This book applies an SFL-inspired, multi-dimensional approach to Latin linguistics, offering fresh insights into Latin narrative tenses while addressing challenges posed by its closed-corpus nature. Bridging Classics and Linguistics, it categorizes the functional potential of the verbal categories “tense” and “aspect” and reshapes existing labels through a quantitative analysis of select historiographical narratives. Aerts elucidates the communicative subtleties of tense and aspect in Latin and highlights their relevance to modern linguistic methodologies and cross-linguistic investigations. Contributing to functional linguistic theory, the volume explores the semantic boundaries of tense and aspect in human languages, uncovering previously unrecognized uses in Latin and addressing obstacles in historical language analysis. It showcases how modern tools enhance reproducibility and deepen our understanding of grammatical systems, with implications for the study of Latin, Romance languages, and beyond. This book will appeal to scholars in linguistics, classical philology, and historical linguistics.

Table of Contents:
List of Tables List of Figures Preface Chapter 1 A modern approach to languages from the past 1.1 Introduction 1.1.1 Latin: a tale of a lot more than one language 1.1.2 Book structure 1.2 Case in point: the Latin tense system 1.2.1 Latin tense morphology 1.2.2 Latin tense semantics 1.2.3 Relative tense theory 1.2.4 Aspectual theory 1.3 Essential forms and functions 1.3.1 Verb tenses 1.3.2 Tense 1.3.3 Aspect 1.3.4 Aktionsart 1.3.5 Situations and events 1.3.6 Foreground-background 1.4 Systemic Functional Linguistics 1.4.1 Metafunctions 1.4.2 Stratification 1.4.3 Indeterminacy, choice and change 1.4.4 System networks and the cline of instantiation 1.5 Towards a 3D-approach to Latin tense and aspect 1.5.1 Multidimensional systems in SFL 1.5.2 Usage-based language data and the importance of context 1.5.3 Audience involvement and its encoding in the lexicogrammar 1.5.4 Metafunctional levels of TENSE and ASPECT 1.5.5 Systematization of traditional labels Notes Chapter 2 From theory to practice: an exposition and illustration of the applied methodology 2.1 Three-dimensional tense and aspect in Latin, Romance and English 2.1.1 Tense 2.1.2 Aspect 2.2 Historical pragmatics: problems and solutions 2.2.1 Aspects of working with closed-corpus languages 2.2.2 Towards an operationalization of pragmatic interpretations 2.3 An exposition of the applied close-reading methodology Notes Chapter 3 A corpus-based description of tense usage in Latin 3.1 Foregrounded events and situations 3.1.1 The narrative perfect, the annalistic present and the historic present 3.1.2 The scenic imperfect 3.1.3 The ingressive perfect and the complexive perfect 3.1.4 The perfect of success and the progressive imperfect 3.2 Simultaneous situations and events 3.2.1 The historic present and the narratorial perfect 3.2.2 The perfect of cessation 3.2.3 The circumstantial imperfect and simultaneous events 3.3 Anteriors and resultatives 3.3.1 The pluperfect tense 3.3.2 The perfect and imperfect tenses with past anterior meaning 3.3.3 Past resultatives vs. past simultaneous situations 3.4 The narrative tenses in non-narrative discourse 3.4.1 Absolute past situations 3.4.2 The present perfect 3.4.3 The actual, general and literary present and the present resultative 3.5 Marked textual meanings of the narrative tenses 3.5.1 The anticipatory present, the suspensive imperfect and the perfect of conclusion 3.5.2 The authorial present Notes Chapter 4 Aspect in the Latin tense system: a matter of perspective 4.1 The survival of aspect in the language of Gregory of Tours 4.2 Narrative perspectives: a linguistic and literary tradition 4.2.1 External perspectives: the voices of the narrator and the author 4.2.2 Internal perspectives: the illusion of unmediated truth 4.2.3 Eyewitness perspectives: showing vs. telling 4.2.4 Temporal anomalies in the subjunctive: displacement encoded in the grammar Notes Chapter 5 General conclusions Chapter 6 References 6.1 Primary sources 6.2 Secondary sources Index