Momentary-Durative

Vidhyanath Rao vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu
Tue Jul 20 15:26:26 UTC 1999


 petegray <petegray at btinternet.com> wrote:
To: <Indo-European at xkl.com>
> >>> I don't see any parts of Sans lit in which aorist has resultative
> >>> meaning.

I have access only to the e-texts of the critical editions, which I will
use. Given the difficulties in disentangling resultatives from hot-news
forms, we need to look at the context. To really convince me, you need to
translate into a living language that distinguishes the two and explain why
the resultative is preferable.

> or Mahabharata 2:60:7 (CE 2.60.8ef)
>   kim nu pu:rvam para:jais.i:t a:tma:nam
>  whom you have lost first, yourself....

This is the easiest to dispose of. Here is the whole stanza:
kasyes'o nah paraajaiSi:r iti tvaam aaha draupadii/
kim nu puurvam paraajaiSiir aatmaanam atha vaaapi maam.//
The context is Draupadi's question of how Yudhisthira can bet her if he had
already lost himself. Translating the second line as ``whom >have< you lost
first, yourself or else me?'' misses the point that D. was bet legally.

>   Ramayana 2:64:52 (CE 2.58.44cd)
>   yah s'aren.aikaputram tvam aka:rsi:r aputrakam
>  with one arrow you have rendered me childless, who had but one son

The first half is
 adyaiva jahi ma:m. raajan maran.e na:sti me vyathaa.

Verse b is a paranthetical remark, placed there for metrical reasons. [It
would be quite odd to claim that the father feared eath when the son was
still living.] I would translate it as ``Slay me, whom you made childless
from being one-sonned, now itself, King; I do not fear death.'' The point is
that Dasaratha, by killing the son, has metaphorically slain the whole
family. It is the event of killing, not the resulting death, that is being
highlighted in the second half.

> or Mahabharata 5:3:10
>   tad akars.it prajagaram
>   that has produced sleepiness

A semantic point. praja:garam is ``awakefulness'', not sleepiness. Anyway,
it is not so obvious to me that the result is being highlighted here. In
other words, it is not clear to me that I should translate this into Tamil
as ``atu muzhipp- un.t.u pan.n.i-y- ul_l_atu'' rather than ``...
vit.t.atu.'' [I don't know enough English to render this difference
effectively.] It is the immediciacy of the event that comes to the fore.



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