Perfective-Imperfective

[Larry Trask]

On Sun, 29 Aug 1999, proto-language wrote:

> Actuallly, I believe the terms momentary and durative are more more
> readily understood than perfective and imperfective.

> Larry, for example, in his dictionary defines "perfective" as "A
> superordinate aspectual category involving a lack of explicit
> reference to the internal temporal consistency of a situation",
> which, I believe is most unhelpful.

But it's accurate. ;-)

Don't believe me?  Here's Bernard Comrie, writing in his book Aspect, p.
12:

	"The term `perfective' contrasts with `imperfective', and
	denotes a situation viewed in its entirety, without regard
	to internal temporal constituency."

> As grammarians of those languages in which the perfective aspect is
> prominent know, the essence of the perfective is "one which desribes an
> action which has been or will be definitely completed" (The Russian Verb,
> Nevill Forbes, Oxford, 1961).

But, among Russianists, the term `perfective' is used in a somewhat
distinctive way to denote a formal distinction which is regularly made
in that language.  I might usefully have noted this in my dictionary,
but unfortunately I wrote the book within a severe length limit, and I
was obliged to omit a number of things I might have preferred to
include.

Anyway, I am not sure that Forbes's characterization of the Russian
perfective is entirely accurate, since it does not match what I have
read elsewhere.  But I'm not entitled to an opinion here.  Maybe
somebody else on the list can comment.

Forbes, and Ryan, appear to be confusing *perfective* aspect with
*completive* aspect -- which is not the same thing.

	perfective = no internal structure
	completive = completion

Of course, a perfective often does denote a completed action, and hence
the confusion, but it need not do so and often does not.  If I write
`Wallace Stevens lived in Hartford', then the form is perfective, but
there is this time no suggestion of completion.  Indeed, it's not even
clear to me what `completion' might denote in this context, since living
in a place is an atelic activity, and completion is surely only relevant
to telic activities.

> Larry writes that the perfective aspect "is chiefly expressed by the
> simple past-tense form",

In *English*, and in the past tense.

> and then offers the example "The hamster climbed up behind the
> bookcase." But he obviously does not realize that the "up" is what,
> in this case, makes the verb of perfective aspect.

No.  This is a misunderstanding.  At most, that `up' indicates
completion, not perfectivity.  `The hamster climbed the curtain' is just
as perfective as `The hamster climbed up the curtain', though you may
feel that the second version implies completeness more strongly than the
first.

> "The hamster (has) climbed up behind the bookcase."
> "The hamster climbs up behind the bookcase."
> "The hamster will climb up behind the bookcase."

> All above are equally "perfective".

> "The hamster (has) climbed behind the bookcase."
> "The hamster climbs behind the bookcase."
> "The hamster climb behind the bookcase."

> All above are equally "imperfective", or would normally be construed so.

No; I can't agree.

> I am sure any of our list-members who command Russian will subscribe
> to this basic division.

But the facts of Russian are rather different from the facts of English,
and both languages are different from other languages.  For linguists,
`perfective' is an aspectual category which may or may not be overtly
marked in a given language, by some means or other.  What Russian does,
or what English does, is interesting, but it is not the alpha and omega
of the issue.

> If Larry and other modern linguists want to obsfuscate the
> traditional meaning of "reflexive (verb)" to cover non-instances of
> the definition "A verb which indicates an action of which the
> subject or agent and the object are identical" (Mario Pei,
> Dictionary of Linguistics, New York, 1954),

Well, if I may be permitted an aside, I think anybody who relies on
Pei's 1954 dictionary as his linguistic bible is in serious trouble.
Pei's dictionary is now woefully outdated, and it wasn't exactly state
of the art when he wrote it: Pei was not a linguist (practitioner of
linguistics), but a polyglot who developed a side line in writing
popular books about linguistics at a time when there weren't many.

In one of his other books, Pei attempted a characterization of the
Japanese noun.  His account is exhaustively divided into four sections,
entitled `Case', `Number', `Article' and `Gender' -- none of which
properties is in fact possessed by the Japanese noun.  Bernard Bloch,
reviewing this book in Language, described it as "an entertaining
collection of miscellaneous observations, many of them true".
This is an unbeatable succinct summary of Pei's linguistic efforts.

> as he seems to, there is little harm done once one is aware of his
> expanded definition but neglecting to identify the *primary*
> characteristic of perfective aspect in a definition is, assuredly,
> fuzzily "modern" but unfortunately, completely beside the point.

No.  While possibly traditional, the confusion between perfective and
completive is harmful and not to be propagated.  Many of our
predecessors also maintained that English nouns have five or six cases,
but they were wrong, and there can be no justification for propagating
their confusion between case-marking and grammatical relations.

> It is also surprising that Larry's definition makes no mention of
> "definiteness".

> "He ate bread" will usually be imperfective; "He ate the bread" will
> usually be perfective.

First, definiteness *per se* forms no part of the definition of
perfectivity.  Second, the difference between these interesting examples
is not one of perfectivity (both are perfective), but once again one of
completion -- not the same thing.

Incidentally, in Early Modern English, there was a systematic
distinction between pairs like `He ate of the bread' (not completive)
and `He ate the bread' (completive).  But both NPs are definite, and
both verb-forms are perfective.

> The problem, of course, is that English grammarians did not
> previously recognize these regular mechanisms in English (and other
> IE languages except Slavic), and they are not a part of everyone's
> cultural background.

Europeean grammarians were generally very slow to recognize the category
of aspect at all, since aspect is not very systematically marked in most
European languages.  Russian is something of an exception, and
Russianists were obliged to get to grips with the distinctive Russian
verbal system.  But it doesn't follow that any given description of
Russian is accurate, or that any given writer's terminology can usefully
be extended to other languages.  Anyway, whatever Forbes might have
written, Slavicists today are very careful to distinguish perfectivity
from completion: see, for example, pp. 18-21 of the Comrie book
mentioned above.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk