Re: Aorist

At 3:23 pm +0100 20/3/00, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>At 09:39 20/03/00 -0300, you wrote:
>>
>>"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.
The indefinite past in ancient Greek only when dealing with the indicative
mood.  Indeed, the word is derived from 'aoristos' = indefinite, unlimited
(negative form of '(h)oristos' = defined, limited).

But even in ancient Greek the term was essentially _aspectual_ as
Christophe says.  The aorist stem (or thema) of a verb constrasted with
(originally) two other stems: the present, denoting durative or repititive
aspect; the perfect, denoting a completed, or perfected, state.  The aorist
was so named because it was not delimited in meaning as the other two
aspects were, it simply denoted the action.

In the subjunctive, optative & imperative moods, the aspectual meaning is
quite clear.

With the indicative it seemed to the Greeks that either we have something
happening (she is writing) or something that habitually happens (she
writes) or else we have a completed state (she has written it [and here it
is]).  The first two are meanings of the so-called 'present stem' and the
third is the present of the perfect.  It seemed to them that the present
indicative could not be undefined, hence there is only the past tense:
imperfect - past of of the present: she wrote (i.e. used to write), she was
writing
pluperfect - past of the perfect: she had written it [and there it was]
aorist - she wrote (once at some unspecified time)

But the imperative shows the aspect clearer:
present - get writing, start writing (now)
perfect - have it written  (rare  :)
aorist - write!  (no messing: just write!)

The ancients messed this neat scheme up be forming futures.  But their
descendants simplified the lot: modern Greek retains just the aorist aspect
versus the durative or repetive aspect - there are futures formed from
both: [aorist: /Ta 'grapsi/] she'll write (at some unspecified time in the
future); ['present': /Ta 'grafi/] she'll write (habitually), she'll be
writing.

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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