Re: Aspect revisited
| From: | Gerald Koenig <jlk@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, November 16, 1998, 11:14 |
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>On Sun, 15 Nov 1998, Gerald Koenig wrote:
Original sentence: "he stopped running". Nik's question: what is the
name for the tense of the end of an action like this.
>
>Hi there, Jerry--
>
>> If it is fair to rephrase it as "he (has/had) stopped (his) running",
>> it would meet the condition for a perfective: the use of a form of
>> "have". If I diagram it in Vector Time Tense it comes out as a
>> perfective if the time of stopping is known or definite (constant, ke
>> or j); and as an imperfect if the time of stopping is unknown
>> (variable, zu) and was allowed to slide along the timeline to finish
>> at an unknown moment. "Imperfect does not connote completeness of
>> action at any specific time"- JBO.
>> It seems like an ambiguous tense.
>
>
>In the English-language-logic that dominates my brain and my conlanging,
>I would say that there's quite a bit of difference between saying "I
>stopped running" and "I have run." In ENGLISH, at any rate, these
>two constructions mean entirely different things and would require
>differentiation as well, perhaps, in a conlang.
I agree it's a stretch to use "had" run for "stopped running" in english,
even though it works in vtt. How about this in english:
he stopped running: equivalent to
he was running, and he stopped.
In that case, running and stopping running are two separate actions,
like driving and putting on the brakes, or coasting to a stop.
The actions are then sequential.
"He stopped." is simple past tense. In English that is imperfect. The
action is completed, but we don't know when. Again I come to the
conclusion that the antithesis of the inceptive is either imperfect or
the perfect, if the inception took place in the past.
I do have tenses
for the inceptive and "completative" as hawksinger I believe called it.
The inceptive occurs at the moment the mu or time cursor contacts the
beginning of the verb. The completative is not exactly symmetrical as
it has to exit the vector by one time-atom for the action to be
complete. The inceptive is called lu ga be (lu equal to BEginning of
vector); there are shorter ways to say this. The completative declares
the mu adjacent to and just exterior to the end of the vector: mu ja po
(mu adjacent to POint). Exterior is default for adjacent.
past be running (just started)
!----------[-*]======>------*------>
lu INCEPTIVE mu the lu is a previous position of mu.
run
(lu ga be)= previous mu equal to beginning of the vector.
was running (just ended), or had just run.
!------------@======>|[-*]--*------->
COMPLEATATIVE lu mu
(lu ja po)= previous mu adjacent to the point of the
vector.
There are much shorter ways to say this, but I'm just using these
diagrams to show the meaning of the tenses. I've been trying to avoid
VTT diagrams here, but I can't help it, it's become the way I think
about matters of tense.
I'll be browsing those new Teonaht pages again pretty soon.
I'll have to respond to the other posts on this thread later,
I'm in a state of sleep inception.
Jerry.