Talk:Grammatical aspect/Archive 1

message: The difference between the perfective and imperfective aspects cannot be rendered by grammatical means in English. The difference between an imperfective verb in the past tense and a perfective verb in the past tense is definitely not the same as the difference between the past continuous and the past perfect tense. These are just different categories. Probably only a native speaker of a Slavic language who has no deep knowledge of English is likely to be under the illusion that imperfective is continuous. The comparison presented in the section "Serbian example" is in my opinion deeply confusing. The translation of "Ja sam jeo" should be "I ate" and the translation of "Ja sam pojeo" should be  "I ate" as well. I am really sorry, but I am afraid the most part of the section should be deleted, as it spreads a misunderstanding (which is BTW quite common among native speakers of Slavic languages). Boraczek 10:40, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: That’s quite right. In some Slavic languages there are imperfective forms of perfective verbs and vice versa: perfective forms of imperfective verbs, eg. the Old Church Slavonic imperfective verb ěsti (eat), ěmъ has forms in aorist (which is a perfective past tense): ědohъ, ěde, ěde, ědohomъ, ědoste, ědošę, and forms in the imperfect tense: ěděahъ, ěděaše, ěděaše, ěděahomъ, ěděašete, ěděhą. The situation is the same in the modern Bulgarian: jadoh (I’ve already eaten or I ate), jadjah (I was eating at a past moment when something happened or I used to eat). Unfortunately, in most of the modern Slavic languages the aorist and imperfect are extinct tenses.--Harry 17:36, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Serbian example 

message: It's been some time since I had much to do with theory of aspect, but I'll have a go.
Wytukaze, you say:
"I went to the store." is indeed in the simple past, but you [Alexander] state "Completion is implied but not required"; I cannot think of a single example in the simple past where an action has not been completed. Therefore, this example, to me, is acceptable for its intended purpose, as it would appear that the simple past tense in English incorporates a perfective aspect.
But no. Sure, "I went to the store", devoid of context, is most naturally taken as perfective (assuming the propriety of that category, for English – which I for one do, by the way). That is characteristic of simple past tenses (of non-stative verbs) in English. But how about "I walked my dog as I went to the store"? Or consider this: "I was walking my dog as I went to the store". Even without further context, our sentence (or clause) as it is embedded in these might best be taken as imperfective; and as such it is only slightly less idiomatic English than this more clearly imperfective version: "I walked [OR: I was walking] my dog as I was going to the store".
But "I went to the store" may be judged to involve other aspects beyond perfective and imperfective, depending on context (as someone else suggests above): "In those days I went to the store whenever I wanted to." The aspect (at least the dominant aspect, if there are more than one) is habitual, is it not?
In any case, it may not be safe to generalise from the sentence in question (partly because it involves a "going" verb, and these can be tricky). How about this one: "He ate the cake"? Plainly, or invariably, perfective? Certainly not. Consider some context: "As he ate the cake he began to choke, and fell into a coma." If "he ate the cake" were perfective here, we could infer that he finished eating the cake; that doesn't seem right, though the containing sentence is as idiomatic as: "As he was eating the cake he began to choke,...".
Moving along, I note that Boraczek writes:
The difference between an imperfective verb in the past tense and a perfective verb in the past tense is definitely not the same as the difference between the past continuous and the past perfect tense.
I agree entirely. It's just that certain forms in English are usually associated with certain aspects; but they do not necessaraly or invariably mark those aspects, at least not with anything approaching the very definite Slavic sort of marking (or the Hungarian, etc., for that matter). But Boraczek also writes:
The difference between the perfective and imperfective aspects cannot be rendered by grammatical means in English.
Here I'd have to ask what Boraczek means by "grammatical means". To use the example of Serbian imperfective piti (to drink), it has the corresponding perfective popiti. But doesn't English have such a pair also? I would translate popiti as to drink up, and I would say that this "up" is a grammatical element as much as the "po" prefix in popiti. It would be possible to construct cases in which to drink up is used imperfectively, but these would be rather stretched – certainly more stretched than my earlier examples. I'll try just one, like the earlier ones: "As she eagerly drank up the last of the vodka, Natasha was shot from behind."
In short, there is aspect-marking in English, and at least some of it might qualify as "grammatical"; but it is rarely very definite, and appears always to be vulnerable to subversion. Despite these qualifications, English aspect-marking is well worth recognising for what it is.
Now, I might be mistaken or muddled in the opinions I express above. (And then I would love to be shown how I am mistaken.) Even if I am mistaken, I think the article needs considerable clarifying work – and some more general copy-editing, which I may well attempt. --Noetica 07:18, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for your comments, Noetica. By "using grammatical means" I meant expressing semantic differences with formal grammatical categories, such as tense, voice, etc. I am not a native speaker of English, but I will rely on your proposition that "to drink up" has the same meaning as "popiti". I'd say that "to drink up" is an example of expressing semantic aspect by lexical means, because 1) a limited set of English verbs have similar corresponding perfective verbs; 2) the "up" element often has another function than marking perfective aspect ("to give" - "to give up"); 3) most English verbs can be used both perfectively and imperfectively ("I drank", "I gave"). This makes me think of "to drink" and "to drink up" as two different lexemes rather than two related grammatical forms. However, I am not an expert on the English language and maybe your interpretation is better. What I wanted to make clear was that it is not possible to explain the difference between imperfective and perfective by mere inflection of an English verb. Best regards. Boraczek 20:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thank you, Boraczek. Yes, I myself have reservations about how "popiti" and "to drink up" may properly be said to differ (in the ways relevant to the present discussion). Perhaps the lexical and the grammatical are themselves not such sharply differentiated categories as we normally assume. By the way, should we say even of Serbian that it marks "the difference between imperfective and perfective by mere inflection", any more than English does? Only if adding "po" is taken to be inflecting "piti", I'd have thought. Anyway, the article is very useful as it stands, and I'm sure we and others will find incremental improvements in good time, to help it on its way. Regards to you. --Noetica 22:03, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I find your remarks very astute. Personally, I do not interpret the difference between "piti" and "popiti" in terms of inflection. Some linguists do, but my view is different. I think there is a formal analogy between adding "po-" in Serbian and adding "- out" in English. My previous comment was not clear on this, sorry. Best regards. Boraczek 19:16, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I appreciate your remarks, too, Boraczek. This area continues to interest me. My preliminary judgement is that much theorising about aspect in English is unduly bound to traditional categories, and that this stands in the way of theoretical efficiency, clarity, and robustness. I have the same attitude to traditional ways of dealing with voice (active, middle, and passive) in English, along with the related matter of transitivity. New theoretical brooms sweep cleaner! I hope we will both continue to monitor things here, and have more to say later. "Original research" is prohibited in Wikipedia, but there must be recent published theory that we could look out for (though alas, I am out of touch with mainstream theory in this area). Best wishes to you. --Noetica 21:09, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Aha, similar issues surfaced some time ago at Talk:Grammatical tense and it was decided to go for a rewrite from scratch. At Grammatical tense/multilingual sources we have started to collect data and to draft a better article; the thought-out opinions of both of you would be much appreciated! You two might also be interested in the Linguistics section of Wikiproject Countering Systemic Bias. Issues like this, like Noetica remarks, often have to do with the use of traditional (Latin-inspired) terminology. The Linguistics section of the CSB project aims at a more universal and modern approach in Wikipedia's linguistic articles.  — mark ✎ 13:33, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Mark, while I agree that Latin categories in particular have hobbled English grammatical theory, I myself was referring to more native traditional categories! Take the so-called progressive, as an aspect, for example. The association of this term with the English tenses that use participial forms in "-ing" obscures the fact that both simple forms and "-ing" forms often involve imperfective aspect (as I discuss above), or indeed perfective aspect. The same sort of revision that we would do to free ourselves from English-as-Latin is needed to free us from English-as-"English", so to put it. For me, this is most evident when we look at voice in English. --Noetica 22:03, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: I must say, I'm impressed with your analysis here. You are quite correct in saying that with further clarification, the same phrase can switch to a quite different aspect. I was referring specifically to the unclarified simple past phrase, or others of similar construction, when I stated that the simple past tense incorporates a perfective aspect. I think this highlights the compound nature of many English 'inflections' (for want of a better word), wherein a tense, mood, aspect (or such semantic subtleties as an implied insult, for that matter: "I like you", "I liked you" as a very simple example) can be added simply by using a traditional tense marker. English in many ways relies on the listener's intuition, rather than plain speech, perhaps ironic in light of the huge amount of English words. I digress. Your comments on additionally clarified sentences are quite valid, of course, and I think this calls for a complex discussion of these subtle linguistic changes in their own section in the main article, rather than the current list we have now. (A list is a much easier thing to read, mind.) I'm hardly qualified to tackle this all by myself, but I would be more than willing to input my thoughts. --Wytukaze 08:15, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Some observations on comments here

message: The English language does have a frequentative, even if it isn't productive anymore (-le and -er endings, e.g. crackle, patter). Do not revert it to "I go to school a lot". 
That is not a frequentative at all, and cannot be translated as such in languages where the frequentative is productive. (E.g. Finnish "Käyskentelen kouluun" means "I walk to the school leisurely", not "go to school a lot".) In summary, you'll have to know a language, which uses the respective aspect, before you edit. --Vuo 15:37, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Know what you're doing with the English translations

message: In english there are two quite different aspects.  One epresses relation between times. "I have eaten" is something that happened in the past but is relevant now and could be redered as "I am not hungry."  Then there is the difference between completed and continuous as in "I ate" and "I was eating"
and just to be confusing the habitual in english is often expresed by the simple past: "I ate every day".
In SerboCroat only the continuous v completed distinction is expressed.  Hence "jeo sam" v "pojeo sam" where "jeo sam" means both "I was eating" and the habitual "I ate" in the sense of "I ate every day" while "pojeo sam" means "I ate" but in the sense "I ate once".
(Okay, Okay, I know you can say "pojeo sam bio" "I had eaten" but people tell me it is so archaic that to say something like that labels you as a  pretentious git.)
Because "perfect" is used for Present perfect etc some people use perfective/imperfective solely to mark the distiction between completed and continuous.
I think that is a useful distiction but here perfect and perfective are used interchangebly.  I think that's a mistake.
Dejvid 16:48, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: perfective v perfect

message: The discussion above shows that formal aspects and semantic Aktionarten are two different things. I suggest to remove the chapter entitled like this comment. It appears that drawing a distinction between the two things are very useful in general and comparative linguistics. I fully agree with Benwing that "in general, it does not make sense to try and distinguish "aspects" in English or Slavic that have no formal expression". --Grzegorj 07:34, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Aspect and Actionsart

message: I have just found 9 examples how to translate Polish imperfective and perfective verbs into English. Because Benwing does not like the example I've cited above, here is the full list (left is imperfective, right - perfective). All Polish examples are Infinitives:
* krzyczeć 'cry' - krzyknąć 'cry out'
* pić 'drink' - wypić 'drink off'
* siadać 'sit' - usiąść 'sit down'
* jeść 'eat' - zjeść 'eat up'  <-- this is the questioned example
* siekać 'chop' - posiekać 'chop up'
* palić 'smoke' - zapalić 'have a smoke' (this is only a special meaning; besides, "palić" = "burn")
* kąpać się 'bath' - wykąpać się 'have a bath'
* pchać 'push' - pchnąć 'give a push'
* śmiać się 'laugh' - zaśmiać się 'give a laugh'
Source: J. Fisiak, M. Lipińska-Grzegorek, T. Zabrocki: An Introductory English-Polish Contrastive Grammar. Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Warszawa 1987 (second edition), p. 117n (the chapter "The English Counterparts of Polish Aspectual Forms")
How anyone can see, it is impossible to find a unique way to make equivalences of Slavic aspects in English. Sometimes the aspectual difference Progressive : Simple is enough (jadłem : zjadłem can be  translated as I was eating : I ate). Sometimes using postpositions can be the right solution. Sometimes periphrastic constructions are better renderings. And sometimes there is no way to fully render the Slavic difference, at all.
--Grzegorj 08:00, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Personally, I don't get this impression. I think I often read sentences like I cried all night long, (but nobody came), which translate into Polish as imperfective. Boraczek 22:04, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Eat vs eat up

message: Finally finished. Please do not blame me for:
* errors in the text - I am not a native English speaker,
* size of the text - I am convinced that it should be so detailed in order to present what Slavic aspect is for real,
* plagiarism :-) - indeed, some parts are similar (not identical) to those on my private website; however because I am their author anyway, I can copy my texts, and I give such a permission to anyone.
Note that Slavic aspects are morphological, not semantic. It would be nice if such a distinction was in all the article. Hence my comparative notice on 4 (and no more) English aspects. Such a view is consistent with the literature (see my other posts in this discussion).
Any corrections and additions are pleased of course!
--Grzegorj 23:57, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Slavic aspects - the second attempt

message: I really do not think that the affairs described in the Finnish chapter had anything to do with telicity (and hardly with aspect, either). See Talk:Telicity.
-- Grzegorj 11:49, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Aspect in Finnish

message: I've removed the following text from the article, as it's not related to the article's stated subject (grammatical aspect), but seems encyclopedic and may find a home somewhere:
:As well as the two basic times of present and past, English has a certain number of auxiliary verbs that are combined with the infinitive to convey a variety of senses, including those normally expressed in other European languages by the future and conditional tenses, such as:
:*capacity: "I can swim."
:*permissiveness: "I may swim."
:*willingness: "I will swim." 
:*futurity: "I will swim" or "I shall swim."
:When combined with these auxiliaries the infinitive form changes to accommodate the same combinations of aspect available for the two genuine tenses, providing English speakers with, among other semantic possibilities, a working future "tense":
:*He can/may/will do (not progressive, not perfect)
:*He can/may/will be doing (progressive, not perfect)
:*He can/may/will have done (not progressive,  perfect)
:*He can/may/will have been doing (progressive, perfect)
:One ought not to derive the impression from the above that auxiliary verbs in English serve only to convey aspect; they additionally, and principally, serve to convey differences in mood, and for that reason they have been referred to as "modals".  Indeed, "can", "will", and "may" all normally express indicative mood, corresponding respectively to the conditional modals "could", "would", and "might".  It should further be noted that, while this correspondence works elegantly in theory, with the obscuring of mood and aspect in English, its gradual extinction of the subjunctive mood, and the further complicating optional usage of the first person "shall" and "should" auxiliaries (to distinguish willingness from futurity), the English system of modals has become quite loose, at times ambiguous, and difficult to formalize so as to reflect common, accepted practice.
Ruakh 05:45, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This sorts best under mood and modality. Kaleissin 16:26, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Text removed from article.