Momentary-Durative

[Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen]

On Mon, 26 Jul 1999, Vidhyanath Rao wrote:

>> [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. [...]

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

The aorist reports a turn of event that caused a new situation: is that
not the perfect thing to express a beginning?

[Nath:]
>>> 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.

[Jens:]
>> 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. [...]

[Nath:]
> 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.

[Jens:] I am rather convinced this is all derivation in origin.

[..]
[Nath:]
> 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.

[Jens:]
The PIE function of the different derivative categories must be at least
compatible with that of their later reflexes, and the simplest solution is
that wherever we find non-trivial correspondences between the daughter
languages we have a relatively direct reflexion of the protolanguage. Why
would a morpheme with lengthening and -s- turn up as the expression of
non-durative past in Italo-Celtic, Slavic, Armenian, Greek and Tocharian
if that were not its function in PIE already?

[Nath:]
>>> There are certain nagging questions about the first thesis [i.e. the
     thesis of Graeco-Aryan archaism and massive losses in Hittite - JER]:
>>> 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.

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

> [Nath:]
> 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.
[...]
> 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.

[Jens:] But Vedic _is_ an IE language.

[Jens, earlier:]
>> 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.

[Nath:]
> 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?

[Jens:] With reference to PIE they must, in case such was the system - and
that it was is very well established.

>[...]
[Jens:]
>> 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.

[Nath:]
> 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?

[Jens:]
Telic verbs are typically aoristic: *{gw}em- 'come' forms a root aorist,
*H1ey- 'walk' forms a root present.

[Jens earlier:]
>> 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 needs 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).

[Nath:]
> 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''?

[Jens:]
I guess they walked home in the aorist, made pots (generically) in the
ipf., but made a specific pot or set of pots in the aorist. But who am I
to know? Please don't demand that I write a fable.

[Jens:]
>> 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.

[Nath:]
> How do you explain that it is the so-called imperfect that is the tense
> of narration in Vedic?

[Jens:]
Sorry to take so long in coming to the point, this _is_ a very important
question which deserves more attention than is perhaps mostly accorded to
it. Now, under no circumstances can we completely divorce the imperfect
from the present, for they are formed from the same stem - that must mean
_something_. And I do not think we can disregard the situation- changing
effect of the aorist stem which turns up in all corners of IE. I repeat:

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

And I maintain this against your comment:

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

I find no problem with the existence of individual verbs that act in
individual ways that have to be entered in the lexicon. That sound fairly
normal.

So, if the present stem is situation-preserving, and the aorist stem
situation-changing, how do we explain the Vedic facts? They do not look so
odd to me: The present is also a narrative form, namely to report what is
going on: "The horse is turning at the corner, it's emerging in full
sunlight, and is now approaching the finish line" - this would all be in
the present indicative in Vedic I guess. If the corresponding past
narrative is the imperfect, that could simply be due to the status of this
category as the past of the present stem. Other IE languages rather
clearly point to the one-time existence of a step-by-step turn-of-events
use of the aorist, opposed there to the background actions of longer
duration reported by the imperfect, but in Vedic the aorist has taken a
turn in the direction of exaggerating the situation-changing value of the
stem, while the imperfect has been generalized to all past narrative, be
it momentary or background-like. In Vedic the aorist is almost constantly
rendered by translators by means of the "have perfect" which states a
conclusion. The consensus on this matter is remarkable, especially since
there is little possibility of checking what is really meant in the text
of the Rigveda. The least one can say is that the use of tenses in
translations of the Rigveda does not strike one as unnatural (it's often
the only thing one does find natural). If I were to combine the Vedic
picture with that of the other IE branches, this would be my guess. It
appears to mean a lot to you that the IE aspect opposition is not supposed
to have been obliterated before the vedic development can take place -
well, in my account it isn't. And then there is nothing alarming (or even
interesting) about the number of preserved root presents.

[Jens earlier:]
>> 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).

[Nath:]
> How do you classify ``I learned that chapter in one month?''

[Jens:] I believe as a job for the aorist.

[Jens earlier:]
>> 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.

[Nath:]
> 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.

[Jens:]
Not due to the creation of the ipf. for that was already there (eber was
one itself). I do not argue about Kui, I only say the Armenian (and IE)
story cannot be that way. We know too much be able to accept it.

> 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<.

If instead of perfective past you read concluding past which is just a
natural further development, you find it supported several times in
practically every hymn of the whole Rigveda. And the distinction between
perfective (aorist) and imperfective past (imperfect) is a salient shared
feature of all other IE languages than Germanic, Indo-Iranian and
Anatolian in the system of synthetic verbal forms. There is no way that
can be an innovation. Specifically, it is not therefore not possible that
the isolated instances of misplaced aspect forms reflect an archaic state
of affairs where the whole aspect business had not even started.

[Nath:]
> 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?

[Jens:]
The IE imperfect is not just Greek. The Slavic imperfect, which mostly
translates the Gk. ipf. in OCS, is an almost direct continuation of the IE
ipf. (in Baltic it has become a preterite pure and simple due to the loss
of the aorist). The Armenian ipf. has endings in -i- from *-e:- stemming
from the verb 'be' (all thematic verbs rhyme with 'be' in Arm.) which
formed *e:st from *e-H1es-t with the augment. The Toch. ipf. is basically
the optative, but there are some long-vowel imperfects which in my view
simply copy the old relation *es-/*e:s- of 'be'. Old Irish no-bered 'was
carrying' is from the middle-voice ipf. *bhereto, notably always
compounded (if only by the default preverb no-) and so rather obviously
continuing an augmented form. No matter what one thinks of Lat. ama:bam it
does contain the same span as Oscan fufans and so adds the same preterital
marker to the present stem as the latter had added to the perfect stem;
and ama:ver-a:-s has preteritalized the perfect stem just as er-a:-s has
the present stem, so here, too, the ipf. is the preterite of the present
stem. Even Albanian ish or ishte (the C,amian forms) may artlessly reflect
*est (in part with productive superimposed ending, probably borrowed from
the aor. qe), i.e. the present stem with secondary ending. Only Germanic
and Anatolian have obliterated the imperfect as an independent category,
using what's left of it simply as past tense (in Gmc., e.g. Eng. did is an
old ipf.). I cannot accept the statement that the imperfectivity of the
"imperfect" is restricted to Greek: the imperfect is opposed to a
non-durative preterite wherever it occurs, except for Indo-Iranian. That
I-Ir. and Anatol. have both innovated, should cause no concern, especially
since the two innovations have nothing in common.

> [Jens, 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, [...]

[Nath:]
> 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 [...].

[Jens:]
Maybe we have something as important as the explanation of the Indic
development here. Perhaps Anatolian and Iranian have been influenced by
some common source which could not distinguish different types of
synthetic preterites?

[Nath:]
> 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.

[Jens:]
As long as our mistakes are comparable to calling the expression of
imperfective action "imperfect" and the expresiion of perfective action
"perfect" in a language that really has a perfective-imperfective
distinction, I see little cause for alarm.

Thank you for your patience and most stimulating questions and
observations.

Jens