[tied] Re: PIE Punctual and Durative

> >> It's an aspect rather than a tense.
> >
> > No, perfective is an aspect rather than a tense. There is no
> > aorist preterite, aorist present nor aorist future. The aorist
> > is a punctual past.
>
> In PIE grammar, aorist = perfective.

No, in PIE grammar, the aorist is perfective

> It's just a question of traditional terminology, not of any real
> difference between these terms.

There's a categorial difference. 'Aorist' is a noun and denotes a
class of verb forms, 'perfective' is an adjective, and denotes a
semantic property of certain classes of verb forms

> Note that the PIE "present" is also an aspect (= imperfective).

No, the PIE "present" is imperfective.

> A "present" stem with primary endings has a present-tense
> interpretation, but the same stem with secondary meanings and the
> augment is a type of preterite (the "imperfect").

Yes, but 'present stem' /= 'the present'
The present stem with primary endings is the present, and the same
stem with secondary endings and the augment is the imperfect.

> The "aorist indicative" is used with the augment as a perfective
> preterite.

The aorist stem is used with the augment as a perfective preterite.

> The aorist indicative doesn't take on primary endings because
> these imply "present continuous" semantics. But this restriction
> doesn't apply to the aorist subjunctive, which was used when
> speaking of hypothetical or future events, including actions under
> preparation but not fully realised (this what links the perfective
> subjunctive with the imperfective present indicative). Needless to
> say, the aorist imperative had no punctual past semantics either.
>
> Finite verbs in PIE could be stripped of all tense specifications
> (the primary-ending markers as well as the augment), forming
> so-called injunctives, which were tenseless but not aspectless.

'Stripped' is the wrong term. Cf. the English phrase 'point- and
senseless'. This is best understood by remembering that the '-less'
part was once an independent word, governing some case in 'point' and
'sense', instead of seeing it as a case of stripping the first noun of
a suffix. In other words in a string of injunctives following an
aorist indicative, the augment of the latter, when it was an
independent word, governed the string of injunctives following it,
much like a temporal adverb in a first sentence today will set the
timeframe for the following sentences.

> Injunctives could be used when speaking of timeless, general truths,
> or in prohibitions (the aorist injunctive had a "preventive" value
> in such cases, cf. *méh1 gWem-s 'don't move!' = 'stay still!',
> while the present injunctive was "inhibitive", cf. *méh1 gWHen-s
> 'stop striking!').

Side remark: the distinction between affirmative and negative
commands makes computer programming sense too.

> A couple of aorist injunctives probably functioned like plain
> imperatives already in PIE: *dHéh1-s 'put!' and *dóh3-s 'give!'

Ah, nice, there's my subitive stem. Hittite pahsi "protect!" etc
should then have been emendated by adding imperative *-ei/*-i (cf.
Slavic) to that perceived stem. Shouldn't they have vr.ddhi, BTW?


Torsten