H. P. Grice and the mode-marker

An early Griceian Grecian resistance is manifested in a particularly clear way in two passages in Apollonius (Syntax, 3, §100 and 102). Examining the difference introduced in utterances in the optative of wish (§100) and the imperative (§102) by the variation of the verbal theme—the “present” theme vs. the “aorist” theme — Apollonius notes that the present theme implies the idea of extension (παϱάτασις), and the aorist theme the idea of achievement (sunteleia [συντέλεια]), for example, graphe [γϱάφε] (present), “continues to write,” vs. grapson [γϱάψον], “finishes writing”; but, commenting on the wish formula he attributes to Agamemnon (eitheporthêsaimi (aor.) tên Ilion [εἴθεποϱθήσαιμι (aor.) τὴν ῎Іλιον]) ([I wish] I could complete the siege of Troy), he glosses it by saying that the wish here is literally aimed at “the past and the finished in time (to parôichêmenon kai sunteles tou chronou [τὸ παϱῳχημένον ϰαὶ συντελὲς τοῦ χϱόνου]),” as if the aspectual notion of the perfective could not, in his view, be isolated from the temporal notion of the past. This example shows how the Greek grammarian both “understands” perfectly the expression of aspectuality in his language, and nonetheless presents a “deficient description” of it because he is unable to isolate aspectuality and temporality conceptually. We can also understand why the grammarians abandoned the double designations that reflected the Stoic point of view in which the expression of tense and the expression of aspect were combined, in favor of a more poorly motivated simple designation, the four “times” of the indicative mentioned above. As for the values that they associated with these “times” in their descriptions of them, even the explanations of the scholiast who cites Stoic terminology lead us to think that they could all be formulated in temporal terms, the four “times” envisaged being simply arranged on a chronological scale going from the oldest (the pluperfect, distant past) to the most present (the present, the time of action still full of the future), via the (continued) 52 ASPECT the present progressive and the simple present, in particular, with the performative values that the latter can have. The question of the moment—instant, interval, but also point of advent (see MOMENT)—is also shaped by the forms of language, by the different presents on the one hand, and by the aorists on the other—when they ignore duration (“il pleuvra” [it is going to rain]), when they accept duration (“il plut pendant trois jours” [it rained for three days]), and when they say what occurred (“il neigea” [it snowed]). We can understand, then, why the categories of aspect and tense have been connected throughout the history of linguistics. This may result from a confusion on the part of the describers, who are incapable of truly conceptualizing an autonomous aspectual category. But this confusion is also inevitable because tense is haunted by questions of aspect.