Continuous vs. Repetitive inflection in ASL

[Victor Brown]

"Kill" _is_ an action. And since it is an action or a verb, the fact that the
meaning of the verb changes the state of the object (i.e. from living to dead)
doesn't really matter when examining -rep vs -cont. The meaning of the verb will
have an affect on the meaning of the sentence yes, but so far I don't see
anything that restricts the use of -rep or -cont on verbs like; KILL, SUSPEND,
ARRIVE, WED(MARRY) vs. KISS, WAIT, LOOK-AT.

Yes, you normally do things like KILL, etc. 'once' in a given time slot. But
they can all be done over and over or for longer than normal. Which is what the
morphemes -rep and -cont are marking and conveying, "time". Granted the meanings
would be "weird" and would require a context.

But then again you can "The cat continues to kill the birds, until they are all
dead. While the monkey continuously looks on"
or " The cat repeatedly killed the newborn birds, despite our efforts to protect
them from the cat".

Is KILL restricted to animate patients (humans and animals)? Or can you KILL
PLANTS, KILL bills in congress?

I've always taken the inability to attach -rep or -cont to an ASL verb to be
based on the "physical" production of a given lexeme. Right? Or are we starting
to say there are Verb Classes that can anc cannot take -rep, -cont and other
inflections?

Later,
Victor

"Karlin, Ben" wrote:

> I try to keep quiet on this list because everyone else knows so much more
> than I do but I have a sense that these sentences would not occur naturally.
> There would need to be a distributive aspect added to indicate a variety of
> victims as it is impossible to kill someone (or something) more than once.
> The only way to KILL-cont would be to kill by degrees, as in torturing
> someone to death and then it would be indicated still as a single movement
> without repetition.
>
> See why I bite my tongue (and fingernails)?
>  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ben Karlin      <KARLIB at mail.dmh.state.mo.us>
> Staff Interpreter for the Deaf, St Louis Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center