'Have you eaten?' and 'Did you eat?'

[John Langran]

This reminds me of a mistake that I made once on arriving home at friends' 
flat in Moscow quite late, when they had already started eating.

I wanted to know if they had had any soup. I asked "Vy c'yeli sup?"
They thought I was asking whether they had eaten it all up and left none for 
me.
Perfective = completion.
Of course I should have asked "Vy yeli sup?"
I have used this as an aspect example ever since.

John Langran
www.ruslan.co.uk

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <pscotto at MTHOLYOKE.EDU>
To: <SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2008 1:02 PM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] 'Have you eaten?' and 'Did you eat?'


> Just quickly: I have often found it helpful to think of the perfective as 
> embedded in an implicit narrative sequence. "[So then] I called home."
>
> Peter Scotto
> Mount Holyoke College
>
> Quoting Ralph Cleminson <Ralph.Cleminson at PORT.AC.UK>:
>
>> In the abstract, I would be inclined to agree: ?? ??????? ?????? = Did
>> you phone home [ever]?, but ?? ????????? ?????? = Have you phoned home
>> [just now]?  However, this is one of those occasions when it all depends
>> on context.  If one is speaking about a specific occasion in the past,
>> then ?? ????????? ?????? is certainly Did you phone home [then]?,
>> whereas if you want to know whether the action has been performed at
>> all, but in the immediate past, then Have you phoned home? is ?? ???????
>> ????? [??????]?  In other words, the perfect illustration of what we
>> always tell our students, that aspect is not the same as tense.
>>
>> But surely the name of the aspect is ??/???????????, not ??/???????????,
>> the latter being only the p.p.p. of ??????????
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> <xmas at UKR.NET> 08/09/08 7:15 PM >>>
>> Dear John,    Can you check you examples?     If I were asked I would
>> translate them quite to the opposite --      ?? ??????? ?????? [Vy
>> zvonili domoj?] (nesovershonny, imperfect, ) =  Did you phone home?
>> ?? ????????? ?????? [Vy pozvonili domoj?] (sovershonny, perfective) =
>> Have you phoned home?    > The distinction between 'Have you eaten?' and
>> 'Did you eat?' is very much alive and well in most varieties > of
>> British English. Indeed, I used to refer to this distinction when
>> teaching the difference between    > imperfective and perfective
>> questions in Russian:
>>
>>> ?? ??????? ?????? [Vy zvonili domoj?] = Have you phoned home?
>>> ?? ????????? ?????? [Vy pozvonili domoj?] = Did you phone home?
>>
>>> John Dunn.
>>
>> With best regards,
>> Maria
>>
>> --
>> Mariya M. Dmytriyeva
>> Fulbright Scholar,
>> California State University, Northridge
>> Linguistics Program, 2007-2009
>>
>>
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