> Thus to summarize, I am not so convinced that the traditional idea
of
> the stative as a perfect tense is wrong. Would anyone care to
> comment on this, and perhaps offer an explanation as to why the
> traditional idea of the "perfect" has been so thoroughly
rejected? I
> just don't buy Sihler's hypothesis, I still find the traditional
idea
> more believable.
I got closer to understanding this thorny issue when, while writing
assembler code for the old 8080 single-chip CPU, I came across some
hardware specication sheets for it. For each pin or 'leg' (which all
had names) on this chip they had time graphs for the current flowing
through it; either 'low' or 'high', denoting the states '0' and '1'
('false' or 'true', after all it's a binary device). The time graphs
of several named pins would be shown on top of each other so that
one could see the temporal (and causal) sequence they would follow
as a result of the input state (represented by current) of a pin
went from '0' to '1' or vice versa.
Some pins had levels, '0' or '1', which represented states.
Some had spikes: a short transition from '0' to '1' and back, which
represented an event.
Some output pins were 'level triggered': they changed state
according to the level (ie. constant state) of an input pin. Some
were 'edge triggered'; they changed state as a consequence of a
change from '0' to '1' or vice versa (not the constant state) in an
input pin.
In other words:
The graph of 'see' has a number of spikes representing the occasion
where the subject sees the object (I've completely left out a
discussion of these two terms).
The graph of 'know' has levels, and goes from from '0' to '1'
when 'see' has a spike.
The perfect of a verb is a summation (with 'or' instead of '+') over
all past (=impf.) occurences (with respect to a given present). It
has levels (the simple verb might have spikes) and consequently goes
from '0' to '1' when the simple verb has a spike in the past.
So 'know' becomes equivalent to 'have seen'.
Sorry for the sloppy notation. A mathematician could do it much
nicer, but then even less people would understand it (I think).
Torsten