Re[4]: [tied] Fw: Subjunctive

At 4:46:27 PM on Sunday, December 31, 2006, Patrick Ryan
wrote:

> Brian M. Scott:

>> At 11:26:59 AM on Sunday, December 31, 2006, Patrick Ryan
>> wrote:

> [...]

>>> What I cannot believe you do not grasp is that
>>> perfective has to do with the goal of an activity not
>>> its duration; as long as the speaker has a logical goal
>>> in mind, the action can be punctual or durative:

>> *perfective* /p&'fektIv/ n. or adj. A superordinate
>> aspectual category involving a lack of explicit reference
>> to the internal temporal consistency of a situation, and
>> contrasting principally with *imperfective*.

>> *imperfective* /Imp&'fektIv/ n. or adj. A superordinate
>> aspectual category making reference to the internal
>> structure of the activity expressed by the verb, and
>> contrasting with the *perfective*. The imperfective may
>> be subdivided into various more specialized aspectual
>> distinctions, such as *habitual*, *progressive* and
>> *iterative*.

>> (From Larry Trask's _A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in
>> Linguistics_.) Nothing about goals here.

> I have and had great respect for Larry Trask but this
> dictionary was not his finest work.

> "internal temporal consistency of a situation":
> meaningless gobbledegook!

Not at all: one has only to read the definition of
'imperfective' to see that 'consistency' here refers to
structure.

[...]

>>> 'I am consuming the bread'; 'I consume the bread'; 'I
>>> shall consume the bread'

>>> are all perfective.

>> The first is not: it is progressive, and hence
>> imperfective. The second can be habitual (and so
>> imperfective). Only the last is clearly perfective.

> Wrong. 'consume' means 'eat up', a perfective of the
> hermaphroditic 'eat'.

Repetition doesn't make it so. 'Consume' is *likely* to be
used with perfective aspect, but 'I am consuming the bread'
clearly shows that it need not be. You may be willing to
burke the facts to support a pet theory, but I'm not.

> 'When I consume the bread, we go to the store for more.'
> Clearly punctual and perfective.

Clearly irrelevant to 'I am consuming the bread'.

>>> English frequently employs prepositions, just like the
>>> Slavic languages, to indicate aspect: 'eat up' is
>>> perfective, whether durative or punctual.

>> 'The durative aspect is a subdivision of imperfective
>> aspect' (Trask s.v. <durative>).

> Trask is wrong.

'I have already made it clear that I *am* describing "real
current professional usage", while you are clinging to an
outdated view' -- Larry Trask to Patrick Ryan in a 22
September 1999 post to the old IE mailing list.

<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9909&L=INDO-EUROPEAN&P=R19549&I=-3>

It is certainly possible that he was wrong in his judgement,
or that professional usage has changed in the 13 years since
his dictionary was published; until so informed by someone
competent to judge, though, I'll take his word for it.

[...]

>>>>> Unquestionably, the reduplicated perfect supplanted
>>>>> the unreduplicated perfect but this happened to most
>>>>> verbs so any that escaped the process in any given
>>>>> branch is fortuitous and unpredictable.

>>>> Why "unquestionably"?

>>> Because 1 comes before 2; simple before complex. It is
>>> the universe we live in. Sorry about that.

>> Language frequently develops in the other direction.

>> mobile vulgus > mobile > mob
>> bi: cause > because
>> amare habemus > aimerons
>> para + veredus > paraveredus > Pferd

>> And perhaps more directly apposite:

>> *bebu: > *beu: > bjó (3sing. past of ON <búa>)

> I would not be so foolish as to suggest that language
> develops by _only_ by addition; obviously, simplification
> also happens.

But you apparently *are* claiming that one direction is so
obviously the default that (1) it needs no support, and (2)
espousing the opposite view is prima facie evidence of
failure to understand a fundamental aspect of the universe
we live in. This simply isn't so.

Brian