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’.