Talk:Aorist

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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, now in the public domain.

Consider grammatical gender:

Gender = {masculine, feminine}

"neuter" is latin for "neither of the two". The neuter class stands outside the Gender system. It is not a Gender at all. It stands for the "null" gender. It means "no gender".

(There are languages where neuter functions as a grammatical gender equal to masculine and feminine. Russian is an example. This analogy does not make any sense.)

Now consider the Aspect system:

Aspect = {perfect, imperfect}

"aorist" is Greek for "undefined". The aorist class stands outside the Aspect system. Therefore aorist is not an aspect at all. It means "non-aspect", or "no-aspect", or "neither-of-the-two". It stands for the "null" aspect, just like neuter stands for the "null" gender.

[Both "neuter" and "aorist" refer to the null class, a singleton category (with just one instance, the null object). "Neuter" and "Aorist" are referring to the same thing, nothing.

The Null class is initially a typeless void, a pure abstraction, containing nothing, the very top of the classification system, the ontology, for lack of a better word, which is filled as the Universe is created. Null is defined like this:

null = {Gender, Aspect, Time, Tense, Person, Number, etc.} ]

Aspect was originally defined to compare the predicate with a circumstance involving time.

Time = {past, present, future}

Tense = {Aspect × Time}

There are four perfect tenses.

1) Past Imperfect

"I was eating, when the door bell rang."

"I was eating" is imperfect, an incompleted action which takes place "when the door bell rang." "Rang" is AORIST, it has no aspect. It is a pure tense, the simple-past, part of an adverbial circumstance.

[Of course, 'rang' is "completed" because it is "past", but it is not the predicate. It serves as the absolute (ablative absolute?) reference point, a circumstance. We are talking about "eating".]

2) Past Perfect

"I had eaten, when the door bell rang."

"I had eaten" is past-perfect i.e. it is past-by-perfect, past-times-perfect, the cartesian product of Aspect-perfect and Time-past. "Rang" is Aorist.

3) Future Perfect

"I will have eaten when the door bell rings."

"I will have eaten" is future-perfect. "rings" is AORIST, it is a pure tense, the "present" tense. Aspect does not apply. "rings" has no aspect. It is not the predicate. We are talking about "eating". It is merely a circumstance.

[Of course, 'rings' is "incomplete", because it is present, but it is not "imperfect".]

4) Present Perfect

"I have eaten" is present prefect, present-by-perfect. The aorist circumstance is undefined, but is conventially assumed to be something like "and I am not hungry".

That's about it. Those are all the perfect tenses.

Over time, the term "Aorist" has come to refer to the simple-past tense. Aorist is conventionally -- but not formally -- a tense, in the same way "Imperfect", an aspect, has become the common way to refer to the "past imperfect" tense.

You could call the past tense the "Past-Aorist" (vs the "Present-Aorist", i.e. the "present" tense.)

What about the future tense?

We'd have to start talking about Modalities.

This is weird. Why am I being redirected from "Aorist" to "Aorist tense" when the first thing the article tells me is that Aorist is not a tense??? 80.134.148.156 13:36, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

This article needs a much better explanation of what "aorist aspect" means. It talks a lot about what aspects in general are (which really ought to be at grammatical aspect), and never really says what an aorist aspect is, or how it is different from imperfective and perfective aspects. Kwertii 22:18, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The article also really needs a list of what languages still have this aspect or treat it separately in a grammatical sense. In English, it exists, but requires different vocabulary, not grammatical changes like a verb tense would. | Keithlaw 02:38, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

(To prove this to yourself, think about the sentences: "I'm seeing a bird", "I'm finding the truth", and "I'm hearing some music". None of them sounds quite right, as the verbs are aorist in nature and cannot be used as processes. If, however, you substitute "looking at", "searching for", and "listening to" for "seeing", "finding" and "hearing", the sentences sound correct, as the verbs do describe processes.)

This part needs reworked. It is not true that none of these sounds quite right; these forms can be used to emphasize the process being referred to. I can think of several examples where these sentences would be considered perfectly valid and grammatical constructions:

To a scientific researcher, who is receiving heavy ethical and moral criticism over questionable methodology:
"You can't do that! Just what are you doing with this research?"
"I'm finding the truth."
To a participant in a psychological experiment, who was previously shown a card bearing the image of a cow (for some reason), and is now being shown a card with a bird on it:
"And what are you seeing now?"
"Now I'm seeing a bird."
Someone is listening to radio noise from outer space, seeking signs of intelligent life. In astonishment, they say:
"Strange... I'm hearing some noise.. and now I'm hearing some music!"

Kwertii 23:30, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hello, i am not an english native-speaker but I believe that at the verb-pairs (hear-listen etc) the former DOES NOT indicate an AORIST LIKE FORM. I think the verb "listen" shows more an constant action than "hear". Pls check it, thanks a lot Primus 11:05, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm a native English speaker who lived and studied in Czech Republic for several years, where this is an issue because many Slavic speakers try to use continuous forms in English to express Slavic imperfective aspect. Many English textbooks, particularly the Cambridge English series, assert that verbs describing certain mental states are not processes and therefore cannot be used in present continuous form (e.g. "I'm seeing a bird"). This is an example of prescriptive vs. descriptive linguistics. These forms are uncommon, but are perfectly intelligible and sound fine to native speakers (other than those trained by over-zealous teachers to think otherwise) when used in the appropriate contexts. Mccajor 15:22, 6 May 2007 (UTC)


I changed 'schizophrenic' to 'double' since, contrary to common usage, it does not refer to so-called 'split' or 'multiple' personalities. Linguists should feel free to change 'double' to something more appropriate. 207.176.159.90 23:58, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

This article desperately needs the attention of a trained Indo-European linguist. AFAIK, the distinction the aorist conveys is purely aspectual, not temporal.

Ancient Greek exemplifies aspect; in all moods the aorist tells you absolutely nothing about the action connoted by the verb other than that it was completed (Rijksbaron 2002 s. 1 ff). The real connection of the aorist to tense is that it expresses the relationships between verbs; using the aorist in subordinate clauses indicates action antecedent to that of the main verb whereas the "present" indicates action contiguous with that of the main verb. As I mentioned earlier, it also indicates that the action happened once and is now completed, but says nothing about the continuing consequences of that action (for that the Greeks used the perfect tense).

The linguists distinguish several different uses of the aorist (ingressive, complexive, resultative, gnomic, empiric, etc). One way or the other, the information contained in this article is hopelessly out of touch with modern linguistics and must be updated. Harry Schmidt 04:41, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

From my studies of Classical Greek, Aorist denotes punctual aspect without respect to time or a known beginning or end. In Greek, there are three aspects (so to speak): Progressive/Imperfective, Punctual, Perfective.

An example, using the verb "poreuw" (to ferry):
Επορευον (Imperfect Indicative, imperfective/progressive aspect): I was ferrying/I used to ferry
Επορευσα (Aorist indicative, punctual aspect): I ferried (Not saying how long it took or when it started/ended, just that it happened)
Πεπορευκα (Perfect indicative, perfective aspect): I have ferried (Indicating that it's finsihed now and that it happened in the past)

An example, showing use of all three tenses:

Εζετουν (imperfect) τοδε το βιβλιον τρεις ημερας και τελος ευρον, (aorist) ωστε νυν ευρηκα. (perfect)

"I kept looking (imperfect, Εζετουν) for this book for three days, finally I found (Aorist ευρον) it, so that now I have found (Perfect, ευρηκα) it.

The Imperfect emphasizes the ongoing, progressive nature of the looking action "Εζετουν".
The Aorist states that the book has been found, it doesn't say when, just that I found it. "ευρον".
The Perfect emphasizes the completeness of the finding. It's over and done with. It emphasizes the present result of finding the book (it is found). "ευρηκα"

Consider some verbs in English (which are similar in Greek), like "To die".
The Aorist would translate as "He died" (such as in "He died last week") (Απεθανον)
The Perfect would translate as "He is dead" (Emphasizing that he died and still is dead) (τεθνηκα) --142.177.213.95 11:15, 23 June 2006 (UTC)Taris on June 23, 2006

It doesn't seem completely accurate to say in the above example that the aorist says nothing about when the book was found--it conveys some notion of being in the past. This is not to say that, e.g., subjunctive aorists say anything about time, but in the indicative, the aorist does function as a tense as well as an aspect. --Poludamas 06:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
True enough. But if the action of finding the book is perfective in aspect, wouldn't it necessarily be in the past? Only in the Indicative Mood does the Aorist tense indicate past time. In the Subjunctive or Optative, you can't really distinguish between aspects in English translation, if I recall correctly. TarisWerewolf 23:38, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Aorist Tense/Aspect and the Future

In my study of Greek, I have found that the Future Tense can express either imperfective aspect or aorist aspect, because the Future is undetermined, having yet to occur. Additionally, I have been told by several of my professors that the Future Tense is in fact derived from the Aorist Subjunctive (compare the Future Indicative and the so-called Aorist short-vowel Subjunctive found in Homeric Greek), indicating an even closer relationship between those two, which should also be expressed in this article. Is there anyone who can develop these ideas into something worthy of mention in the article? If not, I will add them in a very brief section.

[edit] Aorist in Proto-Slavic

Article doesn't deal with this and it probably should. -iopq 16:42, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Aorist in Latin?

The article, as it stands, implies that Latin has an aorist. It does not, as the perfect has essentially "fused" with the aorist. Would someone who knows how to couch this in the proper terminology please change this?--Spurius Furius 20:22, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Aorist in Turkish

The "broad time" in Turkish is usually called aorist in Western grammars. Should there be a mention of this in this article?Mats 09:19, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think so! I have just looked the article up, because I wanted to find some information about the Turkish tense. --eike 16:58, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Factual Accuracy Tag

Is the tag factual accuracy tag on the main page still necessary? It seems the concern mentioned has been addressed already. 131.215.220.112 13:10, 22 June 2007 (UTC)