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Morphological category of aspect and its insufficiency in marking completion

in Modern Greek

Presentation · September 2017

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Kamil Trąba
Adam Mickiewicz University
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International Conference on Greek Linguistics (ICGL) London: 7-9th September 2017

Kamil Trąba
(prooffek@gmail.com)
Faculty of Modern Languages and Literatures
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

The morphological category of aspect and its insufficiency in marking

completion in Modern Greek

I would like to start my presentation with a very short story, which pushed my
research towards the conclusion that the Modern Greek aorist tense is an insufficient way
of expressing completion. A few years ago, I was in Athens. During a conversation with
some Greek people, the topic shifted to language. When I said that in Polish the sentence
wczoraj przeczytałem(perfv.) książkę, which in Greek would be hthes ∂iavasa(Aor.) ena
vivlio ‘I read a book yesterday’ implies that wczoraj przeczytałem(perfv.) całą książkę –
hthes ∂iavasa(Aor.) olo to vivlio ‘I read the whole book’, they looked surprised and started
to ask questions like ‘And what if I read only a part of it?’ At this moment, it was I who
was surprised, because their questions indicated that, despite using the aorist tense, the
sentence does not denote a completed event.
Before I proceed to the main topic of the presentation, a few terminological
clarifications must be made. Firstly, I do not follow Comrie’s (1976: 10) graphical
distinction between the capitalised terms Perfective and Imperfective, which refer to verb
forms, and uncapitalised terms perfective and imperfective, which refer to meanings, as
this distinction is fully orthographical and can hardly be realised phonetically.
Consequently, I find this distinction to be inadequate for the purpose of an oral
presentation. Having that in mind, I use the terms perfective and imperfective to refer
solely to verb forms. Moreover, since in the presentation at hand I explore only two
Modern Greek tenses: aorist and imperfect, the term perfective shall refer to aorist,
whereas the term imperfective shall refer to imperfect.
Secondly, I adopt Bańczerowski and Oh’s (2013: 44) approach towards aspect. They
distinguish three terms: aspect, aspectuality and aspectology. The first term, aspect (adj.
aspective), refers, on the one hand, to three aspective meanings (completion, incompletion
and completive indeterminacy) and, on the other, to the lingual objects expressing these
meanings. These lingual objects are called category of aspect. Furthermore, aspectuality
(adj. aspectual), contrary to aspect, is not restricted solely to three aspective meanings but
also takes into consideration other aspectual meanings like habituality, perdurativity, etc.
along with the lingual objects which express them. Given that, aspectuality may be
considered a hypernym of aspect. Finally, aspectology is a class of linguistic theories on
aspectuality. Aspectology could be considered a subdiscipline of linguistics.
One more topic to discuss before getting to the main part of my presentation is the
notion of completion. According to Horrocks and Stavrou (2003a: 310), an event is
conceived as completed if ‘the result state, which is encoded lexically, is understood to
have been attained’. However, how do we know that the ‘result state has been attained’,
and what is the ‘result state’? Let us consider the event of eating an apple.

A B C

Which of the images presents the result state of this event? The one with the core and some
flesh (A), the one with solely the core (B) or the one in which neither flesh nor core has
remained (C)? As is shown, the result state is, at least partially, subjective, and perception
of it may differ from person to person. One person may assign the statement ‘I ate an
apple’ solely to the result state represented in C, another person to B and C, whereas yet
another person to all three instances.
A different approach towards completion is proposed by Bańczerowski and Oh (2013:
44), who conceive completion as the apprehension of an event as totive (total) and
terminated. Moreover, although Bańczerowski and Oh notice that the notion of completion
is not entirely clear, they consider it intuitive enough. Consequently, they accept
completion as a primitive concept. Bańczerowski and Oh’s approach assumes that
completion is a universal concept and, therefore, should be understood almost identically
(if not completely identically) by native speakers of various languages of the world.

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 To summarise, I agree with Bańczerowski and Oh’s (2013: 44) opinion that aspect is a
complex and intellectually demanding notion whose status is not clear in aspectological
literature. I presume that this is due to the ambiguous nature of completion, which is
related to termination and totivity (totality) as well as quantification (Verkuyl 1993, 1999,
Mourelatos 1981) and resultativity (Horrocks & Stavrou 2003a, Karolak 2005). Moreover,
for the purposes of this presentation, I consider completion as a property possessed by
terminated and totive events. By totivity (totality), I do not refer to the quantity of direct
objects taken by a verb, but to the totivity of the event itself. One of the consequences of
this assumption is that events themselves are conceived as quantifiable objects. Therefore,
returning to images A, B and C, all of them may represent the result of the completed event
of eating an apple provided that the event is apprehended as totive. On the other hand, I
must emphasise that I take into consideration the possibility that some events may be
totively indetermined, which means that they may be considered neither as totive nor
partitive. I assign this property to atelic events (e.g., she danced yesterday or he was sitting
on the sofa). This issue, however, is not discussed in this presentation.
At this point, completion must be separated from termination, since the latter does not
specify whether the culmination point is attained. It merely expresses that an action stops
at a certain point in time. In other words, the action of a terminative event might be carried
out only partially, whereas the action of a completed event must be perceived as fulfilled.
For example, if I take the event of writing a book, it is completed no earlier than the
(whole) book is finished.
Furthermore, for the purposes of this presentation, I distinguish completion from
inchoativity, which denotes the beginning of the event. The relationship between
completion and inchoativity requires more study and, therefore, is not discussed here.
In order to verify my initial suspicions that the aorist tense is an insufficient way of
expressing completion, I have created a list of adversative sentences whose structure may
be presented as:

‘p ala ∂en q’ (p but not q)

where p and q represent two homolexical clauses. The only difference between these
clauses is that in p the imperfect tense is used, whereas in q the aorist tense is used. If the
complete aspective meaning is expressed by the aorist tense, then the sentence should be

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both grammatically and logically acceptable. Otherwise, the adversative sentence would be
self-contradictory, leading to its unacceptability. Let us consider the following examples:

(1) *Hthes ∂javaza(Imperf.) ena vivlio, ala ∂en to ∂javasa(Aor.).

Wczoraj czytałem(imperfv.) książkę, ale jej nie przeczytałem(perfv.).
*‘I was reading a book yesterday, but I didn’t read it.’

(2) *Hthes egrafa(Imperf.) ena grama, ala ∂en to egrapsa(Aor.).

Wczoraj pisałem(imperfv.) list, ale go nie napisałem(perfv.).
*‘I was writing a letter yesterday, but I didn’t write it.’
(3) *Hthes kathariza(Imperf.) to spiti, ala ∂en to katharisa(Aor.).
Wczoraj sprzątałem(imperfv.) dom, ale go nie postrzątałem(perfv.).
*‘I was cleaning the house yesterday, but I didn’t clean it.’

The interesting thing is that none of these sentences was found by native speakers of
Modern Greek to be acceptable. In contrast, their Polish counterparts are perfectly correct.
This fact seems to confirm my earlier assumption that in Modern Greek, aorist does not
determine the complete aspective meaning. Moreover, I shall argue in my presentation that
in fact the Modern Greek perfective verb forms are aspectively ambiguous. This means
that the completion of an event must be also indicated either by the context of the
utterance, by lexical properties of the verb, or by lingual objects other than verb. However,
due to the method applied in the research – acceptability of adversative sentences – the role
of context is restricted to a minimum. Consequently, context is not taken into consideration
in this presentation.
In order to take a closer look into the issue at hand, I propose the following six
postulates:

Po. 1: Postulate of acceptance of adversative sentences

If the adversative sentence s consists of two clauses and the first clause expresses
incompletion and the second clause expresses completion, then the adversative
sentence s is acceptable.

Po. 2: Postulate of aspective indeterminacy

If the aoristic sentence s expresses atelicity, then this sentence may express
termination or inchoativity but not completion.

Po. 3: Postulate of co-signification of completion

If the sentence s expresses completion, then completion is expressed both
grammatically and lexically.

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Po. 4: Postulate of insufficiency of grammatical signification
If the sentence s expresses completion grammatically but not lexically, then the
sentence s is aspectively ambiguous.

Po. 5: Postulate of double lexical signification

If the verb v in the sentence s expresses completion lexically, then no other lexical
significator of completion is required.

Po. 6: Postulate of signifying incompletion

If the adversative sentence s consists of two clauses and the first clause is aspectively
ambiguous, then the aspective meaning expressed by the first clause is determined by
the second clause.

The first postulate refers to the acceptability of adversative sentences and states that an
adversative sentence is acceptable on condition that its first clause expresses incompletion
and the second clause expresses completion. If either of these two conditions is not
fulfilled, the sentence is unacceptable. Since the methodology applied in my research is
based on adversative sentences, and the acceptability of these sentences is the core tool of
evaluating the sentences, the first postulate may be considered the most important one.
Returning for a moment to sentences (1)-(3), based on the first postulate, we could
conclude that these Modern Greek sentences would be acceptable on condition that the
second clause (the one with the aorist tense) expresses complete aspective meaning.
However, since the sentences are unacceptable, the aorist tense does not determine
completion. In contrast, in Polish, the perfective past tense expresses completion of the
event, resulting in acceptability of the sentences.
The second postulate refers to sentences which are generally considered as atelic in
aspectological literature (see Xudopoulos & Tsangalidis 2006, Moser 2009, and others).
According to this postulate, the aorist tense of atelic sentences may express termination or
inchoativity, but not completion. Consequently, by virtue of Po. 1 and Po. 2, adversative
sentences whose clauses express atelicity should be unacceptable. Let us consider the
following sentences:

(4) I Ana kathise(Aor.). [INCHOATIVE]

‘Anne sat down.’
Ania usiadła.
(5) *I Ana kathotan(Imperf.), ala (telika) ∂en kathise(Aor.).
*‘Anne was sitting down, but (in the end) she didn’t sit.’
*Ania siedziała, ale (w końcu) nie usiadła.

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 (6) I Ana horepse(Aor.). [TERMINATIVE]
‘Anne danced.’
Ania (po)tańczyła.
(7) *I Ana horeve(Imperf.), ala (telika) ∂en horepse(Aor.).
*‘Anne was dancing, but (in the end) she didn’t dance.’
??Ania tańczyła, ale (w końcu) nie potańczyła.

The verbs used in these sentences are kathome ‘to sit’ and horevo ‘to dance’. For the
purposes of this presentation we assume (without getting into details) that all sentences (4)-
(7) denote atelic events. Consequently, as is presented in (4) and in (6), the aorist tense of
these verbs may express inchoativity – as in the case of kathise ‘[she] sat down’ in
(4) – or termination – as in the case of horepse ‘[she] danced’ in (6). As was expected,
since none of the aoristic (that is, those with the aorist tense) sentences or clauses expresses
completion, the adversative sentences are unacceptable. This is presented in (5) and (7).
Po. 3 states that in Modern Greek, completion is co-signified. This means that any
Modern Greek sentence expressing complete aspective meaning expresses this meaning
both grammatically and lexically. For the purposes of this presentation, it means that in
Modern Greek, completion is expressed solely by aoristic sentences which also contain a
lexical indication of completion. The lingual objects which lexically indicate completion
will be hereinafter called lexical indicators of completion, whereas the lingual objects
which grammatically indicate completion will be called grammatical indicators of
completion. In order to exemplify Po. 3, let us modify sentences (1)-(3) by adding the
modifiers olos ‘whole’ or telika ‘in the end’.

(8) Hthes ∂javaza(Imperf.) ena vivlio, ala ∂en to ∂javasa(Aor.) olo.

‘I was reading a book yesterday, but I didn’t read all of it.’

(9) Hthes egrafa(Imperf.) ena grama, ala telika ∂en to egrapsa(Aor.).

?‘I was writing a letter yesterday, but in the end I didn’t write it.’

(10) Hthes kathariza(Imperf.) to spiti, ala telika ∂en to katharisa(Aor.).

?‘I was cleaning the house yesterday, but in the end I didn’t clean it.’

As sentences (8)-(10) show, the addition of the modifiers changes the unacceptable
adversative sentences – sentences (1)-(3) – into acceptable ones. Moreover, by virtue of
Po. 1, since the adversative sentences are acceptable, the second clause expresses

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completion. Consequently, the modifiers olos ‘whole’ and telika ‘in the end’ may be
regarded as lexical indicators of completion. Importantly, I assume that different verbs may
require different lexical indicators of completion. This issue, however, still needs to be
studied.
One of the consequences of Po. 3 is that the aorist tense is not sufficient for expressing
completion, and requires a lexical co-significator of completion. Based on this observation,
Po. 4 is proposed. According to this postulate, an aoristic sentence is aspectively
ambiguous if completion is expressed grammatically but not lexically. I have already
presented sentences which exemplify this postulate, namely sentences (1)-(3). Moreover,
by virtue of Po. 1, given that aoristic sentences which do not lexically express completion
are ambiguous in respect to their aspective meaning, it is not surprising that sentences (1)-
(3) are unacceptable.
Po. 5 states that some Modern Greek verbs may simultaneously express completion
lexically and grammatically. Consequently, aoristic sentences with such verbs do not
require additional lexical indicators of completion to express complete aspective meaning.
Let us consider the following sentences:

(11) I Ana pethene(Imperf.), ala (telika) ∂en pethane(Aor.).

‘Anne was dying, but (in the end) she didn’t die.

(12) I Ana telione(Imperf.) to grama, ala (telika) ∂en to teliose(Aor.).

?‘Anne was finishing the letter, but (in the end) she didn’t finish it.

As is shown, the adversative sentences in (11) and (12) contain the verbs petheno ‘to
die’ and teliono ‘to finish’. It goes without saying that the lexical meanings conveyed by
these two verbs are directly related to the notion of finishing or completion. Given that, I
assume that they lexically express completion by default. Consequently, once the aorist
tense is used, these verbs express completion both grammatically and lexically. My
assumption is confirmed by the acceptability of the adversative sentences in (11) and (12).
Furthermore, the lexical indicator of completion telika is put in brackets to show that its
absence or presence does not affect the acceptability of the sentences.
Finally, Po. 6 refers to adversative sentences whose first clause is aspectively
ambiguous. In such cases, the aspective meaning of the first clause is determined by the
second clause of the adversative sentences. The validity of this postulate may be verified

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based on a special type of adversative sentence which consists of two aoristic clauses.
Consider the following examples:

(13) Hthes ∂javasa(Aor.) ena vivlio, ala ∂en to ∂javasa(Aor.) olo.

‘I read a book yesterday, but I didn’t read all of it.’
*Wczoraj przeczytałem książkę, ale nie przeczytałem jej całej.

(14) Hthes egrapsa(Aor.) ena grama, ala ∂en to egrapsa(Aor.) olo.

‘I wrote a letter yesterday, but I didn’t write all of it.’
*Wczoraj napisałem list, ale nie napisałem go całego.

(15) Hthes katharisa(Aor.) to spiti, ala ∂en to katharisa(Aor.) olo.

‘I cleaned the house yesterday, but I didn’t clean all of it.’
*Wczoraj posprzątałem w dom, ale nie posprzątałem go całego.

As the sentences in (13)-(15) show, these adversative sentences consist of two aoristic
clauses and the only difference between them is that the second clause contains a lexical
indicator of completion olos ‘whole’, whereas the first clause does not. Importantly,
although in both clauses the aorist tense is used, the adversative sentences are acceptable.
Consequently, by virtue of Po. 1, the first clause expresses incompletion, whereas the
second clause expresses completion.
It must be emphasised that the fact that sentences like (13)-(15) are acceptable in
Modern Greek despite having the aorist tense in both clauses supports my initial
assumption that the aorist tense is not sufficient for expressing completion. In contrast,
languages which possess sufficient grammatical markers of completion do not allow
similar structures. For instance, in Polish, this type of adversative sentence is considered by
native speakers of the language as self-contradictory and, therefore, unacceptable – see
(13)-(15).

(16) ?Hthes egrapsa(Aor.) ena grama, ala telika ∂en to egrapsa(Aor.).

*‘I wrote a letter yesterday, but in the end I didn’t write it.’
*Wczoraj napisałem list, ale ostatecznie go nie napisałem.

(17) ?Hthes katharisa(Aor.) to spiti, ala telika ∂en to katharisa(Aor.).

*‘I cleaned the house yesterday, but in the end I didn’t clean it.’
*Wczoraj posprzątałem w dom, ale ostatecznie w nim nie posprzątałem.

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 On the other hand, the adversative sentences in (16)-(17) consist of two aoristic
clauses and the only difference between them is that the second clause contains a lexical
indicator telika ‘in the end’, whereas the first clause does not. Interestingly, these
adversative sentences are less acceptable then the sentences in (13)-(15) and may be used
to show dissatisfaction with the result of the action lexified by the verb. Due to the
emotional shade of the sentences in (16)-(17), this kind of sentences requires further study.

To summarise, I believe that analysing the acceptability of adversative sentences

provides interesting insight into the Modern Greek aspective system and, especially, into
how completion is expressed in this language. Interestingly, sentences (8)-(15) show that,
in fact, the aorist tense does not express completion efficiently but requires a co-
significator in the form of a lexical indicator of completion. This observation is contrary to
hitherto theories which assume that in telic sentences, the aorist tense expresses completion
unless it is stated otherwise by the context (see Horrocks & Stavrou 2003b: 292f.).
Furthermore, the obtained data raise new questions regarding the Modern Greek aspectual
system which must be answered. For instance, what kind of relationship binds completion
with inchoativity and terminativity, and what relationship binds completion with
(a)telicity? These questions, however, require further study.

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