From: Vincent DeCaen (decaen@epas.utoronto.ca)
Date: Mon Oct 23 1995 - 10:10:39 EDT
> > TENSE in Greek for the Indicative Mode:
> I am not reproducing the table.
> B. COMRIE, Aspect. An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect
> and Related Problems. Cambridge (England): University Press, 1976, p.
> 131, sees the relations between tense and aspect in Ancient Greek as
> follows:
> "Aorist [+PERFECTIVE, +PAST, -FUTURE]
> Imperfect [-PERFECTIVE, +PAST, -FUTURE]
> Present [-PERFECTIVE, -PAST, -FUTURE]
> Future [ -PAST, +FUTURE]"
does anyone not see the glaring asymmetries of this chart?? you've got
a third feature in complementary distribution with perfective in just
the case of -past. you've also got the redundancies of equipollent
features that Olsen so eloquently argues against. so how about this:
aorist [past, perf]
imperfect [past, ]
present [ ]
future [ perf]
this conceptually clean version is where Olsen should lead. I think
the problem of nonpast perfectives should be immediately clear to a
speaker of Czech. what are your intuitions on the Czech perfective
stem with present endings, Ladislav? cf. Russian "I write" pishu vs
perfective napishu "I write(pf)"
> This table seems to me to be more practical. It can be important to
> use the categories of markedness and unmarkedness, but it seems to me
> there are differences in understanding of "marked" and "unmarked"
> Ladislav Tichy,
> Faculty of Theology,
> Palacky University of
> Olomouc,
> Czech Republic
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Vincent DeCaen decaen@epas.utoronto.ca
Near Eastern Studies, University of Toronto
Religion and Culture, Wilfrid Laurier University
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I really do not know that anything has ever been
more exciting than diagraming sentences.
--Gertrude Stein
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:31 EDT