Guest guest Posted May 15, 2005 Report Share Posted May 15, 2005 Dear list, I wonder if anyone else has felt in reading epic sanskrit that the imperfect sometimes seems to have what I vaguely recall was called the initiatory sense in ancient greek (don't have a greek grammar here), that is, the signification of action begun and continuing. I do not find this meaning of the imperfect in Kale's grammar or in Thomas Oberlies' nice new grammar of epic sanskrit, so I guess it is not a sense described by the old grammarians, but I sometimes feel that the imperfect in the epics anyway might have this sense. In this verse from the Vanaparvan of the Bharata: bhiimasya paadau kRtvaa tu sva utsaGge tato balaat| paryamardata saMhRSTaa kalyaaNii mRdupaaNinaa|| I feel this as possibly meaning, "she began to rub" instead of just "she rubbed". Phillip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted May 16, 2005 Report Share Posted May 16, 2005 I believe that it is not so much the "imperfect" ending, but the basic meaning of the verb root that gives the durative/progressive sense. The 'initiatory' sense is coming perhaps just from the context, if this is the first time she is doing this action, rather than connected with punaH punaH etc. There would be a natural durative/non-durative distinction between a verb like 'touch' versus 'rub'. There is a whole literature in modern semantics on the types of verbs and how they combine with the semantics of affixes etc. For example, in normal English, the progressive use of 'know' such as 'I am knowing him', does not seem correct, because 'know' refers to the resulting state, rather than the process of arriving at such a state. On the other hand, something like 'I am watching him' seems fine, because the verb 'watch' inherently contains a durative sense. A few bibliographic suggestions in this direction are as follows: 1) "The effects of aspectual class on the temporal structure of discourse," In Linguistics and Philosophy, vol. 9, pp. 37-61, 1986; 2) Vendler, Zeno (1967): Linguistics in Philosophy, Ithaca, Cornell University Press; 3) Kenny, Anthony (1963): Actions, Emotions and Will, Humanities Press; 4) Ryle, Gilbert (1949): The Concept of Mind, London; 5) Comrie, Bernard (1976), Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. I have myself touched on some of these related questions in my article "Justification for Verb Root Suppletition in Sanskrit," in Historische Sprachforschung, Vol. 105 (1992), no. 1, pp. 18-49. Madhav Deshpande INDOLOGY, phillip.ernest@v... wrote: > Dear list, I wonder if anyone else has felt in reading epic sanskrit that > the imperfect sometimes seems to have what I vaguely recall was called the > initiatory sense in ancient greek (don't have a greek grammar here) , that > is, the signification of action > begun and continuing. I do not find this meaning of the imperfect in Kale's > grammar or in Thomas Oberlies' nice new grammar of epic sanskrit, so I guess > it is not a sense described by the old grammarians, but I > sometimes feel that the imperfect in the epics anyway might have this sense. > In this verse from the Vanaparvan of the Bharata: > > bhiimasya paadau kRtvaa tu sva utsaGge tato balaat| > paryamardata saMhRSTaa kalyaaNii mRdupaaNinaa|| > > I feel this as possibly meaning, "she began to rub" instead of just "she > rubbed". > > Phillip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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