Re: THEORY: Aspect terminology (long)
| From: | Alex Fink <000024@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, December 12, 2008, 4:21 |
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On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:38:40 -0600, Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>
wrote:
>Hi, all. The other night I had a huge brainstorm which resulted, the
>next day, in me creating a chart of aspects for use in my Dhaqran. It
>all seemed so clear and good at the time, but soon the novelty wore
>off and I began to have doubts about it.
>
>Part of the discomfort has to do with four aspects: perfective,
>perfect, and two "aorists". Here is what I have so far:
>
>Perfective - marks an event as completed
>Perfect (or as I initially called it "effective") - marks an event as
>completed AND leaving behind a state of relevance
>Stative aorist or gnomic aorist - used for timeless truths
>Eventive aorist or "pure eventive" - used to describe events pure and
>simple, without considering their end points
>
>Now, I'm not sure what to actually call my "perfective".
Perhaps I miss something, but does a verbal form referring to "completed
events" not bring in tense meanings as well? I'd call it a past perfective.
I've seen single-word names deployed for the past perfective, in case you
want one (no surprise, it's a common category, at least in IE, and our
terminology grew up describing IE): "preterite", but I've also seen that
used for an aspect-unspecified past; and "aorist", which I'm sure you'll
_love_ as a suggestion.
>I have seen
>various definitions of perfective aspect as referring to a
>*completed* event, but I've also seen definitions of it as referring
>to a *complete* event, i.e. an event without reference to its end
>state or any internal structure. For some reason I seem to believe
>that the "complete" reading is the one more popular in linguistics
>per se, whereas the "completed" reading is more common in
>conlanging... is that true?
I think I've probably seen both definitions and entirely glossed over the
difference, taking "completed actions" as something like 'actions which will
be completed from our temporally-agnostic view', so I couldn't tell you
which was where.
>As for perfect, I like the name "effective" since it's parallel to
>"perfective", but I don't know that it's precedented.
I've never heard of an "effective".
>I've also seen something called a resultive in Saanich grammar*, so I
>thought of using that name, but it doesn't seem to be common (on the
>other hand, I see the conlang 'Yemls uses it!)
When I need a name for this aspect I go for "perfect of result". I'm not
sure I like the word "resultive", for it's too close to "resultative" which
already has a meaning.
Neat, I should take a look at that grammar. (And thank Ghu it doesn't use
the official all-caps Saanich orthography! That thing is just brutal on the
synaesthetic ears.)
Alex
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