From: Patrick Ryan
Message: 46788
Date: 2006-12-27
----- Original Message -----From: Richard WordinghamSent: Tuesday, December 26, 2006 2:14 PMSubject: [tied] Re: Ablaut, hi-conjugation, stress alternation, etc--- In cybalist@... s.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.***
It seems wrong to me, also.
I would think 'They are playing . . .' would be more expected.
On the other hand, 'When Peter and Jane are at home, they play with the rabbit.' This would be habitual.
Patrick
***