[lit-ideas] Self Construction and Aspect Studies

In a message dated 2/25/2009 12:46:24 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Julia's I.B. English exercise has a rubric  that distinguishes an  
excellent paper from a merely good one.   The key, says the blurb, is  
how "well focused the aspect  is."


David Ritchie,
Vice President of Self Construction and Aspect  Studies

-----

This is a good one. I do note how some teachers,  too, show off: Chomsky, 
"Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics". Whenever I  see a professor "of" 
described by more than _one_ thing, I'm taken  aback.

But 'aspect' _is_ an interesting thing for the fortunate among us  who speak 
"eureka" Greek:

And there's nothing wrong with 'vice-presiding'  them, anyway.

aspect. Etym. n. of action f. a-, ad-spicere to look at, f. ad to + specere  
to look.
 
From Ritchie's Vice-Presidential Address,
 
In Pict, but then also in Plato's Attic dialect, we need to focus on  aspect. 
I. e.,  this category of the verb system of which the  function is to express 
action or more generally "being" (we'll turn to  self-construction later on) 
in respect of its inception, duration, or  completion, etcetera. By extension, 
aspect has been also applied to such forms  in other languages, such as, 
surprise-surprise, English!  The earlier term  in Pict grammar was ‘branch’ 
(bruik). Allow me to quote from "An  introductory Pictish grammar": 
 
 
"The aspects have not all the same number of tenses; 
 
the imperfect aspect is used in all the three tenses; 
 
the perfect is employed in the preterit and future, 
 
while the iterative is met with only in the preterit."
 
               (1853), page 86.
End-quote
 
Another one for the philosophically-oriented amongst this delighftul  
audience that gathered today after grabbing a snack and a seat:
 
1884 J. NESTOR-SCHNURMANN Russ. Man. 97 
 
"The variations in form of the same action 
 
are expressed by what is called in Pictology branches or aspects of  the verb.
 
Four branches have been isolated in Pict: 
 
the Indefinite, the Perfect, the Semelfactive.., and the Iterative... 
 
-- end-quote Schnurmann, page 97.
 
I cannot resist to give you an example of Pictish semelfactive:
 
           "I felt  _hot_"
 
-- 
 
As Sapir was well aware, and I quote, 
 
"Aspect is expressed in English by all kinds of idiomatic turns" (Language,  
p. 114) 
 
and I add: some rude, some not so rude. 
 
Perhaps it's Otto Jesperson -- sick! -- who got it right, when he writes in  
that unjustly neglected volume, The Philosophy of Grammar:
 
 
 1924 JESPERSEN Philos. Gram xx. 286 
 
"It is generally assumed that the Aryan languages 
 
had at first no real forms in their verbs for tense-distinctions, 
 
but denoted various aspects, 
 
          a. perfective
 
          b.  imperfective
 
          c. punctual
 
          d/ durative
 
and     e. inceptive."
 
Jesperson was a Danish citizen, and while he _attempted_ at  understanding 
Social Constructions of the Pictish Self -- he _failed_ [End of  Lecture] 
[Silence from he Audience]. _Miserably_."
 
(The President notes the wink, and starts the applause.

Cheers,
 
JL
   
 
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