The Tragic Aorist in Ancient Greek as a Speech Act Phenomenon In most traditional grammars of Ancient Greek a special section is devoted to the tragic Aorist, so-called because it occurs mainly in drama texts. The traditional view on this use of the Aorist is that it describes a present eventuality as if it had already happened or begun. It is often used in dialogue. An example is (1), where Iphigeneia reacts to Orestes’ proposal to kill Thoas: (1) oÎk n dunaÐmhn; tä dà prìqumon ¢ùnesa ouk an dunaimēn to de prothumon ēinesa not prt can.opt.imp.1sg the.acc prt eagerness.acc approve.aor.past.1sg “I could not; yet I approve your eagerness.” Euripides, Iphigeneia in Tauris, 1023 The Greek uses a past tense form (ēinesa), where we would use present tense in English (approve). On the traditional view, the past tense indicates that Iphigeneia had begun to make to judgement before Orestes finished speaking. This Aorist can also be used with verbs of swearing, advising and ordering. Recently, Lloyd (1999) has proposed an alternative analysis in which the tragic Aorist is analyzed in terms of performativity (Austin 1962). I think his analysis is on the right track. Lloyd, however, doesn’t notice that there is a link between performative utterances and perfective (or aoristic) aspect. In the talk, I will show that the two are strongly related. I argue that the tragic Aorist is best explained from the lack of a special form for the combination of present tense and aoristic aspect in Ancient Greek. This would be the most optimal form for performatives, given that (1) performatives are self-verifiable (Lemmon 1962: by uttering a performative sentence, the speaker automatically makes it true), and (2) eventualities that coincide with their location time get perfective aspect (Kamp and Reyle 1993). In absence of the most optimal form, Greek can choose to give primacy to the aspect feature or the tense feature. For example, for a performative utterance of swearing, we find both ‘ōmosa’ (morphologically past tense, Aorist) and ‘omnumi’ (present tense, morphologically Imperfect). The first option corresponds to what is traditionally called the tragic Aorist. References: • Austin (1962), How to Do Things with Words. Oxford, Clarendon Press. • Kamp and Reyle (1993), From Discourse to Logic. Dordrecht, Kluwer. • Kühner and Gerth (1898), Ausführliche Grammatik der Griechischen Sprache. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung. • Lemmon (1962), On sentences verifiable by their use. Analysis, 22, 86-89. • Lloyd (1999), The tragic aorist. The Classical Quarterly 49 (1), 24-25. 1