ego-boost

[fox]

phone rang half an hour ago.

it was M, a fourth-year student from my typology class last semester (which was cross-listed for undergraduate and graduate credit, which is how we were both in it). nice kid. studying spanish linguistics. she was calling because she's writing a senior thesis; she's had a first draft back from her advisor, and she hopes to hand in a final draft tomorrow, and she's a little stumped by something in one of the articles she's reading ("by the sixteenth century, estar had completely ousted ser from aspectually compound tenses"), and she was hoping i could help her out. see, she's decided i Know Things about linguistics, and will therefore be able to explain what that means and why it matters.

now, i don't speak spanish, and i haven't read the article in question, so i don't have the context -- so all i could do was give my best guess, based on what i think i'd mean if i used the phrase "aspectually compound tenses". but, dude! baby undergrad ran into a concept she didn't understand, and decided, i know! i'll call my friend fox the smart grad student. she can help me!

[falls down]

Comments

[mearagrrl.livejournal.com]

"aspectually compound tenses"? Huh. Do explain.

But eeeeee! So cute! The Smart Fox!

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

in general, of course, a verb's tense places it in time relative to the moment of speech, and its aspect identifies its completeness at the moment of speech. so tenses come in past, present, and future, and aspects come in, for instance, perfect, progressive, and so on.

so what i suggested was that "aspectually compound tenses" would be compound tenses that have something to do with aspect -- what, in english, would be the past participle, for example. so i asked M if it could mean that in spanish, what we think of as compound tenses (which have something to do with aspect) are no longer ever conjugated with ser, but only with estar.

[glasshouseslive.livejournal.com]

it's just a short jump to teaching assistant for undergrad classes, and then...

Professor Fox!

[mearagrrl.livejournal.com]

Hmmmmm. It still doesn't quite mean anything to me, but googling comes up with some interesting stuff, like this:

http://assets.cambridge.org/0521571774/sample/0521571774WS.pdf

or this

http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:kAqRnJwky1oC:www.ling.ed.ac.uk/anonftp/pub/working-papers/proc94/mrobinson.ps+aspectual+compound+spanish&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

but that's not what she's talking about. But it's kind of interesting anyway...

[drglam]

It's a great feeling isn't it? I just love those moments when I've got an undergrad or junior grad student saying "Help me Obi-Sian Kenobi!"