Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

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64 Chapter 3. Aspect in formal semanticssecond restriction will turn out to be of use in accounting for the Greek data(chapter 4).Paslawska and von Stechow (2003), who focus on Russian, take a differentstance on the aspectual class restrictions imposed by grammatical aspects.They differ from Gerö and von Stechow in two respects: (i) only perfectiveaspect exhibits a selectional restriction for a certain aspectual class, and (ii),this restriction is not claimed to follow from INCLUDES, but is presented as asecond independent contribution of Russian perfective morphology. The firstpoint is an improvement with respect to Gerö and von Stechow, but the secondpoint raises the question why two independent semantic contributions wouldbe combined in a single morpheme.Note that de Swart’s (1998) and von Stechow et al.’s accounts of grammaticalaspect consist of exactly the same elements: a temporal relation betweenthe eventuality time and the topic time/location time, and an aspectual classrestriction. What differs is which element has primacy. In de Swart’s accountit’s the aspectual class from which the temporal relation is stipulated to follow(following Kamp et al.). In Gerö and von Stechow (2003) it’s the other wayaround: the aspectual class restrictions are claimed to follow from the temporalrelations. And in Paslawska and von Stechow (2003), both contributionsare independent for perfective aspect, whereas imperfective aspect only makesa temporal contribution.In both de Swart’s and Gerö and von Stechow’s account it is unclear whya certain aspectual class and a certain temporal relation between eventualitytime and topic time would go hand in hand. In the latter account it is clearthat aspectual classes are needed in addition to temporal relations to accountfor the data (I will explain this at greater length in sections 4.4 and 4.9), butfrom a theoretical point of view it is not clear why temporal relations wouldbring along aspectual class restrictions. In de Swart’s account it is not evenclear why the distinction in aspectual class alone is not enough to deal with thedata (see section 3.2.2 where I discussed this point for the accounts of Kampet al.).To conclude this section, let’s see what von Stechow et al. have broughtus. An improvement with respect to de Swart’s account is that perfective andimperfective morphology are not treated as semantically vacuous: perfectiveaspect corresponds to INCLUDES, imperfective to INCLUDED. It is less clearhow their account can deal with the variation in interpretation for perfectiveand imperfective aspect. The habitual interpretation of imperfective aspectseems to be ascribed to a coercion process that solves a mismatch in aspectualclass, but we have seen that this makes the wrong predictions. Gerö andvon Stechow don’t discuss the various interpretations of aoristic aspect and itis unclear how they could handle, for example, the ingressive interpretation.Finally, it is unclear why the temporal contribution of aspect would impose
3.2 The perfective-imperfective distinction 65restrictions on the aspectual class of the predicate it combines with.3.2.5 Taking stockIn the previous sections I have discussed five classes of theories on grammaticalaspect. I started in section 3.2.1 with the DRT account of Kamp et al. (Kampand Rohrer 1983, Kamp and Reyle 1993, Kamp, van Genabith, and Reyle2005), in which aspectual phenomena are considered only insofar as they havean effect on temporal reference. The distinction between what they call statesand events was used to account for the different temporal behaviour of theimparfait and passé simple in discourse. In section 3.2.2, I showed that Krifka’s(1989b) account can deal with a whole range of data relating to grammaticalaspect using the distinction between homogeneous and quantised reference. Insection 3.2.3 I discussed de Swart’s (1998) account and various adaptations ofit. They exploit the distinction between homogeneous and quantised referenceto account for the variation in interpretation of the passé simple and imparfait.Section 3.2.4 was devoted to the theories of Klein (1994) and von Stechow etal. (Gerö and von Stechow 2003, Paslawska and von Stechow 2003). In thesetheories grammatical aspect concerns the temporal relation between the timeof the eventuality and the topic time. Von Stechow et al. complement thiscontribution of aspect with aspectual class restrictions. In this respect, thisaccount can be seen as a combination of Klein (1994) and de Swart (1998).The first three theories are one-component theories, as grammatical aspectprimarily concerns aspectual class. They differ in the phenomena for whichthey offer an account in terms of aspectual classes. The theories of Klein(1994) and von Stechow et al. are two-component: grammatical aspect doesnot (primarily) change aspectual class, but locates the eventuality temporallywith respect to the topic time.This said, it is time to weaken the distinction between the two approachessomewhat. First, whereas Krifka uses only aspectual class to deal with grammaticalaspect and Klein only temporal relations, the other three accountsdiscussed, the ones of Kamp, de Swart and von Stechow et al., all containboth a temporal relation and an aspectual class element. The latter three differonly in which element has primacy. Moreover, we can wonder whether thetheory of Kamp et al. is truly one-component in spirit. In de Swart’s accountaspectual classes play a crucial role as a mismatch therein triggers reinterpretation.In Kamp et al., however, with its focus on temporal reference, thedistinction between events and states is of less importance, and one may evenask whether it is crucial. When the distinction between states and events inthis account reduces to the different temporal relations they come with, itcomes close to Klein’s proposal.Although it may be useful to bring some order in the vast literature on
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Aspect in Ancient GreekA semantic a
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viNick Asher, David Beaver, the lat
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Contentsix8 Conclusions and discuss
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2 Chapter 1. Introductiongroundbrea
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4 Chapter 1. Introduction(4) µετ
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6 Chapter 1. Introductionimperfecti
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1.3 Organisation of the thesis 9In
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Chapter 2The interpretations of aor
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114 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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