Verb catalog - lexical aspect

[cwconrad]

I'm tempted to suggested Essives as [+static] [+telic], just to make things difficult . Your comment about complicatedness was helpful; thanks .

What do you mean by "essive"? In my reading, they seemed to be synonymous with statives. I have also seen things that are both static and telic, though not under the name of "essive." Such a beast works with some definitions of telicity but not others.

On B-Greek, Greek is our bread and butter, and Hebrew, Latin, and linguistic gobbledygook are also relatively common. But participants have widely differing ability to read any of these languages (including obscure jargon).

Be merciful. If you are writing about a topic that mere mortals can grasp, write something mere mortals can read. You are very welcome to write in Greek, Hebrew, Latin, or gobbledygook, but if you do so, provide a translation. Διὸ ὁ λαλῶν γλώσσῃ προσευχέσθω ἵνα διερμηνεύῃ (therefore the one who speaks in a tongue must pray that he may interpret).

[TimNelson]

Sorry. The place I first ran across the whole question of verbal aspect was in a work which also discussed essives, namely, Waltke and O'Connor's work on Hebrew Syntax. My understanding is that, according to the WOC (Waltke/O'Connor) use of the terms, an essive is a temporary state (ie. "Bob is being silly") as opposed to a permanent state (ie. "Bob is silly"). With apologies to Bob too .

[cwconrad]

Sorry. The place I first ran across the whole question of verbal aspect was in a work which also discussed essives, namely, Waltke and O'Connor's work on Hebrew Syntax. My understanding is that, according to the WOC (Waltke/O'Connor) use of the terms, an essive is a temporary state (ie. "Bob is being silly") as opposed to a permanent state (ie. "Bob is silly"). With apologies to Bob too .

I'm still at sea; I googled it and find only that it's a noun case in Finnish and Hungarian. What you say makes it sound like it derives from Latin esse "be", but for all I know, it could just as well derive from the German verb essen "eat." My ad nauseam lament about the Linguistic Tower of Babel is sounding another siren call.

[TimNelson]

Oh, dear, I'm exceptionally stupid. What I meant to say is:

Stative = permanent state (ie. "Bob is silly", implying that Bob is always, permanently silly, and can always be considered as such)
Essive = Temporary state (ie. "Bob is being silly", implying that, while Bob is silly at the moment, he may (and in this case, probably will) stop being silly at some point, and be serious.

Waltke and O'Connor make this distinction (section 22.3, p. 367ff), but upon looking this up, I note that they simply refer to them as two kinds of statives. If there's a more common word for "essive", I'm happy to hear it. For those who don't have it, http://books.google.com.au/books?id=jZl ... ve&f=false may be helpful (or may not).

Wiktionary acknowledges my use of the word as "rare", and confirms your guess as to the origin being "esse". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/essive

I also ran across an article with "Greek" and "essive" in the title, but it seems to be mainly about Indo-European, and didn't seem to explain what Essives were. http://lingu.glossa.dk/essive.html

So (assuming I've managed to make myself clear this time), is there another word I should be using?

[MAubrey]

So (assuming I've managed to make myself clear this time), is there another word I should be using?

I think you could get away with simply saying, "permanent state," and, "temporary state."

[cwconrad]

So (assuming I've managed to make myself clear this time), is there another word I should be using?

I think you could get away with simply saying, "permanent state," and, "temporary state."

Yes, that would have been clear. After rooting around some more myself, I find "Fientive" also commonly used along with "Essive"; I think that I might have guessed the meaning of "Fientive" much sooner.

It really is important in these discussions to clarify the meanings of words that most of us have never seen before and that are being used in a sense at which we lesser mortals have to make the best educated guess we can.

[RandallButh]

I think you could get away with simply saying, "permanent state," and, "temporary state."

Nice, Mike.

Imagine, transparent linguistic terms.

Next thing you know you'll replace accomplishment and achievement,
or was that achievement and accomplishment? We've got to keep these apart as you are aware.

Let's see-- one is a process with a goal,
and the other is the complete realization of a goal.
Like 'looking for a ball' and 'finding a ball'.

Wow, we're going to have to be merciful on these.

[MAubrey]

I think you could get away with simply saying, "permanent state," and, "temporary state."

Nice, Mike.

Imagine, transparent linguistic terms.

Next thing you know you'll replace accomplishment and achievement,
or was that achievement and accomplishment? We've got to keep these apart as you are aware.

Let's see-- one is a process with a goal,
and the other is the complete realization of a goal.
Like 'looking for a ball' and 'finding a ball'.

Wow, we're going to have to be merciful on these.

I see what you did there. Very clever, Randall.

But I think I'd take 'achievement' and accomplishment' over Latin-because-I-can terms any day.

[RandallButh]

Yes, 'accomplishment' and 'achievement' are better than Latin,
but they are also synonyms is plain-vanilla English, so something better would help people keep them apart and not need to redefine/reexplain them everytime a discussion on them arises.

Maybe one could be called an 'incremental goal' (search for) and the other an 'actualization' (find).

[MAubrey]

Yes, 'accomplishment' and 'achievement' are better than Latin,
but they are also synonyms is plain-vanilla English, so something better would help people keep them apart and not need to redefine/reexplain them everytime a discussion on them arises.

Maybe one could be called an 'incremental goal' (search for) and the other an 'actualization' (find).

That's a fair point.

Here's my experience:

When I taught the categories in class, however, I found that students don't have a problem remembering them precisely because they're synonymous. They don't need to be explained every time. If a student asked, "What's an accomplishment?" Answering with, "You tell me," or "What would you guess?" invariably got the right answer. I'd say there's little difference between the terms of plain vanilla English. If the students are willing to actually think through what these words normally mean, they quickly realize that they still mean that now. And then at that point, they're grasped them inductively and it isn't an issue for the rest of the semester.