Re: Aorist

>From: Christophe Grandsire <Christophe.Grandsire@...>
> >"The aorist tense is used for unspecified past times,
> >especially in narrative speech, and also for the generic
> >present as in 'I work here', 'I like black coffee'."
> >
> >whereas
> >
> >"The past tense refers to punctual moments or lapses of
> >a continuous activity taken place in the past."
> >
>
>That's quite right I think, it correspond quite well to the use of aorist I
>know.
>
>As far as I know, the linguistic use of 'aorist' is to refer to an aspect
>('punctual', as opposed to imperfect, perfect, continuous, etc...). The
>grammarian use of 'aorist' is generally: indefinite past tense, as in
>Greek. Your use of 'aorist' seems to fit quite well with the accepted
>definitions of the term.
In Georgian and other languages, it's classified more as an aspect.  Is it
used in Old Russian or OCS perhaps?  Or any Semitic languages?

Danny
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