Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

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96 Chapter 4. An analysis of aoristic and imperfective aspectwith both interpretations. On the basis of the principle that an interpreterchooses the strongest interpretation available, we may at first prefer a complexiveinterpretation. It is only after interpreting the continuation (118) (withthe present tense form δακρει̋ dakrueis) that we know that Xerxes is stillcrying at the moment of Artabanus’ speech and hence that a complexive interpretationis not available, for it would state that the whole (=maximal) cryingeventuality is included in a topic time before the time of Artabanus’ speechand hence that the crying is finished by that time. 8The need to wait for more information before a choice from several coercionoperators can be made is quite common. Consider (119), an example ofcoercion outside the realm of aspect:(119) #John began a novel.Sentences like (119) are discussed extensively by Pustejovsky (1991, 1993,1995). He claims that the verb begin denotes a relation between individuals andactivities (properties of individuals). In (119), however, the second argumentof begin is an NP and does not denote an activity. This mismatch is solvedby mapping the NP semantics to a novel-related activity. On Pustejovsky’saccount the information what are the permissible novel-related activities isprovided by the semantic entry of the word novel. The entry contains amongother things information about the origin of novels (someone writes them) andthe purpose of novels (someone reads them). Given these two novel-relatedactivities the mismatch in (119) can be resolved in two ways: (119) can beread as that John began to read a novel and that he began to write a novel.Knowing nothing about John, both are optional. If, however, the story continueswith (120), we know that the novel-related activity John is involved inis one of writing.(120) He writes a page a day.Sometimes it isn’t even clear from the sentence itself that coercion isneeded. To see this, let’s first consider the famous example (121) from Nunberg(1979):(121) The ham sandwich is sitting at table 20.It is clear that the ham sandwich in (121) cannot refer to the sandwich itself,since sandwiches don’t sit at tables. Rather the expression is reinterpreted asreferring to the person who ordered a ham sandwich. But let’s now have alook at (122) (from Egg 2005:122):8 Here I assume that with a sequence of aorists, the topic time of the eventuality at handfollows upon the topic time of the last mentioned eventuality. I will return to this in chapter6, which is devoted to the way the topic time of a sentence is determined in a discourse.
4.6 Aspectual classes as properties of predicates 97(122) The ham sandwich is nice.Here a literal interpretation is available, since nice can be a property of sandwiches.If the sentence continues with (123), however, we in retrospect interpretthe ham sandwich as referring to the person who ordered the sandwich.(123) He smiles.The examples (119) to (123) show that coercion operators are not alwaysinserted instantaneously. Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that inthe realm of aspect too, the final choice between various coercion operators issometimes postponed until after the interpretation of the following sentences.Let’s recapitulate the discussion of aoristic aspect and coercion. Aoristicaspect always has the meaning assigned to it in section 4.3. It furthermorerequires bounded predicates. If it is confronted with an unbounded predicate,coercion comes into play. Two coercion operators,MAX andINGR, correspondingto the complexive and ingressive interpretation, respectively, can be used tosolve the mismatch. The Duration Principle guides the choice between them.If both interpretations are available, the stronger one, hence the complexive,is chosen.Note that we now get the correct result for the problem discussed at thebeginning of section 4.4 concerning the aorist with unbounded predicates. Theproblem was that on the basis of the semantics of the aorist alone we wouldexpect that the aorist could also be used when an arbitrary part of an eventualityis included in the topic time (as long as the predicate holds of this part).With the proposed account we get the correct result that the aorist can onlybe used if the start of the eventuality or the maximal eventuality is includedin the topic time.In the next section I will discuss two issues concerning my choice to restrictaspectual classes to the level of the predicate. First I use the maximalityoperator to defend this choice. Then I discuss a consequence of this choice.4.6 Aspectual classes as properties of predicatesAs stated in section 4.2, I assume that there are bounded and unboundedpredicates, but not bounded and unbounded eventualities. In this respect Ideviate from, for example, de Swart (1998) and Egg (2005), to mention justtwo, in whose accounts a bounded predicate not only satisfies the definition in(99) but also refers to a set of bounded eventualities. As announced in section4.2, I will show that this combination needlessly complicates the formulationof operators that cause a shift in aspectual class. I will do this on the basis of
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Aspect in Ancient GreekA semantic a
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viNick Asher, David Beaver, the lat
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Contentsix8 Conclusions and discuss
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2 Chapter 1. Introductiongroundbrea
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4 Chapter 1. Introduction(4) µετ
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6 Chapter 1. Introductionimperfecti
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1.3 Organisation of the thesis 9In
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Chapter 2The interpretations of aor
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2.3 Additional interpretations of t
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2.5 The challenge 21scriptions of h
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24 Chapter 3. Aspect in formal sema
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158 Chapter 7. Comparison to theori
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172 Chapter 8. Conclusions and disc
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178 Appendix A: The language of Com
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192 Appendix B: Examples spelled ou
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206 Appendix C: List of abbreviatio
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208 Appendix C: List of abbreviatio
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210 References(Eds.), Cross-linguis
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212 ReferencesGrice, P. (1975). Log
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214 ReferencesLemmon, E. J. (1962).
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216 Referencesvan der Sandt, R. (19
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218 References
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220 Samenvatting (Summary in Dutch)
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222 Samenvatting (Summary in Dutch)
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