Re: [tied] Re: Ablaut, hi-conjugation, stress alternation, etc

On 2006-12-26 02:41, Patrick Ryan wrote:

> The primary difference between <c^itaju> and <proc^itaju> is that
> the former is imperfective and the latter perfective.

Of course. It terms of aktionsart, the former is durative and habitual,
and the latter punctual. Here Russian differs from English, where the
default value of <I read> is habitual or punctual (depending on the
grammatical context), while the default value of <I'm reading> is durative.

> Somewhere back along the way I stated that <proc^itaju>, which is
> perfective, was translated by an Oxford linguist as "I shall
> read through"

Well, my native language has the same aspectual distinctions as Russian
(<czytam> vs. <przeczytam>), I'm also a linguist, and my Sprachgefühl
tells me that in most contexts "through" is superfluous or misleading.
The Oxford linguist probably wanted to emphasise the completeness of the
action for didactic reasons, but the natural interpretation of English
<I shall read> makes it a perfectly natural translation of <proc^itaju>.

> That is correct whatever you might think. 'read', according to you,
> apparently, may be imperfective or perfective. Even granting that,
> 'read through' must be acknowledged (hopefully, even by you) as an
> _unambiguous_ way of designating a perfective employment of 'read'.

Not always. We Slavs use the perfective verb in sentences like "I read
the first word of the title", or "I read his name aloud", where
"through" is certainly inappropriate. Then, as Brian has already pointed
out, <read through> is by no means unambiguously perfective in English.

>> READ can be regarded as punctual in such sentences as:
>>
>> I'll read your paper and return it with comments.
>> I'll read the book twice to get the most of it.
>> I'll read only the last paragraph of each chapter.

...

> I see in them nothing which would make me conclude that any of the
> readings were punctual. On the contrary, one could substitute 'be
> reading' for 'read' in any of the three without any change of
> meaning, proving that they are not contextually punctual.

The differences are pretty obvious even to a foreign user of English.
The future progressive tense is not used merely as elegant variation for
the simple future: "I'll be reading your paper" conveys a vague promise
rather than an unequivocal declaration of one's future plans.

Piotr