The words Latin, tense and aspect in the title of this short but dense book will hardly make anyone stop and think, but 3D might raise a few eyebrows. The dimensions in question are the three levels of analysis deployed here – truth-conditional, discourse and interactional – and brought together within the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The themes of Latin and theory are woven neatly and elegantly throughout the volume, which in consequence has a double appeal both to Classicists and to anyone interested in how to model language structure and change. The needs of the latter community are well satisfied since all the Latin passages cited are translated; in addition, where the examples are no more than one or two clauses long, they are fully glossed according to the Leipzig conventions.
As A. observes, for those working within SFL it is valuable to see these concepts applied diachronically to a language other than English. At the same time his advocacy of SFL as a usage-based approach is open to two reservations. First, as he notes (pp. 28–9), this creates a paradox since such approaches tend to prefer spontaneous spoken language as their principal source of data, while their application in the historical domain necessarily involves written and for the most part fairly formal texts. Second, his discussion overlooks the fact that reliance on usage only concerns the way in which data is collected and has no inherent consequences for the theoretical model adopted in analysing that data. His own preference for SFL is clearly stated and persuasively argued, but the chosen database is irrelevant to that decision.
The opening chapter also contains a partial (in both senses!) overview of the concepts of tense and aspect. There is, for example, no mention of the widely cited work on perfects and perfectivity by Wolfgang Klein, possibly because Klein’s goal is to provide an integrated time-relational analysis of the two notions whereas A. seeks to keep them separate and to explore in detail the aspectual dimension as it is realised in particular narrative contexts; what he refers to with the cover term ‘aspectuality’. It is more surprising then that there is no mention of Sarah Dessì Schmid’s monograph with precisely that title (Aspectuality [2019]) even if it is devoted to the Romance developments rather than to their Latin sources.
Moving on to the empirical side, we are offered a thorough analysis of the way in which past events and circumstances are represented in the narratives of what A. calls his ‘main authors’ (p. 74), namely Livy (59 bce–17 ce) and Gregory of Tours (538–594 ce). Occasional passages from the likes of Plautus and Caesar occur, but the vast majority of examples from the classical period are Livian, and for the later period no-one other than Gregory is cited. That said, A. chooses to explain his methodology (pp. 74–83) through a series of examples drawn from the Bellum Catilinae by Sallust (c. 86–35 bce) on the grounds that chronologically he belongs to the same era as Livy, but his narrative bears close resemblances to that of Gregory. A.’s careful dissection of the way in which his chosen authors deploy the perfect, the imperfect, the pluperfect and the historic present – what he calls ‘the applied close-reading methodology’ (p. 74) – yields a significant contribution to our understanding, taking readers well beyond what is to be found in even the most thorough grammars and indeed in much of the relevant scholarly literature. A. not only identifies sub-types – the ingressive perfect, the progressive imperfect, the perfect of success and the like – but also links each to a representation in neo-Reichenbachian terms and thus embeds them in broader theoretical accounts of tense and aspect. His particular interest appears to be on the latter and its ‘survival’ (p. 140) in the language of Gregory’s Histories. These texts are often cited for the author’s apparently early uses of the perfect periphrases in a temporal sense but, as Gert Haverling has demonstrated in various studies, such interpretations are probably premature. In the words of J.N. Adams (Social Variation and the Latin Language [2013], p. 643), ‘in Gregory the ordinary perfect is standard and widespread’, as indeed A. amply documents. Although he makes occasional reference to the Romance compound perfects in his introductory chapters, he cites no sources later than Gregory; the ‘beyond’ of the book’s title is clearly conceptual rather than temporal.
In short, the book is a valuable contribution to the literature for the way in which it assembles and analyses rich and well-chosen sets of examples from two distinct periods. However, as to whether the choice of SFL enhances the narrative, I have my doubts. Much the same three-dimensional breakdown is to be found in other frameworks. The volume is very well produced with tables that helpfully summarise the textual dimensions and theoretical analyses of the forms under investigation. The use of small capitals for technical terms whenever they occur (and recur) makes for easy consultation while initial full capitals – Classical Latin, Late Latin, Antiquity – betray an implicit periodisation. However, it seems unnecessary for each chapter to have its own list of references and then for these all to be collected and repeated in the bibliography at the end of the book.
It is noteworthy that in the concluding chapter A. refers not only to the potential interest his research has for Classicists and linguistic theorists, but also brings into the picture the role that Classics, and humanities more generally, can play in modern education. He ends with the rather optimistic observation that ‘(a)n enhanced understanding of the subtleties involved in language when it comes to influencing your Addressee would help to arm young adolescents against the use of such language in media and politics today’ (p. 167). I only hope he is right!
