[Lingtyp] exceptions in textual data to "la concordance des temps"-like principles (esp. for Koine Greek)

[Russell Barlow]

I don't know much about Koine Greek, but in Attic Greek there's a use of the present tense that Smyth refers to as the "Present of Past and Present Combined". If Jesus is trying to convey that he both *was* before Abraham was born and continues to *be* while he's telling people this, then this seems like a reasonable enough tense to use. As for the aorist infinitive verb (γενέσθαι 'become'), that owes its tense and non-finiteness to the fact that it's in a πρίν 'before' clause, which, in Attic at least, typically took an infinitive (and usually an aorist one).


> On November 8, 2021 at 3:08 PM Joseph Brooks <brooks.josephd at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>     Hello,
> 
>     This is not really a topic I'm familiar with cross-linguistically, but I am wondering if anyone knows of any interesting exceptions (in any language) to any language-specific "concordance des temps" principle (as an important discourse-syntactic principle in clause combining in that language).
> 
>     I'm familiar with this as a prescriptive rule in French, where (if Im remembering right) there are TAM restrictions of verbs in dependent clauses, based on the verb in the main clause. From fieldwork on Chini, similar principles are a fairly big deal in the language (and then in clause chains it becomes particularly important).
> 
>     I'm wondering about this because of the example in the Koine Greek (and then, in translations into whatever language) New Testament in John 8:58 where Jesus says: "Before Abraham was (to be) born (aorist infinitive, middle voice), I am (present indicative)." It's a strange sentence since though I dont know Koine Greek, I imagine your average person would expect Jesus to have just said something more like "I existed before Abraham was born."
> 
>     Cheers
>     Joseph
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