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Article published In:
Development of tense and aspect systems
Edited by Jadranka Gvozdanović
[Journal of Historical Linguistics 10:2] 2020
► pp. 325–345

Continuity and change in the aspect systems of Vedic and Latin

| UIT The Arctic University of Norway

This paper examines the development of the aspect systems in the Indo-European languages Vedic and Latin. Even though aspectual distinctions are central in the verbal systems of both of these languages at the beginning of their attested traditions, they undergo quite different developments in the course of their history. The Vedic verbal system instantiates a classic case of the development from aspect to tense, whereas Latin maintains an aspect-based verbal system, which survives in the Romance languages. The paper explores the semantic properties of the Vedic and Latin past tenses in some detail from two distinct perspectives: a neo-Reichenbachian model, where aspect is regarded as a type of relation between reference time and event time (cf. e.g., Dahl 2010, 2015), and a model where aspect involves different types of partitive operators (cf. Altshuler 2013, 2014). Although these two approaches may first appear to be in conflict, the paper attempts to show that they represent complementary perspectives highlighting different dimensions of aspectual meaning.

Keywords: Aspect semantics, semantic change, Vedic Sanskrit, Latin, diachronic typology
Article outline
  • 1.Introductory remarks
  • 2.Two approaches to aspectual semantics
    • 2.1Aspect as a relation between temporal parameters – A neo-Reichenbachian approach
    • 2.2Aspectual categories as partitive operators – Altshuler (2014)
  • 3.Chronological stages of Vedic and Latin
  • 4.Outline of the Early Vedic aspect system
  • 5.Outline of the Early Latin aspect system
  • 6.Interim summary: The Early Vedic and Early Latin aspectual systems compared
  • 7.The development of the Vedic past tense system according to Dahl (2015)
  • 8.An alternative account of the development of the Vedic past tense system
  • 9.The development of the Latin aspect system in a time-relational perspective
  • 10.An alternative approach to the development of the Latin aspect system
  • 11.Summary
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 21 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.18013.dah
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