More on Verbs

[sartorias]

Lat night superversive came up with the sort of speculation about the linguistic threads of the tapestry of language that made sense to me. Many wouldn't see it, so with permission, here it is up front.

From superversiveI agree with you, Sherwood, and after much noggin-scratching and segashuating, I can even say roughly why

Comments

[faerie_writer]

Well said! :)

[blzblack]

"Show that you are an Artiste and a Stylist and can write in a Picturesque and Arresting Way."

I am believing that I am now being an Artiste and a Stylist!

(I will say, while her post is very well thought out, I'm not sure Creative Writing Profs would get warm and gushy over such a story--unless it's about the only redeeming quality to come out of the entire workshop, i.e. "My gosh! My brain's awaking! Someone is attempting to play with language!")

[sartorias]

Yeah...but the essayist is permitted a modicum of hyperbole!

[jaylake]

the essayist is permitted a modicum of hyperbole!

I had one of those Hyperbole Modicums once. I think it was a 1968, with the soft top. Thing ran like hell, but it looked good.

Nice post. I was so impressed I went off to friend superversive only to discover to my sadness that they weren't an active poster.

[sartorias]

Maybe they can be coaxed out again...though I'd rather see them working on their fiction (which is just as good as you'd expect, from the quality of this post). Meantime, they do pop up here and there with such gems!

[astres]

Brilliant :P

[astres]

oOo and superversive is a fellow Calgarian :P *dances* Small world.

[veejane]

FWIW, aspect is signalled in English via things like auxiliaries -- "was," "had been," "would" -- plus the participle of a verb that can act in any aspect, tense or mood. That's not actually so in all languages, however, and the overuse of progressive aspect is a common language-transfer error for non-native English speakers. Hindi and Urdu both have this issue, which is where the stereotype of the Indian person saying "I am being pleased to meet you" comes from.

Spanish is a language that does have progressive aspect ("yo ando", "yo estoy andando"), but in some cases will signal aorist aspect with a completely different verb rather than with an auxiliary. Many beads of sweat have fallen from seventh-grade brows over the difference between "ser" and "estar." In my own (rather sweaty) seventh-grade class, we memorized lists of situations in which each verb would occur, because we did not have the grammatical expertise to grasp the underlying concept of aspect.

[torrilin]

Huh. I suspect that a lot of Latin's tenses would be more correctly described as tense + aspect. Especially since perfect tense and imperfect tense are so important in Latin...

[starshipcat]

In the Slavic languages, all verbs come in pairs, perfective and imperfective. Sometimes they're distinguished by a prefix or an infix, but sometimes they're completely different verbs.

I studied Russian for four years and Polish for one year, and I can still remember having to keep perfective and imperfective forms straight, and their proper uses. For instance, the perfective has no true present tense, since present tense implies actions going on at the moment, and thus cannot be considered completed actions. The form that's conjugated like the present tense in the imperfective is in fact a future tense, referring to actions performed and completed in a future time.

[superversive]

I haven’t studied any Slavic languages, but that makes a great deal of sense. I can see that must have been the source for a lot of the stuff I’ve read about the reconstruction of PIE verbs. Some verbs are born perfective, and some have perfection thru-thrust upon them.

I’ve been meaning to take up Russian (and a slew of other languages), if I ever get up enough energy to cope with my actual work and have something left over.

[tharain]

Man. I thought I was good with grammar. Your posts and discussions have been laced with so many tenses and names and options that, oy, I'm gobsmacked.

::whimpers::

Just wake me when I've finished.