Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

120 Chapter 4. An analysis of aoristic and imperfective aspectreinterpretation that shortens the time associated with the predicate with theaorist (the ingressive interpretation). This follows directly from the semanticsof the aorist and imperfective: the imperfective states that the topic time is includedin the eventuality time, so the eventuality time should be long enough;the aorist states that the eventuality time is included in the topic time, so theeventuality time should be short enough. It should be clear by now that myaccount has multiple advantages over the mentioned accounts. The one thingI have not yet exploited are the opportunities of dynamic semantics. This isleft for chapter 6.In this chapter, I have shown how the proposed ambiguity-free semanticsfor imperfective and aoristic aspect accounts for the processual and habitualinterpretation of the former and the completive, ingressive, and complexiveinterpretation of the latter. In the next chapter I will demonstrate that it alsoexplains the so-called tragic interpretation of the aorist.