Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

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24 Chapter 3. Aspect in formal semantics3.2 The perfective-imperfective distinction3.2.1 Kamp et al.: events and statesThe passé simple and imparfait are generally considered to be the Frenchrealisations of the perfective-imperfective distinction (cf. Vet 1994, but seede Swart 1998 (to be discussed in section 3.2.3) for a different view). Anattempt to capture the difference in meaning between the two verb forms wasone of the motivations for Kamp to develop a new discourse-based framework:Discourse Representation Theory (DRT). Since I will formulate my analysisin this framework, I first devote a section to its basic ideas. Then I discussthe treatment of aspect of Kamp et al. in terms of this framework. For amore extensive introduction to DRT the reader is referred to Kamp and Reyle(1993) and Geurts and Beaver (2007).3.2.1.1 Discourse Representation TheoryAs implied by its name, Discourse Representation Theory focuses on the interpretationof discourse rather than sentences in isolation. Its basic idea isthat natural language utterances are interpreted in a continually evolving discourse.In the course of this interpretation process the hearer constructs arepresentation of the discourse encountered thus far. As the discourse unfolds,he incorporates the information conveyed by each subsequent sentence in thealready established representation. This incremental interpretation proceduredoes justice to the fact that the interpretation of a sentence often depends oninformation given in the preceding discourse. This type of context dependenceis clearly visible in sentences with anaphoric expressions, i.e. expressions thatin some sense inherit their value from earlier expressions, their antecedents.Pronouns are clear cases of such expressions. Consider the following minidiscourse:(25) John owns a dog. He likes it.To interpret the second sentence, we need the context provided by the first.Otherwise, what would he refer to, or it? As it turns out, many expressions innatural language exhibit this type of context dependence and classical logic isnot very well suited to deal with them. As (26) illustrates, in predicate logic wecan easily represent the truth conditions of the first sentence, and of the whole
3.2 The perfective-imperfective distinction 25discourse, but what exactly is the contribution of the second sentence? 1,2(26) ∃e∃x[own(e,j,x) ∧dog(x)] + ???? =∃e∃x∃e ′ [own(e,j,x) ∧dog(x) ∧like(e ′ ,j,x)]To solve this problem of intersentential anaphora and some other problemsconcerning anaphora, dynamic semantics was developed in the early eighties.Besides Kamp’s (1981) Discourse Representation Theory, Heim’s (1982) FileChange Semantics and Groenendijk and Stokhof’s (1991) Dynamic PredicateLogic belong to this family of semantic theories as well. The defining characteristicof dynamic semantics is that context change replaces truth and referenceas the central semantic notions. Thus, classical truth conditional semantics isnow often referred to as static semantics.The logical forms of DRT are called Discourse Representation Structures(DRSs). They consist of a set of discourse markers and a set of conditions.Discourse markers represent objects that are introduced as the discourse proceeds.They function in a way similar to variables in predicate logic, and Iwill use these terms interchangeably. Conditions come in various kinds. Theyencode descriptive information that is assigned to discourse markers.Formally, a DRS K is an ordered pair 〈U(K), Con(K)〉, where U(K), theuniverse of K, is a set of discourse markers and Con(K) is a set of conditions.I opt for the familiar notation which depicts DRSs as two-compartment boxeswith the universe on top and the conditions below. The DRS for the firstsentence of (25) is (27):(27)e x yjohn(x)dog(y)own(e,x,y)The processing of this sentence introduces three discourse markers in the universeof the DRS. The discourse marker e for the eventuality, x introduced by1 Admittedly, there are ways to deal with intersentential anaphora in classical semantics.One is to represent anaphoric expressions as free variables, which means that they are treatedas referential expressions that get their interpretation from an assignment function. It isthen assumed that assignment functions are somehow fixed by an (unspecified) pragmaticmodule that takes the context into account. I believe that this ‘solution’ pushes the realissue out of sight, into a pragmatic waste basket.A second way to deal with intersentential anaphora within classical semantics is the E-(or D-) type strategy which is inspired by the observation that pronouns can often beparaphrased by a definite description constructed from material in the antecedent sentence(cf., for example, Neale 1990). I don’t go into this strategy here, since it is not a veryplausible option for anaphoricity in the realm of tense with which we are concerned in thisthesis.2 In (26) I ignore the semantic contributions of tense and aspect.
Page 3: Aspect in Ancient GreekA semantic a
Page 6 and 7: viNick Asher, David Beaver, the lat
Page 9: Contentsix8 Conclusions and discuss
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76 Chapter 4. An analysis of aorist
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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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