Difficult Perfective-Imperfective

[ECOLING at aol.com]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Pat Ryan is quite properly indignant that there is such terminological
confusion in the field of Verbal Aspect.
He cites Bernard Comrie, who notes this lack of agreement.

There should perhaps have been some newly created term for
what is meant.
But this solution is not available to us yet in the current problem,
JUST AS we cannot "fix" the problem that what is called "passive"
in the grammar of one language does not match exactly what is called
"passive" in the grammar of some other language.  It is no one's
fault that such is the case, languages differ, and yet we cannot
have an infinite number of distinct terminologies, for they would
then do us no good.  We have to be satisfied with partial overlaps
of reference.  Some grammatical traditions call "passive" what
is more properly called "middle voice".  That is one of the more
extreme cases, and we cannot make it vanish.

I am a firm advocate of not deviating from common sense and
ordinary usage of language.  I even avoid using "phonemic system"
because "system" is sufficient to imply structure, so I normally
use "sound system".  So much for merely one example of my
aversion to elitist perfectionism, or fancier terminology than
is necessary to make clear distinctions.

HOWEVER...

Any solution for perfective / imperfective
is much more difficult than Pat Ryan yet imagines,
because Pat does not distinguish between how a speaker chooses
to regard a situation in the discourse of the moment (what
the universal /typological grammarians call perfective/imperfective)
from how we might characterize a real-world event
(as lasting in time or as compact in time, what the universal/typological
grammarians often call punctual vs. durative, or terms with
similar meanings).  There is a need to distinguish these two
concepts, whatever one calls them.  Pat's proposed "solution"
is to not distinguish them.  That is no solution, it is simply wishing
the problem would go away.  We need BOTH concepts in careful
treatments of the grammar of one and the same language.

THIS DISTINCTION IS CRUCIAL

The fact that this distinction is not often carefully made
(as it has not been made by Pat Ryan) is part of the source for
terminological dilemmas (of the sort Comrie noted).

In a message dated 9/15/99 3:20:32 AM, proto-language at email.msn.com writes:

>I can interpret Comrie's Gothic definition myself: I interpret *his*
>"perfective" to mean: 'a verbal action characterized as a point in time'; and
>*his* "imperfective" to mean: 'a verbal action characterized as points in
>time'.

If one reads "characterized as" in two different meanings,
one gets the two different concepts,
one perfective vs. imperfective (discourse treatment by the speaker),
the other punctual (or momentary) vs. durative
(more lexical, referring to real-world events as types of
what is called "Aktionsart", not to how speakers treat them
in discourse structure in terms of background and foreground).

I agree with Pat Ryan that the terminological situation is most
unfortunate, and wish we had a solution.  Since terms for abstract
concepts which are successful in actual usage almost always grow
from terms for more concrete concepts, and since any term for
the concrete concepts is likely to be like "punctual / momentary" or
like "durative", I believe the current "perfective / imperfective"
arose in the only way such terms can arise and be successful.
That origin probably entailed the kind of confusion we are now
dealing with.

Currently we simply have to say what "perfective / imperfective"
means in universal / typological grammar, where precision is
required, and then specify that the terms are also used with a quite
different sense in the tradition of Russian etc. grammar.
I would not be so bold as to suggest another term instead,
I think that would be even more disruptive.
\I do not have confidence that I could choose a good one.
Something totally unheard-of,
like "frepive" vs. "infrepive", is unlikely to succeed.

I sincerely ask that Pat Ryan begin to make the distinction
which is noted several times above, and has been noted in
quite a number of earlier messages,
before again offering solutions or condemning
the terminological situation which we are all saddled with.
I am glad if Pat liked my wording of this distinction:

>Lloyd expressed it much better, when he said: "It is crucial to carefully keep
>the difference between EVENTS (as they actually are in reality) and ASPECTUAL
>REFERENCES (which reflect how they are conceived by speakers).  Aspectual
>references are partly independent of any real-world nature of events, they are
>partly free choices made by the speaker.

>This is, I believe, the crux of the question, and a point of view completely
>overlooked and misunderstood by Comrie though there may be hope for Larry.

But I am puzzled why Pat thinks Comrie and Trask do not understand it.
I believe they make approximately the same distinction I was expressing.

Pat gives the example of an imperfective (iterative)
"He was sneezing all the way home".
But that is not the most important reason why "sneeze" can be given an
imperfective treatment.
Nor is it because it is predominantly atelic (as Pat correctly notes):

>Although one could think of sneezing as telic (getting
>something out of one's nose by forceful release of air), generally, it would
>be understood as atelic, hence, it must be imperfective.

The "hence, it must be imperfective" does not follow from its being atelic.
In fact, it is most usually treated as a perfective (unless iterative),
if one means "to give a sneeze" rather than "to continue sneezing again and
again".

Rather, "sneeze" can be treated as imperfective
because it can occur in a context like this:

"While John was sneezing, the lights went out."

Since a SINGLE sneeze (not necessarily iterative)
can take a longer time than the lights going out,
the sneezing can be reasonably treated as a background,
having internal parts over time, in relation to
the lights going out which can be treated as the foreground,
without internal temporal structure.

Such cases are not common,
but they are evidence that punctual and perfective are not the same
KINDS of concepts.

Sincerely,
Lloyd Anderson