Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

4.5 Aorist and coercion: the ingressive and complexive interpretations 95Note that the original predicate would not violate the Duration Principle,since stative predicates are compatible with time point adverbials such as immediately.This predicate, however, is not of the required aspectual class, asthe aorist selects for bounded predicates. As a result, a literal interpretationis not available and we have to choose between an ingressive and a complexiveinterpretation.In example (111) the topic time was longer. It was the whole life of thespeaker, Socrates. As a result, there a complexive interpretation was possible.Purely on the basis of the semantics, however, an ingressive interpretationwould be possible too, for the beginning of being a senator can also be includedin the time span of a whole life. Why is it that the natural interpretation isthe complexive one? This is probably due to the fact that the complexiveinterpretation is stronger. It entails the ingressive interpretation: if the completeeventuality of being a senator is included in the topic time, the beginningmust be included in the topic time as well. It’s a common phenomenon thatthe interpreter chooses the strongest interpretation available. This principle isoften referred to as the Strongest Meaning Hypothesis (Dalrymple et al. 1998).Let’s now have a second look at (114), the continuation of which is givenin (118):(118) µαθνMathōnδέdeperceive.aor.ptcp.nom prtδακρσαντα ερετοdakrusanta eiretoweep.aor.ptcp.acc ask.pst.ipfv.3sgµιν Αρτάβανο̋min Artabanushim.accλλήλων κεχωρισµέναallēlōn kechōrismenaone.other.gen separate.prf.pass.ptcp.accτεteκαkaiλίγωoligōiprt prt a.little.datγρgarbecauseσεωυτνseōutonyourself.accπρτερονproteron.beforeArtabanus.nomτάδε ...tade: ...this.acc......̋hōshowπολλνpollonfarργάσαοergasaodo.pst.aor.2sgµακαρίσα̋Makarisasdeclare.happy.aor.ptcp.nomδ α κ ρ ε ι ̋.dakrueis.weep.PRS.ipfv.2sgννnunnow“Perceiving that he had begun to weep Artabanus questioned himsaying: ‘What a distance is there between what you are doing nowand a little while ago! After declaring yourself happy you weep.’ ”Hdt. 7.46.1In (114) the choice between an ingressive and a complexive interpretation ofδάκρυσε edakruse ‘weep.aor’ cannot be made decisively on the basis of thesentence itself. The adverbial µετ τοτο meta touto ‘after that’ is compatible