Re: Tense and aspect

On Tuesday 29 April 2003 07:59 pm, Estel Telcontar wrote:
> Can anyone suggest a good resource?  Most of what I found on the
> internet was either technical notes about particular syntactic issues
> in particular languages, or very basic definitions, or discussions of
> the English system for second-language learners.  None of these gives
> me a sense of what the possibilities are.
        Well, if you don't already have the Conlanger's Cookbook (aka "Describing
Morphosyntax" by Thomas Paine), the very first thing you should do is go to
your favorite online book seller and order it (the paperback edition is about
$25, and you will never regret it, I promise).
        To give you a sample of what delights you are missing, I will give you a
condensed version from the book. Paine spends several pages describing aspect
in all of its glory, but I'm not going to type out the whole thing. In short,
we have:
1. Perfective: the situation is viewed in its entirety. "He wrote a letter."

2. Imperfective: the situation is viewed as an ongoing process.
"He is writing a letter."

3. Perfect: describes a currently relevant state brought about by the
situation expressed by the verb. "He has come from Aqaba."

4. Pluperfect: combines perfect aspect and tense to shift the deictic center
from "now" to some other point in time. "I had entered a congested zone."

5. Completive: expresses the completion of an event. "She finished working."

6. Inceptive: expresses the starting point of an event: "She began working."

7. Continuative/progressive: implies an ongoing, dynamic process, as opposed
to stative aspect, which implies no change over time. It is distinguished
from habitual aspect, in that the progressive refers to actual events, while
habitual expresses the general truth that some events occur from time to
time. "He is writing letters."

8. Punctual: no internal structure because they occur in an instant of time.
"He sneezed."

9. Iterative: a punctual event takes place several times in succession. "He is
coughing."

10. Habitual: expresses an assertion that a certain type of event regularly
takes place, without implying that such an event is taking place "now." "He
drinks."

Note that the English examples are probably not the best, since English
doesn't strictly delimit aspect. They are there to give you an idea of what's
going on, that's all.
        It's also not necessary to grammatically encode aspect. English and many
other languages link aspect with location. E.g.,
        "I _came_ to see..." (inceptive)
        "He cut _away_ at the log." (imperfective)
        "He drank it _down_." (perfective)
        "I ate _up_ the leftovers." (perfective)
And so on.
        I suppose it might be possible to create even more aspects, but these are the
basics. If there are any others, I would love to hear about them.
        Hope that helps,
        :Peter

--
Oh what a tangled web they weave who try a new word to conceive!

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