In earlier documents I mentioned co-occurrence restrictions that aspectual verbs have, i.e. there are some syntactic patterns or environments that have problems, either they don't occur, or they seem 'strange' to native speakers, or they require some elaborate context to be plausible, or they have some curious illocutionary force or pragmatic inferences that are not readily apparent.

1. Here are some of the issues:
1. Some aspect markers can only occur with transitive verbs.
2. Some have implicature of completion, so will not be followed by a more generic aspect marker (the generic aspect marker being (v)iDu.
3. Or, the implicature of completion can't be cancelled.
4. Some cannot occur with negation in a declarative sentence, but most can occur with negation in an imperative sentence, e.g. vand-iD-aade 'Be sure to not come!' (come-compl-neg-imp).

5. There may be some problems with subject-marking, and co-occurrence problems with person-number-gender (PNG), i.e. some can only occur with a third-person, perhaps even neuter, subject.

 

	Can Occur with All Verbs?	Transitive Only	Can be marked COMPL	With Negation in Declarative S's?	Negative Imperative?	Other Restrictions?
iDu (the 'generic', basic all-purpose completive) Lexical analog: viDu `leave, let'	yes		no	no	yes
koo  (reflexive; self-affective, self-benefactive, etc.) Lex. Analog: koo, LT koL `hold, contain'	?	no	no	no	?
kiTTiru (durative) Lex. Analog: none (but ult. source is koL + iru)	yes		yes	no	no
vayyi  (future utility) Lexical analog: vayyi `keep, store, place'	no	yes	yes	yes	yes
	Can Occur with All Verbs?	Transitive Only	Can be marked COMPL	With Negation in Declarative S's?	Negative Imperative?	Other Restrictions?
taLLu  (riddance) Lexical Analog: taLLu `push'	no	yes	yes	no	yes
pooDu  (malicious intent) Lex. Analog: pooDu `drop, plunk, plop (down)'	?	no	?	?	?
	Can Occur with All Verbs?	Transitive Only	Can be marked COMPL	With Negation in Declarative S's?	Negative Imperative?	Other Restrictions?
poo  (change of state) Lex. Analog: poo `go'	no (states only)	Intrans. only!	maybe	yes	No
tole (impatience, disgust) Lex. Analog: tole `(go to) ruin'	yes (2 forms)		yes	yes
iru  (perfect; stative; epistemic) Lex. Analog: iru `be located'	yes	no	yes	no	yes
aahu  (expected result)  Lex. Analog: aahu `become'	No	No	No	No	No	Past only  3PN Ntr only
Others? kuDu? vaa?

2. In some dialects, other verbs, such as kuDu (derived from the lexical verb kuDu 'give') is also used as a 'benefactive' marker, while in other dialects, it forms compounds with some lexical verbs, such as sollu 'say', i.e. solli-kuDu 'teach' ('say and give'). Some dialects lack the aspectual verb pooDu 'malicious intent' or see it as barely grammaticalized, more of an 'idiomatic usage.' The notion that attitudes or value judgements might be semantically related to aspect may seem at first problematical, but as Johnson and Lakoff show (1980), notions that are originally spatial or deictic, such as the prepositions `up' and `down' are used metaphorically in many languages for positive and negative meanings: things that are `up' are good, and things that are `down' are bad; but we also see that these same prepositions have evolved (probably also via metaphor) into aspectual notions in English, so that `up' as a verbal extender has the meaning `completive' as in `eat up, use up, tie up, burn up' while `down' used with the same or similar verbs has another meaning, perhaps not clearly aspectual: `tie down, shut down, pin down, burn down', etc.

   Similarly in Russian, the preposition u meaning `in proximity to; in the possession of' (u m'en'a est' `I have' (`near-me is') is also used as an aspect marker of completion or inchoativeness: znat' `to know' vs. uznat' `come to know, realize'; snut' `to sleep' vs. usnut' `to fall asleep;' bit' `beat' ubit' `kill, murder.'

   An attempt to schematize these four elements as they semantically characterize the lexical verbs in question is shown in Tables 1 and 2:

   1. by stasis I mean 'lack of motion', 'stability', but this can also imply 'duration' and 'continuity'.

   2. By containment I mean 'holding,' 'containing', 'keeping.'

   3. By deixis I mean 'direction (with regard to speaker)', 'motion', 'pointing or indicating.' (speaker-centered!)

   4. By antipathy is meant 'resentment,' 'attribution of bad motives to s.o.', 'disliking.' or even 'anger.' (Very speaker-centered!)

   
    
   

   Table 1: Lexical Verbs that serve as Sources for the Primarily Aspectual Markers:

   
    
    

   Source Verbs	Stasis	Containment	Deixis	Antipathy
   viDu 'leave' (Note phonolog. reduction, deletion of initial v-)	-	-	+	-
   vaiyi 'put, place'	+	+	-
   kiTTiru (not a lexical verb, but derived from koL + iru Note phonological reduction: usu. past of koL is koND-)	+	+	-	-
   iru 'be (located)'	+	-
   koL 'contain, hold' (Note phonolog. reduction, loss of final L)	+	+,-		+/-
   aahu 'become'	+	-	-
   poo 'go'	-	-	+	(+?)
   vaa 'come' (usu. only LT)	-	+	-

   
    

   Table 2: Lexical Verbs that serve as Sources for the Primarily Attitudinal Aspect Markers:
    

   Source Verbs	Stasis	Containment	Deixis	Antipathy
   taLLu 'push'	-	-	+	-
   pooDu 'drop, plunk'	-	+	+	+
   kuDu 'give'	-	+	+	-
   tole '(go to) ruin'	-	-	+	+

   
    
3. Getting to Aspect from the underlying Semantics of these Verbs.

The crux of the matter here is how do we get from deixis, stasis, antipathy, and containment to aspect, in particular, how does it happen that so many of the aspectual markers contain a notion of perfectiveness (which I also refer to as completive or definite)? Moreover, we have not fully specified what kinds of deixis pertain in the various source verbs, and how these different types get transformed or metaphorized into semantic values of various sorts, that we are calling aspectual? Let us take the easy part first: stasis easily transforms into duration; states of various sorts, or any kind of stative/static element makes sense as a durative or continuous aspect marker. Deixis and containment, however, are more complex. For starters, deixis has to be specified as to whether the motion is away from or toward ego, and whether it is up or down. For convenience, let us use the following conventions:
 
 



Table 3: Motion and Ego:




Direction re: Ego	Symbol	Meaning
Away from Ego:	E	Lateral Exdeixis
Up/away from Ego:	E	Vertical Exdeixis
Down to Ego:	E	Descending Addeixis
Towards Ego:	E	Lateral Addeixis

4. As we have already noted, it is typical in many languages for there to be orientational metaphors such that GOOD IS UP and BAD IS DOWN (Lakoff and Johnson 1980:16) so any verb in Tamil that contains any element of descending deixis, i.e. E, will be valued negatively or antipathetically. Thus tole and pooDu both (as lexical verbs) express notions of descending deixis, and are thus, as aspectual markers, used to express antipathy. Similarly, lateral exdeixis, or motion away from speaker, is part of the meaning of a number of the lexical source verbs, such as vayyi 'put away for safekeeping' and taLLu 'push, shove.' These seem to be a subset of the UP IS GOOD/GOOD IS UP metaphor, i.e. FORESEEABLE FUTURE EVENTS ARE UP (and ahead). Getting things 'put away' for safekeeping, or 'pushed away' and gotten rid of gives Ego control over the future, and these seem to be therefore positively valued when used as aspectual markers. This does not hold for all types of lateral exdeixis, however, since poo, which indicates a change of state and uses the verb poo 'go' as its lexical source, generally is negatively valued, since the changes of state involved may themselves be negatively valued: death, spoilage, breakage, etc. On the other hand, drying (kaanju poo) is usually desirable, as when the expectation is that laundry hung out to dry will dry. Lateral addeixis, or motion toward ego (E), is problematical. Being the opposite of lateral exdeixis, which is positively valued, means logically that it should be negatively valued, but that it is not its meaning in Tamil. The AV vaa, which has its lexical source in the verb vaa 'come' has a meaning of iterative or repetitive continuity. It is not used much in ST, if at all, so perhaps the point is moot. The 'benefactive' AV kuDu, however, based on the lexical verb kuDu 'give' certainly involves E i.e. goods and services flowing towards Ego. It is perhaps worth noting that Lakoff and Johnson do not have a ready metaphor for this kind of time/motion relationship. It is perhaps useful to remember that though some actions can be perceived as invasive, annoying, threatening, etc. as personal space is encroached upon, other approaches or movements into personal space can be pleasant, agreeable, beneficial, if culturally or personally they are so perceived.

   Proceed to more indepth discussion of Tamil aspectual verbs.

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   haroldfs@ccat.sas.upenn.edu, last modified Dec. 1, 2002