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

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

> 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.

I would qualify (expand?) this to say that when not referring to the
present, <he reads> is simply ambiguous between habitual, punctual and
durative. In learning-to-read books, it is also ambiguous when
referring to the present, for example: 'Peter and Jane are at home.
They play with the rabbit' with the illustration showing the apples
they picked on the previous page. I suppose it could be a historic
present, but the second sentence just feels wrong to me.

Richard.