Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

6.3 Analysing the patterns 147(181) Περίανδρο̋ δ ν Κυψέλου πα̋ ... τυράννευε δ Περίανδρο̋Κορίνθου“Periander was-ipfv the son of Cypselus. He reigned-ipfv overCorinth.” Hdt. 1.23.1This overlap interpretation is derived in the following way: the first clause,represented as (182), is the context for the interpretation of the second sentence.(182)n e 1 t 1p son(e 1 )τ(e 1 ) ·⊃ t 1t 1 ≺ nSince the first clause has imperfective aspect its representation does not containa discourse marker for a time following the eventuality described, in contrastto (178).(183) is the preliminary representation of the second clause of (181):(183)e 2p reign(e 2 )τ(e 2 ) ·⊃ t 2t 2t 2 ≺ nt 2 looks for a past time to bind to. After we have merged the two DRSs, wefollow the default rule for imperfective aspect (2b on p. 140) and bind t 2 tot 1 :n e 1 t 1 e 2(184) (182) ⊕ (183) =p son(e 1 )τ(e 1 ) ·⊃ t 1t 1 ≺ np reign(e 2 )τ(e 2 ) ·⊃ t 2t 2t 2 ≺ nt 2 := t 1⇒n e 1 t 1 e 2p son(e 1 )t 1 ≺ nτ(e 1 ) ·⊃ t 1p reign(e 2 )τ(e 2 ) ·⊃ t 1Due to its imperfective aspect, the first sentence passes on its topic timeto the second sentence. Both eventualities described include this time (due toimperfective aspect again), which yields the interpretation that the eventualitiesoverlap. The resulting overlap interpretation is graphically represented in