Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

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2 Chapter 1. Introductiongroundbreaking work of Frege (1879, 1892, 1918-1919) and Montague (1970,1973) is to derive the meaning of a compound expression in a systematic wayfrom the meanings of its components. Over the last decades, due in particularto the work of Kamp (1981, 1993), the attention shifted to the analysis of largerstretches of discourse. My aim in this thesis is to add to this enterprise byexploring the semantic contribution of aspect to the meaning of sentences as awhole and and its functioning in larger discourses. To achieve this, I approachthe subject from the perspective of formal semantics. In this branch of semantics,meaning is captured in terms of truth conditions, following the adageknowing the meaning of a sentence is knowing when it is true. These truthconditions are represented in a formal language which has an exact modeltheoretictruth definition. This is to ensure that the interpretation of onenatural language sentence is not explained by means of another, which in turnneeds to be explained, thus leading to an infinite regression. For example, todescribe the difference in meaning between (1a) and (1b), which is a differencein tense, I used quite a number of present tense verb forms (states, is, locates).The definiendum occurs a number of times in the definiens! Formal-semanticapproaches steer clear of this problem by a translation into a formal languagewith an exact model-theoretic interpretation. Examples of such formal systemsare first-order predicate logic, typed lambda calculus, and Discourse RepresentationTheory (DRT). Following Russell, these formal representations of truthconditions are called logical forms. In the last few decades the methods offormal semantics have been applied to a wide range of phenomena in naturallanguage semantics. This has resulted in highly sophisticated treatments ofvarious topics, including tense and aspect.Traditionally, research in formal semantics has concentrated on English.However, it isn’t the meaning of aspect in English that is central to this thesis,but that in Ancient Greek. Ancient Greek is well known for its literaryheritage, but more importantly for our purposes, it presents us a very richaspect system. Following Comrie’s definition, the language possesses threetenses: a present, a past, and a future tense. In addition to these tenses, ithas three grammatical aspects: aoristic, imperfective, and perfect aspect. Inthis respect, it resembles the French system in size. However, Ancient Greekgoes further than French, by extending its aspectual oppositions beyond theindicative forms. We find specialised aspectual forms not only in the indicative,but also in the subjunctive, optative, and imperative modes, as well asin the non-finite forms (infinitive and participle). Apart from its distribution,the Ancient Greek system is transparant as it shows a systematic coding oftense and aspect through the employment of separate morphemes. This meansthat tense and aspect are well distinguished morphologically. The morphemesact as a permanent reminder that the two categories should also be clearlydistinguished in the semantic analysis. In sum, given its analytic morphol-
1.1 Tense and aspect 3ogy and elaborate distribution, the Ancient Greek aspectual system presentsa challenging test case for any theory of aspect.I believe this challenge should be tackled by applying insights from formalsemantics to Ancient Greek. I consider this not only fruitful for a betterunderstanding of the Greek aspectual system, but I also believe that it willbring us closer to the ideal of a general theory of aspect. As such, this enterprisefits in with the recent development of applying formal-semantic methods tolanguages other than Western European ones (van Geenhoven 1998, Faller2002, Grønn 2003, and Tonhauser 2006, among others).Central to the discussion in this thesis is the opposition between imperfectiveand aoristic aspect in Ancient Greek. Like the English examples in (1b)and (1c), this concerns the contrast between presenting an event as continuingor completed. This aspectual distinction shows an interesting interactionwith tense. In the indicative forms, the distinction is restricted to the pasttense. With the present and the future tenses, we do not find distinct formsfor imperfective and aoristic aspect. The only form available in the presenttense is the one for imperfective aspect. Why should this be the case? Suchinteractions between tense and aspect are by no means restricted to AncientGreek. We also observe them in English, for instance. As example (2) shows,substitution of the past tense by a present tense changes the interpretation inan unexpected way:(2) Peter swims in Barton Spring Pool.This sentence does not express that there is a (single) swimming event at themoment of utterance, as the presence of the present tense might lead us toexpect. Instead the sentence has to be interpreted as stating that Peter hasthe habit of swimming in Barton Spring Pool. This kind of tense-aspect interaction,in particular the absence of a form for the combination of present tenseand aoristic aspect, receives a natural explanation in the approach developedin this thesis.The most puzzling phenomenon about imperfective and aoristic aspect inAncient Greek is the fact that the same verb form can get several interpretations.Aoristic aspect is often interpreted as indicating that the event describedis completed, but it may also be used to refer to the beginning of an event.An example of the former interpretation is given in (3), of the latter in (4):(3) τtoµευmeuνάκο̋nakosχθ̋echthesκλεψεν.eklepsen.the.acc I.gen skin-coat.acc yesterday steal.pst.AOR.3sg“He stole my skin-coat yesterday.” Theoc. Id. 5.2
Page 3: Aspect in Ancient GreekA semantic a
Page 6 and 7: viNick Asher, David Beaver, the lat
Page 9: Contentsix8 Conclusions and discuss
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3.2 The perfective-imperfective dis
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3.3 Aspectual coercion 673.3.1 Aspe
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3.3 Aspectual coercion 69bials ((88
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3.3 Aspectual coercion 71the term c
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3.3 Aspectual coercion 73in the ext
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76 Chapter 4. An analysis of aorist
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100 Chapter 4. An analysis of aoris
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122 Chapter 5. Aspect and performat
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134 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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