Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Nir cohen - Prof. Mat." <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>]

karl,

>>> The question I raise, is there a common terminology, even a common
understanding of the same terms, so that communication can occur? If not, then
confusion reigns. 

of course there exists a common understanding of terms. for example, 
each of the known classifications of eventualities (vendler, comrie, 
smith, and many subsequent writers) uses a slightly different division, but
essentially you 
can translate easily one division system into the other. actually, there 
exist quite a few survey papers in the literature doing just that, which 
i had come across. unfortunately, i do not have the details at hand. maybe 
other
b-listees can help. or you can search the internet, just like i did.
a good point to start is just to google these names, and "eventuality".
you may also google "state, event, achievement, accumulation, semelfactive"
etc etc, as so brilliantly described by our constant joker.   

similar is dependency grammar. some say the clause head is the verb, some say
it is the subject. so, there are basically two big schools of how to disect a
clause. both are useful.

tense and aspect are especially complex concepts, and each of them is
described by many SLIGHTLY different models. rather than reject them all, you
might study them all and then recognize that each of them helps us understand
what tense is and what aspect is.

of course there is communication in the linguistics literature. this does not
mean that they all agree all the time.


nir cohen