Iterative

[Frans Plank]

> At 14:36 18.08.2003 -0700, Dan I. Slobin wrote:
>
>
>English re- is exceptionally productive, but I don't know if anyone has
>figured out the constraints.

Haj Ross has, a while ago.   I can't remember the reference, but I believe
the title was "Wording Up".
And there is a vast (formal) semantics literature on 'again', 're-', and
such, though typically limiting itself to the L1 of formal semanticists
(German).

Incidentally, to add to the terminological embarrass de richesse, I'm using
PROLONGATIVE as a cover term for (forms or constructions for) the
continuation of a process or state beyond their normal temporal extension,
or also their prolongation through reiteration, with the participants
remaining the same throughout.  So far as I know, PROLONGATIVE is a term
coined for an aspectual form of Navajo by Young & Morgan (The Navajo
Language: A Grammar and Colloquial Dictionary. Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press,1980: 325-326).  However, the semantics of that particular
form for unintentional action or suppressed initiator control ('doing
something excessively or incorrectly and being unable to stop') seems to me
and others to better captured by the term ERRATIVE, commonly used elsewhere
in Athapaskan.

Obviously, there ought to be an ISA -- if, who knows?, there isn't one already.


Frans Plank