Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

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