Aspect in Ancient Greek

Greek Learning Greek
1

For those of you interested in a somewhat formal linguistic discussion of aspect in ancient Greek, you might want to check out the dissertation referenced below:

Aspect in Ancient Greek: A semantic analysis of the aorist and imperfective

I have no personal link to this dissertation or to the institution, but found the presentation gave me my first comprehensible model to understand aspect in ancient Greek. Although he uses formal semantics in places, he also explains his points in natural language.

Highlights for me were:

  1. A semantic approach to the differences between aorist and imperfect
  2. A formal definition of what aorists and imperfects mean at their core (in his opinion)
  3. A multi-level approach to the meaning of a verb in context.
  4. An introduction to the idea of “coercion” as an explanation for extracting surprising implications from basic aspect meanings, rather than fiddling with the basic meanings themselves.
2

The author is she.