Odp: [tied] PIE grammar made simple (1)

----- Original Message -----

From: Max Dashu

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, April 27, 2001 4:47 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] PIE grammar made simple (1)

> Back in high school, they taught us that the preterite is perfective, opposed to the imperfect forms. Whassup with this?

The preterite can be both: "I read" (perfective) : "I was reading" (imperfective). "The preterite" is just an alternative name of the past tense, whatever its aspect.

 

What is confusing in accounts of PIE is the use of the word "present" to describe stem types. Grammatical tense is not expressed in that way in PIE -- it is a matter of using special inflectional endings (more about that later). As used in the literature, the term "present" refers to one of the three PIE *aspects*. I prefer to use "durative" instead, reserving the word "present" to refer to the present (or, to be more precise, non-past) tense.

 

Piotr