From: "Jud Evans" <Jud-AT-sunrise74.freeserve.co.uk> Subject: heidegger-AT-lists.village. Overtness and Covertness. Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 15:04:18 -0000 Re-invigorated by some recent humourful exchanges, I've been giving more thought to the ubiquitous existential modalities of our own extantal imbuancy and that of the observed essivity of the entities and environment that surrounds us, [which Heidegger confuses as 'Being' ] as mediated by language and perceived by the selfhood. [dasein]. Do all verbs contain an enshelled hidden copula? Are all verbs pregnant with essivity? Why do some verbs require the assistance of a separate 'in your face' overt 'modal processant' ['is' word or 'copula] and others do not? Why does the sentence: "He is running to meet his mother" require a separate overt 'is' - while the sentence which means almost the same thing: "He runs to meet his mother" doesn't appear to have one, though we now understand that it works with its essivity tagged by the hidden, covert, enshellment of the existential modality of the terminal 's'? We can say : "He is running to meet his mother" but not "He is being to meet his mother" Why not? Simply because being is NOT a state, but is conferal of stateness on some other action of a entity. The explanation is that the two sentences have a subtle differences of meaning for whilst: "He is running to meet his mother" means that the action is happening now - at this very minute and is a continuing state, the sentence: "He runs to meet his mother" can be interpreted by the mind in two different ways: (1) He is engaged in the action of running to his mother now. (2) He is engaged in the action of running to his mother now, BUT he is ALSO in the habit of running to his mother sometimes - on different occasions. Back to the question. Why do some verbs require the assistance of a separate 'in your face' overt 'modal processant' [is word or 'copula] and others do not? The reason is that if the 'is' was removed from the sentence:"He is running to meet his mother" then the temporal marker of the present would go with it and it would become temporally ambiguous in the sense that we would be unaware as to whether habituality or existential actuality was being described. It is a difficult concept to get one's head around, and perhaps a somewhat humorous example might help. Imagine two speakers of another language are standing together watching a man running past them. "What he doing?" asks one in fractured English. "He running to his mother " replies his companion. "Oh! What he do on other days then?" "He running to his mother on other days too." says the second man. We can see the temporal ambiguity exposed. This raises the question of why is the simple present verb 'runs' equipped with the 'ever-ready to hand' enshelled processant 's,' whereas the poor old present continuous verb running [in spite of its 'ing' marker of continuity] have to call in and employ an outside contractor 'is' word to supply its statehood? The answer is according to my analysis, that the mixture of immediacy and habituality or occassionality exhibited in the simple present form 'runs' needs to carry its of flexible field Marshall's baton of essivity in its corporeal knapsack for instant use. Bottom line? The main reason that English and other languages have an overt processant like 'is' and 'being' to 'service' some verb forms at all, is because of this tension and subtle ambiguity between the existential modality of the simple present, as opposed to the existential modality of an entity as expressed by the continuous tense of any verb. nomenclature: Modal Processant: the AITist term for the various forms of the 'BE' cluster. Overt [Modal] Processant. - an exposed was,were, is, are,being, or 'will be' etc in a sentence. Covert [or 'enshelled] Processant - a hidden marker of existential modality which is sometimes detectable, as in the terminal's' of run's' and sometimes part of the morphological structure of the word itself as with the 'ew' of the word 'flew' - as in the sentence: "He flew to meet his mother" where the 'ies' of the simple present 'flies' changes to the 'ew' which is the processantal marker of a past [completed] modalic existential action. Cheers, Jud. --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005