Momentary-Durative

[Vidhyanath Rao]

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

> I have the feeling that this is because there are virtually as many
> "perfectives" as there are linguists.

That makes all discussion intolerably complicated.

> 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) ;

The almost unanimous opinion of linguists is that true presents, and a
priori, progressives, are by definition imperfective. This is supposed to be
the reason why there is no present of the aorist. But this won't apply
anymore with the above definition, as your example illustrates. So, why is
there no present of aorist?

petegray <petegray at btinternet.com> wrote:

> It is probable that the root aorist formation (but not of course the
> meaning) existed before the tense system arose - and therefore before the
> present tenses.   So your question is back to front.

Does this mean present tense arose only after the aorist formations,
including thematic and sigmatic, became established?
If so, why is the latter formation, the present, use the bare root in even
one case?

> Secondly, we are talking of a system in the process of developing.   So we
> may not expect that every present formation had an aorist, or even vice
> versa.

The original context of my question was the usual equation present stem =
imperfective, aorist stem = perfective. If not every present formation had
an aorist, this equation becomes problematic.

> Besides, most so-called "root" presents have an -e- vowel, which
> would distinguish them at least from thematic aorists, which have zero
> grade.

Why the ``so-called'' and quotation marks around root? What is the history
of the forms as you see it?

Anyway, I don't get what this has to do with the aspectual meaning of
present and aorist.

> Sanskrit, in as much as it shows it all, has
> the aorist playing the role of the Greek perfect.

In what way?

Regards
-Nath