I think lexical aspect is what the grammatical aspect focuses on.
This provides the content, the cave surrounding the nothing (or the
space inside the rock). So, although your definition of imperfective
can't exclude the beginning (I, too, have read Smith quite carefully),
it can provide for it's inclusion. THe choice of aspect is
subjective, but the contents of what one might choose is, I would
argue, objective and definable.
So much for my dabbling in philologists analogy. As the old New
Yorker column fillers used to have it: Block that Metaphor!
Best of the weekend to y'all, and longer if the list crashes....
Mari
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Mari Broman Olsen
Research Associate
University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies
3141 A.V. Williams Building
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
(301) 405-6754 FAX: (301) 314-9658
molsen@umiacs.umd.edu
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