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Part of
Perfects in Indo-European Languages and Beyond
Edited by Robert Crellin and Thomas Jügel
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 352] 2020
► pp. 483–504

Chapter 14
The perfect in Medieval and Modern Greek

| University of Cambridge

The present-anterior/stative function of the ancient perfect placed it outside the core verbal system, which was organised around a binary (perfective/imperfective) aspectual opposition. By the early middle ages the increasingly marginal perfect had disappeared as a functionally discrete category, its role subsumed by the aorist (past perfective), and the notion of continuing relevance determined contextually. The rare pluperfect was also abandoned, though periphrastic replacements continued the overt, if optional, expression of relative-past meaning, a function later strengthened by contact with Romance. A perfect counterpart appeared only in modern times, however, functioning as a past perfective with a compulsory current-relevance reading, but remaining optional in that the aorist still carries present-anterior implications in appropriate contexts. Other periphrases were introduced in later antiquity specifically to express stativity. Most have continued in stative function into Modern Greek, though intense contact with Latin/Romance also encouraged present-anterior and relative-past functions locally at various times.

Keywords: anteriority, current relevance, loss and renewal, periphrases, Romance influence, stativity
Article outline
  • 1.The inheritance from antiquity
  • 2.Perfect and pluperfect in Medieval Greek
    • 2.1Perfects
    • 2.2Pluperfects
  • 3.Perfect and pluperfect in Modern Greek
  • 4.Conclusion
  • 5.Summary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • Editions of Ancient Greek texts
  • Editions of medieval literary texts
  • Collections of medieval non-literary texts
  • Secondary bibliography
Published online: 23 September 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.352.14hor
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