Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

Chapter 1Introduction1.1 Tense and aspectCompare the sentences in (1):(1) a. Peter is swimming in Barton Spring Pool.b. Peter was swimming in Barton Spring Pool.c. Peter swam in Barton Spring Pool.Any speaker of English will agree that there is a difference in interpretation betweenthe three sentences in (1). This is most easily formulated for the contrastbetween (1a) and (1b). Whereas the former states that there is a swimmingevent at the moment the sentence is uttered, the latter locates a swimmingevent in the past of the moment of utterance. These examples illustrate adifference in tense (here, present versus past tense), which Comrie (1985:9-13)defines as a grammaticalised location in time, most often with respect to themoment of utterance. When we compare (1b) and (1c), on the other hand, wefind that they share their tense. Both sentences locate a swimming event inthe past of the moment of utterance. Nevertheless, they clearly differ in interpretation.The former seems to describe the swimming event from within,as continuing, whereas the latter describes it from the outside, as completed.The difference between (1b) and (1c) is an aspectual one. According to Comrie(1976:1-6) aspect concerns “different ways of viewing the internal temporalconstituency of a situation.” In our examples, this corresponds to viewing theevent as continuing versus completed. Although it is relatively easy to statethe difference between (1b) and (1c) in metaphorical terms, it is hard to givea precise formulation of it. Providing a precise formulation of the meaning ofaspect is at the core of this thesis.The analysis of meaning is the object of semantics. This discipline developedin the course of the 20th century to a full blown science due to the jointeffort of philosophers, logicians and linguists. Its primary goal as set by the