Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

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82 Chapter 4. An analysis of aoristic and imperfective aspectλe p king(e)in (105) is the translation of Perdiccas be king of the Macedonians,a predicate over eventualities. To keep things simple, I will not gobeyond this level of detail. The semantics of the imperfective takes the propertydenoted by this predicate as its input. It returns the set of times thatinclude the runtime of an eventuality with this property. This set of times isthe input for the semantics of the past tense. The past tense specifies thatthe topic time which is before the utterance time is one of the times in thisset. The second line of (105) reduces to the last line with the help of lambdaconversion and merging (see (219) in Appendix B for the intermediate stepsin the reduction). The last line reads as follows: there is an eventuality ofPerdiccas being king of the Macedonians that temporally includes the topictime, which precedes the utterance time. The topic time is determined by thetemporal subordinate clause as the time of the invasion by Sitalces. Thus, thesemantics provided for (104) corresponds to its natural interpretation: at thetime about which we speak there is an eventuality going on of Perdiccas beingking. 4 Figure 4.2 represents the outcome graphically.t TT : the time of the invasionτ(e): the time of Perdiccas being kingFigure 4.2: Graphical representation of (105)In the same way the proposed semantics for tense and aspect gives us (107)for the second clause in (106):(106) Κρο̋Kurosδ οπωde oupōCyrus.nom prt not.yetκεν,hēken,be.present.pst.ipfv.3sgλλall’butτιetistillπ ρ ο σ ή λ α υ ν εprosēlaunemarch.to.pst.IPFV.3sg“Cyrus was not yet present, but he was still marching on.”X. An. 1.5.124 My definitions of boundedness and stativity force me to accept non-maximal eventualities(with respect to a predicate) as eventualities (of that predicate) as well (otherwise, allpredicates would be unbounded and non-stative) (cf. the discussion in section 3.2.2 of thedifferent conceptualisations of eventualities in Krifka and Kamp et al.). The consequencefor (104) is that e is not necessarily the locally maximal being king eventuality, since thepredicate is unbounded. It may be that e is part of a larger eventuality of which the predicateholds. This makes no difference for the interpretation, however, since the effect is thesame: the eventuality is not completed within the topic time.
4.3 Completed vs. going on: the completive and processual interpretations 83(107) PAST(IMP(λe c march(e)))= λQ[tTT ≺ n ⊕Q(t TT)](λPλt[eτ(e) ·⊃ t ⊕P(e)](λe c march(e) ))e≡τ(e) ·⊃ t TTc march(e)t TT ≺ nIn (106), the topic time is fixed by the context as a time when Clearchus isriding through Menon’s army. (107) specifies that (106) is true iff there isan eventuality of Cyrus marching that temporally includes the topic time (atime when Clearchus is riding through the army), which precedes the utterancetime. This gives the correct truth conditions: at the end of the topic time, theeventuality e is still continuing, which yields the effect of ‘going on’.t TT : a time of Clearchus’ ridingthrough Menon’s armyτ(e): the time of the march of CyrusFigure 4.3: Graphical representation of (136)There are two remaining cases concerning imperfective aspect that deservesome closer attention: the imperfective with stative predicates and the imperfectivewith bounded predicates. I will discuss them in section 4.8 and 4.9,respectively.But let us first have a look at aoristic aspect. Following the same recipeas above, the proposed semantics of tense and aspect gives (109) for (108) (=(11)), an example of the completive interpretation of the aorist:(108) τtoµευmeuνάκο̋nakosχθ̋echthes κ λ ε ψ ε ν.eklepsen.the.acc I.gen skin-coat.acc yesterday steal.pst.AOR.3sg“He (= Lacon) stole my skin-coat yesterday.” Theoc. Id. 5.2(109) PAST(AOR(λe l steal(e)))= λQ[tTT ≺ n ⊕Q(t eTT)](λPλt[τ(e) ⊆ t ⊕P(e)](λe l steal(e) ))
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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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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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Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

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