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

I forgot to say what I meant by 'multi-polar'.

There are languages that make a more than two way distinction.
[There is an article in "perspectives on aspect and aktionsart",
edited by C. Vetters on this. I don't have the exact details
at hand.] In particular, some distinguish between, in
Vendler's terminology, 'achievements' (punctual) and
'accomplishments' (a telic process + its endpoint, so it has
a duration >and< is 'terminative'). In such cases,
'accomplishments' can occur in 'true presents', but when in
the past, reaching of the endpoint or failure to reach it must
be made by an additional marker, not by leaving out the
marker that turns an 'achievement' into an 'accomplishment'.

The problem with the usual picture of PIE is that the
situation in modern Russian has been turned into a
linguistic universal (or even into a logical necessity),
ignoring the evidence from the other languages.


Nath Rao