90 (where the opposition is labelled equipollent), pp.

178-81.


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be distributionally more frequent, on the basis of distributional, mor-phological, implicational and semantic criteria 71. System 4: In theREMOTENESS

system (see above), the remote opposition, realized inimperfect/pluperfect or present/perfect tense-forms, was predicted to beskewed, with the +remote term to be distributionally more frequent, onthe basis of distributional, morphological, implicational and semanticcriteria. System 5: In the CAUSALITY system, we were unable to decidewhether the active opposition, realized in the active and non-activevoice verb forms, would be equiprobable or skewed. We were aware ofother distributional figures 72, but considering a variety of factors, suchas origins of the forms and semantic relations, we were unsure whetherwhat was clearly a larger number of active voice forms was large enoughto indicate skewed probabilities 73. System 6: The +passive/+ergative

opposition, realized in the passive and middle voice verb forms, was atfirst predicted to be skewed, but recent work on the concept of ergati-vity and voice for another project has caused us to believe that thissystem may be closer to equiprobable than we first thought 74. System7: In the FINITENESS system, with the finite opposition, realized in ver-bal forms limited by person, it was not possible to predict whether theterms would be equiprobable or skewed 75. System 8: The factively pre-suppositional opposition, realized in the participle and infinitive verbalforms, was predicted to be skewed, on the basis of rudimentary distri-butional analysis 76. What we predicted for the skewed probabilitiesruns counter to the semantic markedness and labelling conventions.System 9: In the NUMBER system, the singular opposition, realized in


71 Porter, Verbal Aspect, pp. 89-90, 245-51.72 See Reed, Discourse Analysis of Philippians, p. 115.73 Porter, Verbal Aspect, pp. 10-11; idem, Idioms of the Greek New Testament, pp. 62-70.74 See Reed, Discourse Analysis of Philippians, p. 115. As noted above, it is hoped that

this work will result in a monograph on voice by Porter. On the concept of ergativity asit is being used here, see M.A.K. Halliday, An Introduction to Functional Grammar(London: Edward Arnold, 2nd edn, 1994), pp. 161-75; K. Davidse,Transitivity/Ergativity: The Janus-Headed Grammar of Actions and Events, in M.Davies and L. Ravelli (eds.),Advances in Systemic Linguistics: Recent Theory and Practice

(London: Pinter, 1992), pp. 105-35; M.B. ODonnell, Some New Testament Words forResurrection and the Company They Keep, in S.E. Porter, M.A. Hayes and D. Tombs(eds.), Resurrection (JSNTSup, 186; RILP, 5; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999),pp. 136-63, esp. pp. 154-61; cf. P.J. Hopper and S.A. Thompson, Transitivity inGrammar and Discourse, Language56 (1980), pp. 251-99.

75 Porter, Verbal Aspect, p. 94.76 See Porter, Verbal Aspect, pp. 390-91, with reference especially to D. Lightfoot,

Natural Logic and the Greek Moods: The Nature of the Subjunctive and Optative inClassical Greek(Janua Linguarum, Series Practica, 230; The Hague: Mouton, 1975); G.Horrocks, Review of Lightfoot, Natural Logic, Linguistics185 (1977), pp. 68-83; D.D.Schmidt, The Study of Hellenistic Greek Grammar in the Light of ContemporaryLinguistics, Perspectives on Religious Studies11 (1984), pp. 27-38; G. de Boel, Aspekt,

Aktionsart und Transitivitt, Indogermanische Forschungen 92 (1987), pp. 33-57.


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the singular and plural forms, was predicted to be equiprobable, espe-cially since the Greek of the New Testament no longer has a dual num-

ber. System 10: In thePARTICIPATION

system

77

, the included opposi-tion, realized in the non-third person and the third person forms, waspredicted to be equiprobable. System 11: The direct opposition, real-ized in the first and second person forms, was predicted to be equiproba-ble. For both systems 10 and 11, prior to this study, we had only intui-tions on which to base these predictions, but equiprobability seemedlikely on the basis of the mix of narrative and expositional material in theNew Testament. System 12: In the attitude system, the assertive oppo-sition, realized in the indicative and non-indicative (excluding participleand infinitive) mood forms, was predicted to be skewed, on the basis ofwhat is already known of frequency of the indicative verbal form, as well

as morphological, implicational and semantic criteria78

. System 13: The+projective/+directive opposition, realized in the subjunctive/optative orimperative mood forms, was predicted to be equiprobable, on the basisof rudimentary distributional figures, as well as morphological, implica-tional and semantic criteria79. System 14: The contingent opposition,realized in the optative and subjunctive mood forms, was predicted to beskewed, on the basis of well-known distributional figures regarding thedisappearance of the optative in Hellenistic Greek, including that of theNew Testament, as well as morphological, implicational and semanticcriteria80.

b.Actual Results

The chart in Appendix A also shows the Greek verbal network withcalculated probabilities from the Greek New Testament attached to eachof the terms in the systems. A summary of the relationship between thepredictions offered and the results is that virtually all of the predictionswere warranted, on the basis of the analysis offered in Verbal Aspect, takinginto consideration not only rudimentary distributional calculations, butmorphological, implicational and semantic criteria as well. Systems 2, 9,

10, 11, and 13 were predicted to be equiprobable, and all of them fellwithin the parameters set above for equiprobable distribution. In systems9 and 10, the distributions were closer to the boundary than in the others


77 See Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament, pp. 76-79, with reference to Lyons,Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, pp. 276-78.

78 Porter, Verbal Aspect, pp. 163-77; idem, Idioms of the Greek New Testament, pp. 50-61.79 Porter, Verbal Aspect, p. 181, as well as pp. 167-77, 321-62; idem, Idioms of the

Greek New Testament, pp. 52-61; cf. Reed, Discourse Analysis of Philippians, p. 115.80 Porter, Verbal Aspect, pp. 181, 321-35; idem, Idioms of the Greek New Testament, pp.

56-61.


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(being around 0.65 or 0.66/0.35 or 0.34), but each was still within therange. The others were very similar in their distribution (system 2:

0.48/0.52, system 11: 0.55/0.45 and system 13: 0.54/0.46). Systems 1, 3,4, 6, 8, 12, and 14 were predicted to be skewed, and all of them exceptsystem 6 fell within the parameters set above for skewed distribution 81.Systems 3 and 4 (0.87/0.13 and 0.90/0.10, respectively) were more skewedthan systems 8 and 12 (0.75/0.25 and 0.80/0.20). System 1 was evenmore skewed at 0.94/0.06, but system 14 was the most highly skewed ofall at 0.97/0.03. Of the two systems that were predicted as uncertain,systems 5 and 7, system 5 was skewed, with 0.72/0.28, although not bya large margin. System 7 at 0.66/0.34 was similar in distribution tosystems 9 and 10, and so should probably be considered equiprobable indistribution. In other words, virtually all of the predictions based upon

Porters Verbal Aspectand Idioms of the Greek New Testament, formulatedon the basis of analysis of morphology, implicational markedness, rudi-mentary distributional figures, and semantic features, have been shown tobe correct in so far as distributional patterns over the whole of the GreekNew Testament are concerned.

These predictions are also supported by distributional probabilitieswhen individual corpora within the corpus of the Greek New Testamentare considered as well. In all but a few instances, the probabilities for thewhole of the New Testament also apply to the sections within it. Wehave performed the same statistical analysis for the Synoptic Gospelsand Acts, the Pauline Letters, the Johannine Writings, and the otherbooks of the New Testament as we have for the whole of the NewTestament. In only perhaps five instances does one of these corporadepart from the probabilities for the New Testament as a whole. AsAppendix B indicates in system 2, ASPECT1, the probability for thewhole New Testament is equiprobable that perfective would be selec-ted (0.48/0.52). This ratio is very similar for all of the sub-corpora exam-ined, apart from the Pauline Letters where a distribution of 0.36/0.64is still within the range for equiprobable systems, but not as nearly equal


81

The features of system 6, CAUSALITY sub-system (CAUSALITY2), are realized by themiddle and passive voices in Greek. Statistical analysis of this system is hindered by thefact that the middle and passive forms of the present, imperfect, perfect and pluperfecttense-forms are formally/morphologically ambiguous. Machine-readable texts of theNew Testament differ in the manner in which they select to annotate these forms. TheFriberg text has a complex classification scheme that allows for active (a), middle (m),passive (p), middle or passive (e), middle deponent (d), passive deponent (o) or middleor passive deponent (n). The GRAMCORD text in contrast classifies an ambiguousform as either middle (m) or passive (p) (though a recent revision has included bothoptions in cases of ambiguity). Given the current state of textual annotation of the NewTestament we decided to count all unambiguous middle and passive forms (aorist andfuture) and then add half the frequency of all ambiguous forms to each of these totals.

We realize that this means of calculation may affect the results.


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as the ratios of the other sub-corpora. The preference for perfectiveforms in these letters might be explained by the exhortative function of

a letter. Further research might examine the distribution of variousaspectual forms according to the letter form 82. The FINITENESS system(system 7) exhibits a weak equiprobable distribution for the entire NewTestament (0.66/0.34). The Johannine Writings, at 0.81/0.19, a skeweddistribution, is the only examined sub-corpus in this system to vary great-ly from this ratio. These writings have noticeably fewer finite forms(participles and infinitives) than +finite forms. Again, more detailedanalysis is required to explain this variance, but it might be a functionof Johnannine style. In system 10, PARTICIPATION, the probability forthe whole of the New Testament is equiprobable that included wouldbe selected (0.65/0.35) but in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts, it is

slightly more probable that included rather than +included would beselected (0.72/0.28), a slightly skewed distribution. This is probablybest explained by the narrative nature of this material and its subse-quent dependence upon third person forms. In contrast, the PaulineLetters exhibit a clear equiprobable distribution for this system(0.48/0.52). Again, this may be explained by the genre of the mate-rialletters have a relatively higher use of first and second person formsthan do narratives. Similar comments can be made regarding the use ofthe first and second person as indicated by system 11, DIRECTION. Inthe whole New Testament, the system is equiprobable (0.55/0.45), butin the Synoptic Gospels and Acts the ratio is closer to the divide betweenskewed and equiprobable at 0.65/0.35, although still within theequiprobable distribution. In system 13, an ATTITUDE sub-system (NON-ASSERTION), the system is of equiprobable distribution in the whole ofthe New Testament (a relatively equal number of imperative and sub-junctive/optative forms) but ambiguous for the Johannine writings(0.70/0.30). These are the only possible departures within various sub-corpora of the New Testament from the probabilities for the whole ofthe New Testament. In fact, in only two (systems 7 and 10) is there aclear changing of category of distribution (we discount system 5, CAU-SALITY1, since the system and all of its sub-corpora, except for the

Johannine Writings, are very close in their distributions, even if they fallon either side of the dividing line between skewed and equiprobable).In the light of the probabilities of the systems involved, the departuresnoted above seem understandable, and do not jeopardize the results inany way.


82 Preliminary attempts along these lines have been made by Reed, Discourse Analysisof Philippians; and S.E. Porter and M.B. ODonnell, Semantics and Patterns of

Argumentation in the Book of Romans: Definitions, Proposals, Data and Experiments,in S.E. Porter (ed.), Diglossia and Other Topics in New Testament Linguistics(JSNTSup,193; SNTG, 6; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000, pp. 154-204).


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5. Implications of Results of Distributional Analysis

There is more that can be said on the basis of these calculations, how-ever. These comments will be divided into two parts. The first part is con-cerned with the findings regarding several individual systems. The secondis concerned with more extended patterns of distribution, with particularreference to their implications regarding verbal aspect.

a. Individual Systems

As a result of the above analysis, several questions regarding certainindividual systems should be addressed. The first is the question of howthe semantic feature labelling is possibly affected by the distributional pat-terns. This issue appears in several different forms. The first is where onehas an equiprobable distribution, but positive and negative terms are uti-lized to indicate the semantic features, such as in system 2, where there isan equiprobable distribution but the terms +perfective and perfective areused. This labelling would appear to indicate a skewed distribution, sincethe use of + feature notation may seem to imply markedness. The samequestion arises for systems 7, 10, and 11. Systems 1 and 3 are skewed intheir distribution, yet they have two positive semantic features indicated,such as in system 1 with +expectational and +aspectual. There is also thequestion of how one labels a system where one cannot clearly establish

equiprobable or skewed distribution. These questions of labelling are onesthat have been of interest to systemic linguists from the advent of this gra-phic systemic display, since the convention seems to warrant concise andconsistent labelling conventions in the light of their use as semantic fea-ture notation for the forms grammaticalized by these features 83. There hasbeen no resolution to the difficulties regarding the labelling of systems,with some systemicists using systemic networks for purely semantic cate-gories, others for formal categories, and others for a combination. Themajor criticism of networks seems to revolve around instances where thelabelling terms are not either formally or implicationally motivated 84.Our network has both formally and implicationally motivated terms, and

moves from the broadest to the most delicate semantic features, with themore delicate features implicated by the previous entry conditions of thenetwork, and specific forms that serve as the unique realizations of thesemantic features. So long as this double condition is realized, as ours is,


83 Besides the sources mentioned in Porter, Verbal Aspect, pp. 8-11, see Butler,Systemic Linguistics, pp. 40-45; R. Melrose, Systemic Linguistics and theCommunicative Linguistics Syllabus, in Fawcett and Young (eds.), New Developments,II, pp. 78-93.

84 See J.R. Martin, The Meaning of Features in Systemic Linguistics, in Hallidayand Fawcett (eds.), New Developments, I, pp. 14-40; P.W. Davies, Modern Theories ofLanguage(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 298.


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the positive or negative features of the network do not seem to be ofimportance, and such semantic labelling is found in a variety of networks.

A second major question to ask is with regard to the implications ofthe distribution of system 2 and the aorist tense-form. The question iswhether the equiprobable distribution indicates that the aorist is notunmarked. There has probably been too much loose use of language withregard to the so-called unmarked character of the aorist. The equiproba-ble distribution indicates, as predicted, that the forms grammaticalizingthe +perfective semantic feature are not in privative opposition to thosethat are perfective, but that they are equipollent. In this sense, the aoristtense-form is not unmarked. However, on the basis of a number of otherfactors, such as morphology, implication and semantics, as well as the pat-terns of distribution when one differentiates the aorist from the present

and from the perfect tense-forms, it is accurate to say that the aorist isprobably the least heavily marked of those forms 85.

b. Patterns of Distribution

The probabilistic studies that have been performed also allow for a test-ing of several particular dimensions of verbal aspectual usage. In VerbalAspect, Porter defined verbal aspect in the following way: Greek verbalaspect is a synthetic semantic category (realized in the forms of verbs)used of meaningful oppositions in a network of tense systems to gram-

maticalize the authors reasoned subjective choice of conception of a pro-cess 86. This definition was refined further in Idioms of the Greek NewTestament as follows: verbal aspect is defined as a semantic (meaning)category by which a speaker or writer grammaticalizes (i.e. represents ameaning by choice of a word-form) a perspective on an action by theselection of a particular tense-form in the verbal system 87. There havebeen two major objections raised against these definitions 88. One of theserevolves around the issue of lexis 89. This response takes several different


85 See Porter, Verbal Aspect, pp. 89-90.86 Porter, Verbal Aspect, p. 88.87

Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament, pp. 20-21.88 Objections based upon simplistic or traditional temporal conceptions of the verbare not considered here, since they have already been adequately dealt with in Porter,Verbal Aspect,passim.

89 The major proponents of this position with regard to the Greek of the NewTestament are J. Mateos, El Aspecto Verbal en el Nuevo Testamento (Estudios de NuevoTestamento, 1; Madrid: Ediciones Cristiandad, 1977); cf. idem, Metodo de AnalisisSemantico Aplicado al Griego del Nuevo Testamento (Estudios de FilologaNeotestamentaria, 1; Crdoba: Ediciones el Almendro, 1989); and S.M. Baugh, AnIntroduction to Greek Verbal Aspect in the Non-Indicative Moods (unpublishedmanuscript; Westminster Theological Seminary in California, 1995). These categoriesare not absolute, and several of those listed here could be placed in the next category,with some of those below placed here as well.


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forms, but essentially argues that choice of verbal aspect is to a largeextent, if not entirely, determined by the choice of lexical item. Therefore,

the aspectual systems in the Greek verbal network cannot have the statusor position in the Greek language that they are given in Porters model,but aspectual choice comes only as a latterly or even terminal choice dic-tated by previous lexical choice. The probabilistic results regarding thevarious corpora as opposed to the whole of the New Testament go someof the way to showing that lexis, at least as it would be influenced by indi-vidual writers and genre, does not have a significant effect upon verbalaspect. This is especially the case since none of the aspectual systems showedsignificant variance in its probabilities between the sub-corpora andthe whole of the New Testament. ODonnell has also shown in a moredetailed study that such holds true 90.

The second response sees verbal aspect as dependent upon a variety ofother grammatical features, such as voice and mood 91. The contention ofVerbal Aspectwas that the Greek verbal network has aspect as one of itsmajor system components, and that verbal aspect as a morphologicallybased semantic system functions largely independently of these other fac-tors. In the rest of this paper, we have tested this theory by analyzing anumber of instances where aspectual systems in the Greek verbal networkinteract with other verbal systems.

As the tables discussed below indicate, aspectual choice seems for themost part to be independent of any other set of grammatical choiceswithin the Greek verbal network. Not all of the possible paths throughthe systemic network have been analyzed, but those that haveall ofthem concerned with various aspect related systemstend to confirmthis analysis. For each analysis, we first define the parameters of the inter-active systems (they are not necessarily simultaneous choices in the net-work, but are choices that must be made to realize the various semanticfeatures concerned), and then comment upon the possible influences ofone on the other, paying particular attention to how choice of verbalaspect may or may not be affected by the other interactive system 92.Distributional statistics for these individual systems in isolation are also


90 See M.B. ODonnell, Aspect and Lexis: An Empirical Approach (forthcoming).91 See B.M. Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (OTM; Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1990), esp. pp. 126-96; cf. M. Silva, God, Language and Scripture:Reading the Bible in the Light of General Linguistics (Foundations of ContemporaryInterpretation, 4; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), pp. 111-18; idem, A Response toFanning and Porter on Verbal Aspect, in S.E. Porter and D.A. Carson (eds.), BiblicalGreek Language and Linguistics: Open Questions in Current Research (JSNTSup, 80;SNTG, 1; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), pp. 74-82 (also found in WTJ54 [1992], pp.179-83); idem, Explorations in Exegetical Method: Galatians as a Test Case(Grand Rapids:Baker Book House, 1996), pp. 68-79, who especially in his later work entertains Baughsideas (see n. 89 above).

92 See Halliday, Language as System and Language as Instance, pp. 72-76.


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provided. These statistics sometimes differ from those of the individualsystems in the Greek verbal network as a whole, since other systems that

affect the statistics have been eliminated. As mentioned above, the resultsare essentially confirmatory that choice of verbal aspect is not affected bycompeting grammatical choices; however, there are several other interes-ting statistical results that come to the fore, virtually all of them in con-firmation of previous research found in Porters Verbal Aspect. Each tableis presented with the two systems that are being tested. The system at thetop is the one seen to influence the system at the side. For each set, eachsystem is tested in relation to the other, to determine whether the proba-bilistic distribution for a given system is or is not affected by the othersystem. We determine that a system is not affected if the distributionstill falls within its distributional type, that is, as either equiprobable or

skewed, even if the exact figures vary. A system is affected if its distributionchanges types. Those that fall on the border of the two types are alsonoted.

1. FINITENESS (7) and ASPECTUALITY (1)

Realization Statements:

+finite +expectational >> Future Indicativefinite +expectational >> Future Participle & Infinitive

+finite +aspectual >> Non-Future Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative & Optativefinite +aspectual >> Non-Future Participle & Infinitive

The first set of examples concerns the relation of the FINITENESSsystem and the ASPECTUALITY system. This set of systemic choices con-cerns the options of finite and +expectational/+aspectual (systems 7 and1). Choice of finite does not affect the skewed distribution of +expecta-tional/+aspectual (0.08/0.92 and 0.01/0.99, respectively), in conformitywith the distribution for this system on its own (system 1). Choice of+aspectual results in an equiprobable distribution regarding finite

28 Stanley E. Por