Aspect, Aktionsart, and Abduction: Future Tense in the New Testament 133 was that the primary meaning of the tense-forms was Aktionsart with secondary implications for time14. This traditional understanding of the function of tense-forms often became an obstacle and a point of contention in the discussion of Greek verbal aspect theory. To make matters worse, Aktionsart, literally the kind of action, is a term long confused with aspect and has sometimes been used interchangeably in some grammars15. Bache’s work is credited as the first to make a semantic distinction between aspect and Aktionsart16. Some grammarians see Aktionsart as a lexically expressed feature and prefer to use a different label. Olsen prefers to use the term ‘lexical aspect’ to describe the nature of aspect while Fanning uses ‘procedural characteristics’ to refer to the ways in which verbs behave in different settings. However, no matter what terminology is used, Aktionsart concerns the type or quality of an action, the nature of the internal temporal constituency17. It is a theory that attempts to characterize actions as they objectively took place18. In other words, whereas aspect indicates the speaker’s subjective viewpoint of an action, Aktionsart concerns its objective nature. Unlike aspect, which is a semantic category, Aktionsart is generally regarded as a pragmatic category19. Although the aspect and Aktionsart of a word sometimes may have complementary or even overlapping descriptions, they are expressed differently: aspect is expressed grammatically whereas Aktionsart is expressed lexically and contextually20. Thus when considering linguistics it is most helpful to discuss the meaning of a Greek verb in terms of both semantics and pragmatics categories. Notice that, in Porter’s definition of aspect, two features are stressed: (1) Aspectuality is treated as a semantic category; and (2) the Greek verbal structure is described as systemic. Following Hallidayan systemic 14 Absolutely in the Indicative and relatively in Participles. Picirilli, “The Meaning of the Tenses”, 533. 15 For instance, refer to the discussion of Robertson’s Aktionsarten and Porter’s aspects mentioned above. There is also the work of Burton, although without aspect or Aktionsart terminology, it reflects the concepts in modern studies of these categories. Decker, Tempo- ral Deixis, 6-7. 16 C. Bache, “Aspect and Aktionsart: Towards a Semantic Distinction”, Journal of Linguistics 18.1 (1982) 57-72 and also C. Bache, The Study of Aspect, Tense, and Action: Towards a Theory of the Semantics of Grammatical Categories (NY 1997) 64. 17 Olsen, Lexical and Grammatical Aspect, 8-9. 18 Porter, “Greek Grammar and Syntax”, 89. 19 See for example Fanning, Verbal Aspect, 49-50, Campbell, Verbal Aspect, 24-5. However, Evans contends that Aktionsart can become grammaticalized, this is similar for those who argues that certain lexical aspect (Aktionsart) features are semantic features. See Evans, Verbal Syntax, 21, and Olsen, Lexical and Grammatical Aspect, 18-54. 20 Decker uses the term verbal complex to describe the web of semantic factors com- prised by all grammatical and contextual factors that contribute to the meaning of a verb. See Decker, Temporal Deixis, 27.