Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

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116 Chapter 4. An analysis of aoristic and imperfective aspectBecause of these problems, I don’t follow Gerö and von Stechow’s accountof the imperfective paradox. I think the solution instead has to be found inthe semantics of the imperfective operator itself and I have proposed a way toachieve this.Apart from the conative interpretation, the intensional version of the imperfectiveoperator is also needed to account for the likelihood interpretation, theinterpretation that something threatened to happen, as exemplified in (143)(= (18)):(143) µεταρσίαmetarsiaληφθεσlēphtheis’raised.from.the.ground.nom take.aor.pass.ptcp.nom κ α ι ν µ η νekainomēnξίφειxipheikill.pst.IPFV.pass.1sg sword.datλλall’butξέκλεψεν ...exeklepsen ...snatch.pst.aor.3sgΑρτεµι̋ArtemisArtemis.nom“having been lifted high in the air I (= Iphigeneia) was about to bekilled by the sword; but Artemis snatched me away.”E. I.T. 27-28The situation here is a bit more complicated than with the conative interpretation,though, since coercion is involved. I be killed is naturally classifiedas a punctual predicate. If punctual is taken in the strong sense here, meaningthat a predicate is punctual if it refers to a set of eventualities without duration,there is a clash between the semantics of the imperfective and its argument:the imperfective indicates that the topic time is properly included in the runtimeof the eventuality, which is impossible if the runtime is a moment. 21 Aswith the habitual reinterpretation, the mismatch is a durational one. And asbefore, the hearer nevertheless tries to give a sensible interpretation to theutterance. The reinterpretation path – to use Moens and Steedman’s terminology– involved in (143) is the same as in English sentences like (94c), hererepeated as (144):(144) Harry was reaching the top.21 Egg (2005:chapter 6) provides a way to deal with these kind of data without resortingto eventualities without duration.
4.10 Conclusion 117In (144), some eventuality that may result in reaching the top, but not thereaching itself is in progress. In the same way, in (143) some eventuality thatmay result in being killed is in progress, not the being killed itself. 22 Thecoercion operator involved here maps the set of eventualities in the extensionof a predicate P onto the set of preparatory eventualities for the eventualitiesin the extension of P. The crucial thing is that such an operator extends thetime associated with the predicate and thus solves the mismatch in duration.The insertion of this coercion operator between the imperfective operator andthe predicate results in the truth conditions that the topic time is included ina preparatory eventuality that leads to an eventuality of the kind described bythe predicate in the normal course of eventualities: the eventuality (of dying,of reaching the top) ‘was about to happen’. Since the subject in (143) incontrast to (144) supposedly doesn’t want the eventuality to happen, we getthe interpretation that it threatened to happen. 23 To conclude this discussionof the likelihood interpretation I emphasise that we need the intensional IMP ′rather than IMP to avoid being committed to the existence of an actual dyingor reaching eventuality.In this section I have argued that the conative and likelihood interpretationsin Ancient Greek should be understood in the same terms as the effects foundwith the combination of the progressive with bounded and punctual predicatesin English.4.10 ConclusionLet me recapitulate my account of the various interpretations of aoristic andimperfective aspect, which is also graphically represented in Figure 4.15. Theaorist and imperfective are grammatical aspects and determine the relationbetween the topic time and the eventuality time. More specifically, the aoristindicates that the eventuality time is included in the topic time, the imperfectivethat the eventuality time includes the topic time. This semantics of aorist22 If one prefers to classify I be killed as a non-punctual predicate, that’s fine with me too.Then the being killed itself (which now consists of several phases) is in progress, which yieldsthe same interpretation as the account given here where the preparatory eventuality of apunctual eventuality is in progress. Similarly, I wouldn’t have a problem with classifyingDarius buy the garment as punctual, referring to the sole moment of giving the money, andsaying that preparatory coercion is involved here, since the resulting interpretation is thesame.23 The duration associated with the predicate is not the only factor that determineswhether a sentence is traditionally classified as an example of the conative or of the likelihoodinterpretation. Other properties of the predicate play a role as well, for examplewhether the subject is an intentional agent. If it is, as in (135), the example is classified asconative. If it’s not, as in (143), we may get the interpretation that something threatenedto occur. From an aspectual point of view, however, this difference is not relevant.
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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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166 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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