Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

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20 Chapter 2. The interpretations of aoristic and imperfective aspectkill Thoas. Note that Greek uses a past tense form (νεσα ēinesa), where wewould use a present tense in English (approve).(22) Or. ρ ν τραννον διολέσαι δυναίµεθ νˇIph. δεινν τδ επα̋, ξενοφονεν πήλυδα̋.Or. λλ ε σε σώσει κµέ, κινδυνευτέον.Iph. οκouknotνanprtδυναίµηνdunaimēn;can.ipfv.opt.1sgτtothe.accδdeprtπρθυµονprothumoneagerness.acc ν ε σ α.ēinesa.approve.PST.AOR.1sgOr. “Could we murder the king?”Iph. “A fearful suggestion, for foreigners to kill their host!”Or. “But we must dare it, if it brings our safety.”Iph. “I could not; yet I approve your eagerness.” E. I.T. 1020-23 5On the traditional view the use of the form for aoristic aspect and past tensewould be argued to indicate that Iphigeneia had already made her judgementbefore Orestes finished speaking.In addition to verbs of judgments and emotions, this use of the aoristis found with verbs of saying, ordering, advising, and swearing. (23) is anexample with a verb of swearing:(23) Or. µοσον (ε δ µή, κτεν σε) µ λέγειν µν χάριν.Phr.τνtēnµνemēnκ α τ ώ µ ο σ ,katōmos’,the.acc my.accν εορκοµan euorkoim’prtψυχνpsuchēnsoul.accswear.PST.AOR.1sgγώ.egō.I.nomνhēnthat.rel.accswear.truly.ipfv.opt.1sgOr. “Swear you are not saying this to humour me, or I will kill you.”Phr.“I swear by my life, an oath I would keep!” E. Or. 1516-7 6Again, a Greek past tense form (κατώµοσα katōmosa) is translated with anEnglish present tense form (swear).2.4.4 The generic interpretationAncient Greek has a second use of the form for aoristic aspect and past tensethat often receives a present tense translation in English: it is the aorist in de-5 Potter’s (Euripides 1938) translation.6 Coleridge’s (Euripides 1938) translation
2.5 The challenge 21scriptions of habits, procedures, and general truths. This use is called genericor gnomic. An example is given in (24):(24) εχθνrechthenδέdeτεteνήπιο̋nēpios γ ν ωegnōdo.aor.pass.ptcp.acc prt prt fool.nom know.PST.AOR.3sg“Once a thing has been done, the fool knows it.” Il. 17.32The sentence states a general truth. Note that the past tense form γνω egnōtranslates as a present tense form (sees).In this and the previous sections I have shown that apart from a basicsemantic opposition (for example in terms of completedness, cf. Rijksbaron2002), many grammars distinguish various other uses or interpretations ofaoristic and imperfective aspect. The existence of so many different interpretationsfor both aspects is the central problem of this thesis. This problemwill be formulated more sharply in the final section of this chapter.2.5 The challengeThe present chapter was devoted to the various interpretations of aoristic andimperfective aspect. We have seen that for bounded predicates aoristic aspectindicates that an eventuality is completed (completive interpretation). Forunbounded predicates, it receives an ingressive or complexive interpretation.Furthermore, aoristic aspect can occur with a tragic or generic interpretation.We have seen that imperfective aspect may be used to express that aneventuality is going on (processual interpretation), but also to express a habit(habitual interpretation), an attempt (conative interpretation), or ‘likelihood’(likelihood interpretation).In order to understand the Ancient Greek aspect system, we must determinehow these various interpretations come about. In principle, we couldtreat all these interpretations as separate, independent meanings. This, however,would come down to simply listing them and wouldn’t provide insight inthe system. Furthermore, it would leave a number of phenomena unaccountedfor. One is that we find the same clustering of interpretations in languageafter language: the ingressive interpretation goes with the interpretation ofcompletion, and the habitual interpretation with that of progression. This isfor example found with the French passé simple and imparfait (see, for example,de Swart 1998), and with the perfective and imperfective forms of Russian(cf. Comrie 1976). If the various interpretations of one aspect represented independentmeanings, it would remain unclear why these interpretations clustertogether in the same way cross-linguistically. This would simply be a coincidence(apart from a historical connection). Moreover, the fact that the
Page 3: Aspect in Ancient GreekA semantic a
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Page 9: Contentsix8 Conclusions and discuss
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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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122 Chapter 5. Aspect and performat
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134 Chapter 6. The temporal structu
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158 Chapter 7. Comparison to theori
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172 Chapter 8. Conclusions and disc
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178 Appendix A: The language of Com
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192 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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