Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

76 Chapter 4. An analysis of aoristic and imperfective aspectof this language is given in Appendix A.The chapter is organised as follows: I first present the aspectual classificationI assume (section 4.2). Then, in section 4.3, I show how the semanticsvon Stechow et al. propose for perfective and imperfective aspect directly yieldsthe completive interpretation of the former and the processual interpretationof the latter. In section 4.4 I demonstrate why aoristic aspect requires boundedpredicates, the question left unaddressed in the account of von Stechow et al.In section 4.5 we see that Egg’s Duration Principle accounts for the choicebetween the ingressive and complexive interpretation of aoristic aspect and insection 4.7 that the same principle is also responsible for the emergence of thehabitual interpretation of imperfective aspect. Section 4.6 is an excursion intothe consequences of restricting aspectual classes to the level of predicates. Insection 4.8 I demonstrate that the proposed semantics for imperfective aspectaccounts for the difference between progressive and imperfective aspect withrespect to their ability to combine with stative predicates. In section 4.9 Ishow how an intensionalised version of the semantics accounts for the conativeinterpretation of imperfective aspect. Section 4.10 summarises my account.4.2 Aspectual classesIn this section I present the aspectual classification assumed in my analysis.Following the theories discussed in the previous chapter, I adopt a Davidsonianevent semantics, that is, I assume that verbs are represented as predicates withan additional argument slot for an eventuality variable. Furthermore, I adoptthe idea that grammatical aspects work on predicates of eventualities (as do deSwart, Krifka, and von Stechow et al.). As I am interested in the interactionbetween grammatical aspect and aspectual class, my aspectual classificationis restricted to predicates of eventualities. I do not go beyond that level. Myclassification is based on two properties of predicates of eventualities: boundednessand stativity.For the property of boundedness, I adopt Krifka’s definition of quanticity(cf. (59)):(99) A property P is bounded iff for all e, e ′ if P(e) and e ′ ⊏ e then ¬P(e ′ )This definition states that the extension of a bounded predicate never containsan eventuality as well as one of its proper parts. This makes, for example,John write a letter a bounded predicate, in contrast to, for example, Johnbe in the pub or John waltz. Parts of eventualities in the extensions of thelatter predicates may be in their extensions as well, and therefore they areunbounded.The last two predicates are distinguished by the property of stativity. If a