Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

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104 Chapter 4. An analysis of aoristic and imperfective aspect(131) Ηνδ τοτον τν χρνον θνο̋Ēn de touton ton chronon ethnosbe.pst.ipfv.3sg prt that.acc the.acc time.acc nation.nomοδνoudenno.nomνeninλκιµώτερονalkimōteronbraver.nomσφέωνspheōnthey.genτtēithe.datτοtouthe.genΑσίηAsiēiAsia.datνēnbe.pst.ipfv.3sgοτεoutenorΛυδίου.Ludiou.Lydian.genπap’from φ ρ ε ο ν µεγάλαephoreon megalacarry.pst.IPFV.3pl long.accππεεσθαιhippeuesthaimanage.horse.inf.impνδρηιτερονandrēioteronmore.courageous.nomΗHēthe.nomππων,hippōnhorses.genκαkaiandγαθοίagathoigood.nomατοautoithey.nomδdeprtοτεoutenorµάχηmachēbattle.nomδρατάdorataspears.accτεteprtσανēsanbe.pst.ipfv.3pl“Now at this time there was no nation in Asia more courageous orbraver than the Lydian. They fought on horseback, carried longspears, and they were skillful at managing horses.” Hdt. 1.79.3.We can see that the duration associated with the predicate determines whetherwe get a habitual reinterpretation or not. The time associated with beingbrave is much longer than the time associated with carrying spears. Therefore,a literal interpretation is available for the former but not for the latter,which therefore receives a habitual reinterpretation. 10 The example also showsthat it is understandable that de Swart ascribes the habitual interpretation ofthe imperfective to a mismatch in aspectual class, since examples with stativepredicates are hard to find. I claim that this is because most stative predicatesare associated with a duration with a high upper limit, so the need forreinterpretation does not occur so often.In a static framework, a mismatch in duration can be made explicit byrestricting the models of evaluation to those models that respect our knowledgeconcerning the duration of eventualities. This can be done by meansof meaning postulates. One such postulate, for example, could represent ourknowledge that the duration of sleeping (for a human being) ranges from minutesto one day. The result is that (130), for example, is contradictory on aliteral interpretation, since it isn’t true in any model that satisfies the meaningpostulate. A hearer will nevertheless try to make sense of the utterance by10 Here I assume that the topic time of the first clause is passed on to the following clauses.We will see in chapter 6 that this is common for a series of imperfectives.
4.8 Imperfectivity versus progressivity 105giving the predicate a habitual reinterpretation.In a dynamic framework, like DRT, however, there is no need for meaningpostulates that represent our knowledge concerning the duration of eventualitiesin order to get a contradiction. Since a context update is always anintersection with the background knowledge, which also contains knowledgeabout the typical duration of eventualities, we automatically end up withoutmodels if the interpretation of the utterance is in conflict with the duration ofeventualities.After this discussion of the habitual interpretation, we are left with theconative and likelihood interpretation of imperfective aspect. Before discussingthese, however, I first consider the imperfective with stative predicates.4.8 Imperfectivity versus progressivityIn this section I will discuss a remarkable difference between the processualinterpretation of imperfective aspect and the progressive in English: in contrastto the latter, the former combines happily with stative predicates (see p. 12).The unwillingness of the English progressive to combine with stative predicatesis commonly explained by arguing that the progressive of a stative predicatedoes not mean more than the predicate itself (one of the first explanationsalong these lines is found in Taylor 1977:206). This is indeed the case if oneassigns Krifka’s PROG (= (66)), given in its dynamic form in (132), to theprogressive:(132) PROG = λPλe[e ′e ⊑ e ′ ⊕P(e ′ )]PROG maps predicates of eventualities onto predicates of eventualities. 11 Itfollows from this semantics of the progressive in combination with the definitionof stativity in (100) that a sentence with a stative predicate in the simple formand the same sentence with the predicate in the progressive form have thesame truth conditions: for all stative predicates P, for all eventualities e, (i)if PROG(P) applies to e, P applies to it as well, and conversely, (ii) if P appliesto e, PROG(P) applies to it as well. 12 Thus, the two sentences have the same11 Existential quantification over the eventuality variable e is introduced later in the composition,as in de Swart’s (1998) account. In this respect this semantics of the progressivedeviates from (101a), the semantics I propose for the imperfective.12 The truth conditions are also the same if the semantics of the progressive has a properpart rather than a part relation, as we find for example in Egg (2005), see (96). Although(ii) does not hold in that case (not always if an eventuality e is in the extension of a stativepredicateP, it is also in the extension ofPROG(P), for e may be maximal with respect toP(formaximality, see section 4.5)), it is still the case that if an eventuality e is in the extension of astative predicate P there is an eventuality e ′ that is in the extension ofPROG(P) (for if e is not
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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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3.2 The perfective-imperfective dis
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154 Chapter 6. The temporal structu
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156 Chapter 6. The temporal structu
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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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Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

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