What is the tense of "Christ is risen"?

[Leo Bloom]

See subject.

Leo

[picker]

I think it is the Present Perfect tense.

[Ruby Slippers]

I would say it's simple present tense. The word "risen" in this example is an adjective, similar to "pure as the driven snow."

[ultrafilter]

You can also parse risen as an adjective, in which case it's just the present tense.

[isaiahrobinson]

I'd also vote for present tense, with "risen" being an adjective. Present-perfect tense would be "Christ has risen".

[Polycarp]

Present passive. He was dead but now He is risen.

[John Mace]

Originally Posted by Polycarp

Present passive. He was dead but now He is risen.

Is there a difference between "He is risen" and "He has risen". I think of the latter as the passive voice.

[Polycarp]

Originally Posted by John Mace

Is there a difference between "He is risen" and "He has risen". I think of the latter as the passive voice.

In a gun battle, there is a serious difference between "I have shot" and "I am shot" -- the parallel meaning is the one you are looking at/for. While I see your point, "He has risen" refers tp an event nearly 20 centuries ago; "He is risen" to his present state today.

(All of this, i think it goes without saying, is within a universe of discourse presupposing the Christian Resurrection as factual.)

[John Mace]

Originally Posted by Polycarp

In a gun battle, there is a serious difference between "I have shot" and "I am shot" -- the parallel meaning is the one you are looking at/for. While I see your point, "He has risen" refers tp an event nearly 20 centuries ago; "He is risen" to his present state today.

(All of this, i think it goes without saying, is within a universe of discourse presupposing the Christian Resurrection as factual.)

Exactly. If I say: "I am cold", is that passive?

[sundog66]

I think the two most plausible analyses are:

1. Present-tense form of copula be, with risen parsed as an adjective.

2. Present perfect, but differing from normal present perfect in that the auxiliary be is used instead of have.

If (2) is correct, then we have to explain why this pattern is not productive, e.g., why do we not find:

a. John is eaten breakfast.
b. John is taken a shower.

Maybe it's an archaism.

However, I do not think that a passive analysis is tenable (and besides, passive is a voice, not a tense, so it doesn't really answer the question anyway), because at least in English, intransitive predicates do not passivize. That is, if "Christ is risen" were passive, then we would expect an active counterpart along the lines of "Somebody rose Christ", contrary to fact: rise is intransitive, cf. transitive variant raise. Of course, it's also true that some passive forms lack active counterparts, e.g., "John is reported to have left" but not "I reported John to have left". But I don't think we want to go down that road in this case.

[ultrafilter]

Originally Posted by John Mace

Exactly. If I say: "I am cold", is that passive?

No. The passive voice is used to indicate that something was done to you by someone else. The test is to ask whether you could add the words "by John" to the sentence and still end up with something that makes sense. So "I am shot" is passive because "I am shot by John" is a valid sentence, whereas "I am cold by John" is a hot mess, so "I am cold" is not passive.

[John Mace]

Originally Posted by ultrafilter

No. The passive voice is used to indicate that something was done to you by someone else. The test is to ask whether you could add the words "by John" to the sentence and still end up with something that makes sense. So "I am shot" is passive because "I am shot by John" is a valid sentence, whereas "I am cold by John" is a hot mess, so "I am cold" is not passive.

Right. I was not suggesting it was. I was challenging that "He is risen" is passive.

[Frylock]

It'san archaic construction. It means the same as "has risen."

[Mr Downtown]

I'm with Frylock. Long ago, I learned that German verbs use the auxiliary verb sein (instead of haben) to form the present perfect provided that the main verb is intransitive and that it indicates a change of location or of condition. The example given was ist storben (has died). In Christian theology, and in biblical language not so distantly removed from its Germanic roots, we get not only thee and thou, but also is risen to indicate a permanent change in condition.

[John Mace]

Is "Christ is risen" actually in the NT?

[isaiahrobinson]

Originally Posted by John Mace

Is "Christ is risen" actually in the NT?

I can't find that phrase but "he is risen", "the Lord is risen" and "Jesus of Nazareth, who is risen" all appear in the King James version, sometimes multiple times.

[Mister Rik]

It's a deliberate choice of wording to support a specific belief. "He has risen" leaves open the possibility that He rose, but then died again at a later date. "He is risen" deliberately states that He rose, and remains in that state even now.

[John Mace]

Originally Posted by isaiahrobinson

I can't find that phrase but "he is risen", "the Lord is risen" and "Jesus of Nazareth, who is risen" all appear in the King James version, sometimes multiple times.

OK, so it does look like it might be an archaic grammatical construct.

[Malacandra]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

I'm with Frylock. Long ago, I learned that German verbs use the auxiliary verb sein (instead of haben) to form the present perfect provided that the main verb is intransitive and that it indicates a change of location or of condition. The example given was ist storben (has died). In Christian theology, and in biblical language not so distantly removed from its Germanic roots, we get not only thee and thou, but also is risen to indicate a permanent change in condition.

Also French. "I have arrived" is <<Je suis arrivé>>, not <<J'ai arrivé>>, and similar for the other so-called "Advent" verbs. The construction is only just dead in vernacular English; as recently as The Children's Encyclopaedia a writer could say "I am come too soon for you" with only a slight hint of archaism. And of course "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds".

[psychonaut]

Originally Posted by picker

I think it is the Present Perfect tense.

That's not a tense in English.

Originally Posted by Polycarp

Present passive. He was dead but now He is risen.

Neither is this.

English has a grand total of two tenses: present and past. The sentence in question is in the present tense, and it also employs the perfect aspect. It's certainly not in the passive, since the verb isn't transitive.

[Blue Mood]

Originally Posted by Frylock

It'san archaic construction. It means the same as "has risen."

Two more that spring to mind:
Joy to the world, the lord is come.
Their light is gone out.

[isaiahrobinson]

Originally Posted by John Mace

OK, so it does look like it might be an archaic grammatical construct.

I think this is right. Wikipedia claims it was a common variant on the present perfect tense in Early Modern English, citing examples from Shakespeare and Tennyson among others:

Early Modern English used "to have" and "to be" as the auxiliaries for the present perfect, with a similar distinction to other modern European languages. This usage has practically disappeared from Modern English. Examples of this conjugation can still be found in older texts:

"Madam, the Lady Valeria is come to visit you."
- The Tragedy of Coriolanus by William Shakespeare

"Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;"
- Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"Pillars are fallen at thy feet,
Fanes quiver in the air,
A prostrate city is thy seat,
And thou alone art there."
- Marius amid the Ruins of Carthage by Lydia Maria Child

"I am come in sorrow."
- Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

[Hari Seldon]

I am with those who think it is an archaic version of the "present perfect". I use scare quotes because this form is generally not perfective and I call it the compound past, as opposed to the simple past which is usually perfective in meaning. Contrast "Perleman has proved Poincaré's conjecture" (Perleman is still alive and possibly still proving things) with "Hilbert proved Waring's conjecture" (Hilbert is deceased).

In various IE languages I am aware of, verbs of motion do their compound past using a form of "be" and other compound pasts using "have". I assume that English used to do that and still did so in King James's day and has since ceased doing so.

It is worth noting that Latin had an inflected imperfect past and an inflected perfect. I assume that the descendents of those tenses in French are the imperfect and simple past, resp.

[Leo Bloom]

It would make sense to refer to the original Greek, I would presume: see W's Aorist. This is way above my head, but seems to hold the clue.

In the general summary of Aorist in a number of languages, the following strikes me as interesting as a locus of syntactic/semantic tension:

[Begin excerpt]
Hermeneutic implications
Because the aorist was not maintained in either Latin or the Germanic languages, there have long been difficulties in translating the Greek New Testament into Western languages. The aorist has often been interpreted as making a strong statement about the aspect or even the time of an event, when, in fact, due to its being the unmarked (default) form of the Greek verb, such implications are often left to context. Thus, within New Testament hermeneutics, it is considered an exegetical fallacy to attach undue significance to uses of the aorist.[13] Although one may draw specific implications from an author's use of the imperfective or perfect, no such conclusions can, in general, be drawn from the use of the aorist, which may refer to an action "without specifying whether the action is unique, repeated, ingressive, instantaneous, past, or accomplished."[13] In particular, the aorist does not imply a "once for all" action, as it has commonly been misinterpreted.[14]
[End excerpt]

Something similar--not syntactically marked, but "spelled out" in Jewish homiletics, is in the Haggadah of the Passover Seder, which says that the Jews were enslaved, and they are still enslaved (until Messiah, etc.).

[oliversarmy]

As ever, this has been asked before with no real clarity.

I would guess past perfect.

[oliversarmy]

I actually meant present perfect.

[Leo Bloom]

Originally Posted by oliversarmy

As ever, this has been asked before with no real clarity.

I would guess past perfect.

It seems to me that the attempts at clarification in this thread are stronger...

[ultrafilter]

One of the various bits of song that shows up in some Christian services that I've been to asserts the following:

Christ has died
Christ is risen
Christ will come again

The contrast between the first and second lines suggests that they're not both meant to be past tense. So I'm also throwing in with the old school grammar crowd.

[mister nyx]

It's the present perfect. It's exactly the equivalent of "Christ has risen" in Late Modern English; in Early Modern English, sometimes be was used as the auxiliary verb, depending on the main verb in the sentence.

It's not passive. It's not aorist (LOL.) It's just an entirely normal way of forming the present perfect a few hundred years ago. Something that would be familiar to anyone who has ever read any English literature from that era. It's a very simple matter of fact.

But, like, posters, continue throwing out random grammatical terms you don't understand. I'm sure we'll all benefit from a few dozen other people misusing the term "passive".

Originally Posted by psychonaut

English has a grand total of two tenses: present and past.

LOL. If you want to nitpick terminology, at least get it right. If you use the term "tense" strictly, English's tenses are "past" and "non-past". Any grammar of English will make that clear.

[psychonaut]

Originally Posted by mister nyx

LOL. If you want to nitpick terminology, at least get it right. If you use the term "tense" strictly, English's tenses are "past" and "non-past". Any grammar of English will make that clear.

"Any" grammar? You mean maybe like Visser's An Historical Syntax of the English Language? Or were you perhaps thinking only of instructive material, such as English Grammar Instruction That Works! by Rothstein et al., or Leech's Meaning and the English Verb, which for about thirty years now has been pretty much the standard textbook on English verb use for foreign learners? Or are you thinking instead of scholarly works focussing specifically on the development English verb tenses, such as Past Tense in English: From OE to PDE (Sangmeister, 2009)? And let's not forget the scores of academic and popular works by David Crystal; I'm sure he would be grateful to receive your corrections on his very glaring misuse of these very basic grammatical terms.

[jjimm]

Originally Posted by ultrafilter

The contrast between the first and second lines suggests that they're not both meant to be past tense. So I'm also throwing in with the old school grammar crowd.

This is what I was going to say. It was part of the Anglican services I grew up with, and it's clearly meant to be poetically past/present/future: what happened/what is current/what will happen.

[jjimm]

Weirdly enough, on my wikiwalk (note, that's my only info so am prepared to accept that there are inaccuracies) the "has died/is risen/will come again" construction seems to from an an episcopal English translation of the Roman Missal, which was only produced in 1970.

[Frylock]

Originally Posted by mister nyx

It's the present perfect. It's exactly the equivalent of "Christ has risen" in Late Modern English; in Early Modern English, sometimes be was used as the auxiliary verb, depending on the main verb in the sentence.

It's not passive. It's not aorist (LOL.) It's just an entirely normal way of forming the present perfect a few hundred years ago. Something that would be familiar to anyone who has ever read any English literature from that era. It's a very simple matter of fact.

But, like, posters, continue throwing out random grammatical terms you don't understand. I'm sure we'll all benefit from a few dozen other people misusing the term "passive".


LOL. If you want to nitpick terminology, at least get it right. If you use the term "tense" strictly, English's tenses are "past" and "non-past". Any grammar of English will make that clear.

Wow.

I'm sorry, who are you again?

[Frylock]

Originally Posted by psychonaut

"Any" grammar? You mean maybe like Visser's An Historical Syntax of the English Language? Or were you perhaps thinking only of instructive material, such as English Grammar Instruction That Works! by Rothstein et al., or Leech's Meaning and the English Verb, which for about thirty years now has been pretty much the standard textbook on English verb use for foreign learners? Or are you thinking instead of scholarly works focussing specifically on the development English verb tenses, such as Past Tense in English: From OE to PDE (Sangmeister, 2009)? And let's not forget the scores of academic and popular works by David Crystal; I'm sure he would be grateful to receive your corrections on his very glaring misuse of these very basic grammatical terms.

Also, according to this site, : The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

AFAIK the Cambridge Grammar is basically the go-to reference among linguists when it comes to the grammar of English.

[jjimm]

LOL.

[Chessic Sense]

Originally Posted by John Mace

Exactly. If I say: "I am cold", is that passive?

No.

Originally Posted by John Mace

Is there a difference between "He is risen" and "He has risen". I think of the latter as the passive voice.

Neither are passive. The latter is just present tense, perfect aspect.

Originally Posted by Polycarp

Present passive. He was dead but now He is risen.

That's not passive. It's simple present, as 'risen' is an adjective.

Originally Posted by ultrafilter

"I am shot" is passive because "I am shot by John" is a valid sentence.

Not in English, it's not valid. "I have been shot by John" is passive. Even "I have been shot" is passive. "I was shot" can be passive if 'shot' is a verb, not an adjective. "I am shot" is not and never will be passive. Even adding an ungrammatical "by John" doesn't change that.

[nudgenudge]

Originally Posted by Chessic Sense

Not in English, it's not valid. "I have been shot by John" is passive. Even "I have been shot" is passive. "I was shot" can be passive if 'shot' is a verb, not an adjective. "I am shot" is not and never will be passive. Even adding an ungrammatical "by John" doesn't change that.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you said, but "I am shot by John" is a valid sentence.

Billy: So I'm walking across the field, and I see Farmer John's bull. I decide to steal it.
Fred: And what happens?
Billy: I am shot by John.

[Frylock]

Originally Posted by nudgenudge

Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you said, but "I am shot by John" is a valid sentence.

Billy: So I'm walking across the field, and I see Farmer John's bull. I decide to steal it.
Fred: And what happens?
Billy: I am shot by John.

Seconded. "I am shot by John" can definitely be used as a passive construction in English.

"Let's go over the script one more time. You're hit over the head by Mary, John is stabbed with a knife by Charlotte, and here at the end, I am shot by John."

(The rest of what Chessic said about the passive was right, though.)

[Alley Dweller]

Originally Posted by Chessic Sense

Not in English, it's not valid. "I have been shot by John" is passive. Even "I have been shot" is passive. "I was shot" can be passive if 'shot' is a verb, not an adjective. "I am shot" is not and never will be passive. Even adding an ungrammatical "by John" doesn't change that.

Is the following passive?
In Act 3 of the play, Caesar is killed.

Is the following grammatical?
In Act 3 of the play, Caesar is killed by Brutus.

If we replace "Caesar is" with "I am" do they remain passive and grammatical?
If we replace "killed" with "shot" (the past tense of "shoot") do they remain passive and grammatical?

ETA: Err. Um. I swear the last two posts weren't there when I started typing.

[Alley Dweller]

Originally Posted by sundog66

I think the two most plausible analyses are:

1. Present-tense form of copula be, with risen parsed as an adjective.

2. Present perfect, but differing from normal present perfect in that the auxiliary be is used instead of have.

If (2) is correct, then we have to explain why this pattern is not productive, e.g., why do we not find:

a. John is eaten breakfast.
b. John is taken a shower.

But we have
a. Cereal is eaten for breakfast.
b. John is taken, so you better stay away from my man.

[Leo Bloom]

I have never been LOL-ed at before in GQ before, let alone twice.

Perhaps the poster just thought of a mother-in-law joke, or something, at those points he was typing.

The grammar of texting shorthand is unclear.

[Frylock]

Originally Posted by Leo Bloom

I have never been LOL-ed at before in GQ before, let alone twice.

Perhaps the poster just thought of a mother-in-law joke, or something, at those points he was typing.

The grammar of texting shorthand is unclear.

I believe you have been LOL-ed at in this thread zero times.

[Chessic Sense]

Originally Posted by Leo Bloom

I have never been LOL-ed at before in GQ before, let alone twice.

Um, excuuuuse me, that should be "Posters have never LOL-ed at me before." Active, man, active!

Originally Posted by Alley Dweller

In Act 3 of the play, Caesar is killed.

In Act 3 of the play, Caesar is killed by Brutus.

Originally Posted by nudgenudge

Billy: So I'm walking across the field, and I see Farmer John's bull. I decide to steal it.
Billy: I am shot by John.

These are being rejected by my brain as ungrammatical, but the reason can't be figured out by me. It feels like it should be called some sort of irrealis mood, but it can't have my finger put on it. If the whole thought is "Perhaps then I am shot by John." or "Suppose I decide to steal it," then we're no longer indicative and it makes sense.

Usually story-telling uses the imperfect or perfect, not the present. "Caesar was killed in act 3" sounds much better. So does "I decided to steal it." But I can't find any way around "The leaves are raked by my son," which is certainly passive, indicative and grammatical.

[Frylock]

In Julius Caesar, Claudius eats an apple, not a banana. Anthony addresses a crowd, not an intimate gathering. And Caesar is killed by Brutus, not Cleopatra.

Does the above hit any grammatical funny bones for you?

[Chessic Sense]

Originally Posted by Frylock

In Julius Caesar, Claudius eats an apple, not a banana. Anthony addresses a crowd, not an intimate gathering. And Caesar is killed by Brutus, not Cleopatra.

Does the above hit any grammatical funny bones for you?

Yes. "Is killed" still bugs me. How can something with completed aspect be happening in the present? "Gets killed" makes sense. "Was killed" makes sense. "Will be killed" makes sense. "has been killed" makes sense. "Is being killed" makes sense. "Is killed" hurts my brain.

Nitpick: Anthony didn't do shit. That was Antony.

Upon investigation, I found this unhelpful thing:

Sometimes it is difficult to say whether a “To be” verb is linking a subject to a participle or if the verb and participle are part of a passive construction. In “Certain behaviors are allowed,” is "are” linking “behaviors” to "allowed" (a participle acting as a predicate adjective) or is “are allowed” a passive verb? In the final analysis, it probably doesn't matter, but the distinction leads to some interesting variations.

[Frylock]

Originally Posted by Chessic Sense

Yes. "Is killed" still bugs me. How can something with completed aspect be happening in the present? "Gets killed" makes sense. "Was killed" makes sense. "Will be killed" makes sense. "has been killed" makes sense. "Is being killed" makes sense. "Is killed" hurts my brain.

Could be a genuine dialectical (or ideolectical?) difference between you and I.

To my knowledge, the linguists would count "Caesar is killed by Brutus" (and "I am shot by John--see my "script" example a few posts above, I note you missed it when quoting examples from the thread) as unproblematically grammatical in standard american English.

Note that uncontroversially though "is" is in the present tense, it is not exclusively used to denote things happening in the present.

For example: Tomorrow, I am going to school, my wife is going to work, and my kids are going to Grandma's house.

[Frylock]

And:

"Today I'm on the red team and Johnny is on the green team. Tomorrow, Johnny is on the green team, and I'm on the red team. And we continue to alternate thereafter."

All in the present tense, but all talking about the future.

We also do this in informal settings when talking about the past:

"Yesterday, Claude walks up to me and says..." etc.


Also note that your objection in the last post from the fact that the events are "in the completed aspect" should apply to each clause in my example, not just the one containing the passive construction. Does it not?

[Dixieland]

Simple present tense, passive voice. It may be USED for narrative (whatever time).

[BigT]

The idea that English only has two tenses is ridiculous. If that were true, then ideas in languages that have more tenses than that could not be expressed in English. Grammars that insist this is true are using their own definition of tense that is not shared by 99% of the English speaking world. I really wish specialists would realize that you don't get to make up your own definition for words and then tell everyone else that they are wrong because they choose to use the more common definition.

It's like those (not that bright) scientists who tell you you aren't doing work when you are carrying a box.

[Frylock]

Originally Posted by BigT

The idea that English only has two tenses is ridiculous.

It's actually true. The number of tenses a language has has nothing to do with what ideas about time it's able to express.

For example, note that you're perfectly well able to talk about future events in English--but to do so, you use the present tense.

If that were true, then ideas in languages that have more tenses than that could not be expressed in English. Grammars that insist this is true are using their own definition of tense that is not shared by 99% of the English speaking world.

Certainly they're using it as a technical term--because it is a technical term.

Physicists also don't mean by "particle" what 99% of the english speaking world means by "particle." Do you think physicists should stop using the term the way they do?

I really wish specialists would realize that you don't get to make up your own definition for words and then tell everyone else that they are wrong because they choose to use the more common definition.

This makes sense--but very often the specialist finds that the layman isn't using the term with a different definition but instead with no clear definition at all.

For example, what do you think the definition is of the layman's sense of "tense" you're referring to here?

It's like those (not that bright) scientists who tell you you aren't doing work when you are carrying a box.[/quote]