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THEORY: Aspect terminology (long)

From:Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 10, 2008, 6:39
Hi, all. The other night I had a huge brainstorm which resulted, the
next day, in me creating a chart of aspects for use in my Dhaqran. It
all seemed so clear and good at the time, but soon the novelty wore
off and I began to have doubts about it.

Part of the discomfort has to do with four aspects: perfective,
perfect, and two "aorists". Here is what I have so far:

Perfective - marks an event as completed
Perfect (or as I initially called it "effective") - marks an event as
completed AND leaving behind a state of relevance
Stative aorist or gnomic aorist - used for timeless truths
Eventive aorist or "pure eventive" - used to describe events pure and
simple, without considering their end points

Now, I'm not sure what to actually call my "perfective". I have seen
various definitions of perfective aspect as referring to a
*completed* event, but I've also seen definitions of it as referring
to a *complete* event, i.e. an event without reference to its end
state or any internal structure. For some reason I seem to believe
that the "complete" reading is the one more popular in linguistics
per se, whereas the "completed" reading is more common in
conlanging... is that true? Anyway, the real question is what I
should call my "perfective".

Second, upon reading up again on perfect vs. perfective aspect, it
sounds like my "eventive aorist" is more like what's conventionally
described as a perfective - i.e. it refers to an event as a whole.
But when I read about (what are conventionally known as) aorists,
they sound like they function very similarly. So I'm also wondering
whether to call my "aorist" aorist or perfective.

As for perfect, I like the name "effective" since it's parallel to
"perfective", but I don't know that it's precedented. (On the other
hand, the perfect aspect is more similar to MY "perfective" than to
conventional "perfectives", so maybe the parallelism is unwarranted.)
I've also seen something called a resultive in Saanich grammar*, so I
thought of using that name, but it doesn't seem to be common (on the
other hand, I see the conlang 'Yemls uses it!)

* http://www.cas.unt.edu/~montler/Saanich/Outline/23.htm#2.3.6.