21st Century Classical Greek -- negation and aspect

I am skipping section 14 because about the only thing in it is that we have our first perfective eventive, ekektinto. Book I section 15, on the other hand, lets us examine more negatives to see what is going on.

τὰ μὲν οὖν ναυτικὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων τοιαῦτα ἦν, τά τε παλαιὰ καὶ τὰ ὕστερον γενόμενα. ἰσχὺν δὲ περιεποιήσαντο ὅμως οὐκ ἐλαχίστην οἱ προσσχόντες αὐτοῖς χρημάτων τε προσόδῳ καὶ ἄλλων ἀρχῇ: ἐπιπλέοντες γὰρ τὰς νήσους κατεστρέφοντο, καὶ μάλιστα ὅσοι μὴ διαρκῆ εἶχον χώραν.

[2] κατὰ γῆν δὲ πόλεμος, ὅθεν τις καὶ δύναμις παρεγένετο, οὐδεὶς ξυνέστη: πάντες δὲ ἦσαν, ὅσοι καὶ ἐγένοντο, πρὸς ὁμόρους τοὺς σφετέρους ἑκάστοις, καὶ ἐκδήμους στρατείας πολὺ ἀπὸ τῆς ἑαυτῶν ἐπ᾽ ἄλλων καταστροφῇ οὐκ ἐξῇσαν οἱ Ἕλληνες. οὐ γὰρ ξυνειστήκεσαν πρὸς τὰς μεγίστας πόλεις ὑπήκοοι, οὐδ᾽ αὖ αὐτοὶ ἀπὸ τῆς ἴσης κοινὰς στρατείας ἐποιοῦντο, κατ᾽ ἀλλήλους δὲ μᾶλλον ὡς ἕκαστοι οἱ ἀστυγείτονες ἐπολέμουν.

[3] μάλιστα δὲ ἐς τὸν πάλαι ποτὲ γενόμενον πόλεμον Χαλκιδέων καὶ Ἐρετριῶν καὶ τὸ ἄλλο Ἑλληνικὸν ἐς ξυμμαχίαν ἑκατέρων διέστη.

Ouk elakhistin is an idiom, “not least” those who got rich got not the least of the strength (but Thucydides punts on whether they had the most).

Oudeis ksunesti does negate an imperfective; of the earliest wars was a joint war. Here Mr. T can negate an action.

Ouk eksisan uses a derivative of eimi “be” in an eventive. So you know eimi and you know this isn’t imperfective. What does it mean to negate a progressive? “They did not repeatedly or habit-formingly…”  Which is exactly what Thucydides is saying in subsection 2; the habit was for each polis to fight for itself against another polis encroaching on its borders. In the clause here beginning with kai, Thucydides is talking about attacking foreigners on their own turf, ep’ allon. That’s the habit they didn’t have. It continues in oud’ au autoi…epoiounto.

Goodwin never gets to the point of asking why, in a past situation, negations wouldn’t just all use “aorist”. He doesn’t have a listing in the index under aorist for negations. Under imperfect (tense), he points to sections that differentiate between aorist and imperfect; those sections don’t discuss negation. There’s no such reference under pluperfect or perfect.

Goodwin’s claims about the difference in use of the various eventives or perfect (which he considers a past tense) are wholly subjective.

The aspectual paradigm gives us objective reasons for using eventives, both positive and negated. Biblical Hebrew also puts across different nuances depending on which aspect is being negated, and also on what is used to negate it.

Now that the eventives show such clear differences under negation, I’ll scope for conceptual differences.