Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

6.2 Temporal patterns 139offerings at Delphi, being the work of Glaucus the Chian, the onlyone of all men who discovered how to weld iron.”Hdt. 1.25.2(167) Κατ ατνKat’ autonδdeΚροσονKroisonτάδεtadeγίνετο.egineto.with self.acc prt Croesus.acc this.nom happen.pst.ipfv.3sgΗνο πα̋, το κα πρτερονĒn hoi pais, tou kai proteronbe.pst.ipfv.3sg he.dat son.nom rel.gen prt before π ε µ ν ή σ θ η ν,epemnēsthēn,mention.pst.AOR.1sgφωνο̋aphōnosmute.nomδέ.de.prtτtathe.accµνmenprtλλαallaother.accπιεική̋,epieikēs,fitting.nom“With Croesus the following happened. He had a son, whom I havealready mentioned, fine in other respects, but mute.”Hdt. 1.85.1In (166), the eventuality of the discovery is not temporally linked to the othereventualities in the discourse. It is related only to the moment of utterance.Similarly, in (167), the eventuality of mentioning is not temporally linked tothe eventualities previously described.Molendijk (1990) observes the same phenomenon for the passé simple inFrench. An example is given in (168) (from Molendijk 1990:251):(168) En 1982, il s’ installa dans la ville mêmein 1982 he oneself install.pst.pfv.3sg in the town sameoù Charles Martel a r r ê t a les Arabs. Il ywhere Charles Martel stop.pst.PFV.3sg the Arabs. He thererencontra son épouse future.meet.pst.pfv.3sg his wife future“In 1982 he went to live in the same town where Charles Martelstopped the Arabs. There he met his future wife.”The eventuality described in the second clause, the stopping of the Arabs byCharles Martel, is presented solely from the perspective of the moment ofutterance. As in Greek, we do not find such examples with the imparfait.In this section I have given an overview of some common patterns found inAncient Greek discourse. The question now is how to account for them. Onthe one hand, we want to explain the regularities. On the other, it is clear thatan adequate account should have a certain degree of flexibility since there are