Momentary-Durative

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Nath and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Vidhyanath Rao <vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Saturday, June 12, 1999 9:41 PM

> Patrick C. Ryan <proto-language at email.msn.com> wrote:

>> Lehmann does not consider C'CV per se perfective: he contrasts an aorist
>> vida{'}t as +perfective, + momentary, and the perfect ve{'}da as
>> +perfective, -momentary.
>> You may or may not agree.

Nath asked:

> Isn't perfective supposed to mean that the duration, if any, of the event is
> being ignored? I did not understand this +perf, -momentary (or +duration)
> business when I first heard it and I still do not.

Pat attempts to answer:

I have the feeling that this is because there are virtually as many
"perfectives" as there are linguists. If one looks at Larry Trask's
grammatical; dictionary, he attempts to make a distinction between "perfect
aspect" and "perfective aspect"; and contrasts the "perfect" (not
"perfective") aspect with the "resultative".

I am not going to re-define any of these terms but I will say that what I
think Lehmann meant :  'expresses an activity that continues/continued/etc.
to its logical conclusion'.

For example: "he is eating up the bread" (he intends to continue the
activity of eating until there is no more of that bread, and
that-bread-eating cannot be continued) ; obviously, by this interpretation
of "perfective", it can occur in all other tenses: "he ate up the bread";
actually, my interpretation of "he ate the bread" would generally coincide
with this last example, contrasting with "he ate bread" or "he is eating
bread"., which leave the question open as to whether there is still bread
left when he ceases the activity.

Pat continued:

>> But to attempt to address the idea behind your question if I understand
>> it, the relative rarity of thematic aorists may be substantially
>> attributable to  the fact that there were two other competing aorists
>> (or equivalents): the root aorists and s-aorists.

Nath commented:

> But s-aorists are generally considered to be a late formation too. So what
> kind of aorists did all the roots with root presents form, before there were
> thematic or s-aorists?

Pat writes:

I cannot answer that question.

Pat wrote previously:

>> Would you agree that there was some difference in meaning between the
>> athematic and thematic aorists? And what might that difference (if any)
>> have been?

Nath responded:

> I am not sure that there was an unified ``aorist'' in PIE. If I have to take
> a position other than ignorance, it will be that the different stem
> formations were not yet fully grammaticalized. To try to find such
> differences of meaning will be as futile as trying to find a pattern in the
> changes in meaning brought about by ``prepositions'' in phrasal verbs in
> English. For example,
> *winedti (>vindati in Sans) must have meant ``is searching out'', *widet
> meant ``found'' while ``woida'' meant ``knows''. It is not clear to me that
> *(e)winedt meant >only< ``was searching out'' and never ``searched out'' (as
> avindat does in Sans). And without such a conclusion, perfective as a
> category does not make sense.

Pat comments:

"Perfection" is in the eye of the beholder.

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN (501) 227-9947; FAX/DATA (501)312-9947 9115 W. 34th St.
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