Re: Some interesting stuff...

At 1:10 pm -0400 19/4/01, David Peterson wrote:
[snip]
>    Anyway, the other thing was George Lakoff claimed, in one fell swoop,
>that a lot had been written about the nature of aspect, but that absolutely
>everyone else was wrong, and that he found the one and only correct origin of
>aspect,
Umm - I'm always rather skeptical when someone makes that sort of claim.
Everyone's out of step except me  ;)

>and it's a diagram as follows.
>            -------Iterative---------
>Ready-----Start-----Process-----Finish-----Result
>  -                               -       -
>  -               Interupt  -       - Continue
>Cancel                     Suspend
I understand the Ready-Result axis, but it's not clear to me how the other
aspects (iterative, cancel, interrupt etc) are meant to relate to it.

[snip]
>of his aspect model.  You can't tell me that someone saying "I am ready to
>love you" would not be hilarious.
The Romans had thought of that one: te amaturus sum.

Indeed, Esperanto of course has the 'Ready', 'Process' & 'Result' points on
the Ready-Result axis:
mi estas scribonta [Ready]
mi estas srcibanta [Process]
mi estas scribinta [Result]

...with a fully developed tense system for each aspect.

If we follow Lakoff (and at the moment I need some convincing), we need to
fill in the two gaps, i.e. [Start] and [Finish].

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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