From: Kimmo Huovila (kimmo@kaamas.kielikone.fi)
Date: Thu Dec 07 2000 - 08:40:41 EST
Thanks, Randall, for throwing more light on the term neutral.
However, to quibble with terminology, this 'neutral' aspect is not
neutral, since it contrasts with both perfect and imperfective. A
neutral aspect is one that could be either perfect or imperfective (or
whatever aspects one's theory has).
At least this is how I have seen the word neutral used in aspectological
literature.
Stagg seemed to advocate the view that the aorist is aspectually truly
neutral, but even he is not so clear, as he sees himself within the
grammatical tradition, which tended to view the aorist (at least
somewhat) aspectually (though not using the term at the time).
Kimmo
Randall Buth wrote:
> Let me add a couple of points:
> Yes, I agree with Kimmo that the aorist is 'perfective', a general
> linguistic term.
> The so-called 'neutral' aorist seems to be coming from some discussions
> interacting with Porter, where he distinguished 'aorist' from 'perfect'
> aspect, which gives a sort of three-way aspect split 'imperfective',
> 'neutral', 'perfect'. However, I would prefer to see both the aorist and
> perfect as two types of 'perfectives', in the general linguistics
> perspective.
>
> ERRWSO
> Randall buth
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