<P> Because the aorist was the unmarked aspect in Ancient Greek, the term is sometimes applied to unmarked verb forms in other languages, such as the habitual aspect in Turkish . </P> <P> In Proto - Indo - European, the aorist appears to have originated as a series of verb forms expressing manner of action . Proto - Indo - European had a three - way aspectual opposition, traditionally called "present", "aorist", and "perfect", which are thought to have been, respectively, imperfective, perfective, and stative (resultant state) aspects . By the time of Classical Greek, this system was maintained largely in independent instances of the non-indicative moods and in the nonfinite forms . But in the indicative, and in dependent clauses with the subjunctive and optative, the aspects took on temporal significance . In this manner, the aorist was often used as an unmarked past tense, and the perfect came to develop a resultative use, which is why the term perfect is used for this meaning in modern languages . </P> <P> Other Indo - European languages lost the aorist entirely . In the development of Latin, for example, the aorist merged with the perfect . The preterites (past perfectives) of the Romance languages, which are sometimes called' aorist', are an independent development . </P> <P> In the Ancient Greek, the indicative aorist is one of the two main forms used in telling a story; it is used for undivided events, such as the individual steps in a continuous process (narrative aorist); it is also used for events that took place before the story itself (past - within - past). The aorist indicative is also used to express things that happen in general, without asserting a time (the "gnomic aorist"). It can also be used of present and future events; the aorist also has several specialized senses meaning present action . </P>

What is the meaning of the aorist tense