"Perfective" definition

[Vidhyanath Rao]

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

> Traditionally, perfective aspect has had a linguistic definition of "an
> aspect of verbs that expresses a completed action as distinct from a
> continuing or not necessraily completed action" (AHD).

May be it is because I am a mathematician, but I see nothing wrong with
changing definitions as we learn more.

Cross-lingusitic definitions must capture the essence of the usage in
different languages, have a coherent and `objective' definitions. Due to
historical reasons, for any given language, the usuage might a bit wider
or a bit narrower than the definition allows. And, if it is a lot wider or
a lot narrower, we want to assign it to some other category. Occassionally
we will come across cases that are hard to place (how much hair must
fuzzy-wuzzy lose before he stops being fuzzy?). That is price for dealing
with real-life. Just because the definition does not precisely capture the
usage of one language (or one genetic/areal group) we should not abandon
the definition.

> Obviously, his "punctual" is very much like your "treated as an
> indivisible unit", which, according to Larry is only a subdivision
> of the grander perfective

If I understand Lloyd correctly, `treated as an indivisible unit' is same
as `treated as an undivided whole': When the speaker uses the perfective,
he is ignoring that the event may be divisible or even carry a
derivational marker indicating divisiblity. Puncutal is different in that
it is truely indivisible, that is the speaker is not allowed to divide it.
Hence it is typically used in the perfective (but in some languages the
imperfective of puncutal is used to denote habitual and/or generic).

> In fact, I would be interested to know a language which has a category
> "perfective" according to *his* definition but one which does *not*
> conform to the traditional definition of "perfective".

See the long list in Dahl, Tense and Aspect Systems, p.72