Re: Anti-telic?

Andreas Johansson wrote:
 > Quoting Sai Emrys <sai@...>:
[snip]
 >>And even 'big crunch' ways, AFAIK it's just that we have no way to
 >>know what'd happen afterwards (ditto pre-'big bang'). Might be
 >>cyclical on a grand scale.
 >
 > I'll just add that in orthodox theory, there *is* no before the big
bang, and
 > similarly no after the big crunch. Time itself starts and ends in
these points.

That is my understanding of the theory also. But I have heard
speculations like Sai's as well. But, as I have already written, even
the 'cyclic on the grand scale' still limits time and space in _our_
universe to one cycle.
================================
Eldin Raigmore wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:58:51 +0100, And Rosta <and.rosta@...> wrote:
>
>
>>'Anti-telic' sounds very much like 'eternal',
It does, doesn't it? Which was the point I was asking about. Tho my
_question_ was strangely interpreted as my foisting my belief system
onto a grammar. Bizarre.

>>which could obviously be
>>used for 'platonic' statements like "2+2=4" or "a square has four sides",
Tho strictly that assumes a Platonic view of reality_   :)

>>but could conceivably be used for things like "I am/was born in 1967"
>>or "I am father of Edwin", both of which statements arguably will be true
>>forever and slighly more arguably have been true forever.
>
> How are those remarks related to the term "gnomic" and its meaning?
Good question! "I was born in 1967" arguably remains true while the
earth lasts. In a sense, I guess, it would remain true even if the sun
becomes a red giant and swallows up the earth.

> "Gnomic" applies to general background knowledge that the speaker knows,
Gnomic:
"Denoting an aspectual form expressing a general or universal truth."
[Trask]

But telic and atelic is about _goals_, that's what the words mean (Gr.
telos = goal). I assumed that by introducing a third term 'anti-telic'
Sai was suggesting an action/event/circumstance that could specifically
have no goal that would ever bring it to a conclusion. But what has "
expressing a general or universal truth" got to do with the presence or
absence of a goal?

I'm confused.

We have aspectual labels 'telic', 'atelic' & we have 'gnomic'. So what
is exactly is 'anti-telic'? (NB - a genuine question!)

[snip]

>
>
>>Or, more
>>poetrically, "X and Y are soulmates". Or statements about other
>>worlds: "Sherlock Holmes is a detective". Or even "Achilles kills Hector"
>>(with tense in our world, not the Iliad's).
The last example is surely the narrative use of the present, as tho the
action is happening before the listener's eyes, so to speak. It's
ancient and found in many (all?) cultures. It does not seem to me
relevant to this argument, especially as 'killing' must be telic  :)

>>I'm sure(ish) I've read somewhere of an 'eternal' tense/aspect in some
>>natlang, but Comrie's _Tense_ and _Aspect_ do not list 'eternal' in the
>>index.
Of 'gnomic' Trask writes: "Very few languages seem to have a distinctive
form exclusively for expressing gnomic aspect; most often, as in
English, the morphologically simplest form of verbs and sentences are used."

It does imply that a few languages may have specifically gnomic forms.
But did Sai mean simply 'gnomic' when he said 'anti-telic'? I do not
know. If he did, then I've been "boxing shadows" again   ;)

>
> "Aorist" comes from words meaning "without boundary" or "without horizon".
> Usually we see "aoristIC" used to mean "perfectIVE"; but aren't gnomic
> clauses often aorist or aoristic? The Wikipedia article lists three "gnomic
> tenses"; "gnomic present", "gnomic future", and "gnomic aorist".  (Which
> means they think "aorist" is a "tense", whereas "aoristIC" is an "aspect".)
Yes, "aorist" is a confusing term and I agree with Comrie that in
linguistic discussion it is best avoided. "Aorist(ic)" does mean
'perfective' _aspect_ when we are speaking of the aorist subjunctive of
modern & ancient Greek, and of the aorist optative, aorist imperative,
aorist infinitive & aorist participle of ancient Greek. But when we
speak of the 'aorist indicative tense' of Greek (ancient or modern) we
mean the past perfective tense.

When 'aorist' is used in the description of any other language it
appears to mean just about any verbal feature the describer chooses!

In ancient Greek, the most common tense used for gnomic statements was
the present indicative. But the aorist indicative was also used - known
as the 'gnomic aorist' - but is normally translated into a simple
English present. There are some rare instances of the perfect indicative
(perfect aspect, present time) being used gnomically. I am not sure
where the Wikipedia writer got the 'future' from; I am not aware of the
future indicative being used this way in Greek.

[snip]
>>(1) Even in a worldview in which time is bounded, 'eternal' could be
>>defined as 'coextensive with all time'.
>
> Good point.
It could be, but that is not the way it is understood in some
philosophic and religious systems. But 'anti-telic', as I understand it,
would only be appropriate if "all time" is limitless, i.e. goes on for
ever, and ever, and ever .........

But even if 'eternal' is so defined as 'coextensive with all time', then
we would still need another term to define the notion of 'not bound by
space or time' even if one thought that such a notion was nonsense. If
the second meaning is "not allowed" then some one is foisting their view
point onto the semantics of a language.

>
>>(2) We can easily conceive of the eternal, so there is no reason why a
>>human language (whether con or nat) cannot have a tense/aspect for it.
But what is meant by 'eternal'? If we mean 'gnomic' then it would seem
that a few natlangs (and probably conlangs) do have such forms, but it
is not common.

> If they don't often speak of it, they are unlikely to _grammaticalize_ it;
> there is unlikely to be _morphology_ for it unless either they speak of it
> often, or the morphology for it is an "accidental side effect" (so to
> speak) of combining morphologies for other tenses and/or aspects of which
> they _do_ often speak.
Quite so.

> Do most peoples frequently speak of the eternal?  Have most peoples
> frequently spoken of the eternal?
No.

Come to that, how many languages actually mark telicity? I read that
Finnish does in that the object is accusative if the verb is telic and
partitive if it is atelic. I do not know how true this is; but if
Finnish does mark telecity, has it ever felt felt the need for
'anti-telic' verbs?

What about other natlangs that mark telicity?


--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
"Ein Kopf, der auf seine eigene Kosten denkt,
wird immer Eingriffe in die Sprache thun."
"A mind that thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language".
J.G. Hamann, 1760

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