OF NOMINATIVES AND DATIVES^471Figure 1ken) there is no general word for "color" differentiating a specific realm of
hue-saturation-brightness as perceptual criteria, as our European languages
seem to, and while in many languages the monolexemic terms which are at
issue also seem to classify and differentiate things on dimensions of very dif
ferent sort (e.g., succulence, shininess, reflectivity, smoothness, uniformity
of surface), insofar as we independently can vary and control the extension-
ally-definable psychophysical dimensions of stimuli, the coding relationship
will be compatible with the universal as stated, even though there may be
no intra-linguistic way of defining hue-saturation-brightness with a term
"color" or a definitional schema. The relationship of each language with the
universal constraint is one of compatibility in general, placement on a scale
in particular, and freedom to vary in any way not dictated by the formal-
functional constraint between lexical structure and extensionally-specified
reference focus (or denotational application).
Take another example, that of the formal categorization of tense-
aspect in languages, for which William E. Bull (1960) has given the basis for
an ordering and explanation. Again here in the realm of systematic formal
grammatical machinery, the relationship is one of formal differentiation
with respect to a universe of semantico-pragmatic possibilities, each lan
guage of necessity conforming to a particular placement on a scheme of
minimal-to-maximal formal differentiation. Based on the work of Bull, we
can see that the fundamental categories in languages are aspectual of two
alternative sorts, asymmetric in their markedness, so that systems are either
perfective/non-perfective or continuativelnon-continuative. The apparent
reference to "time" is achieved in such minimal systems by implementing
the semantic category of aspect in pragmatic relationship to the event of
speaking, taken as the point-like interval of reference: an event described as
or predicated to be "perfective" with respect to the moment of speaking is
deducibly "past" in pragmatic discourse; an event described as or predi
cated to be "continuative" with respect to the same moment (in the alterna
tive system) is deducibly "present" in pragmatic discourse. See Figure 2.