Re: Aorist

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. Your use of 'aorist' seems to fit quite well with the accepted
definitions of the term.

                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.org
(ou : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepages/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html)