Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

1.2 Before we start 71.2.3 Aspectual classesI use the word aspect in a rather broad sense. It includes both grammaticalaspect and aspectual classes or Aktionsart. The distinction between aoristicand imperfective aspect is a distinction in grammatical aspect. Most verbsin Ancient Greek come in two forms: aoristic and imperfective forms, clearlydistinguished by specific morphemes. In this thesis I am primarily interestedin grammatical aspect. But the verb itself, without grammatical aspect, alsohas certain properties that are relevant aspectually. On the basis of theseproperties, verbs (or I prefer to say: predicate-argument structures, that is,the verb with its arguments) are divided in aspectual classes or Aktionsarten.Given the complex interactions between grammatical aspect and aspectualclass, I will say a few words about aspectual class here. The sole purpose ofthe remarks here is to facilitate understanding of the following chapters. Morewill follow when we go along.Throughout this thesis I use infinitival expressions like John run to referto the predicate-argument structure, that is, the verb with its arguments, abstractingaway from tense and grammatical aspect. These expressions fall intovarious aspectual classes. One important division is that between the classesof bounded and unbounded predicates. Some predicates introduce inherentboundaries for eventualities, for example, John eat an apple and John run twomiles. They belong to the class of bounded or telic predicates. Others do notintroduce inherent boundaries, for example, John run and John be blond, andare called unbounded or atelic. Moreover, a subclass of the unbounded predicatesis set apart as the stative predicates. Examples are John be blond andJohn be at the pub. One characteristic of stative predicates is that they do notcombine with the progressive in English, as (5) shows (the asterisk indicatesungrammaticality):(5) a. *John is being blond.b. *John is being at the pub.In accordance with common practice (see e.g. de Swart 1998) I assume thefollowing syntactic scope relations: tense outscopes grammatical aspect, whichoutscopes the predicate-argument structure:(6) TENSE (GRAM. ASPECT (predicate-argument structure))The intricate interactions between grammatical aspect and tense and betweengrammatical aspect and aspectual class will be discussed at length in thisthesis.