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

Hallo!

Ray Brown wrote:

> 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   :)
Indeed, in Old Albic when-clauses like (1) sometimes the aorist
*subjunctive* is used if the antecedent is uncertain.  However, in this
example, one can be sure that the Sun WILL set.

But well, Old Albic is not Greek, so there is no need for the aorists
in both languages to be functionally 100% the same.

Greetings,

Jörg.