--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Sergejus Tarasovas"
<S.Tarasovas@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@>
> wrote:
>
> > Well, I guess Neville Forbes, author of _The Russian Verb_,
> published by Oxford University (1974), is wrong then, for he translates
> proc^itayu as 'I shall read through' on p. 7 of that book.
> >
> > Does not budu c^itat mean 'I shall read'?
>
> I've never studied Russian grammar formally enough to contribute
> something on the puctual/durative vs. perfective/imperfective part of
> the discussion, but as a native speaker I confirm what you said:
> <proc^itáju> has an inherent meaning of completeness ("through"), and
> if one is not sure whether he is going to read something completely or
> not, he will say <poc^itáju> or <búdu c^itát'>.
>
The problem with the perfective/imperfective and punctual/durative
distinctions iin linguistics is the several ways we can choose to
"punctualize" an act that stretches over some time. Let's look at
the chess game world I've used as an example earlier, and the set
of glosses we need to describe a chess match, eg for the purposes
of making a database consisting of matches, described as a sequence
of moves and/or board states (this is the task of database designers;
this is why Sowa in "Conceptual Structures" likens them to
philosopher kings). We need one eventive, born-puctual verb: 'move'.
Now this does not mean that we can't in some system use 'move' as
a durative verb, as in 'is moving', but this is *not* within the
'universe of discourse' of chess matches (but possibly of a
sub-universe dealing with malfunctions of a mechanical chess player
arm). The point here is: punctuality of a verb is not an aspect of
the actual situation designated by a sentence in which the verb
occurs, but of the universe of discourse we have chosen. In this
case we have chosen something that in its actual performance (moving a
chess piece) is sequential, complex and durative, and made it punctual
by ignoring details of its execution.
So this is one way of making a born-punctual, or an ambiguous verb
punctual. But there is another way, which is for a durative verb to
make it designate the state transition to the state it otherwise
designates, ie 'begin to write', also called inceptive. The problem is
that some Russian imperfective/perfective pairs, as usually quoted,
are actually state/inceptive pairs, eg. znat'/uznat' (know/get to
know), videt'/uvidet' (see, catch sight of).
Torsten