R.J. Furuli wrote:Dear Karl,
You have not fully grasped what scholars say about aspect.
That is true. My knowledge of “aspect” dates from decades ago, from works written in the 1960s and earlier. At that time, “aspect” was an objective measurement of time, and that only. As a non-professional linguist, I haven’t followed newer redefinitions of the term.
Ken quoted Binnock as saying that in much of linguistic literature, “aspect” has become a “trash bin” into which is thrown all sorts of meaning. When a term means anything, it means nothing. Either we clean out all the trash and crud from that “trash bin” and return it to be a container with a specific meaning, or we coin a neologism for the historic meaning of “aspect” and let the now meaningless modern term sink into well deserved obscurity.
R.J. Furuli wrote:Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976, p. 3 says: "Aspects are different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation." On p. 4 he says: "It is quite possible for the same speaker to refer to the same situation once with the perfective form, then with an imperfective, without in any way being self-contradictory."
These quotes from Comrie can refer to objective measurements of time, just as I was taught.
R.J. Furuli wrote: Aspect is highly subjective. L.J. Brinton,The Development of English Aspectual Systems, 1988, p. 2 says: "In the history of aspect scholarship, the term /aspect/ has been used in diverse ways, and no single definition of the concept has come to be accepted." Different definitions have been given, but I have never seen a scholar say that aspect is an objective property.
Yes you have seen an objective property to “aspect”—“a temporal view” is an objective property.
R.J. Furuli wrote:Neither do the SIL definitions portray aspect as objective properties. The SIL definitions leave much to be desired:
I agree they leave much to be desired.
R.J. Furuli wrote:"Aspect is a grammatical category associated with verbs that expresses a temporal view of the event or state expressed by the verb."
Notice—“temporal”—last I looked, this refers to time. This isn’t a category referring to viewpoints, what can be seen, what is brought into view, angle of view, rather something dealing with objective time.
Yet “a temporal view”—tense is a temporal view, so do you claim that tense is subjective and not objective?
SIL needs to get its act together on this definition, as it is so vague as to be meaningless. However, when looking at examples of aspect given below the gloss, I find objective measures of time.
R.J. Furuli wrote:"Imperfective aspect is an aspect that expresses an event or state, with respect to its internal structure, instead of expressing it as a simple whole."
Seeing as this is a subset of a temporal measure, it makes sense. When it’s taken out of temporal context then it becomes vague.
R.J. Furuli wrote: States do not have any internal structure,
Yes they do, continuous aspect if expressed with a verb.
R.J. Furuli wrote: but any part of a state is similar to the state as a whole. So "state" should be removed from the definition. Removing "state," the definition holds for English, where the participle expresses the imperfective aspect, but not for Hebrew where the imperfective aspect expresses conative and resultative situations, both being external and not internal.
This is what is at the heart of why I started this thread—you have à priori defined Biblical Hebrew as an aspectual language, then put into this “trash bin” of “aspect” the meanings that you want. This confuses rather than communicates.
My question: if we are to study linguistics on a technical level, should we not first define our terms, then analyze the language to see if it fits the patterns? Or should we assume that the terms apply to the language, then redefine the terms to fit the language? Which approach is more likely to lead to communication? To confusion?
R.J. Furuli wrote:Perfective aspect is an aspect that expresses a temporal view of an event or state as a simple whole, apart from the consideration of the internal structure of the time in which it occurs." This definition does not hold for English, where perfect (the perfective aspect) is a point at the end of an event and not the whole of it.
Wrong on two counts.
The English perfect is not the perfective aspect as far as grammar is concerned.
“I have lived in Norway.” refers to the whole event.
“I have worked here for ten years.” can refer to imperfective aspect when referring to an action that is continuous through the present time.
R.J. Furuli wrote:Neither does it hold for Hebrew where the beginning or end (a point and not the whole) can be expressed, and a great part, but not the whole event can also be expressed by the perfective aspect.
Strictly speaking, “aspect” in grammar refers to different and recognizable forms of verbs that carry meaning. Seeing as both Qatal and Yiqtol can carry both perfective and imperfective meanings, there’s no such thing as “perfective aspect” in Biblical Hebrew.
R.J. Furuli wrote:Any definition of aspect that we start with is random and uncertain, and we are forcing this definition upon the language we are studying.
That is true if and only if we insist that the language conjugates for aspect. If, on the other hand, we do not force on the language the presupposition that it must conjugate for aspect, we then are free to take a common, widely understood definition for “aspect” then ask if the language conjugates for that definition—if it doesn’t conjugate for that definition, then we’re free to say that the language doesn’t conjugate for aspect.
To me it seems backwards to insist à priori that a language must conjugate for aspect without making a study first whether it actually does or not.
R.J. Furuli wrote: Therefore, it is much better not to start with a particular definition of aspect, but rather to use the universal parameters event time and reference time and see how the relationship between the two can tell us whether a language is aspectual, and in that case, what the meaning of the aspects are.
I’m sorry, but this sounds like a nonsense statement to me.
If you had taken the same approach to “tense” as you have here to “aspect”, would that not invalidate your dissertation?
Karl W. Randolph.