Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

3.2 The perfective-imperfective distinction 59My aim in this thesis is to account for the variation in interpretation ofaoristic (perfective) and imperfective aspect by means of an ambiguity-free semanticsfor the two. In this section I have shown that a one-component theorycannot help us out in this respect. In such a theory the difference between perfectiveand imperfective aspect corresponds to a difference in aspectual class.As a consequence, the semantics of perfective and imperfective aspect end upvacuous if the shift in aspectual class is attributed to coercion, that is to aspectualrestrictions from other sources. Conversely, if it’s not attributed tocoercion, but to perfective and imperfective aspect themselves, we must assumean ambiguous semantics of the two in order to deal with the variationin interpretation. This does not only hold for Ancient Greek, but for all languagesin which the perfective-imperfective opposition is found throughout theverbal paradigm.The extensive discussion of de Swart’s proposal in this section has taughtus the following things for our own analysis: (i) coercion can be useful for dealingwith the variation in interpretation found with aoristic and imperfectiveaspect; (ii) in order to implement it, we must assign an element as a trigger ofthis coercion; (iii) we want aoristic and imperfective aspect to make semanticcontributions of their own; (iv) we want to be able to handle the asymmetryin distribution of ‘special’ interpretations between perfective and imperfectiveaspect. As should be clear by now, we cannot combine these ingredients ina one-component theory. In section 3.2.4 I will therefore investigate a twocomponenttheory, a theory in which the contribution of grammatical aspectis not primarily a shift in aspectual class.3.2.4 Klein, von Stechow: topic timeThe theories of Kamp, Krifka, and de Swart discussed in sections 3.2.1, 3.2.2,and 3.2.3, respectively, all represent one-component theories of aspect. In suchtheories the primary contribution of grammatical aspect is a shift in aspectualclass. As such they are different from the theories to be discussed in this section,those of Klein and von Stechow et al. In these two-component theoriesthe function of grammatical aspect is to locate an eventuality temporally withrespect to the topic time (Klein 1994) or reference time (Gerö and von Stechow2003, Paslawska and von Stechow 2003). Topic time and reference timecorrespond more or less to what Kamp et al. call location time. It is the timeto which the speaker refers with his utterance, the time about which he speaks.More often than not this particular time is recoverable from the context.Klein (1994) claims that imperfective aspect indicates that the topic timeis properly included in the runtime of the eventuality, called the situation time.Perfective aspect, on the other hand, indicates that the time of the eventuality