Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

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80 Chapter 4. An analysis of aoristic and imperfective aspectpretation of imperfective aspect and the completive interpretation of aoristicaspect. 2The temporal relation I assign to imperfective aspect deviates from theone proposed by von Stechow et al. (τ(e) ⊇ t TT ). The reason for this deviationis the following. The intuition that imperfective aspect indicates that theeventuality is ‘going on’ is not captured by the semantics of von Stechow etal. A necessary ingredient for capturing this intuition is a continuation of theeventuality after the end of the topic time, a constellation that the semanticsof von Stechow et al. allows for but does not require. For bounded predicates,von Stechow et al. can save their analysis by the insertion of a progressivecoercion operator, as we will see in section 4.8. This, however, does not workfor unbounded predicates. In (102), for example, von Stechow et al.’s semanticsdoes not account for the intuition that the running is ‘not yet completed’:(102) Pierre c o u r a i t.Pierre run.pst.IPFV.3sg“Pierre was running”By contrast, this intuition is captured if we assign imperfective aspect a semanticswhich entails that the topic time is a non-final part of the time of theeventuality, cf. (101a).As for tense, following Kamp et al., Klein, and von Stechow et al., I take itto make reference to some particular time (the topic time) and to temporallylocate this time with respect to the moment of utterance. The analyses ofKamp et al. and von Stechow et al. differ from that of Klein (see (84)) withrespect to the temporal relation assigned to the present tense. I will follow theformer two and claim that with the present tense the topic time is rather thanincludes the utterance time. 3 I propose the following semantics for the threetenses present, past, and future:(103) a. PRESENT λQ[tTT = n ⊕Q(t TT)] = PRESb. PAST λQ[tTT ≺ n ⊕Q(t TT)] = PASTposal, which indicates that the question whether the aorist has to do with completeness orcompletedness (see, e.g., Comrie 1976:18–19) turns out to be a non-issue once one considersthe notions as relative with respect to a reference point.2 I will discuss the complexive interpretation of the aorist, that is, the interpretation ofcompletion with unbounded predicates, in sections 4.4 and 4.5. As I will show there, thesemantics of the aorist in (101b) on its own does not suffice to deal with this interpretation.3 See section 5.3, footnote 2 for the motivation of this decision.
4.3 Completed vs. going on: the completive and processual interpretations 81c. FUTURE λQ[tTT ≻ n ⊕Q(t TT)] = FUTThe semantics of tense takes a property of times Q and returns a proposition.For the past tense, for example, the property of times Q is mapped onto theproposition that the topic time precedes the moment of utterance and that Qholds of the topic time. As for the topic time, I follow von Stechow et al. inthis chapter and treat the topic time as a free variable t TT that is assumed toget its value from an assignment function that is fixed by the context. We haveseen that this is one of the static ways of handling intersentential anaphora.On such an account the way in which the topic time is determined on the basisof the context is not specified. Since I believe, however, that a full accountshould provide a specification of the process, I switch to a proper treatment ofanaphora in chapter 6 on discourse. As I said before, in this chapter I formulatemy account in DRT to make it possible to provide a proper treatment of thetopic time later on.Let’s apply this semantics of tense and aspect to two of the examples ofthe processual interpretation of imperfective aspect given in section 2.1 andrepeated below for convenience. (105) is the semantic representation of thefirst clause of (104).(104) κα Περδίκκα̋kai Perdikkasand Perdiccas.nom νēnbe.pst.IPFV.3sgΑλεξάνδρουAlexandrouAlexander.genτεhotewhenΣιτάλκη̋SitalkēsSitalces.nomβασιλε̋basileusking.nomατνautōnthey.genπήειepēieicome.upon.pst.ipfv.3sg“And Perdiccas, Alexander’s son, was their (=the Macedonians’) kingat the time of the invasion by Sitalces.” Th. 2.99.6.(105) PAST(IMP(λe p king(e)))= λQ[tTT ≺ n ⊕Q(t TT)](λPλt[eτ(e) ·⊃ t ⊕P(e)](λe p king(e) ))≡ep king(e)τ(e) ·⊃ t TTt TT ≺ n
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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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2.3 Additional interpretations of t
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2.5 The challenge 21scriptions of h
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24 Chapter 3. Aspect in formal sema
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130 Chapter 5. Aspect and performat
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132 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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