Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter_Kirk AT SIL.ORG]

I wonder if Dave and Bryan are working on different definitions of 
perfectivity here. My understanding is based on my knowledge of 
Russian, but also agrees with Bryan's definition.

Dave proposed sentences and wrote:

c) John ate a piece of pie.
d) John ate some pie.

In c, we have a definite end-boundary as you said.  In d, I'm not 
sure we do.  How much pie?  We don't know, hence in a very real 
sense we're not sure where the end-boundary is.  It gets even less 
clear if we add a temporal modifier:

e) John ate some pie while he waited for the party to begin.

The element in these clauses that we want to know about is the 
simple past tense verb "ate."  I would suggest that all 3 clauses 
are "good" English, yet they use the same verb form in very 
different aspectual contexts.  c is clearly perfective, while d is 
ambiguous and e is clearly imperfective.  But we can make d sort 
of perfective if we add the following:

f) John ate some pie and then went back to the dance floor.

Here we have an explicit end-boundary, but it isn't provided by the 
form of "ate," it's provided by the temporal indicator "then" 
introducing the next clause.

PK: In Russian, all four of these would use a perfective verb, but 
perhaps not the same one. There is a well-known distinction between:

g) Ivan prochital gazetu - Ivan read right through the newspaper
h) Ivan pochital gazetu - Ivan read for a bit from the newspaper

Both are perfective, and distinct from

i) Ivan chital gazetu - Ivan was reading the newspaper (imperfective)

But a time clause, whether "this morning" or "while he waited for the 
party to begin", does not affect the perfectivity issue, unless it 
indicates repetitivity e.g. "every morning". In d) the verb form (and 
the word "some" which suggests that some pie remained uneaten) 
suggests to me that there was an end, though we have no information 
about it; in English we would say "John is/was eating a piece of pie" 
if there is no finish. In e) the while clause implies that John 
finished eating before he finished waiting or at the same time; the 
corresponding imperfective situation would be:

j) John was eating a piece of pie when the party began.

I would not say that "some pie" is impossible here, but the meaning of 
"some" is subtly different from in d), e) and f) as there is no 
suggestion here that other pie was left uneaten.

Peter Kirk