"She built her house" is a completed act

[Michaelll]

In my previous thread Barque wrote that "She built her house for five years" doesn't make sense because "She built" implies a completed act. But at the same time he wrote that "I read a book for half an hour" and "My grandfather learned English for only three months" are fine.

Why? Why "She built her house" is a completed act, but "I read the book" and "He learned English" are not?? Why we can't add duration to the 'built', but can to 'read' and 'learned'? What's the logic of the English language?

 

[Tarheel]

"She built her house" is indeed a completed act. You can't keep building a house after you have finished it. However, you can keep reading a book even after you have finished it. You can start over. Also, you might have studied something for a particular length of time, but you can always go back and do it more if you wish.

 

[Michaelll]

"She built her house" is indeed a completed act.

Yesterday I spent two hours writing my book, and of course I didn't complete it. So, then, I didn't write it yesterday even though I spent two hours doing so?

 

[5jj]

You didn't write your book yesterday.
You worked on your book.
You wrote some more of your book.
You wrote.

 

[Barque]

In my previous thread Barque wrote that "She built her house for five years" doesn't make sense because "She built" implies a completed act. But at the same time he wrote that "I read a book for half an hour" and "My grandfather learned English for only three months" are fine.

Why? Why "She built her house" is a completed act, but "I read the book" and "He learned English" are not?? Why we can't add duration to the 'built', but can to 'read' and 'learned'? What's the logic of the English language?

You have to accept that different verbs work in different ways.

There's NO logic. It works on common sense and understanding. You just have to accept that.

 

[Tarheel]

@Barque I disagree slightly. There is a kind of logic involved. It's just not the kind of logic that there is in mathematics, for example.

 

[Barque]

Ok. I see what you mean.

 

[Michaelll]

There's NO logic.

If "I didn't write my book yesterday" is a true statement even if I spent two hours doing so yesterday, then I do agree with this. There's actually NO logic. I just have to accept that English works this way.

You didn't write your book yesterday.
You worked on your book.
You wrote some more of your book.

If something happened during that time, we can use the continuous, "I was writing a book when he came in", or "I was writing a book at 10am yesterday", but if we just want to state a fact what we did yesterday, we can't say "I wrote my book", instead we should change the verb from 'to write' to 'to work on'.

A: When you called me, I was writing my book, I'm sorry I couldn't answer right away.
B: Oh, what did you write?
A: I worked on my book, but I didn't write it. ‍

You wrote.

What did you write?

 

[Tarheel]

@Michaelll As Barque said, different verbs work different ways.

"I worked on my book, but I didn't write it."

I don't think you understand what that means. (I'm not even sure I do.)

It is quite possible to read a book in one day, but it is highly unlikely that you could write one in one day. If you say "I wrote a book yesterday" that says to me that you started and finished it in one day.

Added: You managed to invent a conversation that could only happen in your imagination.

 

[Holmes]

In my previous thread Barque wrote that "She built her house for five years" doesn't make sense because "She built" implies a completed act. But at the same time he wrote that "I read a book for half an hour" and "My grandfather learned English for only three months" are fine.

Why? Why "She built her house" is a completed act, but "I read the book" and "He learned English" are not?? Why we can't add duration to the 'built', but can to 'read' and 'learned'? What's the logic of the English language?

I disagree with the idea that "My grandfather learned English for only three months" is fine. Either the verb should be "studied," or "for" should be changed to "in":

My grandfather learned English in only three months. (= It only took him three months to learn English.)
My grandfather studied English for only three months. (Then he had had enough. He decided that he didn't want to study it any more.)

Notice that the meaning of each of those sentences is vastly different from that of the other.

As for "I read a book for half an hour," there are two different senses in which that can be interpreted, only one of which is aspectually cromulent. Reading a book can understood as an activity; that is the natural interpretation of "read a book" in that sentence. A lot of folks read the Bible every day, for example. That doesn't mean they read the entire Bible every day; it means they read from the Bible every day. To read a book in this sense is essentially to read from a book (but without jumping around). The other interpretation of reading a book is that it is an accomplishment, the complete act of reading a book from start to finish. It is on this unnatural interpretation that "I read a book for half an hour" would be aspectually odd-sounding. This oddity and unnaturalness can be obviated by adding "whole":

??? I read a whole book for half an hour.
*?! I read the whole Bible for half an hour.

While it might be possible for an extremely fast reader to read a very short book from start to finish many times continuously in a mere half hour, I do not think that there ever has been or ever will be a human being capable of reading so fast that he or she could read the entire Bible, Old Testament and New, many times consecutively in a mere half an hour. Now, if we changed the subject to a computer or smartphone, the sentence would be better, since is it conceivable that a computer could (without consciousness) mechanically scan the entire Bible for half an hour, say, to search for a collocation a grammarian was interested in.

Regarding "She built her house for five years," why can't that sentence have the type of activity reading available for "I read a book for half an hour"? I think it is because building a house involves bringing something that did not previously exist into existence. When we read a book, the book is already there. When we build a house, we go from not having a house to having a house. This going from not having a particular house to having that selfsame house cannot occur cyclically as an activity for any length of time, let alone for five whole years.

As you can see, the reasoning in these matters is quasi-metaphysical. Indeed, this grammatical phenomenon was first studied by philosophers. Arguably, it was Aristotle himself who noticed it first. But English didn't exist when he was around. More recently, the philosophers Gilbert Ryle, Anthony Kenny, and Zeno Vendler studied the phenomenon. In 1957, Vendler wrote a very famous little article called "Verbs and Times" in the journal The Philosophical Review; he later published it as part of his book Linguistics in Philosophy (1967). It has influenced linguists interested in "ontological aspect," including specialists in the English tense system, ever since. Here's a link to the article on JSTOR.

 

[Tarheel]

I would say:

"I read a whole book in half an hour" if I had done that.

 

[Holmes]

I would say:

I read a whole book in half an hour if I had done that.

Exactly. That's like the case of "My grandfather learned English in only four months." He didn't learn the entire language over and over for four months. That makes no sense at all. What he could do is study the language for four months, learning aspects or elements of the language in the process of studying it.

With "in," we have "take X amount of time to . . ." entailments. The sentence "I read a whole book in half an hour" entails "It took me half an hour to read a whole book" the sentence "My grandfather learned English in only for months" entails "It took my grandfather only four months to learn English."

With "for," we have "spend amount of time V-ing . . ." entailments. The sentence "I read the Bible for half an hour" entails "I spent half an hour reading the Bible." I suppose it would be possible to say, "I spent five years building a house," but that would not imply that one had finished it (fully brought the house into being).

 

[Michaelll]

Thank you for your help, Holmes! I appreciate it.

Regarding "She built her house for five years," why can't that sentence have the type of activity reading available for "I read a book for half an hour"? I think it is because building a house involves bringing something that did not previously exist into existence. When we read a book, the book is already there. When we build a house, we go from not having a house to having a house. This going from not having a particular house to having that selfsame house cannot occur cyclically as an activity for any length of time, let alone for five whole years.

As you can see, the reasoning in these matters is quasi-metaphysical. Indeed, this grammatical phenomenon was first studied by philosophers. Arguably, it was Aristotle himself who noticed it first. But English didn't exist when he was around. More recently, the philosophers Gilbert Ryle, Anthony Kenny, and Zeno Vendler studied the phenomenon. In 1957, Vendler wrote a very famous little article called "Verbs and Times" in the journal The Philosophical Review; he later published it as part of his book Linguistics in Philosophy (1967). It has influenced linguists interested in "ontological aspect," including specialists in the English tense system, ever since. Here's a link to the article on JSTOR.

I think "She's been building it + for + any amount of time" is possible. I've heard some native speakers say that.

I disagree with the idea that "My grandfather learned English for only three months" is fine. Either the verb should be "studied," or "for" should be changed to "in":

My grandfather learned English in only three months. (= It only took him three months to learn English.)
My grandfather studied English for only three months. (Then he had had enough. He decided that he didn't want to study it any more.)

Notice that the meaning of each of those sentences is vastly different from that of the other.

We can use study in the perfective way, can't we?

• I studied your letter/question (in ten minutes), and now I know how to help you.

It's just strange for me that build, learn, read and study are different.

In my native language we have forms of any verb that help us understand the meaning, whether we refer to the activity or to the result. The imperfect form is neutral while the perfect form implies a certain (often the highest) degree of success.

To show you some examples so that you will understand the issue with understanding English verbs, I'm going to use verbs with 'est' at the end. (I am aware English does not have such verbs.)

Imperfect forms are neutral, we can say this just to show the activity/action. In English they can be followed by 'for + an amount of time'.

• I insisted on going to the movies.
• I asked her to go to the movies.
  -- We don't know whether 'they' went to the movies.
• We defended our land.
  -- Neutral, it's just means that someone else initiated the attack.

Perfect forms show successfully fulfilled actions (= results). In English they can be followed by 'in + an amount of time'.

• I insistedest on going to the movies.
• I askedest her to go to the movies.
  -- We know for sure just from the phrase that 'they' did go to the movies.
• We defendedest our land.
  -- Successfully. We won. The attackers were/have been defeated.

And of course cases related to objects: books/pictures/movies/ships/cakes etc. etc.

• A: What did you do yesterday after coming home?
  B: I read a book. (activity)
  /B: I readest a book.
  
  
• A: What are you going to do tonight?
  B: I'm going to paint a picture. (activity)
  /B: I'm going to paintest a picture.
  
  
• A: Do you write your book every day?
  B: Yes, I do. I write it every day until I writest (complete) it. I wrote it yesterday and the day before and will do so today and tomorrow.
  
  
• He wrotest his third book last year.

A little update 40 minutes later:
I just realized that the best way to understand how the verb forms work is by looking at this beautiful couple: look for and find.
I looked for my keys for 2 hours.
I looked for my keys in 2 hours.
I found my keys for 2 hours.
I found my keys in 2 hours.
And they say English has no perfect or imperfect verb forms Here they are!

 

[5jj]

If "I didn't write my book yesterday" is a true statement even if I spent two hours doing so yesterday, then I do agree with this.

I would not say "I didn't write my book yesterday" if I spent two hours on it.

A: When you called me, I was writing my book, I'm sorry I couldn't answer right away.
B: Oh, what did you write?
A: I worked on my book, but I didn't write it.

The parts I have underlined are not natural.

I disagree with the idea that "My grandfather learned English for only three months" is fine. Either the verb should be "studied," or "for" should be changed to "in":

'Learned' is acceptable in that sentence.

 

[Holmes]

I disagree with the idea that "My grandfather learned English for only three months" is fine. Either the verb should be "studied," or "for" should be changed to "in":

'Learned' is acceptable in that sentence.

No, it isn't. I'm surprised that you think it is, though. Would you also accept *How long did your grandfather learn English for?

 

[Tarheel]

@Michaelll I suggest that you get used to the idea that different verbs are different. Indeed, that should come as no surprise.

Your idea that English should have verbs that end in "est" is not, I think, going to catch on.

 

[5jj]

No, it isn't. I'm surprised that you think it is, though.

Life is full of little surprises,

Would you also accept *How long did your grandfather learn English for?

Yes.

 

[Holmes]

Perhaps you understand "learning something" differently from most English speakers. For most of native speakers of English, learning something involves the transition from not knowing something to knowing it. This transition does not occupy a period of time, though the effort leading to that transition can occupy time.

*How long did you learn the song for?
How long did it take you to learn the song?

One can use the progressive (My grandfather was learning English; My grandfather had been learning English for five years), but that focuses on the midpoint of the situation, not on the situation of learning something as a whole, as do the nonprogressive tenses: *I shall learn Greek for five years. The verb needed is study.

 

[5jj]

For most of native speakers

It's clear that your idiolect is different from mine.

The verb needed is study.

For you perhaps. But then you say 'most of native speakers'.

 

[Tarheel]

One thing I have learned is that is that two people can disagree with each other and you can agree with both of of them to some extent. Or agree with one more than the other. It is certainly true that different people have different language patterns.

I think I have made it clear how I would say it (the phrase in question). I don't think anything more needs to be said.