Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

3.3 Aspectual coercion 69bials ((88a) and (88b)), but don’t go with the progressive on a literal reading((89a) and (89b)). Other predicates, for example process predicates (like Johnrun), exhibit the opposite behaviour ((88c) versus (89c)).(88) a. John was in the pub at ten.b. John coughed at ten.c. #John ran at ten.(89) a. *John was being in the pub.b. #John was coughing.c. John was running.Example (88c) makes no sense on a literal reading, only on an ingressive reinterpretation,that is the interpretation that John started running at ten. Likewise,(89b) makes sense only on an iterative reinterpretation. (89a) cannot bereinterpreted and is simply unacceptable.Stative and punctual predicates behave differently on the compatibilitywith the simple present tense, as (90) illustrates.(90) a. John is in the pub.b. #John coughs.Example (90a) is fine on a literal interpretation, but (90b), and non-stativepredicates in general, must undergo a habitual reinterpretation.For- and in-adverbials distinguish between bounded and unbounded predicates.Bounded predicates are fine with in-adverbials on a literal reading,but not with for-adverbials. For unbounded predicates, the reverse situationholds.(91) a. John ran for an hour.b. #John played the sonata for an hour.(92) a. #John ran in one hour.b. John played the sonata in an hour.(91b) must undergo reinterpretation since the bounded predicate John play thesonata combines with a for-adverbial. There a two options: a progressive or aniterative reinterpretation. I will come back to this example in the next section.(92a), where the unbounded John run combines with an in-adverbial, makessense only if world knowledge supports the reinterpretation of the unboundedpredicate as a bounded predicate (run a specific distance), for example, if weknow that John runs a particular distance every day.The perfect is sensitive to telicity. Only telic predicates combine happilywith the perfect. (93a) is in need of reinterpretation, whereas (93b) is fine: 3232 Moens and Steedman would claim that (93b) involves reinterpretation, too, since in