Ian Hollenbaugh | Washington University in St. Louis (original) (raw)

Dissertation by Ian Hollenbaugh

UCLA Dissertation, 2021

Though Greek and Sanskrit possess clearly cognate tense–aspect categories, they differ significan... more Though Greek and Sanskrit possess clearly cognate tense–aspect categories, they differ significantly with respect to the function of these categories. This dissertation investigates the usage of the Aorist and Imperfect indicative in Homeric Greek and Rigvedic Sanskrit, in order to reevaluate the functional range of both categories in each language. A qualitative and quantitative examination of the data reveals that the differences in usage between the two languages are only superficial. In Homer as in the Rigveda, the Aorist is commonly used to express perfect aspect, while the Imperfect is used to sequence events in past narration. This thesis thus further extends the findings of Hollenbaugh 2018 in proposing that the Aorist and Imperfect do not represent a perfective/imperfective system, nor can they be traced back to such a system in the proto-language, as is often assumed. Rather, they originally marked perfect aspect and a simple past tense respectively. In addition, this dissertation explores the pragmatic interactions across functional categories to explain the lack of application of certain forms in contexts with which they are semantically compatible. The differences in usage observed for the two languages are thus attributed to systematic differences in their respective verb systems overall, rather than to any particular functional innovations per se. The Vedic injunctive and Homeric augmentless forms are also considered, and an account is given of the interaction between the augment and the verbal bases with which it combines. This provides insights into why the augment and augmentless forms behave differently in the two languages in the way that they do, and suggests how each can be derived from a common source in the proto-language.

Papers by Ian Hollenbaugh

Fs Stowell (Forthcoming), 2025

as part of the celebratory colloquium for Tim Stowell, in whose honor I am proud to contribute my... more as part of the celebratory colloquium for Tim Stowell, in whose honor I am proud to contribute my work. I received a number of encouraging and insightful remarks from the attendees of that colloquium, including from Prof. Stowell himself, which have been of great benefit to this paper. I wish also to express my gratitude to the editors of this volume for their many helpful suggestions, especially María Arche. In addition, I am grateful to Daniel Greeson (Stony Brook) for reading a late draft of this paper, bringing to my attention several points of confusion and contributing some additional data. Final responsibility is, of course, my own. or else questionable without being altogether ungrammatical (?). For this reason, I will refer to the (non-AAE) varieties of English that have this usage of BE simply as "Non-standard American English" (NSAE). This term is meant to acknowledge that the habitual use of BE is not part of the prescribed grammar of what might be called "standard" American English, and that it is not the same as the habitual BE found in AAE but is widespread across American dialects. However, the usage and frequency of application of this construction may vary even within speech communities or across utterances of individual speakers. Native-speaker judgments throughout this paper are my own and those of my colleagues who share this feature, who belong to a variety of age groups, backgrounds, and regions of upbringing within the United States. All numbered examples in this paper are NSAE unless otherwise noted. Habitual be's may be particularly prominent among children (Payne 2013:30-1), albeit of a fairly advanced age. The utterance in (2) was produced by a 12-year-old in casual conversation. According to Payne (2013:31), "The context was the behavior of one of her friends who attended a birthday party." (2) "He's not silly; he just be's silly when he's around girls." The contrast between (i)s and be's in (2), both in form and in function, suggests that we are dealing with distinct lexical items-a matter treated in Section 4 below. 1 The past-tense of be's is be'd (beed in Payne 2013), though it appears to be largely restricted to the speech of children (ibid.:32). Like be's, be'd is eventive in meaning. Unlike be's, however, be'd is more readily used in non-habitual contexts and may refer to a single event in the past, as shown in (3). This is essentially the same behavior we see in other simple present and preterite pairs in English (e.g., walks regularly only has a habitual interpretation (at least in matrix clauses), whereas walked may be habitual or refer to a single event). (3) "I gave the monitor to her while she 'be'd the doctor,' using the monitor to poke around my feet."

FASAL 2022 Proceedings, 2023

This paper uses formal pragmatics to show that discourse context alone is inadequate to explain t... more This paper uses formal pragmatics to show that discourse context alone is inadequate to explain the function of “injunctive” verb forms (i.e., finite verbs unspecified for tense or mood) in R̥gvedic Sanskrit. Prior treatments, which explain the temporal and modal specification of the injunctive as being picked up from other verb forms in the immediate discourse, do not fully account for the injunctive’s observed meanings. By applying a framework known in neo-Gricean pragmatics as a “Horn strategy” to tense and modality, I explain the various functions of the injunctive as arising from partial blocking relationships that hold between it and other verb forms with which it competes.

Journal of Greek Linguistics, 2021

This article seeks to combine the viewpoints of formal semantics and pragmatics, typology, histor... more This article seeks to combine the viewpoints of formal semantics and pragmatics, typology, historical linguistics, and philology, in order to give a diachronic overview of the semantic and pragmatic changes observable for the Imperfect indicative within the recorded history Greek. Since its development does not adhere to typologically expected stages of semantic change, I provide a pragmatic account by taking into consideration not only the Imperfect but also the rest of the past-tense system of Greek, namely the Aorist and Perfect. With this holistic approach, I am able to motivate a development that is otherwise typologically anomalous.

Proceedings of the 31st Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference (November 8–9, 2019), 2020

In this paper I examine two "inceptive" constructions in Ancient Greek, one built with the imperf... more In this paper I examine two "inceptive" constructions in Ancient Greek, one built with the imperfect (type εἰς τὸν ἀγρὸν εἰσελθόντες ἐπόνουν "Having entered the field, they began to work") and one with the aorist (type ἡ Μυρρίνη ἐδάκρυσε "Myrrhine burst into tears"). After a review of the relevant grammatical and linguistic literature on inceptives, I observe a near-complementary distribution of the two constructions in Greek, with the aorist occurring only to state-like predicates (such as 'be king' or 'cry') and the imperfect occurring elsewhere (mostly to activity predicates, such as 'work'). I then present a formal semantic analysis that can properly account for the observed distribution, working within the assumption that the (post-Homeric) Greek imperfect and aorist align more or less with what in the typological literature on tense-aspect systems are referred to respectively as imperfective and perfective aspect.

Journal of the American Oriental Society, 2020

Negative commands in Vedic have traditionally been divided into two classes: those built with the... more Negative commands in Vedic have traditionally been divided into two classes: those built with the Aorist stem and those built with the Present stem. The former is said to be "preventive," used to ward off some dreaded future eventuality, while the latter is said to be "inhibitive," used to halt some currently ongoing action. I challenge this division on two grounds: one functional and one formal. Reexamining all prohibitions of the two oldest Sanskrit texts, the R̥ gveda and the Atharvaveda, I find that there is no correlation between "inhibitive" interpretation and use of the Present stem in Vedic. Having established that the traditional division is incorrect, I then propose a new, formal explanation for the attested distribution of stem types.

Indo-European Linguistics, 2018

The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) tense-aspect system has been reconstructed since the time of Delbrü... more The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) tense-aspect system has been reconstructed since the time of Delbrück (1897) as containing a fundamental opposition between two aspect-denoting stems: An Aorist stem, denoting perfective aspect, and a Present stem, denoting imperfective aspect. This reconstruction is, for practical reasons, based almost entirely on Greek and Vedic. Reexamining the Homeric and R̥ gvedic data, I argue on semantic grounds against this century-old understanding of the tense-aspect system of PIE. In its place, I reconstruct the "Aorist" indicative as denoting perfect aspect (not perfective), and the "Imperfect" indicative as a simple past tense (not imperfective). Evidence for this reconstruction is based on the consistent usage in the R̥ gveda of the Aorist in the meaning 'have done X' (with present reference) and the Imperfect in the meaning 'did X' (especially in narrative contexts)-a distribution which frequently has a precise match in Homer.

Proceedings of the 28th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, 2016

Presentations by Ian Hollenbaugh

American Oriental Society, 2022

UCLA Indo-European Conference, 2021

o-/jo-and the performative Aorist 9 / 67 Ian Hollenbaugh Mycenaean o-/jo-and the performative Aor... more o-/jo-and the performative Aorist 9 / 67 Ian Hollenbaugh Mycenaean o-/jo-and the performative Aorist 10 / 67 Ian Hollenbaugh Mycenaean o-/jo-and the performative Aorist '(People) who owed spice.. . Psellos Psellos: sesame Phuskēs Phuskēs: fennel seed Z 1. .. ' 11 / 67 Ian Hollenbaugh Mycenaean o-/jo-and the performative Aorist * The-qe here may not be the connective (see Bernabé and Luján 2006:199 for discussion and refs.). 'so-and-so has now done such-and-such' vs. 'so-and-so hereby does such-and-such'. Yet it is a contrast supported by the usage of both Homeric Greek and Vedic Sanskrit. Likewise, the distinction between the Present and Aorist is virtually neutralized in their performative functions (again, precisely as in Vedic). The distinction between these tenses with o-/jo-would thus be one of aspect alone.

It is understood that the concepts are purely differential and defined not by their positive cont... more It is understood that the concepts are purely differential and defined not by their positive content but negatively by their relations with other terms of the system. Their most precise characteristic is in being what the others are not.-Saussure (1916 [1959]:117) 1. With the exception of various fossilized forms (imperatives in *-s or *-so, type Gk. δός 'give!' and ἕπεο, Lat. sequere 'follow!'; 2sg. pres. ind. to Gk. athematics, type τίθης 'you are putting'. This suggests that the underspecificity of the inj. is an archaism.

East Coast Indo-European Conference, 2021

Introduction Proposal Assessing the evidence Conclusion Comparative evidence References Drewitt's... more Introduction Proposal Assessing the evidence Conclusion Comparative evidence References Drewitt's Rule Bréal-Strunk model Willi 2018 Willi 2018 Willi (2018:378): If the augment had the same origin as " ἠ: Not expected Not expected: augmentless verb + δέ 'and' (Drewitt's pattern) Expected Expected: "narrative units" of ἠδέ 'and' + augmentless verb. Willi (2018:367): Why, if the augment was originally an independent adverb, do we never find constructions of the type: *ἒ δὲ θ" ηκε 'and (s)he placed' 5 / 47 Ian Hollenbaugh Drewitt's Rule and the origin of the augment E.g., μὲν κλύον ἠδὲ πίθοντο 'they listened and obeyed' (Il. 9.75, etc.). 8 / 47 Ian Hollenbaugh Drewitt's Rule and the origin of the augment 9 / 47 Ian Hollenbaugh Drewitt's Rule and the origin of the augment 10 / 47 Ian Hollenbaugh Drewitt's Rule and the origin of the augment 13 / 47

Society for Classical Studies, 2021