Pensare, sapere, ricordare: i verbi di attività mentale in greco omerico

We analyze a number of verbs that indicate mental states and mental activities
in Homeric Greek, and discuss their constructions in the light of recent typological
studies on such type of predicates. Among experiential predicates, verbs of mental state
and activity are peculiar, in that they presuppose at least to some degree consciousness
and awareness on the side of the experiencer. In addition, mental activities can to
some extent be construed as controlled situations, contrary to various other types of
experiential situations. In particular, we focus verbs that fall into three semantic areas:
thinking, knowing, and remembering. While ‘think’ and ‘know’ are often taken to represent
semantic primes (i.e. indefinable meanings which exist as the meaning of a lexical
unit in all languages), ‘remember’ indicates a more complex situation, which conflates
simpler concepts, including ‘think’ and ‘know’. Among differences in the construal
of the various types of situation, we focus on the role of lexical and of verbs aspect.
Among the verbs that we discuss only a limited number occurs both in perfective and
in imperfective forms, while most of them show a partial distribution across verbal
aspects. Thus, thinking can be construed as an atelic activity or as an inchoative event
implying the arousal of consciousness. Similarly, know normally indicates a state, but
depending on the verbal root and verbal aspect it can also be construed as the act
of acquiring knowledge. Finally, remembering in Homeric Greek often translates as
simply as ‘think of’, ‘occur’. This may well be the original meaning of the verbal root,
which in other ancient Indo-European languages means ‘think’.