[B-Greek] Re: Understanding Greek Verb Tense/Aspect

Kimmo Huovila kimmo.huovila at helsinki.fi
Mon Apr 12 12:15:24 EDT 2004


On Friday 09 April 2004 14:05, Kimmo Huovila wrote:
> Do you mean that historical present is (at least sometimes) perfective or 
that 
> it is imperfective but can be used in cases where also a perfective can be 
> used? I think Mourelatos said that the same limitations for adverbials of 
> count that hold for other presents (imperfectives) hold also for historical 
> presents. Would that argue for the historical present to be imperfective?

Correcting myself, the correct reference is not to Mourelatos, but David 
Armstrong (The Ancient Greek Aorist as the Aspect of Countable Action. In 
Philip J. Tadeschi and Annie Zaenen (eds.), Tense And Aspect, 1-12. Syntax 
and Semantics 14. Year 1981). The relevant quote is (p. 10) "The historic 
present may be substituted, for example, for one verb and not the other verbs 
in the same sentence, or used and not used several times inconsistently in 
the same paragraph. But it is apparently NOT  an option (this has not been 
noticed in any of the standard grammars) to substitute historic present for 
aorist indicative when the historic present would co-occur with an adverb of 
cardinal count like hapax, dis, tris, etc."

Sorry for any confusion.

Kimmo Huovila



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