[B-Greek] XWRIS TELOYS vs. META TELOYS and EXEI TELOS

Kimmo Huovila kimmo.huovila at kolumbus.fi
Mon Sep 22 12:39:47 EDT 2008


Sorry for delayed answer.

On tiistai 16 syyskuu 2008, you wrote:
<snip>

> Substantive question:
> 
> Goodwin says that the aorist indicative is without limitation of
> "completion, continuance, repetition, etc., which belong to the other
> past tenses."
> 
> Is it really true that the Greek aorist has no sense of COMPLETION?
> 

No.

> In linguistic theory, a basic opposition perfective vs. imperfective does
> carry a sense of completion. NB: viewing the "whole" event
> necessarily includes an end point or a boundary point. It certainly
> appears that the AORISTOS XRONOS and PARATATIKOS XRONOS
> capture this perfective vs. imperfective distinction in the past tense.
> One may say that the end-point is included within the viewpoint.
> So-called ingressive aorists 'he became rich' EPLOYTHSE imply
> crossing a boundary, crossing "the endpoint of not-being rich".
> 

Yes.

> I find it more satisfactory to say that the aorist is
> META TELOYS or EXEI TELOS (it has an endpoint)
> and that the PARATATIKOS XRONOS (a.k.a. imperfect) is
> XWRIS TELOYS (without an endpoint), OYK EXEI TELOS.
> 

Yes. The endpoint being within the scope of predication with the aorist and 
with the imperfect either there is no endpoint or it is outside of the scope 
of predication.

> That is why I appreciate Rijksbaron's Syntax and
> Semantic of the Verb in Classical Greek.
> He calls a spade a spade. Aorist is a 'completed state of
> affairs', 'indivisible whole'. He notes, significantly, that
> PAYSAI παυσαι 'stop!' cannot be used with an aorist
> participle complement.
> Thus, *PAYSAI LALHSAS is not Greek, you can't stop something
> that already has an endpoint and that is 'whole'.
> But PAYSAI LALWN 'stop speaking' is correct.
> (Kimmo may have something to add on the domain of aspect, though
> that is an additional refinement.)

This all makes perfect sense. You cannot put (semantically speaking) a 
perfective layer (=the lexical aspect of PAYSAI) with a semantically 
immediately inner perfective layer (LALHSAS). If you do it structurally 
(*PAYSAI LALHSAS, not a good example since it is ungrammatical), there must be 
an uncoded semantic imperfective layer in between ("Stop repeating perfective 
bits of speaking" would be an attempt to make sense out of the ungrammatical 
*PAYSAI LALHSAS). With the verb 'stop' it is hard to think why an 
imperfective layer would be so irrelevant that it would not be coded and the 
inner perfective layer so relevant that it would be coded. Therefore 
Rijksbaron's observation seems to make a lot of sense as a rule.

For those who are unfamiliar with aspectual layers, an introduction is found 
at http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe19991439. Download towardsa.pdf and enjoy.

> 
> This is a nice rule-of-thumb proof on the aspectual side,
> like *AYRION HLQE is a similar proof on the time side that
> time is part of the indicative aorist.
> (PS: omnitemporals 'the sun rises' are singularities that are
> outside of the above dichotomies. Something like the way math
> notation allows both 4.0 and  3.999...+, one can use either
> aspect in some languages, including Greek.)
> 
> And the terms XWRIS TELOYS versus EXEI TELOS allow one to
> describe these verbs in Greek from early stages of Greek learning,
> within a first semester when taught primarily in Greek (90% time).

Or to refine (or squibble) CWRIS TELOUS versus META TELOUS (or OUK ECEI TELOS 
versus ECEI TELOS).

Few grammatical terms are as unfortunate as the aorist:
hH AORISTH OYIS (aspect) OUK ESTIN CWRIS hOROU ALL' ECEI TELOS. TOUT' ESTIN: 
hH AORISTH OYIS hORISTH ESTIN. hH DE PARATATIKOS (imperfect) CRONOS AORISTOS 
ESTIN EN OYEI (aspectually) MH ECON TELOS MHDE hOROU (EN OYEI LOGOU, within 
the scope of predication) . DIA GAR TI hOI hELLHNES WNOMAZON THN AORISTHN 
OYIN AORISTHN? OUK OIDA. TAXA hH LEXIS ECEI DYNAMIN "pragmatically unmarked"? 
hO AORISTOS CRONOS ESTIN PARELHLUQWS CRONOS (CWRIS TINWN DYNAMEWN OUK ECOUSWN 
CRONON). DIONYSIOS hO QRAIKOS EN THi TECNHi GRAMMATIKHi ENOMIZE hOTI CRONOS 
ESTIN KAI MOI DOKEI hOTI ORQWS ENOMIZE (CWRIS ANWMALIWN :-) ).

Those more knowledgeable in KOINH neologisms of grammatical terminology might 
want to fix my terminology above, but I hope the Greek is understandable 
anyways.

Kimmo Huovila



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