"Perfective" definition

[Vidhyanath Rao]

<ECOLING at aol.com> wrote:

> Larry Trask's definition of "perfective",
> which Pat quoted today, is very much on target.

>> Larry, for example, in his dictionary defines "perfective" as "A
>> superordinate aspectual category involving a lack of explicit
>> reference to the internal temporal consistency of a situation",

> Other than not knowing what the "superordinate" means here
> (general, abstract?), "lack of explicit reference to the internal
> temporal consistency of a situation" is very much like the shorter
> "treated as an indivisible unit" which I use.

Larry's definition sounds very much like Comrie's. I don't have Larry's
dictionary at hand, but the above suggests that the imperfective pays
attention to the internal make-up of the situation (as Comrie makes
explicit). But this is questionable (see, for example, Dahl, Tense and
aspect systems, p.76).

There is also another objection. There are languages in which morphemes
denoting aktionsart combine with perfective-imperfective distinction. For
example, in Slave there are prefixes that denote momentary, `continuative'
(explained as directed durative events) etc (in the grammar by Keren Rice
these are called `aspect'). There is a separate set of prefixes that
denote perfective, imperfective or optative (called markers of `modes' by
Rice). These go into different slots. There are more than a dozen slots
which makes it hard to figure out what is going on. But it seems that, for
example, continuative marker and perfective marker can be combined. It
seems strange to say that the perfective marker ignores the internal
structure of the event specified by the continuative marker, while the
imperfective marker pays attention to it.

A simpler example is possible if you will let me use hypothetical
languages: Consider one, with aspect,  in which `shake' is formed with a
morpheme that generally indicates iteration. [I got this idea from a
description of reduplication in Dakota, but it is said not to have tense
or aspect.] `I shook the tree. Apples fell down.' would be expressed using
a perfective. But the action of shaking involves iteration as make
explicit by the form. Same thing might go for `walk' (iterative of
`step'). What should we do in this case?

[BTW, I still don't know the difference between `treat as an indivisible
unit' and `treat as a whole'. In fact I am not sure that that reply
relates to this question, rather than the difference between `is
objectively indivisible' and `is treated as a whole'.]