Is it of much use?

[Robert Orr]

> Is it just me, or are things becoming more complicated? AM

> More complicated than anyone seems to think so far.

Indeed.  

To start with, there is an implied present (resultative) in, e.g., perfectives such as раскинулось море широко.

One distinction that is often forgotten, and a further complication,  is one made by David Greene for Irish and English:  essential parts of the verbal paradigm / free syntactic constructions, and the transitions,  usually from the latter to the former, e.g., the development of ."gonna" described below.  

See David Greene  “Perfectives and Perfects in Modern Irish”, Ériu 30: 122-141, 1979.

> First, English.  The system that has been described here is rather formal and does not reflect spoken English in either North America or UK.  For decades I have been collecting examples of the actual spoken future tense in English.  The most common future form is "I'm gonna read..."  It is at least potentially contrasted with the less common--and shrinking "I'll read..."  Re the difference, compare "She's gonna have a baby."--She is pregnant--and "She'll have a baby..." (Just to please her mother...)  There are other clear examples.  Before my English colleagues insist this is American, they should goggle "gonna" only from .uk sources.  I first noticed this whole phenomenon reading the Sunday Times while studying in Norway in 1963.  I could go on at length; in fact I have a lecture ready to go:  
"Going, gonna, gone--the disappearing "will" future in English."  Nor does this form gonna have the despised status of "ain't".  I have examples of its use in otherwise high style prose.  Take a yellow pad, make columns for "gonna", "will", "'ll", "going to", and turn on the TV--news, commentary, drama, etc., and start checking off every future you hear.  You will be astounded.

> As for Russian, has anyone mentioned the implied perfect of simple unprefixed verbs in the past tense, e.g., [Sorry about the Latin--too much in a hurry to get this out to paste in Cyrillic] Ty chital Voinu i Mir?
Da, chital.  The speaker wants to know if you read the novel.  The response states that you read the novel.  Not that you read "in it", or some of it, or started it...  If in fact you never finished it, you are sorta fibbing...
There are many more examples possible. 

Maybe "chital" might also imply a sort of cancellation such as expressed in "ja otkryval okno"  (when the window is closed, but it is clear that someone has been opening it), whereby "da, chital" might imply "I did read it, but I've forgotten chunks of it, don't ask me for a book report", whereas "prochital" in isolation might imply "yes, and I remember the contents."   

"If in fact you never finished it, you are sorta fibbing..."

Rather ... You might be, or you might not be - a bit vaguer.

Robert  Orr


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------