Tense in Ancient Greek Reports

Abstract

This paper shows that tenses in Ancient Greek reports have both an anaphoric and a shifted-indexical component. It develops a new account of Ancient Greek tenses that deals with this combination of features. Following Klein's (1994) semantics of tense, I claim that tense indicates the relation between an anaphoric topic time and the moment of utterance, the now. As for Ancient Greek indirect discourse, I argue that the anaphoric component works exactly the same as in non-embedded discourse (contra von Stechow 1995). The indexical component, however, is di ferent in that the now is not provided by the actual context of utterance, but by the reported context. The DRT account developed models this combination of features, taking also into account the role of aspect.

Examining a Hypothesis about the Past‐Oriented Aorist Infinitive in Post‐Classical Greek

“… For a somehow different account of the use of the aorist infinitive in sequences of anterior events, see Bary (: 43–9). She argues that this function of the aorist infinitive is a result of its tense markers, which are ‘interpreted’, although they are not ‘morphologically expressed’ (Bary : 43).…”

“… For a somehow different account of the use of the aorist infinitive in sequences of anterior events, see Bary (: 43–9). She argues that this function of the aorist infinitive is a result of its tense markers, which are ‘interpreted’, although they are not ‘morphologically expressed’ (Bary : 43). This claim is supported by the observation that the aorist infinitive can only have ‘a past interpretation’ (Bary : 43), which seems difficult to maintain, however, given the ambiguity of the aorist infinitive (see Section ). …”