Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

More documents

Recommendations

Info

170 Chapter 7. Comparison to theories in Classicsof information structure, or maybe something else.In this light, it is interesting to consider to Grønn’s (2003) dissertationabout a similar phenomenon in Russian. He develops a temporal approach toaspect in general, but wants to explain the often observed fact that Russianimperfective aspect is sometimes used for complete eventualities (see, for example,Forsyth 1970, to whom Sicking also refers). He labels this the factualuse of imperfective aspect. In order to explain the data, Grønn has to makequite some distinctions within this use. First he divides the factual use intothe presuppositional and existential use. According to Grønn, with the former,the existence of the eventuality to which the verb refers is presupposed.This resembles Sicking’s account in terms of focus. Grønn recognises howeverthat this does not hold for all instances of the factual imperfective. With theexistential use, the existence of the eventuality is asserted rather than presupposed.The class of existential uses isn’t homogeneous either, and Grønndivides it into an experiential, bidirectional, and cyclic use. I don’t knowwhether the phenomena in Russian and Ancient Greek are exactly the same,but the Russian data may shed new light on this puzzle in Ancient Greek.To conclude, I take it to be the major drawback of Sicking’s focus accountthat the key notion of focus is ill-defined. On the above-given interpretation ofthis notion, which seems the one intended by Sicking, his account is untenableas a general account of aspect. This is due to (i) its inability to deal withthe temporal interpretations, (ii) its inability to explain the lack of a form foraoristic aspect and present tense, and (iii) the existence of counterexamples.Nevertheless, I acknowledge the existence of examples that are problematic fora temporal account of aspect.In this chapter I have discussed two influential approaches to Ancient Greekaspect found in the literature, that of Ruijgh in terms of temporal relationswith respect to a moment donné and that of Sicking in terms of focus. I haveargued that the account of aspect developed in the present work is preferableover both.
Chapter 8Conclusions and discussion8.1 ConclusionsThe main challenge in this thesis was to account for the variation in interpretationof imperfective and aoristic aspect in Ancient Greek without postulatingambiguity. I have tackled this problem by employing methods from formalsemantics. Let me recapitulate the analysis developed in this thesis. It is alsosummarised in Figure 8.1.The starting point of my analysis is that aspect concerns the temporalrelation between the run time of the eventuality described by the predicateand the so-called topic time. This topic time can intuitively be seen as thetime about which we speak. Formally, it is treated as an anaphor that bindsto a previously introduced time. Imperfective and aoristic aspect relate theeventuality’s run time to the topic time in different ways. Imperfective aspectindicates that the eventuality is going on at the time about which we speak,that is, the eventuality’s run time includes the topic time. Aoristic aspect,by contrast, indicates that the eventuality takes place within the time aboutwhich we speak: its run time is included in the topic time. The proposedsemantics directly yields what Ancient Greek grammars consider the basic oppositionbetween imperfective and aoristic aspect: going on versus completed.I have labeled these the processual interpretation of imperfective aspect andthe completive interpretation of aoristic aspect, respectively.In order to derive the other interpretations associated with imperfectiveand aoristic aspect in Ancient Greek I used some additional principles andmechanisms. A central role was assigned to coercion, a mechanism whichforces the argument of an operator to be reinterpreted in order to resolve asemantic mismatch between the selectional restrictions of the operator andthe properties of its argument. The proposed restriction of the aorist operatorto bounded predicates (in order to rule out a potential overlap between theuse of aorist and imperfective) triggers reinterpretation when it is confronted
Page 3:
Aspect in Ancient GreekA semantic a
Page 6 and 7:
viNick Asher, David Beaver, the lat
Page 9:
Contentsix8 Conclusions and discuss
Page 12 and 13:
2 Chapter 1. Introductiongroundbrea
Page 14 and 15:
4 Chapter 1. Introduction(4) µετ
Page 16 and 17:
6 Chapter 1. Introductionimperfecti
Page 19 and 20:
1.3 Organisation of the thesis 9In
Page 21 and 22:
Chapter 2The interpretations of aor
Page 23 and 24:
2.3 Additional interpretations of t
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29 and 30:
Page 31:
2.5 The challenge 21scriptions of h
Page 34 and 35:
24 Chapter 3. Aspect in formal sema
Page 36 and 37:
Page 38 and 39:
Page 40 and 41:
Page 42 and 43:
Page 44 and 45:
Page 46 and 47:
Page 48 and 49:
Page 50 and 51:
Page 52:
Page 57 and 58:
3.2 The perfective-imperfective dis
Page 59 and 60:
Page 61 and 62:
Page 63 and 64:
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68:
Page 69 and 70:
Page 71 and 72:
Page 73 and 74:
Page 75 and 76:
Page 77 and 78:
3.3 Aspectual coercion 673.3.1 Aspe
Page 79 and 80:
3.3 Aspectual coercion 69bials ((88
Page 81 and 82:
3.3 Aspectual coercion 71the term c
Page 83 and 84:
3.3 Aspectual coercion 73in the ext
Page 86 and 87:
76 Chapter 4. An analysis of aorist
Page 88 and 89:
Page 90 and 91:
Page 92 and 93:
Page 94 and 95:
Page 96 and 97:
Page 98 and 99:
Page 100 and 101:
Page 102 and 103:
Page 104 and 105:
Page 106 and 107:
Page 108 and 109:
Page 110 and 111:
100 Chapter 4. An analysis of aoris
Page 112 and 113:
Page 114 and 115:
Page 116 and 117:
Page 118 and 119:
Page 120 and 121:
Page 122 and 123:
Page 124 and 125:
Page 126 and 127:
Page 128 and 129:
Page 130 and 131: 120 Chapter 4. An analysis of aoris
Page 132 and 133: 122 Chapter 5. Aspect and performat
Page 144 and 145: 134 Chapter 6. The temporal structu
Page 168 and 169: 158 Chapter 7. Comparison to theori
Page 182 and 183: 172 Chapter 8. Conclusions and disc
Page 188 and 189: 178 Appendix A: The language of Com
Page 202 and 203: 192 Appendix B: Examples spelled ou
Page 216 and 217: 206 Appendix C: List of abbreviatio
Page 218 and 219: 208 Appendix C: List of abbreviatio
Page 220 and 221: 210 References(Eds.), Cross-linguis
Page 222 and 223: 212 ReferencesGrice, P. (1975). Log
Page 224 and 225: 214 ReferencesLemmon, E. J. (1962).
Page 226 and 227: 216 Referencesvan der Sandt, R. (19
Page 228 and 229: 218 References
Page 230 and 231:
220 Samenvatting (Summary in Dutch)
Page 232 and 233:
222 Samenvatting (Summary in Dutch)
show all

Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?