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hjkei again



Thanks to R. Glenn Wooden and David Mealand for responding to my
question about the conditionals.  Thanks to Philip Graber for
responding to the 'hjkw' question:  his answer prompted another
question.  'hjkw' has a 'perfective' interpretation in the present,
what Fanning 1990 describes as denoting a present state and implying
the action which preceded it (i.e. 'be here' implies 'coming here').
Apparently (according to Graber's examples) the motion is implied
without another motion verb needed in the immediate context.  THis
interpretation of a telic verb is unexpected with imperfective aspect,
both in Greek (cf. Fanning) and in English:  'John was coming' does
NOT imply that John had reached the destination.  So my question is
whether this interpretation is the only one available to 'hjkw' in the
present, or may it mean something similar to 'be [in the process
of] coming'?


Mari Broman Olsen
Northwestern University
Department of Linguistics
2016 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208

molsen@astrid.ling.nwu.edu
molsen@babel.ling.nwu.edu



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