On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 2:09 AM, Eric Christopherson <rakko@...> wrote:
> I am wondering if any language has a verb that can be analyzed as both
> stative and punctual. Everything I read on the subject seems to say that
> stative verbs cannot distinguish punctual from durative, because states
> inherently last some amount of time. However, I have thought of a few
> examples that might be punctual statives:
gjâ-zym-byn would express some of this with a punctual
aspect morpheme and the stative verb suffix. But I'm
not sure if an independent analysis would call the {-van}
suffix "stative"; it's used not only for states, but for
nonvolitional or nonagentive processes.
>
> - "The light flashed red" (e.g. it was glowing green, but then momentarily
> turned red and then back to green) - I don't have a problem regarding this
> as really an event rather than a state; but I think it would be cool for a
> language to innovate by taking the stative "to be red" and applying to it
> punctual eventive morphology. How likely is this?
fu-nu-van ðru-bô fu-ĉa.
light-moment-V.STATE red-ADJ light-tool
> - "For a brief moment I felt angry" - Similar to the flashing example.
ĥul-nu-van.
anger-moment-V.STATE
> - "When I glanced at the light, it was red" - This one I'm having a tough
> time with. If you only looked at the light for an instance, you could see
Here I think gzb would mark the "glance" verb
as punctual, but leave the "red" verb unmarked
for aspect.
> - "Tiger Jr. came to the shelter when his owner had too many cats and
> couldn't keep him" - I saw this on the Web today. Clearly the owner's state
> of having too many cats had a duration, but in that sentence is "had too
> many cats" eventive or stative? It's almost like it should say "...
> *because* his owner had too many cats ...".
It seems to be common for languages to use the
same words or structures to mark time-when
and conditions-under-which.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/