Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

More documents

Recommendations

Info

108 Chapter 4. An analysis of aoristic and imperfective aspectb. Max a c o u r u.Max run.pst.pc.3sg“Max has run”(134) a. Max t r a v e r s a i t laMax cross.pst.IPFV.3sg the“Max was crossing the street”b. Max a t r a v e r s é laMax cross.pst.pc.3sg the“Max has crossed the street”rue.streetrue.street(133a), with an unbounded predicate, entails (133b). By contrast, (134a),with a bounded predicate, does not entail (134b). A part of running countsas running, but a part of crossing the street does not count as crossing thestreet. In line with Rijksbaron (2002), I claim that the conative interpretationof imperfective aspect should be understood in this way. Let me illustrate thiswith (135) (= (17)):(135) πεθµησεepethumēseτ̋ χλανίδο̋tēs chlanidoslong.for.pst.aor.3sg the.gen garment.genκα ατνkai autēnandπροσελθνproselthōn ν έ ε τ ο.ōneeto.hogo.to.aor.ptcp.nom buy.pst.IPFV.3sg the.nomΣυλοσνSulosōnSyloson.nom.........πωλέωpōleōsell.prs.ipfv.1sgλέγειlegei:say.prs.ipfv.3sgµνmenprtοδεν̋oudenosno.genγegōI.nomχρήµατο̋,chrēmatos,money.genτατηνtautēnthat.accthat.accδdebutδίδωµιdidōmigive.prs.ipfv.1sgδdebutλλω̋allōsfor.nothing“He (= Darius) set his heart upon the garment, came forward andwanted to buy it. But Syloson said: ‘I don’t sell that one for anymoney, but I give it for free.’ ” Hdt. 3.139.2-3According to my analysis the imperfective aspect of νέετο ōneeto ‘buy’ indicatesthat the buying is going on at the topic time, a time immediatelyfollowing the coming forward. This intuitively captures the fact that the firstsentence states nothing with respect to the completion of this eventuality.Unfortunately, this attractive feature of the informal analysis is lost if wemake explicit in the way I did what this going on at the topic time means.
4.9 The conative and likelihood interpretations 109Consider (136), which gives the semantics for (135):(136) PAST(IMP(λe d buy(e)))= λQ[Q(t TT ) ⊕tTT ≺ n ](λPλt[P(e) ⊕ eτ(e) ·⊃ t TT](λe d buy(e)))≡ed buy(e)τ(e) ·⊃ t TTt TT ≺ nIn contrast to the natural language sentence (135), the logical form (136) doesentail that there is a (complete) eventuality e of which the predicate holds,which is clearly not what we want. We hit here upon the notorious problemof the imperfective paradox, which I have already briefly discussed in section3.2.2 and which was shown to be a challenge for the English progressive aswell.I don’t have a solution to the imperfective paradox. I believe that such asolution goes beyond the scope of this work and deserves a study of its own, aswitnessed by the many attempts found in the literature. However, in order notto neglect the imperfective paradox completely, I will show how one specificproposal to solve the imperfective paradox (for the English progressive) can beintegrated into my account of imperfective aspect. This is the account of Dowty(1979:145–150). The solution involves an ‘intensionalisation’ of the semanticsof imperfective aspect. To put it simply, the imperfective now indicates thatthere is an eventuality to which the predicate applies in the normal, not theactual, course of eventualities. The formalisation of this new imperfectiveoperator IMP ′ is given in (137):(137) IMP ′ = λPλt w ′Inert t (w 0 ,w ′ ) → [eτ(e) ·⊃ t ⊕P(w′ )(e)]A crucial part of IMP ′ is the notion of inertia worlds. Inert t (w 0 ,w ′ ) readsas: w ′ is an inertia world for the actual world w 0 at time t, which meansthat w ′ is exactly like world w 0 up to and including t and after t the course
Page 3:
Aspect in Ancient GreekA semantic a
Page 6 and 7:
viNick Asher, David Beaver, the lat
Page 9:
Contentsix8 Conclusions and discuss
Page 12 and 13:
2 Chapter 1. Introductiongroundbrea
Page 14 and 15:
4 Chapter 1. Introduction(4) µετ
Page 16 and 17:
6 Chapter 1. Introductionimperfecti
Page 19 and 20:
1.3 Organisation of the thesis 9In
Page 21 and 22:
Chapter 2The interpretations of aor
Page 23 and 24:
2.3 Additional interpretations of t
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29 and 30:
Page 31:
2.5 The challenge 21scriptions of h
Page 34 and 35:
24 Chapter 3. Aspect in formal sema
Page 36 and 37:
Page 38 and 39:
Page 40 and 41:
Page 42 and 43:
Page 44 and 45:
Page 46 and 47:
Page 48 and 49:
Page 50 and 51:
Page 52:
Page 57 and 58:
3.2 The perfective-imperfective dis
Page 59 and 60:
Page 61 and 62:
Page 63 and 64:
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68: 3.2 The perfective-imperfective dis
Page 77 and 78: 3.3 Aspectual coercion 673.3.1 Aspe
Page 79 and 80: 3.3 Aspectual coercion 69bials ((88
Page 81 and 82: 3.3 Aspectual coercion 71the term c
Page 83 and 84: 3.3 Aspectual coercion 73in the ext
Page 86 and 87: 76 Chapter 4. An analysis of aorist
Page 110 and 111: 100 Chapter 4. An analysis of aoris
Page 132 and 133: 122 Chapter 5. Aspect and performat
Page 144 and 145: 134 Chapter 6. The temporal structu
Page 168 and 169:
158 Chapter 7. Comparison to theori
Page 170 and 171:
Page 172 and 173:
Page 174 and 175:
Page 176 and 177:
Page 178 and 179:
Page 180 and 181:
Page 182 and 183:
172 Chapter 8. Conclusions and disc
Page 184 and 185:
Page 186 and 187:
Page 188 and 189:
178 Appendix A: The language of Com
Page 190 and 191:
Page 192 and 193:
Page 194 and 195:
Page 196 and 197:
Page 198 and 199:
Page 200 and 201:
Page 202 and 203:
192 Appendix B: Examples spelled ou
Page 204 and 205:
Page 206 and 207:
Page 208 and 209:
Page 210 and 211:
Page 212 and 213:
Page 214 and 215:
Page 216 and 217:
206 Appendix C: List of abbreviatio
Page 218 and 219:
208 Appendix C: List of abbreviatio
Page 220 and 221:
210 References(Eds.), Cross-linguis
Page 222 and 223:
212 ReferencesGrice, P. (1975). Log
Page 224 and 225:
214 ReferencesLemmon, E. J. (1962).
Page 226 and 227:
216 Referencesvan der Sandt, R. (19
Page 228 and 229:
218 References
Page 230 and 231:
220 Samenvatting (Summary in Dutch)
Page 232 and 233:
222 Samenvatting (Summary in Dutch)
show all

Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?