Sanskrit Tense & Aspect

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

"Peter &/or Graham" <petegray at btinternet.com> wrote:

>Miguel said of imperfect, aorist, and perfect in Skt and Greek:

>>the three categories can be described
>>conveniently as "aspects", since they are all "past" in terms of
>>tense.

>I wonder if Miguel is bending the meaning of "aspect" beyond its usual
>function here.

Of course.  I was talking about PIE, or at least a portion of it,
an unattested language.

>They would be "aspects" (in its usual meaning) if there
>were something about the way in which the action were done, quite apart from
>the time of them, which distinguished these three forms.

The question isn't *if* there was something distinguishing the
three forms.  Of course there was, or we wouldn't have three
*forms*.  The question is *what* distinguished them.
The imperfect vs. aorist distinction was one of (im)perfective
aspect, that much is clear from the way it is formed (present
stem vs. aorist stem) and the attested uses in Greek.  I'm not
sure if the Greek perfect qualifies as an "aspect" (I guess that
depends on your definition of "aspect").  Would Aktionsart be
better?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam