From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 40212
Date: 2005-09-21
----- Original Message -----
From: "nathrao" <nathrao@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 12:48 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: IE thematic presents and the origin of their thematic
vowel
>
> 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
>
***
Patrick:
A certain amount of parochialism is inevitable.
***