Momentary-Durative

[Vidhyanath Rao]

Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk> wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Jul 1999, Vidhyanath Rao wrote:

>> The tuda'ti type, with primary endings, is somewhat rare in RV. Perhaps,
>> tuda'ti type was a replacement for injunctives, i.e., tuda'ti was a
>> general  present and not progressive present. Just a thought.

> Hardly so, for the injunctive is not a stem-formation, but an inflectional
> category that can be formed from all verbal stems.

Present, with primary endings, is also an inflectional category.

The roots of the tudati type, excepting transfers from root and nasal
classes, tend to have punctual meanings. Punctual verbs cannot be used in
the progressive (unless repetition is indicated) but can be used in generic
sense etc. But when the injunctive was lost, only the present was available
for this. This is what I meant.

>> [Jens:]

> If my observation that there is an alliance between the sk^-present type
> and the s-aorist is correct ... then the s-aorist was originally
> inchoative in function. I'd say that makes very good sense, for the
> s-aor. is also widely used with verbs that form radical or thematic
> presents, as *weg^h-e/o- 'drive', whose aor. *we:g^h-s- will then
> originally have meant 'start driving, set out (by carriage)'.

This makes it harder for me to understand how the aorist became the
perfective. `Started driving', in contrast to `drove', suggests incomplete
action.

>> This brings me to a general question. There seem to be two camps about
>> the category system of the PIE verb. One believes that the
>> aorist-imperfect distinction, to be equated to perfective-imperfective
>> distinction, ``always'' existed in PIE and Hittie lost this distinction,
>> while Vedic changed things around. The other considers the aspectual
>> distinction to postdate the separation of Anatolian.

> There are these two camps, yes, and I am in no doubt that camp one is
> right. There is no way the specific forms of the aspect stems could have
> been formed secondarily in "the rest of IE" left after the exodus of (or
> from) the Anatolians. At the very least, all the _forms_ must be assigned
> to a protolanguage from which also Anatolian is descended. And what would
> the forms be there for, if the functions that go with them only developed
> later? We find practically all the IE verbal stems in Anatolian, many only
> in a few lexicalized remains; are we to assume they have had totally
> enigmatic earlier functions, and that they were later dug up by "the rest
> of IE" and given totally new functions there? Clearly the only unforced
> interpretation is that their functions in the common protolanguage were
> the ones with which they are found where they do survive with a palpable
> functional identity.

The stem formants might have been derivational in nature. In particular,
they might change the meaning, valence and/or aktionsart. It is the
assumption that they changed only the aspect and nothing else that is in
question. Your view, expressed elsewhere, that different present stems might
be because there are different kinds of durativity is halfway to this.

Incidentally the assumption that all kinds of repetition must be represented
by imperfectives is as mistaken as the assumption that atelics cannot be
represented by perfectives. Languages differ in how they convey repeated
complete events. Czech, for example, is said to (permit the use?) use the
perfective in this case [Dahl, TAS]. Gonda (somewhere in ``The aspectual
function of Rgvedic ...'') gives examples from Greek where the aorist is
used with adverbs denoting repetition. And, just because we can think of
`walk' as a repetitive`step', we cannot conclude that `walk' cannot be used
in a telic manner.

Grammatization of derivational affixes is found often enough that its
occurance in Pre-IE -> PIE or PIE -> dialects cannot be rejected out of
hand. As it seems that very different languages underwent similar evolution
of grammatical categories (see Bybee et al, ``The evolution of grammar), we
cannot assume the similar functions must go back to the proto-language. That
might have had a precursor function.

>> There are certain nagging questions about the first thesis: The change
>> in Vedic is not explained and how it came about without the prior
>> loss of  aspect has, AFAIK, not been explained. Those who adhere
>> to this also feel the need to explain away as much as possible of
>> root presents. But there are enough of them remain in Hittite and
>> Vedic to raise doubts.

> I don't follow - what change in Vedic are you talking about?

In Vedic, the so-called imperfect is the tense of narration. Aorist has a
recent past meaning. In living languages with aspect, the perfective is the
tense of narration, unless historical present is being used. Languages with
remoteness distinction, either it applies only in the perfective or without
regard to aspect. It is this that needs to be explained.

People have tried to explain this. The attempts I know of are by Gonda and
Hoffman. Gonda's explanation is that this is due to the ``national character
of ancient Indians'' that led them to use in lento description in place of
narration. I won't comment on this idea of explaining language change by
reference to ``national characters'', except to ask about reactions to a
claim that the use of passe compose in French is due the Gallic
characteristic of exaggeration that sees everything as having present
relevance.

Hoffman's answer is to posit an intermediate stage in which aspect was
limited to non-recent past. He does not give any contemporary examples, nor
does he explain how the aorist, which in such a stage must have been even
more common, was lost in reference to remote past.

The point is that an alternate explanation is possible: Completives have a
``hot news'' value, which makes it plausible to see them develop into recent
past. They also can develop into perfectives, Slavic being a usable example.
There are gaps in the examples, but I find this more plausible than
deriving the Vedic usage out of perfecitve-imperfective opposition.

> Why would anyone want to explain away root presents where
> they are securely reconstructible? One would do that only to avoid
> having a language combining a root-present with a root-aorist, for in that
> case the two aspect stems are identical. That is why I am so sceptical
> about the authenticity of the Vedic root presents lehmi and dehmi,
> because for these verbs we have nasal presents in some other IE
> languages pointing to the existence of a root aorist; thus leh- deh- look
> like displaced aorists. But not so for eti 'goes' or asti 'is': these are
> durative verbs, and so their unmarked form could function as a
> durative (socalled "present") stem.

This argument is valid only if you have an independent reason to assume
obligatory perfective-imperfective contrast for PIE. But firstly, we see
stems transferred from one class to another within a single group. This is
most obvious in Indic, where we have a long recorded history. Secondly,
there are too many root presents that remain: In Vedic, amiti (injures),
da:ti (cuts, divides), yauti (joins, unites) and of course, hanti confirmed
by Hittite kuen-. None of these is eligible for a nasal present (expecpt
perhaps amiti, if you believe in nasal presents for roots of the shape CeNH,
with N standing for a nasal). Especially *g'henti is unavoidable, unless you
are going to argue that the two oldest recorded dialects innovated in
precisely the same way. Such an argument needs more compelling evidence
than a just so story.

If you add potentialy telic verbs, we get some more: ta:s.t.i (taks,
fashion), ya:ti etc. These can and are used in the so-called imperfect with
definite objects without any indication of non-completion. etc. How can they
be called imperfetive?

>> [part of my (Nath's) post deleted]

> Again, I do not think there is any problem in accepting root present as
> original for inherently durative verbs, and root aorist as equally
> original for inherently punctual verbs.

What about telic verbs? These are inherently durative, but with a determined
object, their preterite (in languages without perfective-imperfective
distinction) carries the implicature of completion, while their imperfective
past would do the opposite. How, without recorded narratives, can you decide
how a given language operated?

> But the IE aorist is not restricted to any special kind of verbs - it is
> only _unmarked_ (better: apparently originally unmarked) for inherently
> punctual verbs; for other verbs the aorist need a morphological marking,
> and the meaning is then some nuance that can be regarded as punctual
> ("started to -") or it just reports that the action got done (Meillet's
> action pure et simple).

Could the imperfect report `action pure et simple', or was that reserved for
the aorist? How did PIE speakers report a durative action that was done,
like ``I walked home''? How did they say ``I made pots yesterday''?

> One important functional point with the aorist,
> however, is that it marks a turn of events which creates a new situation,
> whereas the "present aspect" stays in the situation already given and
> reports another action contributing to that situation.

How do you explain that it is the so-called imperfect that is the tense of
narration in Vedic?

> This is seen remarkably well in the prohibitive use of the prs. vs. aor.
> injunctive, as propounded so clearly by Hoffmann.

Hoffmann's claim requires morphological gymnastics, such as taking i:'s'ata
as an aorist and still has some holes (eg, jivi:t).

> Still, even verbs generally signifying completed action could form
> duratives, indicating e.g. a repetition of the action (give one thing, and
> then another) or an as yet unsuccessful attempt (I'm opening the window).

How do you classify ``I learned that chapter in one month?''

> We know that this kind of change was small enough in the languages here
> concerned to lead to a number of misplaced aspect stems. E.g., the
> Armenian aor. eber is an old ipf. Is the jump from "narrative past" to
> "recent past" so great? If it is, even great changes happen.

But if the PIE ``imperfect'' was really just a preterite, what we see in
Armenian eber is old preterite becoming an aorist due to the rise of an
imperfective past. That is attested. For example, Kui, a Dravidian language,
has generalized an old progressive into an imperfective and this limited the
preexisting past into an aorist.

It is not the size of the change, but the direction and manner of the
change, that must be credible. All I am asking for is a single
uncontrovertable evidence of this change. It won't do to say, as I was once
told by an Indologist, that this change is possible because it must have
happened in Vedic. You need to give an example where the perfective past
category can be established from >preserved texts<.

What I find difficult to swollow with the argument for aspect in PIE is that
the association ``imperfect'' = imperfective is limited to Greek. The two
oldest recorded dialects, Hittite and Vedic, do not work that way. We are
simply supposed to believe that they innovated, but what do we get in
return? What can you explain this way that you cannot explain otherwise?

[quoted from a different post]
> The most rewarding experience during the time I have been
> watching Indo-European Studies has been to see the protolanguage
> come alive and assume an increasingly well-established structure, [...]

Do we really understand the variety of syntactic structures and their
diachrony that well? I have mentioned the Tamil -vidu construction a few
times. You will find some linguists call that a perfective and the Tamil
simple past an imperfective. This is simply wrong as the simple past is and
has been the tense of narration for the 2000+ year recorded history, and
this distinction is nothing like the perfective-imperfective distintion in
Russian or Arabic, as can be seen by comparing the translations of Dahl's
questionairre [or simply use his summaries]. Use of the inappropriate lables
is due to either trying to fit every non-tense non-mood apposition into the
Procrustean bed of perfective-imperfective distinction or the lack of
adequate terminology. If anyone thinks that they know how Tamil syntax works
based on these labels, the mildest thing one can say is that (s)he is
woefully misinformed.

It can be even worse: Similar constructions exist in some NIA languages
which also have a prefective-imperfective distinction that is different
(imperfective out of old progressive). I have seen at least one linguist
apply the label of perfective to the construction with auxillary, and
imperfective to the one without the auxillary. This completely misrepresents
the syntax.

What reason is there to think that we are not making the same kind of
mistake with PIE? I am not asking for certainity here, but evidence for
greater probability than the opposite.