Some time ago I provided a brief introduction to markedness. This has been a somewhat difficult area to explain, due both to misconceptions and the fact that it represents a new way of thinking about things. In light of embarking on another series that depends heavily on this idea, I tried to think of another way of explaining things. Like usual, God provided in a dream of the night. Trusting that this is better, I’ll try some application and see what the verdict is from readers.

The first time around, I differentiated the two approaches to markedness as symmetrical and asymmetrical. This is accurate, but I remember the difficult time I had in the late 90’s keeping them straight. I used to carry a lot of 3×5 cards with new terms and brief definitions. Fundamentally, the distinction I was trying to make was qualitative versus quantitative.

A quantitative approach to markedness seeks to differentiate a set of similar items from one another. They are similar, but not the same, so there must be something that sets each apart from the other. Asymmetrical markedness provides this differentiation qualitatively, describing the set of characteristics that make each member of the set unique. Let’s consider the personal pronouns as an example. We could divide them up by number, obtaining one group of singular ones, and another of plural. Alternatively, we could divide them up by person, arriving at three groups: first, second and third person. By combining these two qualities, we could uniquely differentiate each pronoun using a plus/minus system. For instance, “I” would be singular and first person. “They” would be plural and third person. “You” provides something of a challenge, since it can be used in both singular and plural contexts.

Markedness is really the study of “markers,” that which signals the presence of something. In the case of “you” the person is clearly signaled (second person), but the number is not. It could be singular or plural. We could say that “you” is unmarked for number. There is no marker present to tell us which it is, we would have to rely on context. Believe it or not, this kind of ambiguity happens quite a bit in language, with one form wearing multiple hats. It may seem strange to an outsider, but to the native speaker it is “normal.” In English, we have no concern for ensuring that the listener knows which “you” we mean, except in Texas. There they have added the form “y’all” to disambiguate second person plural from singular, though I have heard this form used for a singular person–me!

So qualitative markedness (asymmetrical) seeks to differentiate members of some set from one another. Most typically, there will be one member that occurs most frequently, and it often ends up being the least marked form. In the case of personal pronouns, the most common form would probably be “you.” Back in the day, English used to have distinct forms to differentiate singular from plural, ye versus thou. Pressure for efficiency and other factors in the historical development of the language lead to a streamlining of the forms until the two finally shared a single form.

We would do the same kind of qualitative analysis of Greek tense forms to determine what each form marks. We could divide them up by aspect:

  • Perfective: aorist
  • Imperfective: imperfect and present
  • Stative: pluperfect and perfect

This gets us part way to uniquely differentiating what each form signals, so we need to find another meaningful constraint. Depending on your background, you would either add tense as time, or tense as “remoteness” for the indicative mood.

  • Past/remote: imperfect, pluperfect
  • Non-past/non-remote: present, perfect

Note that it is only in the imperfective and stative that we need to find an additional distinctive, the perfective only has one option. So what? This means that the aorist, at least theoretically, needs to play double-duty. However, since perfective action is viewed/portrayed as an undifferentiated whole, the vast majority of the usage will refer to past actions. It is kind of hard to conceive of an ongoing activity that is viewed as a whole, but it can happen. Therefore, I will not attempt to assign a past/non-past value to the perfective since there is no need for one. If there is no choice available, there is nothing to be gained by assigning it.

In fact, there is much to be lost in doing so, since then one would then need to defend oneself against the counter-examples, where the aorist is used for non-past reference in the indicative. It would be like trying to claim that “you” is plural, except when it is not. You (sing) would need to defend your (sing) claim against all of the counter-examples that essentially disprove your (sing) claim. It is much easier and more accurate to simply claim it is unmarked for the feature. “You” may be singular, it may be plural, it is unmarked. Aorist may be past, it may be non-past, it is unmarked. There is nothing to be gained by being too precise, at some point you just become wrong.

Returning to the tense-forms, if we combine the two constraints of time and aspect, we can uniquely differentiate each major tense-form from the other. Now you may say, “Hey Steve, this doesn’t work outside the indicative! What are you going to do about that?” Ah, dear friend, I’m glad you asked. When one moves outside of the indicative, the options in the non-perfective aspects drop out, leaving only one option like what we find in the perfective. Here are your non-indicative options:

  • Perfective: aorist
  • Imperfective: present
  • Stative: perfect

Since we don’t find things like pluperfect participles and such, since there are no competing options for the imperfective or stative aspect, there is no need to add the time/remoteness layer of differentiation. It would make no sense, but would require you to defend against the many counter-examples. If there is no need to add another layer of differentiation, then don’t do it. Herein lies the problem with past claims made about Greek tense and time. On the one hand, you have those who have claimed that time is encoded in the tenses, but they have neglected the clear caveats from the dead grammarians that this only holds for the indicative. Then there are those who would claim that there is no temporal information conveyed by the tenses. I would argue (and have done so) that this too misunderstands the system. It is here that Gentry’s notes add further support, since he looks at the function of the augment on the verb, something only found in the indicative mood.

I seem to have gotten off on a bunny trail. I’ll post this and come back to the quantitative approach to markedness in a future post.

Ain’t grammar grand, y’all?