Re: [tied] Stative Verbs, or Perfect Tense

On 05-02-25 09:03, P&G wrote:

> Are there any such states? Couldn't all states, with a fertile imagination,
> be seen that way? But that is diffferent from the pattern we see in Greek
> and Latin, where the present meaning is far and away uppermost - e.g.:
> Vixerunt (Cicero's famous one-word speech) = They are dead.
> Fuit Ilium = Troy is no more.
> I quote these from Latin, because the Latin use of the pefect as a past
> tense is widely known, and its use in this sense is less appreciated. In
> Greek it is the only use.

The perfect merged functionally with the preterite tense in Germanic,
but a handful of perfect stems (the so-called preterite-presents) have
retained their present meaning despite occurring with past-tense
inflections, e.g. Old English wa:t '(he) knows' < *woid-e (the
consequence of seeing something [*weid-], cf. Gk. eidon, eidomai : oida).

Piotr