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 Šn
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.
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