Difficult Perfective-Imperfective

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Lloyd and IEists:
 ----- Original Message -----
From: <ECOLING at aol.com>
Sent: Monday, September 27, 1999 10:28 PM

Thank you for your thoughtful comment to find a common ground for our
discussion/

[LA]
> Pat, I am not at all sure I understand you,
> or that you are indeed making the distinctions needed.
> It will take a lot of work for me to try again.

> The chief problem is that we have BOTH the
> issue of translation of terminology between us,
> AND the issue of analysis of particular usages.
> I think until we get the terminology issue straightened out
> for spoken languages known from direct evidence,
> currently living ones, it is probably counterproductive
> to bring in anything at all concerning ancient Indo-European
> aorists etc.

> ***

> Can you provide a table of translations?
> There are actually THREE categories which are distinct.

> Pat (you) use
> perfective / imperfective as synonymous with Russian telic / atelic (??)
> and use momentary / durative for the discourse-aspects (??)
> then what do you use for the two of the Aktionsart categories
>      (various, not just two) which are closest to the aspectual categories?

> Comrie, Trask, Anderson use
> and telic/atelic for the Russian categories,
> and perfective / imperfective for what Pat calls momentary / durative.
> punctual (momentary) / durative for two of the Aktionsart categories
>      (there are others like state, process, activity, etc.)

> Is that anywhere close?

> ***

[PR]
Yes, very accurate. To answer your question, since I would prefer to retain
'durative' for a discourse aspect contrasting with 'momentary', I would
retain 'punctual' for the Aktionsart category contrasting, for want of an
easily agreed upon term, with 'non-punctual', what C/T/A would call
'durative'.

The reason: not just selfish insistence of preferred terminology (I
sincerely hope) but because I am firmly convinced that the definition
advanced for 'imperfective/perfective' by Comrie, who wrote to me that it
was not original with him, is defective; and so meaningless as to not be
capable of being applied consistently whereas I believe the essence of
Comrie's definitions are captured by 'momentary' and 'durative'.
> In the meantime (I am not sure this is relevant to our debate):

[LA]
>> While he ate up the bread, I drank (telic, durative).

> This is quite odd, in English, unless my imagination
> is failing this afternoon.  It ought to be

>> While he ate the bread, I drank

> (in other words, telic completive is incompatible with
> what I call imperfective, the background, unless it is iterative or etc.,
> or is expressed as progressive (in English):

[PR]
Two points. The 'up' is just a strengthening of the telic aspect. Actually,
the definite article 'the' would make it a telic completive as it would
usually be interpreted, contrasting with 'While he ate bread, I drank.'
Frankly, I think a part of the problem is the view that telic action cannot
be regarded as having duration; in some languages, this may be true but
English offers us the opportunity to portray a goal-directed activity as
occupying a period of time, providing the opportunity for linking it to a
contemporal action.

Would you have a similar problem with: "While he was eating (up) the bread,
I drank."  ???

[LA]
>> While he was eating up the bread, I drank.

> The second clause can be either perfective or imperfective (my terms).

[PR]
In all the examples I gave, I should have specified that only the first
clause was being analyzed.

[LA]
> The sentence as you gave it

>> While he ate up the bread, I drank (telic, durative).

> tends to force me to an interpretation of contrast, rather than time,
> for the "while", that is, during some time, he ate up the bread,
> but I, by contrast, drank (the entire time, possibly),
> not contained within his eating the bread.

[PR]
While you may not agree with my terminology or rationale, I hope I have made
clear the basis for my analysis.

Now let me ask you a question:

What additional important additions to the superordinate category (discourse
aspect) do you feel Comrie's definition of 'perfective' brings that
'momentary' does not?

Pat

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