Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

Chapter 2The interpretations of aoristicand imperfective aspect2.1 IntroductionIn the previous chapter I have laid down the object of this thesis: aspect inAncient Greek, and more in particular the various interpretations of aoristicand imperfective aspect. In this chapter I discuss the interpretations receivedgrammars of Ancient Greek distinguish for both aspects. The fact that bothoccur with several interpretations is the main problem of this thesis, whichwill be formulated in section 2.5.2.2 The basic distinction: completed versusnot-completedOne of the clearest formulations of the opposition between imperfective andaoristic aspect in Ancient Greek is found in Rijksbaron (2002:1). He claimsthat imperfective aspect indicates that an eventuality is not-completed, whereasaoristic aspect indicates the opposite, i.e. that it is completed. Similarideas about imperfective aspect can be found in Smyth (1984:423) and Goodwin(1966:11), among others. Both grammars state that imperfective aspectindicates that an eventuality is going on. In this chapter I use notions likecompleted and going on descriptively. I aim to make explicit what they meanlater in this thesis.Let’s illustrate this opposition with some examples. From now on, I useinter-letter spacing and ordinary capitals IPFV and AOR (rather than smallcapitals) in the interlinear gloss to highlight the relevant forms. See AppendixC.2 for the abbreviations used in the glosses. Consider the following examplewith imperfective aspect: