Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Bryan Rocine" <596547 AT ican.net>]

Perhaps, Andrew, depending on how we define aspect, but perfectivity and
imperfectivity are other matters.  For instance, perfect, as defined by
Bernard Comrie (_Tense_) indicates "the past situation has present
relevance"(p. 24 et. al.).  Perfectivity and imperfectivity, on the other
hand, are differing views of the internal temporal constituency of a
situation.  Perfectivity and imperfectivity are differentiated by how much
of a situation is in view in a sentence.  Perfective presentation shows a
situation as an 'unanalyzable whole' with beginning point, interval, and
stopping point rolled into one.  A twenty-year reign of a king of Judah or
a cough can be presented as an unalyzable whole as well as each other. 
Imperfectivity views something less than the whole of a situation,
generally lacking the endpoints.  E.g. "Harriet was coughing"  combines the
instantaneous nature of a cough with the imperfective(open-at-the-end) view
to give us an iterative sense.

It is unfortunate that we have so many senses of terms such as 'aspect.' 
That's why I have been trying to define terms as I have proceeded in this
thread.  I am pretty much sticking to the terminolgy shared by Comrie,
Carlota Smith, Paul Hopper, T. Givon, and a few others.

Shalom,
Bryan



B. M. Rocine
Associate Pastor
Living Word Church
6101 Court St. Rd.
Syracuse, NY 13208

315-437-6744(w)
315-479-8267(h)

----------
> From: Andrew C Smith <a.c.smith AT juno.com>
> To: 596547 AT ican.net
> Cc: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu; aspect AT ican.net; and AT ican.net;
the AT ican.net; universal AT ican.net; discourse AT ican.net; paradigm AT ican.net
> Subject: aspect
> Date: Tuesday, August 11, 1998 7:02 PM
> 
> English has three aspects:
> 
> [perfect] I have eaten
> [aorist] I ate
> [imperfect] I was eating