Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

1.2 Before we start 5parts and the way these are put together. But can this be achieved if linguisticand extralinguistic information interact within reinterpretation processes?Furthermore, we venture into the various other fields including performatives(Austin 1976, 1962), competition between forms, and discourse semantics, aspioneered by Kamp.Given that the study of Ancient Greek aspect inevitably raises all theseissues, this thesis builds a bridge between Ancient Greek linguistics on the onehand and philosophy of language and formal semantics and pragmatics on theother. Since I believe this thesis may be of interest to both fields, I have goneto great effort to make it accessible for both audiences. For scholars of AncientGreek, I have made sure that technicalities are often illustrated with diagramsand always summarised in natural language. For formal semanticists withoutknowledge of Ancient Greek, I have included transcriptions and glosses. Inshort, the aim of this thesis is not just to tackle a specific puzzle, but also toillustrate in general how fruitful a combination of these two fields is.The remainder of this introductory chapter is organised as follows. Section1.2 introduces the aspectual system of Ancient Greek in some more detail togetherwith some of the terminology used throughout this thesis and makessome preliminary remarks concerning aspectual classes and logical forms. Section1.3 describes the organisation of this thesis.1.2 Before we start1.2.1 The aspectual system of Ancient GreekAs I said, Ancient Greek has three aspects: aoristic, imperfective, and perfectaspect. It is the first (not the last!) that seems to correspond to what is calledperfective aspect in other, notably Slavic, languages. In principle, I use theterms aoristic and perfective aspect interchangeably in this thesis. However,I often use the former when speaking about Ancient Greek in particular andthe latter in cross-linguistic contexts.As mentioned before, the opposition between aoristic and imperfective aspectis realised throughout the verbal paradigm. Table 1.1 gives an overviewof the imperfective and aoristic forms of the verb λειν luein ‘to loosen’. - e-is a past tense marker; -σα -sa is a marker for aoristic aspect.In this thesis I concentrate on indicative forms, but I consider it a prerequisitefor any theory of aspect in Ancient Greek that it can deal with thefact that we find the aoristic-imperfective opposition throughout the verbalparadigm.