Focalizzazione e deissi: una possibile funzione dell’aumento omerico

Abstract

According to Bakker, the Homeric augment was a morpheme of proximal deixis. This theory can be confirmed in two contexts: similes, where the coexistence of present indicatives and augmented aorists can be explained only by considering the category of aspect, not the one of tense; and contexts involving the adjective νήπιος, which are here explained not only from a narrative viewpoint, but also by considering the major presence of augmented forms in them. The PIE augment seems to have been a deictic particle not compatible with present tense and it might have been initially used only with aorists and later extended to imperfects, as foregrounding is strongly related to perfectivity.