On 2006-12-24 05:57, Patrick Ryan wrote:
> I think a part of the problem we are having is with your
> understanding of what the English equivalent phrase means.
>
> I have no problem believing that Russian perfectives have no
> present; and certainly, proc^itayu is perfective.
>
> But I do have a problem with believing that English 'I shall read'
> is punctual.
>
> Could you furnish a sentence and a context in which it would be
> punctual?
I have no problem understanding English verb forms. What makes
translation difficult is that English does not consistently distinguish
between perfective and imperfective verbs, so <I shall read> is actually
ambiguous and could be translated as <ja proc^itaju> or <ja budu
c^itat>, depending on the situational context. <I shall be reading> is
explicitly imperfective, but the use of the English future progressive
is more restricted than the use of the corresponding imperfective future
in Russian or Polish.
As regards the definition of "punctual", the following quotation from
Don Ringe (2006) may help (he's talking about PIE aspects):
"The perfective stem, traditionally called the aorist, denoted an event
without reference to its internal structure, if any. The event might in
fact have been complex, or repeated, or habitual, or taken a long time
to complete; but by using the aorist the speaker indicated no interest
(or perhaps knowledge of) those details (cf. Comrie 1976). Since the
present tense by definition includes the time of speaking, which imposes
internal structure on the event, the aorist stem could have no present
tense..."
Piotr