The question of tense in the ancient Greek Aorist Indicative

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the Aorist Indicative as a past tense. In the majority of cases when the Aorist Indicative is used, it refers to some past perfective action. However, there are exceptions in which it seems that the Aorist Indicative refers to a non-past perfective action. These apparent exceptions led some recent scholarship to conclude that the Aorist Indicative does not refer to the past tense, but merely to a perfective aspect. However, the majority of scholarship rejects this novel notion. This dissertation is a new attempt to explain these apparent exceptions of the Aorist Indicative. This dissertation employs Cutrer's model, which is rooted in Fauconnier's Mental Space Theory (1985, 1994, 1997). Cutrer (1994) developed her model to explain apparent anomalous usages of tense in English and French. Accordingly, it is contended within this dissertation that the purported non-past usages of the Aorist Indicative may possibly be explained as referring, in terms of Cutrer's model, to a PAST action from a V-POINT which may either be in writer reality, in reader reality, within a narrative, in a future mental space or in a hypothetical mental space. Therefore, this dissertation concludes that it is possible to explain some of the apparent non-past usages of the Aorist Indicative with Cutrer's model, leaving less exceptions.