Re: Different types of roots; temporary/permanent stative verbs?

On Thu, May 03, 2001 at 07:22:55PM -0700, J Matthew Pearson wrote:
> Eric Christopherson wrote:
>
>
> > Also, I was wondering how different natlangs handle the distinction in
> > stative verbs or adjectives between conditions that are permanent and those
> > that are temporary? I know of <ser> and <estar> in Spanish, but what other
> > ways of dealing with them are there? (Conlang examples would be welcome
> > too.)
> >
> > I'm also wondering about different ways of actually *defining* the
> > difference -- how fleeting does something have to be to be "temporary," and
> > how long-lived to be "permanent"? Of course, there can be some flexibility
> > and irregularity -- in Spanish you say <estar muerto> as if the dead are
> > only temporarily dead :)
>
> The contrast you're referring to is probably best thought of not in terms of the
> length of time for which the property holds (temporary versus permanent), but
> rather in terms of how 'integral' that property is to the individual it is
> predicated of (what semanticists call the "stage-level" versus
> "individual-level" distinction).
[snip]

Thanks for the very good explanation, Matt. Yeah, I think inherent vs.
incidental (or "occasional" maybe?) is more like what I was getting at. So
does anyone else have examples of how their langs distinguish the two?

Also, I've been thinking of punctual vs. durative eventive verbs lately; in
other words, those that basically happen all at once vs. those that take an
amount of time to finish. How do different languages handle that
distinction? I'm especially interested in the use of them with aspects such
as perfect and imperfect, because I've heard that punctual and durative are
examples of aspects, but it seems conceivable to me to use either punctual
or durative along with either perfect or imperfect. So would you call one
category "primary aspect" perhaps, and the other "secondary aspect?"

Now, speaking of aspects, what aspect would you use for "is blue" in "The
sky is blue"? It doesn't seem to me to be meaningful to speak of the sky's
being-blue as either "completed" or "uncompleted." I would also hesitate to
call it habitual, since that seems to me to describe events that happen over
and over, and are completed each time. So, assuming there is
some aspect involved in that sentence to speak of, what would one *call* the
aspect?

(Maybe stative verbs like "is blue" will have a whole different aspect
system.)


--
Eric Christopherson / *Aiworegs Ghristobhorosyo

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