Do Any Languages Lack Transitive Stative Verbs?

[Astraios]

I disagree, but I'm no native speaker. I won't really argue with you here, even though I see your reasoning, accept it and disagree on the conclusion.

But it's how English works. Look:

1) "Do you see that guy over there? I'm seeing him."

2) "Are you watching that guy over there? I watch him."

The question part of both of those is asking about what "you" is doing, at the moment of speech, and the first one means "At this moment in time, has that guy entered into your field of vision?" and the second one means "At this moment in time, are your eyes focused attentively upon that guy?" And the following part gives information about what "I" does to that guy on a regular basis, and the first one means "I meet up with him every so often because he fucks me good" and the second one means "I spy into his bedroom window every so often because I'm a creepy stalker".

So why are these not equivalents?

[Legion]

As I see it, it's a narrative equivalence. In English, in a narrative present frame, verbs that are unmarked for any other parameter will take the simple present if they're stative, and the present continuous if they're dynamic.

French has a similar phenomenon, but in a narrative past frame.

That is, you don't consider the individual tenses of the verbs, you consider the tense of the reference frame, and how verbs that are unmarked for specific aspect behave in this frame.

[Ser]

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I understand the analysis now! And indeed, because "to see" is a stative verb, it can't take the present progressive and mean "to see as in a presently ongoing action" (i.e. the stative equivalent to dynamic "I'm watching", or to put it more in Legion's terms, in a time frame of an ongoing state/action without a clear final bound, finishing doesn't matter)--unless we're talking about an idiomatic use of "to see" ("I'm seeing a girl"). The equivalent to "I'm watching" would then be just "I see".

[Wattmann]

Ah, now I see! (pun intended)

[Ser]

...What would be the pun anyway?

[Yng]

...What would be the pun anyway?

Not really a pun, just 'see' was used in the examples.