Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

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154 Chapter 6. The temporal structure of discourseencounter which occurred in the sixth year, that during the battle theday was suddenly turned to night. Thales of Miletus had foretoldaorthis loss of daylight to the Ionians, fixing it within the year inwhich the change did indeed happen.” Hdt. 1.74.2(191) is an example of the aorist where we go backward rather than forward innarrative time: the natural interpretation is that the prediction of the eclipsehappens before the eclipse itself. Here the default binding rule for the aoristis overruled by the lexical knowledge that one foretells something before ithappens. I believe that for (191) it is natural to assume that a time in thepast of the eclipse is accommodated to which the topic time of the foretellingclause binds.The fact that the Ancient Greek aorist shows quite a large degree of flexibilitycan be partly explained by the fact that this language does not have aform that exclusively expresses that an eventuality takes place prior to some(contextually given) reference time, that is, a form to express a past-in-thepast(the Greek pluperfect indicating a perfect-in-the-past, see e.g. Kühner andGerth 1898:151). Lacking such a form, Ancient Greek has to find a solutionand uses the aorist in this case, as in (191). By contrast, in French, which hasits plus-que-parfait to express a past-in-the-past, the passé simple does not allowfor a reverse order interpretation (in absence of a temporal adverbial) (seee.g. Molendijk et al. 2004:284–288). (192) (from Molendijk et al. 2004:285),for example, does not have the interpretation that the pushing precedes thefalling, in contrast to its English translation (193) (from Lascarides and Asher1993:438):(192) Max tomba. John le poussa.Max fall.pst.pfv. John him push.pst.pfv“Max fell. John pushed him.”(193) Max fell. John pushed him.The use of the passé simple to express a past-in-the-past is blocked by theexistence of a better form to express this. 13 Ancient Greek, on the other hand,lacking this form, can use the aorist and deviate from its default binding rules.6.3.6 Autonomous use of the aoristThis leaves me with the autonomous use of the aorist, the use of the aorist foreventualities that are not situated in the time of the story, as illustrated in (166)and (167). The impression is that in these cases the eventualities are presented13 This leaves unexplained why in English, having a pluperfect serving as a past-in-thepastform, it is possible to get a reverse order interpretation with the simple past, as (193)shows.
6.4 Conclusion 155solely from the perspective of the moment of utterance. This impression hasled some to the assumption that perfective (= aoristic) aspect, in contrast toimperfective aspect, has a non-anaphoric use (see for example Asher 1995:57and Molendijk and de Swart 1999 for French). Although there is somethingintuitive in this assumption, stated in this way it leaves unexplained why theimperfective does not have this use. The restriction of this phenomenon tothe aorist can be understood, however, if we realise that the topic time can beaccommodated and can be the whole history up to the moment of speaking, orthe whole life of the speaker until this moment. If then the aorist is used, whichonly indicates that an eventuality of the described kind is temporally includedsomewhere within this long topic time, the impression is that the exact locationin time is not relevant as long as it is in the past of the moment of speaking. Ifon the other hand the imperfective is used, it follows from its semantics thatthe described eventuality must include the moment of utterance. This is verywell possible, but does not give rise to an autonomous interpretation.As we may expect, this use of the aorist is more common in conversationsthan in narrative discourses (cf. Ruijgh 1991:201), since here the temporal relationsbetween the eventualities described are less important. When it occursin narrative discourse, there is a clue present that the narration is temporallyinterrupted, which allows for a shift in topic time. In (167), for example, sucha clue is the fact that Herodotus makes reference to himself, although he is noprotagonist in the story he is telling.Notice that this phenomenon is again explained on the basis of the simplesemantics of aspect developed in chapter 4. We do not have to assume anambiguity for the aorist between an anaphoric and a non-anaphoric use, nordo we have to look for an independent explanation why we do not find thesame interpretation with the imperfective.6.4 ConclusionIn this chapter I have specified the default binding rules for the anaphoric topictime. These rules together with the semantics of aspect proposed in chapter4 explain the common temporal patterns found in Ancient Greek discourse.One of these patterns was the so-called immediative use of the imperfective.Furthermore, I have shown how the variation in interpretation of aorist andimperfective fits naturally within this account of the temporal structure ofdiscourse. I have argued that the anaphoric nature of the topic time ensuresthe flexibility needed to allow for deviations from the common patterns underthe influence of particles, world knowledge etc. Finally, I have shown that theautonomous use of the aorist is best explained in terms of the accommodationof a long topic time up to the moment of utterance.
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Aspect in Ancient GreekA semantic a
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viNick Asher, David Beaver, the lat
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Contentsix8 Conclusions and discuss
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2 Chapter 1. Introductiongroundbrea
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4 Chapter 1. Introduction(4) µετ
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6 Chapter 1. Introductionimperfecti
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1.3 Organisation of the thesis 9In
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Chapter 2The interpretations of aor
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2.3 Additional interpretations of t
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2.5 The challenge 21scriptions of h
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24 Chapter 3. Aspect in formal sema
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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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102 Chapter 4. An analysis of aoris
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204 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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