Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kimmo Huovila <kimmo.huovila AT helsinki.fi>]

I just write a quick note to clarify my thought, and hopefully answer
Peter and Dave's comments. I also noted Rolf's reply, but I do
not comment on it yet. I just came from a trip and need to have some
sleep before tomorrow. I hope to get back to Rolf's response in a few
days.

The thing that we need to emphasize is that punctuality does not mean
undivisible time in the physical realm. That is how I see your
counter-examples. Punctuality means that _linguistically speaking_ the
event does not have any time. Sure it takes time in the real world, but
a punctual event cannot be predicated of as having time (or if you do,
then you cannot use a punctual expression). In other words,
linguistically speaking it is timeless. The event and its linguistic
coding may differ (in the sense that linguistic categorization is not an
exact representation of reality - linguistic conventions affect how
reality is 'seen').

Peter Kirk wrote:

> But after looking at the definitions you quote, I wonder if there are any
> truly punctual events. Your best example of punctuality, "the cable
> snapped", is not truly punctual. It does have an internal structure: a crack
> opens up in the metal of a the cable and takes a finite time to cross it.
> With an actual metal chain this time is likely to be too quick to be
> consciously discerned, but this is simply because of the material. Indeed,
> physics tells us that no event takes place truly instantaneously, all events
> have duration. We cannot say "the cable snapped for two nanoseconds", but we
> can say "the cable was snapping for two nanoseconds", with the implication
> that the load was then removed so that the snapping process did not
> continue. In the sentence
> 
> "The boy sat on the branch. But he soon realised that the branch was
> snapping, so he jumped off it."
> 
> "snap" is not punctual, and is imperfective. As the material is different,
> the time taken to snap is discernable. In this scenario, probably the branch
> did not snap off completely, but it was damaged. Of course this is
> comparable with the sentence

Here I agree that snapping is not punctual. This is what I call
aspectual polysemy. The verb is either an achievement or an
accomplishment (by Vendlerian categories) - and the context makes it an
accomplishment (durative). The more prototypical aspect for the verb
would probably be punctual.

Fanning analyses these examples as 'climaxes', which is a subcategory of
punctuals. His claim is that not all punctual verbs can have that
capability of receiving a durative interpretation. I think he uses the
word 'prefacing'; the idea is not originally his - I could check the
references if you want to follow this thing up. Just let me know. But I
am not checking it tonight, I am too tired.

> 
> "When the doctor arrived the woman was dying, but he managed to save her
> with a new wonder drug."
> 
> Then how about this one?
> 
> "When we got to the casualty ward the woman was dying. Her heart had just
> stopped, and the doctors were trying to resuscitate her by pounding her
> chest and with electric shocks, but to no avail."
> 
> Is "die" punctual in these contexts? It is certainly imperfective.

Die is not a good verb to study punctuality. I have done some study (not
deep, I think it was a term paper) on the aspectual behavior of that
verb, and it seems that some languages are quite comfortable viewing
dying as a process.

> 
> My conclusion: punctuality is not an absolute (or uncancellable) binary
> category, it is a continuum, so that if we look closely enough any event has
> internal structure.

Linguistic change and novelty, metaphoric or otherwise, make it hard to
make a claim that never, under any circumstances a punctual verb cannot
be seen as durative. However, in many cases it does not seem natural.

Perhaps we could think of punctuality as a continuum. Somewhere in the
middle would be Fanning's climaxes (he did not originate the idea, but
he used it). The extremes would be verbs that are not viewed as punctual
and verbs that always are.

And I agree that if we look closely enough, any event has internal
stucture (well, unless you want to get really philosophical...in a
philosophical level I do not commit myself to that view). But not all
linguistic expressions allow any reference to the event taking time or
to the description of its internal structure.

I hope this clarified something. I wrote this quite fast, so if there
are inconsistencies or strange comments, just ask what I might have
meant :-)

Kimmo