Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

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158 Chapter 7. Comparison to theories in Classicsou d’un moment simplement présent dans l’esprit du locuteur. Lemoment donné est le point d’orientation.(In the case of the moment donné, it can be the present moment,the initial moment of another action mentioned in the context, ora moment that is simply present in the mind of the speaker. Themoment donné is the orientation point.) Ruijgh (1991:199)The moment donné is not an anaphor, since it often is a time that will be introducedin the following discourse rather than a time that has been introducedalready. 1A second difference between the two accounts becomes clear when we considerthe temporal relation they assign to imperfective and aoristic aspect.This temporal relation is roughly the same in case of the imperfective, as bothaccounts take the eventuality time to include the moment donné/topic time,which yields the effect that the eventuality is ‘not yet completed’. The twoaccounts assign different temporal relations to the aorist, however. To captureits value of completion, Ruijgh locates the eventuality time before themoment donné, whereas I locate it within the topic time. 2 The two proposalsare represented graphically in Figure 7.1.aoristimperfectivemy accounttopic timeeventuality timeRuijgh’s accountmoment donnéeventuality timeFigure 7.1: My account of grammatical aspect versus Ruijgh’s1 See, for example, Hettrich’s (1976) test of Ruijgh’s (1971) account, in particular, pp.33–34.2 This is clear from the following citation:Le TPr [imperfective aspect] exprime qu’à un moment donné par la situationou le contexte, l’action exprimée par le thème verbal est encore en cours. LeTAo [aoristic aspect] exprime qu’avant un MD [moment donné], l’action a déjàété achevée (ou finie).(The TPr [imperfective aspect] indicates that the action expressed by theverbal theme is still going on at a moment given by the situation or context.The TAor [aoristic aspect] expresses that the action has already been achieved(or finished) before an MD [moment donné]) Ruijgh (1985:9)
7.2 Ruijgh’s moment donné 159Let’s illustrate Ruijgh’s account by means of his own (constructed) examples(Ruijgh 1991:200):(194) πίνωνpinōn(195) πινpiōnνέστηanestēstand.up.pst.aor.3sgdrink.IPFV.ptcp.nom“While he was drinking, he got up.”drink.AOR.ptcp.nom“After he had drunk, he got up.”νέστηanestēstand.up.pst.aor.3sgOn my account the preceding participial clause provides the topic time for themain clause. On Ruijgh’s account, on the other hand, the main clause providesthe moment donné for the participial clause. He explains the interpretions ofthe different temporal relations in the following way: With the imperfectiveparticiple, the drinking eventuality includes the moment donné, that is the(beginning of the) getting up. With the aorist participle, on the other hand,the drinking eventuality is finished before this moment donné.In contrast to my account, Ruijgh’s main aim is to capture the basic oppositionbetween imperfective and aoristic aspect in terms of completion and doesnot try to derive the various interpretations of the two aspects from a uniformsemantics. For example, he doesn’t assign a role to the length of the referencetime in the coming about of the habitual and ingressive interpretations, whichis crucial to the analysis I have proposed.Apart from the difference with respect to special interpretations, there is asecond, more important reason why my account is preferable over Ruijgh’s. AsI will show in the remainder of this section, Ruijgh’s semantics of the aorist isuntenable in the light of the interaction between grammatical aspect and tense.In short, the problem is that it is impossible to combine Ruijgh’s account ofaspect with a uniform account of tense.Unfortunately, Ruijgh doesn’t discuss the semantics of tense explicitly. Inorder to understand the problem, let’s see what options are open to him:1. Tense locates the time of the eventuality with respect to the moment ofutterance.2. Tense locates the moment donné with respect to the moment of utterance.3. Tense locates both the time of the eventuality and the moment donnéwith respect 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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3.3 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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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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