Re: What's the aorist tense?

I always get confused, 'cause lots of people say the "aorist" tense
in a given natlang is pretty much just a simple past, or even a
perfective.   But the "timelessness" definition is the one I know, and
it's present in the following:

Dogs chase cats.

This isn't a sentence in the present (that'd be "Dogs are chasing cats"),
and it's not a habitual (it's not "Dogs chase cats on Thursday; on
Fridays they leave them alone").   It's supposed to be a statement that
will hold true for all time.   And, I imagine, if you put it in the past
tense, then it would indicate that it was true for all time, and would've
been true for all time forever, but something put a stop to it.   Maybe,
"Dogs used to chase cats, but then at the International Cano-Felinian
Summit of 1976, the dogs and the cats signed an agreement stating that
dogs would no longer chase cats if cats stopped annoying them, and
ever since, no dog has ever chased a cat."

What I'd be interested in is hearing how the name "aorist" got applied
to tenses that act just like a kind of past tense.

-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/

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