Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

54 Chapter 3. Aspect in formal semanticsis inserted if and only if there is a conflict in aspectual class. Nothing else cantrigger the coercion. That means that in (78), where there is no mismatch inaspectual class, the habitual interpretation cannot be accounted for. In thefollowing section we will see that the proposal is faced with more problemswhen applied to Ancient Greek.3.2.3.2 Applying de Swart (1998) to Ancient GreekIn the previous section I discussed the way in which de Swart (1998) accountsfor the variation in interpretation of the passé simple and imparfait. Theseinterpretations are ascribed to coercion triggered by tense operators. Moreprecisely, her account consists of the following elements:(79) (i) the variation in interpretation of perfective and imperfective isthe result of a coercion process;(ii) this coercion is triggered by a mismatch in aspectual class;(iii) this mismatch holds between the requirements of the tense operatorand the input candidate, a predicate over eventualities;(iv) the relevant aspectual class distinction for the perfective-imperfectivedistinction is quantised versus homogeneous.We saw furthermore that there are striking similarities between the interpretationsof imperfective and aoristic aspect in Ancient Greek and those of theimparfait and passé simple in French. In fact, apart from the generic and tragicinterpretations of aoristic aspect, the range of interpretations is the same.These similarities strongly invite us to examine whether de Swart’s accountcan be extended to Ancient Greek. I will show that this is not possible. Subsequently,I will explore several options that hold on to de Swart’s idea that theperfective-imperfective distinction is sensitive to the quantised-homogeneousdistinction (iv), but leave out the problematic parts of the analysis. 22 It will,however, turn out that in this way one throws out the baby with the bathwater.Why can de Swart’s analysis not be used to explain the Ancient Greekdata? The reason for this lies in some crucial differences between the aspectualsystems of French and Ancient Greek, in spite of the many similarities ininterpretation. In French, the imparfait and passé simple can be analysed aspast tense operators since they only occur in the past tense. In Ancient Greekthe aorist-imperfective distinction is not restricted to the past tense. On thecontrary, as we have seen it is found throughout the verb paradigm. Althoughin the indicative the distinction is largely restricted to the past tense, 23 outside22 See also Bary (to appear) for an elaborate discussion of the possibility of applying deSwart’s theory and modifications of it to Ancient Greek.23 The situation of the future is somewhat unclear: Kühner and Gerth (1898:154,177) notethat there are distinct forms for aoristic and imperfective aspect in the passive forms of the