Re: THEORY: What is an aorist? (was Re: THEORY: Temporal Auxiliaries, Aspectual Auxiliaries, Modal Auxiliaries)

On Monday, July 11, 2005, at 08:55 , Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

[snip]
> Another use of the Old Albic aorist is to express anteriority with
> relation to another event which is not restricted to past time
> reference.  An aorist can thus even refer to an event in the future!
> Example (uttered during the day, before sunset):
>
> (1) Sí   evessa            Are,    pathymi        am        matanal.
>     when AOR-descend-3SG:A Sun:AGT open-FUT-1PL:A the:I:OBJ feast-OBJ
>     `When the sun will have set, we will open the feast.'
>
> How is this handled in Greek?  Does it use the aorist in such
> situations as well?
No, the aorist indicative cannot refer to a future event. In such
situations (where Latin used the future perfect in the 'when' clause),
ancient Greek combined the particle _an_ with the word for 'when' and used
the subjunctive mood. In the above example, it would be the aorist
subjunctive as the aspect is perfective, not imperfective   :)

Ray
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