From: Kimmo Huovila (kimmo@kaamas.kielikone.fi)
Date: Tue Dec 19 2000 - 03:22:56 EST
Thanks, Cindy, for clarification. This is what I meant when I said that his view of aspect is too subjective. He calls the aorist perfective. If he says that perfective does not say anything about the situation, if it is completely subjective and related only to grounding and perhaps other text linguistic matters, then here I must part company (this is how I understood his dissertation, please correct me if you think I understood him wrong). I know he is not the first to espouse such a view, but I prefer the denotative view of the meaning of aspect. As a matter of fact, I have not heard of an aspect language where aspect does not regularly affect truth conditions (Vendler's classic illustrates this with English). Why would ancient Greek aspect be different? Would it still be aspect?
I do appreciate his meticulous study, but some of his presuppositions and methodology I find unconvincing.
Kimmo
CWestf5155@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 12/17/2000 8:32:06 PM Mountain Standard Time,
> emory2oo2@hotmail.com writes:
>
> > Moon:
> >
> > You said:
> >
> > -----
> > >I understand your claim. "to love" itself is unbound like uncountable
> > >nouns. But uncountable nouns can be made countable as in "two coffees,
> > >please". Similarly verbs that are lexically open-ended can be made bound
> > >by the aorist coding. It seems to be a nice and systmetic explanation of
> > >aorist aspect.
> > ------
> >
> > Since this is to Kimmo, I thought I would ask some Verbal Aspect questions.
> >
> > Correct my thinking Kimmo:
> >
> > Moon has, to some extent, hit on the weakness of Porter's Verbal Aspect
> > system, namely, LEXICAL ASPECT. The Aorist FORM encodes GRAMMATICAL
> ASPECT,
> > but not LEXICAL ASPECT. Hence, you have a more complex issue here than
> just
> > the Aorist aspect (Perfective Aspect).
>
> Just to clarify, none of this discussion has really articulated Porter's view
> on the aspect of the Aorist. He would say that the use of the aorist is
> making the most general statement possible without elaboration--God loved the
> world--without any information coded in the verb about when it started or
> stopped, or whether it was punctilliar or repeated, or whether it could be
> counted or not.
>
> Cindy Westfall
> PhD Student, Roehampton
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