aspect question

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Tatiana Filimonova wrote:

> Doesn't "watching" imply a continuing action?  Something more in line with:
> Я смотрел(а), как она бросает мяч.
> or
> Я смотрел(а), как она бросала мяч.
> or
> Я смотрел(а), как она бросила мяч.
>
> It would depend on whether "she" was throwing the ball repeatedly, or
> just threw it once.

For me, "watch" differs essentially from "see" in that "watch" denotes 
conscious attention directed at the target. Often, that is associated 
with prolonged processes, but not necessarily: "I watched him jump off 
the cliff."

As a nonnative speaker of Russian, I would have been more inclined to 
use смотреть for Prof. Gladney's case, but I was not surprised to see 
видеть in the first response from a Russian. The boundary between the 
two Russian verbs is not precisely the same as the boundary between the 
two English verbs.

As to your solutions, my understanding of the English admits the first 
two possibilities -- the throwing could have happened once or 
repeatedly. Of course, it is illogical to think that the throwing could 
have happened before the watching. ;-) But with a different main verb:

Я узнал(а), как она бросила мяч.

it is quite possible that the throwing preceded the learning by some 
time. A clearer case:

Я только позавчера узнал(а), как Советский Союз распал.

If we substitute смотреть here, the listener/reader can only make sense 
of the sentence by assuming we were watching a recording of the event 
and not the live event itself:

I was just watching the fall of the Soviet Union (on TV) the other day.

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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