Event contours--culturally neutral?

I just read the ZAhO tenses explained article from the archives, and I wonder if the ten event contours (pu'o, ca'o, ba'o, za'o, co'i, co'a, co'u, mo'u, de'a, di'a) as well as related aspectual cmavo can really be considered either "universal" or "culturally neutral". The papers recognizes initially that "the concepts are very un-English", but what are they based on?

--

Most if not all are from Russian, and possibly Chinese (the latter is just a guess, however.) It wouldn't surprise me to find that other languages have them. -- mi'e bancus