[tied] Re: IE thematic presents and the origin of their thematic vo

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

> My gut feeling is that the durative/punctual contrast is not
> terribly fundamental in historical terms, [...]
> inherently "present" or "aorist" value of a verb was a
> function of its meaning, so that it tended to be used in
> certain contexts, accompanied by certain adverbs, etc.,
> but didn't have to be specially marked for aspect.

The thing to do is to look for contemporary languages that have
durative vs punctual as a fundamental distinction and study them,
to understand how PIE may have evolved.

Unfortunately, such languages seem to be hard to come by. For
one thing, it is hard to find a language that groups (to use
Vendler's terminology) 'states', 'activities' and 'accomplishments'
together, but does not put generic/habitual in the same group.

Nath Rao