Time and its categories in Classical Greek: Language and thought

Richard Faure (1) , Emmanuel Golfin (2) , Elsa Grasso (3)

1 BCL, équipe Linguistique de l’énonciation
2 PLH - Patrimoine, Littérature, Histoire
3 CRHI - Centre de recherche en histoire des idées

The conceptions of time are manifold (cyclic, linear, subjective/objective etc.). This is also true of Ancient Greece (Lloyd 1976). However, in Classical Greece certain human sciences arise and evolve at the same time, including History (Herodotus, Thucydides) and Philosophy (Plato, Aristotle), which may share a common notion of time. We explore the idea that these developments are related to what we observe in the language in the same period, namely that the marking of aspect and mood steps back and gives way to a more precise marking of time in the verbal system. This may be due to mutual influences of the categories of language and thought, as already observed in Benveniste (1958).

Mots clés: tense; aspect; time; history; philosophy; linguistics; mood

Mots clés: temps; histoire; philosophie; linguistique; aspect; mode

Domaines: Etudes classiques; Linguistique; Philosophie; Histoire; Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences

Richard Faure, Emmanuel Golfin, Elsa Grasso. Time and its categories in Classical Greek: Language and thought. Journal of Interdisciplinary Methodologies and Issues in Science, 2019, The Time Era, ⟨10.18713/JIMIS-010719-7-11⟩. ⟨hal-02276221v3⟩