Momentary-Durative

[Vidhyanath Rao]

Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

> Spanish distinguishes them [resultative and passive]
> by resorting to

> estar --a "momentary" verb--
> [actually a verb indicating condition] for resultant conditions--

> and ser--a "durative" verb
> [actually a verb indicating  characteristics]
> for passive constructions.

I don't know much Spanish, but I ought to have remembered this for I have
been told about this before.

I find something curious about your glosses. Resultatives, as indicating a
state of indefinite duration, ought to be duratives, though examples of
languages which use `go', `come', `finish' to form resultatives are
mentioned in ``The evolution of grammar''. How old is the use of `estar'?.