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THE HORTATIVE AORIST

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2019

Michael Lloyd
Michael Lloyd*
Affiliation:
University College Dublin
*
[email protected]
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Extract

The final section on the aorist indicative in Goodwin's Moods and Tenses identifies the following usage: ‘In questions with τί οὐ [‘why not’], expressing surprise that something is not already done, and implying an exhortation to do it’. Other scholars identify urgency or impatience in these questions. Albert Rijksbaron writes: ‘Questions with the 1st or 2nd person of the aorist indicative, introduced by τί οὖν οὐ or τί οὐ, often serve, especially in Plato and Xenophon, as urgent requests [original emphasis] … The aorist indicative is more emphatic than the present: the speaker observes that a state of affairs which he apparently wants to occur has, in fact, not occurred, and he asks his interlocutor why it has not.’ Kühner and Gerth explain it as follows: ‘Der Redende wünscht in seiner Ungeduld gewissermassen die begehrte Handlung als eine schon geschehene zu sehen’ (‘the speaker impatiently wants, as it were, to see the desired action as one that has already been done’). They contrast allegedly less urgent examples in the present (‘der Ton der Frage ist alsdann ruhiger’, ‘the tone of the question is thereby milder’). These scholars stress the pastness of the aorist tense in communicating urgency and impatience: ‘Why have you not …?’. This remains the dominant view, regularly repeated in commentaries.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , December 2018 , pp. 415 - 424
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019 

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References

1 Goodwin, W.W., Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb (corrected impression; London, 1912), §62Google Scholar; cf. Smyth, H.W., Greek Grammar (Cambridge, Mass., 1920), §1936Google Scholar.

2 Rijksbaron, A., The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek (Amsterdam, 2002 3), 31Google Scholar.

3 Kühner, R. and Gerth, B., Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache ii (Hanover and Leipzig, 1898–19043), 1.165–6Google Scholar. Cf. Stevens, P.T., ‘Colloquial expressions in Euripides’, CQ 31 (1937), 182–91, at 184–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar (‘in impatient questions, equivalent to an imperative or an exhortation’); he does not discuss this usage in Colloquial Expressions in Euripides (Hermes Einzelschriften 38) (Wiesbaden, 1976), so presumably decided that it was not colloquial after all.

4 Thompson, E.S. (ed.), The Meno of Plato (London, 1901), 189–90 (note on 92d)Google Scholar.

5 Nijk, A., ‘How to control the present: a unified account of the nonpast uses of the aorist indicative’, JHS 136 (2016), 92–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Nijk (n. 5), 103. Cf. Denyer, N. (ed.), Plato: Protagoras (Cambridge, 2008), 67 (note on 310a2)Google Scholar: ‘the aorist of the indicative … has the same import as the aorist of an imperative’.

7 Cf. Davidson, J., The Greeks and Greek Love (London, 2007), 85Google Scholar.

8 For the force of καί, see Denniston, J.D., The Greek Particles (Oxford, 1954 2), 320Google Scholar, comparing Pl. Phlb. 25b (σὺ καὶ ἐμοὶ φράσεις, ‘You shall tell me’, instead of vice versa), Resp. 573d; Xen. An. 7.7.10.

9 Nijk (n. 5), 102.

10 Nijk (n. 5), 103.

11 Nijk (n. 5), 103. Nijk's other alleged contrast, between the aorist at Pl. Prt. 317d (1) and the present at Ar. Lys. 1103–4, is open to a similar objection.

12 Dover, K.J. (ed.), Plato: Symposium (Cambridge, 1980), 78Google Scholar.

13 Burnet, J. (ed.), Plato: Phaedo (Oxford, 1911), 86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 On the dialogue in general, see Davidson, J., Courtesans and Fishcakes (London, 1997), 120–9Google Scholar.

15 Flower, M.A. and Marincola, J. (edd.), Herodotus: Histories Book IX (Cambridge, 2002), 196Google Scholar, quoting Smyth (n. 1), §1936.

16 On the ‘logical connective force’ of δῆτα in questions, see Denniston (n. 8), 269.

17 Henderson, J. (ed.), Aristophanes: Lysistrata (Oxford, 1987), 90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 MacDowell, D.M. (ed.), Aristophanes: Wasps (Oxford, 1971), 160Google Scholar; similarly Biles, Z.P. and Olson, S.D. (edd.), Aristophanes: Wasps (Oxford, 2015), 154CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 See Brown, P. and Levinson, S.C., Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage (Cambridge, 1987 2), 176–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The concept of ‘negative politeness’ is useful for analysing the conversational strategies in these passages, although we might be inclined to describe 21 and 22 as ingratiating rather than polite. It is an issue in politeness theory that Brown and Levinson's treatment of politeness as a universal human phenomenon does not always capture what is actually regarded as polite in particular societies: see (e.g.) Watts, R.J., Politeness (Cambridge, 2003), 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Native-speaker intuitions are in any case unavailable for ancient Greek.

20 Jebb, R.C. (ed.), Sophocles: Antigone (Cambridge, 1900 3), 231Google Scholar.

21 Moorhouse, A.C., The Syntax of Sophocles (Mnemosyne Suppl. 75) (Leiden, 1982), 196Google Scholar.

22 Moorhouse (n. 21), 196.

23 See Lloyd, M., ‘Sophocles in the light of face-threat politeness theory’, in de Jong, I.J.F. and Rijksbaron, A. (edd.), Sophocles and the Greek Language (Mnemosyne Suppl. 269) (Leiden, 2006), 225–39, at 227 n. 4Google Scholar.

24 See Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., Svartvik, J., A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (London and New York, 1985), 4.16; 4.37Google Scholar: ‘such forms enable us to avoid the impoliteness which might well result from expressing one's attitude too directly’. Cf. Chalker, S. and Weiner, E., The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar, s.v. ‘social distancing’.

25 Brown and Levinson (n. 19), 204–5; cf. 118–19. Cf. Coulmas, F., ‘Linguistic etiquette in Japanese society’, in Watts, R.J., Ide, S., Ehlich, K. (edd.), Politeness in Language: Studies in its History, Theory and Practice (Berlin and New York, 1992), 299–323Google Scholar. Coulmas ([this note], 323 n. 12) notes the use of past-tense forms of the verb as a politeness marker in a northern dialect of Japanese, quoting Mr Tanaka answering the telephone: ‘Moshi moshi, Tanaka deshita’ (literally, ‘Hello, this was Tanaka’).

26 Cf. Kühner and Gerth (n. 3), 1.172–3; Smyth (n. 1), §1913.

27 Cf. Kühner and Gerth (n. 3), 1.205–6; Goodwin (n. 1), §425; Smyth (n. 1), §1782.

28 For this interpretation, see Lloyd, M., ‘The tragic aorist’, CQ 49 (1999), 23–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Nijk (n. 5), 98.

30 Bary, C.L.A., ‘The ancient Greek tragic aorist revisited’, Glotta 88 (2012), 31–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Colvin, S., ‘The instantaneous aorist: the syntax of the agora and the syntax of Parnassus’, in Gabaudan, F. Cortés and Dosuna, J.V. Méndez (edd.), Dic Mihi, Musa, Virum (Salamanca, 2010), 113–21, at 116Google Scholar. Colvin's other objections have no validity if the discussion is confined specifically to the performative aorist. Even with his inclusive definition of the ‘instantaneous’ aorist, it is notable that he can cite no examples in Plato or Xenophon. He suggests that Platonic dialogue ‘lacks the interactive and reactive features of dramatic dialogue, and the linguistic markers of (realistic) turn-taking’ (at 118), but such passages as the beginning of Lysis, to take one example from many, are likely to be closer to natural dialogue than is the verse of fifth-century tragedy.