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The tense of speech indications in Vergil's Aeneid

  • Suzanne Adema EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: August 1, 2005
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Journal of Latin Linguistics
From the journal Journal of Latin Linguistics Volume 9 Issue 1

Summary

An analysis of the introductions and conclusions of all instances of direct speech in Virgil's Aeneid (book I - VI) reveals that in these introductions and conclusions the present tense is used to describe events that are contemporaneous with "the effective span of story time", i.e. the moment in the story world that is narrated at that point in the narrative. The effect of this is that the narrator takes up a position inside the story world, from which he describes what he sees as the story time proceeds. This type of presentation is called the immediate mode. The use of the perfect tense is a more complex matter. On the one hand, the perfect is used as the main tense of (a particular part of) the narrative: the narrator presents his material from his own position in time. In this paper this retrospective presentation is called the detached mode. On the other hand, isolated perfect tense forms also occur in the immediate mode. In such cases the perfect is not just anterior to the speaker's time (as is the case in the detached mode), but has to be interpreted as anterior to the effective span of story time.

Published Online: 2005-08
Published in Print: 2005-08

© 2013 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Masthead
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Gualthari Calboli Praefatio Latina in Epistulae Modum Confecta
  4. Latin Linguistics in Machtelt's way
  5. Phonetics and Morphology
  6. The Latin Third Declension in the Scope of Natural Morphology
  7. Subjonctif Latin (-sē) et futur Indien (-sya-)
  8. Some remarks on the graded forms with sub- in Latin
  9. The sigmatic subjunctive in Plautus and Terence
  10. Sprachliche Beobachtungen am Formular lateinischer Kaiser-Inschriften des Ostens
  11. La morphologie nominale d'après le De analogia de César
  12. La diptongación de /e/ y /o/ breves latinas en territorio hispano
  13. Middle Voice in Latin and the phenomenon of Split Intransitivity
  14. Los verbos 'frecuentativos' con sufijo -it- en la comedia de Plauto y Terencio: Primera parte
  15. Latin syllable structure in typological perspective
  16. Zur Forschungsgeschichte der lateinischen Nominalkomposition Per una storia degli studi sulla composizione nominale latina
  17. Old and new (un)certainties regarding the Lapis Satricanus
  18. Attivo e deponente nei verbi in -fico(r) a primo elemento sostantivale
  19. Semantics and Lexicology
  20. Die etymologische Herleitung des Namens Latium
  21. Vocabulary of the Apocalypse of Paul
  22. La "traductibilité" des noms propres dans le cadre du bilinguisme gréco-latin
  23. El comportamiento en latín de tres lexías complejas
  24. La (dés)-intensification dans les adjectifs latins : les morphèmes de degré
  25. La estructura de oposición privativa y la dialéctica de Hegel
  26. Semántica Cognitiva del latín (II): haeret haec res, o qué es un "problema" en latín
  27. Facies equum currere : Sens et emploi de facere dans les textes vétérinaires latins
  28. On Tense, Viewpoint and Actionality in Vulgar and Literary Late Latin
  29. Quasi and tamquam — Some Developments in Imperial Latin
  30. Semantic Roles within a Contrastive Grammar of Latin and German
  31. Les procédés de création lexicale mis en oeuvre par Lucrèce
  32. Modality's semantic maps. An investigation of some Latin modal forms
  33. Lagunas léxicas en latín
  34. Le parfait latin, entre acquis et révolu
  35. Champ lexical et polysémie : l'expression du pardon en latin
  36. Verba peregrina: Von der Interdiktion zur Integration
  37. Un nom de l'arpenteur en latín : agrimēnsor
  38. A few remarks on the habeo + object + passive perfect participle construction in archaic Latin, with special reference to lexical semantics and the reanalysis process
  39. Die Etymologie von caballus
  40. Syntax and Pragmatics
  41. The tense of speech indications in Vergil's Aeneid
  42. ¿Accusativus pendens en Latín?
  43. Word length and clitics in Latin
  44. Indefinite pronouns in conditional clauses
  45. Interférences fonctionnelles entre relatives, complétives et circonstancielles
  46. Subordination seconde du relatif. Contraintes d'emploi.
  47. Inserción sintáctica y Función Semántica en construcciones de Dativos no 'posesivos' + sum
https://doi.org/10.1515/joll.2005.9.1.419

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Masthead
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Gualthari Calboli Praefatio Latina in Epistulae Modum Confecta
  4. Latin Linguistics in Machtelt's way
  5. Phonetics and Morphology
  6. The Latin Third Declension in the Scope of Natural Morphology
  7. Subjonctif Latin (-sē) et futur Indien (-sya-)
  8. Some remarks on the graded forms with sub- in Latin
  9. The sigmatic subjunctive in Plautus and Terence
  10. Sprachliche Beobachtungen am Formular lateinischer Kaiser-Inschriften des Ostens
  11. La morphologie nominale d'après le De analogia de César
  12. La diptongación de /e/ y /o/ breves latinas en territorio hispano
  13. Middle Voice in Latin and the phenomenon of Split Intransitivity
  14. Los verbos 'frecuentativos' con sufijo -it- en la comedia de Plauto y Terencio: Primera parte
  15. Latin syllable structure in typological perspective
  16. Zur Forschungsgeschichte der lateinischen Nominalkomposition Per una storia degli studi sulla composizione nominale latina
  17. Old and new (un)certainties regarding the Lapis Satricanus
  18. Attivo e deponente nei verbi in -fico(r) a primo elemento sostantivale
  19. Semantics and Lexicology
  20. Die etymologische Herleitung des Namens Latium
  21. Vocabulary of the Apocalypse of Paul
  22. La "traductibilité" des noms propres dans le cadre du bilinguisme gréco-latin
  23. El comportamiento en latín de tres lexías complejas
  24. La (dés)-intensification dans les adjectifs latins : les morphèmes de degré
  25. La estructura de oposición privativa y la dialéctica de Hegel
  26. Semántica Cognitiva del latín (II): haeret haec res, o qué es un "problema" en latín
  27. Facies equum currere : Sens et emploi de facere dans les textes vétérinaires latins
  28. On Tense, Viewpoint and Actionality in Vulgar and Literary Late Latin
  29. Quasi and tamquam — Some Developments in Imperial Latin
  30. Semantic Roles within a Contrastive Grammar of Latin and German
  31. Les procédés de création lexicale mis en oeuvre par Lucrèce
  32. Modality's semantic maps. An investigation of some Latin modal forms
  33. Lagunas léxicas en latín
  34. Le parfait latin, entre acquis et révolu
  35. Champ lexical et polysémie : l'expression du pardon en latin
  36. Verba peregrina: Von der Interdiktion zur Integration
  37. Un nom de l'arpenteur en latín : agrimēnsor
  38. A few remarks on the habeo + object + passive perfect participle construction in archaic Latin, with special reference to lexical semantics and the reanalysis process
  39. Die Etymologie von caballus
  40. Syntax and Pragmatics
  41. The tense of speech indications in Vergil's Aeneid
  42. ¿Accusativus pendens en Latín?
  43. Word length and clitics in Latin
  44. Indefinite pronouns in conditional clauses
  45. Interférences fonctionnelles entre relatives, complétives et circonstancielles
  46. Subordination seconde du relatif. Contraintes d'emploi.
  47. Inserción sintáctica y Función Semántica en construcciones de Dativos no 'posesivos' + sum
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