Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

3.2 The perfective-imperfective distinction 33Example (45a) is a normal discourse. By contrast, (45b) is anomalous.This leads Kamp et al. to the generalisation in (i):(i)If a sentence describes an event, the time of the event is included in thelocation time; a state, on the other hand, overlaps with the locationtime.Returning to our French mini-discourses, the first sentence of (40) and (41)is represented as (46):(46)n e 1 t 1 t 2p enter(e 1 )τ(e 1 ) = t 1t 1 ⊆ t 2t 2 ≺ nSince this sentence is in the passé simple, it describes an evente 1 . 7 It is an eventof Pierre entering. τ maps e 1 on its runtime t 1 , the time e 1 actually takes.Since e 1 represents an event, its runtime t 1 is included (⊆) in the locationtime t 2 . 8 Furthermore, since the verb is in the past tense, the location timet 2 precedes the utterance time n. 9(46) functions as the context for the interpretation of the second sentencesof (40) and (41). The preliminary DRSs of these sentences are (47) and (48),respectively:(47)e 2 t 3 t 4m phone(e 2 )τ(e 2 ) = t 3t 3 ⊆ t 4t 4 ≺ nt 5ρ(t 5 ,t 3 )7 Throughout this work I use e, e ′ , e ′′ , . .., e 1 , e 2 , . . . as variables/discourse markers foreventualities in general when discussing theories that do not make an ontological distinctionbetween events and states, and as variables for events specifically in the discussion of theoriesthat do make such an ontological distinction, like the one discussed here.8 Here my notation deviates from Kamp et al., who have e 1 ⊆ t 2 , which is equivalentto my τ(e 1 ) ⊆ t 2 . The reason for this deviation is to have a uniform representation of thevarious analyses discussed in this thesis, which I believe facilitates comparison.9 One may wonder why it’s the location time and not the runtime of e 1 that tense locateswith respect to the utterance time. I postpone the motivation for this to section 3.2.4.