The Parameter of Aspect
Abstract
While working on this project I have received institutional support of several kinds, for which I am most grateful. I thank the Institute for Advanced Study at Stanford University, and the Spencer Foundation. for a stimulating environment in which the basic idea of this book was developed. The Max Planck Institute for Psycho linguistics at Nijmegen enabled me to spend several months working on the the manuscript. A National Science Foundation grant to develop Discourse Representation Theory, and a grant from The University Research Institute of the University of Texas, also gave me time to pursue this project. I thank Helen Aristar-Dry for reading early drafts of the manuscript, Osten Dahl for penetrating remarks on a preliminary version, and my collaborator Gilbert Rappaport for relentless comments and questions throughout. People with whom I have worked on particular languages are mentioned in the relevant chapters. lowe a special debt of gratitude to the members of my graduate seminar on aspect in the spring of 1990: they raised many questions of importance which made a real differ ence to the final form of the theory. I have benefitted from presenting parts of this material publicly, including colloquia at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at San Diego, the University of Pennsylvania, Rice University, the University of Texas, and University of Tel Aviv. I thank Adrienne Diehr and Marjorie Troutner for their efficient and good-humored help throughout the work on the first edition.
Chapters (4)
In this Chapter I outline the theory of aspect to be developed in this book, and discuss the way it provides for both a general and specific account of aspectual systems. Aspect is a parameter which is realized differently across languages. An adequate theory of aspect must account for the similarities and the differences in the aspectual systems of languages of the world. The two-component theory is abstract enough to do this. Based on a general account of the structure of situations, the theory also allows precise statements of the systems of particular languages.
The presentation of the two-component theory of aspect has focused on the basic notions and their realization in language. I now turn to formalization of the theory. In this chapter I discuss the principles and rules that are needed to associate the surface structures of sentences with their aspectual and temporal meanings. Chapter 7 integrates the analysis into Discourse Representation Theory.
English offers a consistent, obligatory choice of viewpoints in all tenses. The perfective viewpoint is available for all situation types and is therefore the dominant viewpoint in the language. The value of the perfective varies with situation type. The perfective presents events as closed and states as open, accordanted with each. The progressive is the main imperfective viewpoint; it is available neutrally only for nonstative sentences. There is also a limited resultative imperfective, which appears with verb constellations of the position and location classes.1
Aspectual choice is salient perceptually and morphologically in Russian. The formal contrast of perfective and imperfective viewpoints appears in all finite verb forms and many nonfinite finite verb forms as well. Speakers are keenly aware of aspectual choices and their effects.1
... Dado que las perífrasis de gerundio con verbos de movimiento dan lugar sistemáticamente a estructuras imperfectivas, realizaremos en el apartado siguiente un análisis más profundo del uso de evento concluido de ir + gerundio. En concreto, someteremos a la perífrasis a una serie de pruebas (Squartini 1998;Smith 1991;Bertinetto et al. 2000) destinadas a observar si la estructura que aquí estudiamos es perfectiva, como parece sugerir el hecho de que describa eventos concluidos, o imperfectiva, como es esperable en la perífrasis ir + gerundio. 4. Caracterización aspectual del uso de evento concluido de ir + gerundio Algunas pruebas que permiten evaluar el carácter perfectivo o imperfectivo de estructuras están dados por la combinación de esas estructuras con determinadas frases temporales. ...
... En relación con el aspecto léxico, asumimos una clasificación bastante extendida, que, además de distinguir entre los cuatro Aktionsart clásicos presentados en Vendler (1957), i.e., estados, actividades, realizaciones y logros, reconoce otro tipo de Aktionsart, los semelfactivos (Smith 1991;Rothstein 2004;2008). En particular, nos interesa el trabajo de Rothstein (2004), que discute la naturaleza de estas cinco clases de Aktionsart a partir de la noción de partes mínimas de evento o átomos. ...
... Laca sostiene que estar + gerundio expresa aspecto gramatical o de punto de vista(Smith 1991), dado que toma el evento y establece una relación con respecto a un tiempo de referencia.4 Es preciso observar que la distinción entre estos dos grupos de perífrasis (estar + gerundio vs. perífrasis con verbos de movimiento) también se observa en términos sintácticos: las perífrasis de verbos de movimiento parecen estar más cercanas al dominio del VP, ya que no pueden aparecer por encima del dominio del TP (donde se coloca 'ir a' + infinitivo, ya que en el español americano es una perífrasis temporal) (*Va yendo a estudiar de a poco) y que imponen restricciones a los predicados con los que se combinan (*Va lloviendo)(Laca 2004a(Laca , 2004b. ...
En este artículo analizamos un uso peculiar de la perífrasis ir + gerundio, que denominamos lectura de evento concluido, presente en el español rioplatense, que se diferencia de la lectura canónica de ir + gerundio en que parece expresar una situación en la que el evento denotado por el predicado se presenta como completo (De todo lo que tenía para leer, Ana iba leyendo tres libros el miércoles → ley. tres libros). A través de una serie de pruebas, demostramos que esta construcción constituye una estructura progresiva, a diferencia de la forma canónica, que expresa una estructura durativa. En concreto, sostenemos que este uso de la perífrasis ir + gerundio describe una situación en la cual, en un punto temporal específico (el tiempo de referencia), ciertos eventos ya han ocurrido, y se espera que otros eventos potenciales ocurran. Así, el efecto de perfectividad surge del anclaje temporal de la estructura progresiva: los eventos denotados por el predicado son anteriores al tiempo de referencia. La interpretación prospectiva, a su vez, se deriva pragmáticamente de una implicatura escalar.
... It has been commonly accepted that aspect is divided into two parts, including the situation type and viewpoint aspect, mainly developed and made clear by Smith [3] and Smith [6] in her two-components theory. The interaction between viewpoint aspects and situation types is vitally important for aspectual studies since it plays a key role in the description and explanation of grammatical and semantic features of various aspectual structures. ...
... As a representative of inflectional languages, English has developed multiple viewpoint aspectual markers (such as the progressive aspect and the perfective aspect) or inflectional means, which is also quite common among inflectional languages. However, Chinese, as a typical isolating language almost without inflectional morphemes, is surprisingly an aspect language with abundant aspectual markers including ZHE, ZAI, ZHENGZAI, LE1, LE2 and GUO.Verbs' abilities to co-occur with these markers serve as an important part in describing their syntactic and semantic features in Chinese [3,6,[8][9][10][11][12][13]. ...
... Taking run and run a mile as examples, Vendler [4] treats run itself as an activity verb and run a mile as a transition, or accomplishment situation to be specific. Studies such as Smith [6] identify this phenomenon as an ambiguity of verbs situation types since the situation type of run per se is different from the run in run a mile. To tackle this dilemma, she moves situation types onto the phrase level and claims that verbs have no situation type, which is followed by dozens of researchers. ...
Situation types can be viewed as the foundation of representation of sentence meaning. Noting that situation types cannot be determined by verbs alone, recent studies often focus on situation type prediction in terms of the combination of different linguistic constituents at the sentence level instead of lexically marked situation types. However, in languages with a fully marked aspectual system, such as Mandarin Chinese, such an approach may miss the opportunity of leveraging lexical aspects as well as other distribution-based lexical cues of event types. Currently, there is a lack of resources and methods for the identification and validation of the lexical aspect, and this issue is particularly severe for Chinese. From a computational linguistics perspective, the main reason for this shortage stems from the absence of a verified lexical aspect classification system, and consequently, a gold-standard dataset annotated according to this classification system. Additionally, owing to the lack of such a high-quality dataset, it remains unclear whether semantic models, including large general-purpose language models, can actually capture this important yet complex semantic information. As a result, the true realization of lexical aspect analysis cannot be achieved. To address these two problems, this paper sets out two objectives. First, we aim to construct a high-quality lexical aspect dataset. Since the classification of the lexical aspect depends on how it interacts with aspectual markers, we establish a scientific classification and data construction process through the selection of vocabulary items, the compilation of co-occurrence frequency matrices, and hierarchical clustering. Second, based on the constructed dataset, we separately evaluate the ability of linguistic features and large language model word embeddings to identify lexical aspect categories in order to (1) verify the capacity of semantic models to infer complex semantics and (2) achieve high-accuracy prediction of lexical aspects. Our final classification accuracy is 72.05%, representing the best result reported thus far.
... (1) French, Souvestre & Allain (1987: What sets apart NIMPF uses from standard, imperfective viewpoint-readings of the IMPF, is that (i) they associate with a 'forward shifting' of the temporal location of the current topic/reference time, and that (ii) they let us perceive the entirety of the events they express (i.e., the entire runtime of said events is encapsulated within the topic timethe latter claim remains a matter of debate though, as we will see). This conjunction of properties has prompted many scholars to treat the NIMPF as near synonymous with the passé simple, i.e., as denoting a perfective aspectual viewpoint function (Smith 1991). ...
... I will argue that at the sentence-level semantics, the NIMPF 26 Of course, what counts as a short temporal distance is highly context-dependent, and involves world knowledge-based, granularity effects, sensitive to our temporal expectations (canonical duration, typical temporal distances in causal chains/scripts…) about the relevant event predicate. 27 One can also think of the aspectual 'vacuousness' of the French future (Smith 1991) if we take the future to denote a modal anchored in the present, under the scope of a present imperfective viewpoint aspectuo-temporal function (see Caudal 2012b), then event predicates under the scope of the modal will be 'sheltered' from the viewpoint function denoted by the future. This is also a scope-related type of aspectual neutrality, caused by the following scope hierarchy: TEMPORALfunction > ASPECT.VIEWPOINTfunction > MODALfunction > AKTIONSARTfunction. ...
... Overall, and most importantly, the main, two-pronged hypothesis explored in this paper, if correct, has far-reaching consequences for theories of the interaction between the aspectual viewpoint content of tenses, and Aktionsart parameters (taken as another dimension of aspectual meaning, à la Smith 1991). Indeed, it suggests that while the latter only operates at the sentence semantics-level, the latter can scope well out of it, as high as speech act-level expressions, and directly impact the semantics/pragmatics interface. ...
This paper aims at demonstrating the validity of a two-pronged hypothesis: (i) that the aspectual viewpoint content of the so-called ‘narrative imparfait’ (NIMPF) does not bear on the verb it marks (i.e., it does not combine with the event predicate denoted by said verb) but that, therefore, (ii) it must operate at a higher, discursive semantic level. To substantiate the above hypothesis, the paper first focuses on diachronic and synchronic evidence suggesting that the NIMPF does not contribute aspectual meaning at the sentence semantics-level – showing notably that it behaves like a ‘viewpoint neutral’ tense with respect to the verb it marks. The paper then discusses synchronic, discursive evidence supporting the view that the NIMPF actually indicates a partial, discourse-structurally incomplete, ‘ongoing’ narrative act. From these two facts, the paper concludes that NIMPF utterances refer to imperfectively viewed narrative speech act events, and constitute a separate speech act-level conventionalized reading of the imparfait, applying an imperfective viewpoint meaning to relational speech act functions, i.e., to rhetorical relations. It is argued that they should be endowed with a speech act event argument, and constitute an abstract type of event predicate which the viewpoint meaning of the NIMPF takes as its input.
... In this paper, I assume an event semantics approach to aspect where verbs/VPs are predicates of events denoting sets of events (Rothstein 2004), or an event type (Landman 2000, Parsons 1990). I further assume the now standard 2-layered aspectual system proposed in Smith (1991): Situation (lexical, Aktionsart) and Viewpoint (grammatical) aspect. ...
... Similarly, Krifka (1998:207) argues that "it is misleading to think that a particular event can be called telic or atelic. The distinction is in the description of the object -aspectual properties are properties of event descriptions". 2 A fifth class, that of semelfactives, has been assumed by Smith (1991). According to her understanding, this class involves instantaneous but atelic events. ...
... e.g. Smith (1991), Borik (2002. In the Bulgarian grammatical tradition, "vid" is viewed as a grammatical aspectual category as well, cf. ...
The article argues against earlier treatments of Bulgarian secondary imperfective verbs in terms of atelicity and Viewpoint imperfectivity. Instead, it offers empirical evidence about telicity and durativity as the two core properties of this type of verb in Bulgarian aspectual triplets. An analysis is proposed in terms of Rothstein’s (2004) aspectual classes as properties of verbal predicates that captures the way secondary imperfective verbs differ from both their bare imperfective and perfective counterparts. At the same
time, the analysis captures the intrinsic semantic relationship between the triplet members and accounts for the role of the aspectual morphology in terms of aspectual operators that shift the aspectual properties of verbal stems.
... There is a long line of research on tense and aspect, investigating a vast variety of typologically diverse spoken languages. While tense has to do with time reference, aspect, which is the focus of the present study, relates to internal temporal structure (e.g., Binnick 2012a;Bybee 1985;Comrie 1976;Dahl 1985;Smith 1997). Both are traditionally considered grammatical categories of verbs: languages may reflect temporal and aspectual differences in the inflectional distinctions they make (compare, for instance, English present tense walk to past tense walked). ...
... 2 Aspect in spoken and signed languages 2.1 General background Previous work has shown that two types of aspect can be distinguished: lexical aspect and grammatical aspect. First, lexical aspect (also called "situation aspect" by Smith [1997]) refers to inherent properties of the verb, or, in the words of Filip (2012: 721), it is "a semantic category that concerns properties of eventualities (in the sense of Bach 1981) expressed by verbs". These "properties" generally refer to an end or boundary that is present in the lexical structure of some classes of verbs, but not in others, known as the basic distinction between telic verbs, which have a clear endpoint or goal, and atelic verbs, which do not (Filip [2012]; and see Garey [1957] for the telic/ atelic distinction). ...
... The present study will not be concerned with lexical aspect, and solely focuses on grammatical aspectalthough, of course, the two are closely related (see Binnick [2012a] for more discussion). 1 Second, grammatical or verbal aspect (also called "viewpoint aspect" by Smith [1997]) is not an inherent lexical property of the verb, but can be described as "a subsystem belonging to the grammar of a particular language" (Binnick 2012b: 32). Comrie (1976: 3) defined it as "different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation". ...
This study investigates the use of predicate reduplication to express aspectual meaning in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). The study focuses on three aspect types that have been found to be encoded by reduplication across sign languages – habitual, continuative, and iterative – and addresses potential phonological restrictions. Naturalistic corpus data and data elicited from six deaf NGT signers were taken into account. The results suggest that (i) predicate reduplication can express all three aspect types, but it is optional; (ii) reduplication expressing habitual and continuative aspect appears to be phonologically constrained; and (iii) such phonological constraints do not apply to iterative reduplication, whose form is different from the other two aspects, in that the reduplication cycles are separated by pauses. Since there is no formal difference between habituals and continuatives in the data, it is suggested that this semantic distinction may not be grammaticalized in the language, and that, possibly, the inflectional system of NGT instead more broadly distinguishes imperfective/perfective viewpoint. While this latter suggestion is in line with findings reported for many spoken languages, the results are different from what has previously been described for NGT as well as for other sign languages. Potential explanations for these differences can be found in both methodological and sociolinguistic factors.
... propone Smith (1997) en su trabajo sobre la focalización: Mary was walking to school. El enunciado anterior no implica que ocurrió un evento completo, tal es así que si usamos la técnica de la prueba indirecta colocando una cláusula que afirme que no se completó (prueba de conjunción 6 ) y se comprueba su razonabilidad podemos afirmar que el evento no fue completado Mary was walking to school but she didn't actually get there. ...
... En el predicado de logro [PASAR A ESTAR [x <ESTADO>]], el significado aspectual de la construcción de gerundio en (1a) viendo, (1b) despertando y (1f) consiguiendo le otorga un valor temporal peculiar a dicha clase aspectual. Al ser el logro un evento puntual (Escandell, 2007;Morimoto, 2017), que no tiene subeventos de procesos, la operación de coerción (Michaelis, 2004(Michaelis, , 2005Reyes, 2012;Dӧlling, 2014;Saavedra, 2015) evita el conflicto que se genera entre la estructura progresiva (+durativa) y dicho predicado (-durativo) a (Smith, 1997), aunque no se cancela léxicamente. En otras palabras, la existencia de la torta no está implicada (pues está desfocalizada), pero tampoco está anulada. ...
En este trabajo se indaga acerca de las condiciones semánticas y aspectuales que permiten la alternancia entre el grupo preposicional con estructura “a + cláusula de infinitivo” y la construcción morfológica simple de gerundio (al escuchar–escuchando). Con las herramientas de análisis semántico-aspectual, se evaluaron las estructuras y/o mecanismos de conformación para encontrar los factores que motivaban la alternancia entre el grupo preposicional y la realización morfológica de gerundio. Se constata que los factores que intervienen en la alternancia tienen relación con el aspecto léxico de los predicados en los que se insertan y con los fenómenos de reajustes semánticos gramaticales de coerción aspectual y focalización.
... Xiao & McEnery 2004 for a more thorough description of the transformation in terminology). Smith (1997), in her two-component theory of aspect, terms the first approach to aspect 'viewpoint aspect', and the second approach 'situation aspect'. In ...
... Tsai 2008 and Travis 2010, see also Ramchand 2008 for an elaborate account of the VP shell for the representation of different classes of predicates). This paper follows Smith's (1997) terminology, and includes data related to the negation of five situation aspects -state, activity, accomplishment, achievement and semelfactive -following Comrie's (1976) classification. Formally, this paper also takes viewpoint aspect (a.k.a. ...
This paper examines the negation system of Gaozhou Yue, an under-documented and under-studied Yue variety. The discussion takes the official documentation of the variety as a starting point, which reports two negators mau5 and mau5 jau5 to be equivalent to Mandarin méi(yǒu) and can appear interchangeably. Then based on systematic acceptability judgment data and field-recorded production data, the paper compares Gaozhou Yue and Mandarin negators and argues that (i) mau5 is resemblant to méi(yǒu) only in terms of viewpoint aspectual restrictions but has a much broader application where situation aspect is concerned; and (ii) mau5 and mau5 jau5 are only interchangeable in negative existential and negative possessive constructions, together with the fact that mau5 jau5 is hardly acceptable in verbal negation, these demonstrate that mau5 jau5 is not a standard negator. The empirical findings from this comparative study highlights that aspectual restriction still happens in a Chinese variety with only one standard negator. The conclusion reopens discussion on the negation-aspect interaction in Chinese varieties and points the discussion towards a more typologically generalisable formal explanation.
... Some languages express the temporal reference of a sentence with tense morphemes, such as English in the previous examples, but this needs not be the case, as exemplified with the Paiwan example. Mandarin Chinese and its varieties spoken in other regions such as Taiwan Mandarin is another instance of languages without overt tense distinction (Li & Thompson, 1981;Smith, 1997;Smith & Erbaugh, 2005; among others). 5 The temporal reference of a sentence in Mandarin can be expressed with deictic time adverbs and viewpoint aspect morphemes, where viewpoint aspect is defined as the "different ways of viewing the internal constituency of a situation" (Comrie, 1976:3). ...
... 5 The temporal reference of a sentence in Mandarin can be expressed with deictic time adverbs and viewpoint aspect morphemes, where viewpoint aspect is defined as the "different ways of viewing the internal constituency of a situation" (Comrie, 1976:3). Viewpoint aspect morphemes function as a "camera lens", focusing on different parts of the event (Smith, 1997). For instance, the focus can be made on the entire situation, corresponding to perfective aspect (expressed with the morpheme -le in Mandarin), or the internal stages of it, corresponding to imperfective aspect (expressed by zai or -zhe). ...
The mechanisms underlying the processing of the temporal reference of a sentence are still unexplored. Most of the previous psycholinguistic studies used the temporal concord violation between deictic time adverbs and tense marking on the verb to investigate this issue. They found that processing past tense marking is more difficult than non-past tense, indicated by lower accuracy rates and/or longer reaction time. However, it is not clear whether this complexity is due to tense marking or the temporal reference it denotes. This paper examines this issue with a judgment acceptability experiment in Taiwan Mandarin, which is analyzed as a tenseless language. The two modal auxiliary verbs you and hui were placed after deictic past time adverbs (grammatical with you but not with hui) and deictic future time adverbs (grammatical with hui but not with you). The temporal concord violation of the auxiliary verb you led to higher acceptability rates but longer reaction time than hui, reflecting higher processing difficulties. This paper argues that these complexities are due to the existential-assertive meaning of you, which interplays with the meaning of the event described by the verb rendering the situation more or less likely to occur in the future. The computation of the temporal concord of hui, displaying a future sense meaning, is more straightforward and therefore easier to process. This suggests that the mechanisms responsible for temporal reference processing are of different nature depending on the semantics of the temporal marker in the sentence.
... Zhu (2020) distinguishes syntactic ABAB reduplication (highly productive, regular distribution) from morphological AABB forms (low productivity, irregular distribution). Semantic interpretations of ABAB include: momentary action (Xiong, 2016), repetitive aspect marking (Smith, 1991;Dai, 1993;Sui & Hu, 2016), pluralizing operations (Gu, 2008;Deng, 2013), and homogeneous object marking (Basciano & Melloni, 2017). ...
... 显示，"曾经"和"一度 1"与所有的情状类型均能组配。搭配活动、完结和一次 性情状时，"曾经"和"一度 1"都有过去惯常的解读，这与二者都与时段性相容有关。但 二者不同的是，"曾经"不要求时段性，因此"曾经"所修饰的事件可以有多次解读，也可 以有单次解读，例○24 、○ 25 、○ 27 中的 b 组例句既可以表示过去曾经发生多次，也可以表示只发 生了一次。而"一度 1"具有[+时段]特征，这要求在某一个时段内所关联的事件/状态为真。 当事件/状态具有[+持续]特征，且事件本身或其结果状态能够在某个时间段内持续为真，发 生一次即可满足"一度"的语义要求(如例 ○ 23 a 和例 ○ 26 a 所示)；当事件或事件结果带来的 状态具有[-持续]特征，或者事件本身或其结果状态不能在某个时段内持续为真时，则需要 通过重复来保持在该时间段内为真，因此往往具有复数性的解读，如例○ 24 、○ 25 、○ 27 ...
This article divides “yidu一度” into “yidu1” and “yidu2”, and compares the semantic
differences among cengjing曾经, “yidu1” and “yidu2” based on three parameters: relatively distant past, time interval and extremum. Cengjing indicates that an associated event or state was true at some point or during a specific time period in the relatively distant past, while “yidu1” indicates that an associated event or state was true within a relatively short time period (either in the past or future). On the other hand, “yidu2” indicates that at a given time point, the associated event
reaches a maximum or minimum, or is of the deepest extent. The situation that accompanies “cengjing” can be interpreted as either a single occurrence or multiple occurrences, but due to the duration requirement, the one which accompanies “yidu” often has a plural interpretation. The so-called discontinuity for “cengjing” is only a pragmatic inference rather than an inherent semantic feature, though for “yidu” it is an inherent semantic feature. “Cengjing” requires the co-occurrence of a relative past event or state, while “yidu” can coexist with both past and future
events or states. In addition, “cengjing” is mainly used in background sentences, while “yidu” is more commonly used in foreground sentences.
... Comrie (1976) argues that the English past tense can denote the perfective aspect in which the action is regarded as a whole. Smith (1997), on the other hand, proposed the "two-part tense" theory, suggesting that the English past tense can express both tense and aspect simultaneously. ...
The study of tense, aspect and modality has always played a very important role in language learning, so a deep understanding of the three is helpful for language learners to see the essence of language better. The author observes that most of the existing studies are from tense, voice and modality, respectively and analyze them from different angles, but there are few articles that can combine the three for interactive analysis. Therefore, this paper takes CCL as the main source of corpus, takes the past tense, one of the important tenses in English and the common auxiliary word “le” in Chinese as the main line of research, making a comparative analysis of their interaction with aspect and modality in the past tense expression. It is found that the interaction between the past tense and the aspect in English is mainly realized through the inflection of verbs and the combination of auxiliary verbs, which has a fixed grammatical structure. However, the interaction between Chinese “le” and aspect is relatively flexible, usually with the help of context or time adverbials. In terms of modality, the past tense can be combined with modal verbs to form a fixed expression so that the modality has a direct influence on the expression of the past tense. On the contrary, the modal expression of “le” in Chinese usually relies on modal auxiliary words and adverbs, causing a weak influence on the past tense expression of “le”. This study not only reveals the differences and similarities between English and Chinese time-system expressions, but also provides new insights into language teaching and translation practice.
... ( Pfv verbs typically describe completed, temporally delimited events and ipfv verbs refer to unbounded eventualities (Smith, 1991;Filip, 1999Filip, , 2017Borik, 2006;Grønn, 2015;a.o.). In spite of significant variation in the use and meaning of the pfv and ipfv across Slavic, most studies on the Slavic aspect have focused on a single language. ...
This study examines variation in the use and interpretation of the perfective (pfv) aspect in negated past tense contexts across East Slavic and selected West and Southwest Slavic languages. Unlike West and Southwest Slavic, where the pfv + neg in past tense contexts allows for an interpretation denying the existence of the event at any past time, East Slavic uniquely interprets the pfv aspect in these contexts as indicating that the agent either planned but failed to realize the event or initiated it but failed to complete it. We account for this by assuming that negation operates either high (¬TP), as sentential negation, or low (¬vP), over the event domain. In East Slavic, the interaction of the pfv aspect with the past tense prevents high negation and enforces low negation, resulting in inhibited event reading. This reading implies that the event was expected or initiated but ultimately unrealized. We argue that the semantics of the pfv aspect in East Slavic parallels the semantics of specific indefinites in the nominal domain. The aspect head introduces a temporal variable t, which, via a choice function, restricts the domain of existential quantification over t to a singleton set, presupposing the existence of t, which cannot be canceled by high negation. Consequently, in negated pfv past tense contexts in East Slavic, negation scopes over the event domain giving rise to special interpretative constraints in past tense perfective contexts with negation.
... Važan segment ove studije predstavlja analiza obeležja situacionih temporalnih struktura vizuelnih glagola, na osnovu kojih autor određuje situacione tipove koje dati glagoli reprezentuju. Postavke o situacionim tipovima, nedovoljno poznate srpskoj lingvistici, autor razrađuje oslanjajući se na studiju Karlote Smit (Smith, 1991), dok se u terminološkom pogledu vodi rešenjima Janeza Orešnika (1994), koji se bavi aspektualnošću u slovenačkom jeziku, a pojam situacionog predikata elaborira u skladu s postavkama Džona Barvajza i Džona Perija (Barrwise, Perry, 1983). ...
The paper is a review that examines the semantic and syntactic analysis of verbs of visual perception in standard Serbian and standard Slovenian presented by Željko Marković in the monograph entitled Verbs of Visual Perception in Serbian and Slovenian: A Contrastive Semantic-Syntactic Analysis. The monograph was published in 2023 by the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, Serbia. The study investigates the semantic and syntactic properties of verbs of visual perception in Serbian and Slovenian from the perspective of contrastive linguistics. The author introduces the situation analysis of the perception act, which determines the properties relevant to the semantic description of this lexical semantic field of the verbs, and also investigates their predicate-argument structure.
... The distinction between perfective and imperfective aspects, as well as other more complex aspectual categories (e.g., progressive, habitual), has been extensively explored in temporal semantics. Smith (1991) provides a comprehensive framework for understanding aspect and its relation to event structure. According to Smith, the aspectual features of a verb phrase (such as whether an event is seen as complete or ongoing) crucially influence the interpretation of the event's temporal characteristics. ...
Purpose: This study explores the conceptualization and contextualization of time in Cameroon from a linguistic perspective, emphasizing how localized meanings of words and expressions shape cognitive and social dynamics. Methodology: Anchored in the pragmatic framework which examines the relationship between linguistic signs, their users, and speaker intent, this research focuses on the role of context, place, and time in the production and interpretation of time-related utterances. Data was drawn from casual conversations, lecture materials, and media discourse. Findings: The study reveals that Cameroonian linguistic practices reflect a strong emphasis on hierarchical status, relatively low prioritization of time-consciousness, and the adaptation of certain expressions in ways that diverge from their conventional meanings in other cultural settings. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: These findings suggest that time perception in Cameroon is deeply embedded in socio-cultural realities, with significant implications for communication, governance, and national development. Encouraging greater time-consciousness, particularly among the ruling class, could contribute to enhanced efficiency and progress across various sectors.
... We begin by asking whether mental states in the progressive are like achievements in the progressive. The answer is "no", because achievements in the progressive are related to preparatory stages (SMITH, 1991;ROTHSTEIN, 2004). If (18a) is true, then it must be the case that Peter is not yet at home, but that he is about to arrive there. ...
This paper aims to investigate in which contexts stative predicates are possible in the progressive in Brazilian Portuguese (BrP). In the literature, especially on English, this is unexpected, because progressive aspect is applied on events composed by stages (event predicates). States, however, are known as segmentally homogeneous, which means that: i) they have no stages and ii) they have the subinterval property of being true at minimal instants. In the present paper, we argue that the progressive aspect can be acceptable if a stage structure is grammatically licensed on the events denoted by the stative predicate. Moreover, we also found some similarities between the constraints on progressive statives in BrP and those on progressive habitual predicates in English. Then we propose that the difference in the acceptability between stative predicates in the progressive in BrP (estar amando) and in English (is loving) comes from grammatical constraints on the composition of a stage structure between these languages, rather than semantic distinctions in the progressive.
... Ces différences illustrent des approches distinctes à la structuration de l'information temporelle, influencées par des facteurs culturels et linguistiques. Cela souligne l'importance de comprendre les systèmes aspectuels dans les études interlinguistiques, surtout pour les applications en traduction et en enseignement des langues (Smith, 1991 ;Omoregbe, 2009). ...
Abstract
This study presents a comparative analysis of verbal tenses and aspects in French, Bini (Edo), and Gungbe – three linguistically and culturally distinct languages. French, a Romance language, features a complex system of verb conjugations that finely articulate temporal and aspectual distinctions. In contrast, Bini, a Niger-Congo language spoken in Nigeria, employs a tonal system and particles to express verb tenses and aspects, reflecting its unique linguistic structure and cultural heritage. Gungbe is a language belonging to the Gbe language family. It is spoken by the Ogu people of Benin and in the Gbe language family, which includes the language of southwest Nigeria. Two questions arise; (a)What are the areas of convergence or intersection among the three languages? (b) What are the areas of divergence among the three languages? Relying on a blend of Michael Halliday’s linguistic theory of systemic functional linguistics and Roman Jakobson`s Structural Grammar, coupled with the methodology of comparative analysis, this study presents a detailed examination of each language's approach to verbal time and aspect. The paper highlights how linguistic forms are shaped by and reflect cultural contexts. The analysis reveals significant differences in how these languages encode time and action, providing insights into the challenges of translation and language teaching across cultural boundaries. The study underscores the importance of cultural awareness in linguistic analysis and suggests directions for future research to further explore the interplay between language structure, function, and cultural expression. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the global diversity of linguistic mechanisms and their implications for cross-cultural communication and language pedagogy.
... Ces différences illustrent des approches distinctes à la structuration de l'information temporelle, influencées par des facteurs culturels et linguistiques. Cela souligne l'importance de comprendre les systèmes aspectuels dans les études interlinguistiques, surtout pour les applications en traduction et en enseignement des langues (Smith, 1991 ;Omoregbe, 2009). ...
This study presents a comparative analysis of verbal tenses and aspects in French, Bini (Edo), and Gungbe – three linguistically and culturally distinct languages. French, a Romance language,
features a complex system of verb conjugations that finely articulate temporal and aspectual distinctions. In contrast, Bini, a Niger-Congo language spoken in Nigeria, employs a tonal system
and particles to express verb tenses and aspects, reflecting its unique linguistic structure and cultural heritage. Gungbe is a language belonging to the Gbe language family. It is spoken by the Ogu people of Benin and in the Gbe language family, which includes the language of southwest Nigeria. Two questions arise; (a)What are the areas of convergence or intersection among the three languages? (b) What are the areas of divergence among the three languages? Relying on a blend of Michael Halliday’s linguistic theory of systemic functional linguistics and Roman Jakobson`s Structural Grammar, coupled with the methodology of comparative analysis, this study presents a detailed examination of each language's approach to verbal time and aspect. The paper highlights how linguistic forms are shaped by and reflect cultural contexts. The analysis reveals significant differences in how these languages encode time and action, providing insights into the challenges of translation and language teaching across cultural boundaries. The study underscores the importance of cultural awareness in linguistic analysis and suggests directions for future research to further explore the interplay between language structure, function, and cultural expression. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the global diversity of linguistic mechanisms and their implications for cross-cultural communication and language pedagogy.
El objetivo de este artículo es demostrar que el uso del aspecto gramatical en español como L2 está sesgado por el sistema tempoaspectual y el aspecto léxico de la primera lengua del aprendiz sinohablante de nivel intermedio. Para el análisis de los datos del presente estudio tenemos en cuenta la Hipótesis de la Transferencia de la L1 (Nishi y Shirai, 2019), la Hipótesis del Aspecto Léxico (Andersen y Shirai, 1994 y 1996), y la Hipótesis de la Subespecificación Léxica (Giacalone-Ramat y Rastelli, 2008; Rastelli, 2009). Las tres pruebas realizadas (opción múltiple, traducción, producción escrita controlada) han sido analizadas a través de chi-cuadrado y de muestras emparejadas SPSS. Los resultados muestran que los aprendices sinohablantes repiten dos patrones de uso en el proceso de adquisición de la morfología tempoaspectual del español. El primero consiste en el uso del pretérito perfecto compuesto en contextos perfectivos; el segundo, cuyo uso es agramatical en español, se traduce en la asociación de los verbos de logro con complementos adverbiales de duración, lo cual verifica tanto las predicciones de la Transferencia de la L1 como las de la Hipótesis de la Subespecificación Léxica. Los resultados también manifiestan el efecto del aspecto léxico en la preferencia del pretérito perfecto simple con los logros en la prueba de producción, lo cual indica un claro efecto del tipo de tarea en el uso de las marcas tempoaspectuales. Todo ello evidencia que la adquisición del tiempo y el aspecto es un proceso complejo en el que intervienen diversos factores.
This study is a multivariate analysis seeking to identify semantic and syntactic factors influencing the alternation between to-infinitival and bare gerundial clauses in subject-control complements of the verb fear in contemporary American English. It builds on recent qualitative discussions of this alternation and recent multivariate analyses of similar binary alternations involving a prepositionally linked (rather than bare) gerundial option. We draw upon the American component of the Corpus of News on the Web, sampling subject-control complements from a period extending from the beginning of 2010 to the end of 2021. Bayesian mixed-effects logistic regression provides varying degrees of support to numerous manifestations of the Complexity Principle, as well as strong support for the so-called Choice Principle. There is also low-quality evidence for a continuing diachronic decline of the to-infinitive.
Este artigo busca desenvolver uma proposta didática para uma reflexão linguística sobre a conjunção subordinativa adverbial temporal ‘enquanto’ a partir de uma metodologia de ensino de língua baseada em estudos formalistas. Mostramos como a Linguística Formal, como uma perspectiva biológica da gramática, pode promover um maior engajamento dos estudantes ao valorizar seus conhecimentos prévios e, como uma proposta científica, estimular o pensamento crítico e a capacidade analítica por meio dos métodos de raciocínio indutivos e, principalmente, hipotético-dedutivos. Tomamos como teoria norteadora a Semântica Formal para elucidar os conceitos de tempo linguístico (Reichenbach, 1947; Klein, 2009), aspecto gramatical (Klein, 1994), aspecto lexical (Vendler, 1967) e sua relação com as conjunções temporais (Sæbø, 2011) para, em seguida, utilizar as propriedades essenciais de aprendizado postuladas por Lobato (2015), como (i) procedimento de descoberta, (ii) método de elicitação e (iii) técnica de resultados, acompanhadas de atividades epilinguistícas (Franchi, 1987) como ferramentas para a proposta de uma metodologia de ensino de língua que explore, por meio de um raciocínio semântico, a explicitação da faculdade da linguagem do aluno e, consequentemente, promova sua consciência linguística ao produzir um texto.
This paper investigates the role of simplex perfectives in the Russian aspectual system, which are known to display a number of characteristics that seem to escape a proper theoretical treatment. It is proposed that simplex perfective roots (like reš- or bros-) share with internally prefixed base predicates (like napis- or pročit-) a maximal path in their event descriptions. The two classes of predicates differ from each other, however, in that only the latter require their events to realise the path up to its limit. The underspecification of so-called simplex perfectives with respect to event maximality is resolved by the choice of the different theme vowels -a or -i. A theoretical model is developed that derives the actual verb forms in accordance with their aspectual values. It implements two different morphological cycles, with theme vowel insertion demarkating the end of the first one. Early (internal) and late (external) prefixation are defined relative to this.
This paper makes two contributions, one empirical and one theoretical. The empirical focus is “adverbs of change”—modifiers such as quickly, slowly, and immediately, which characterize the change described by the modified predicate as fast or slow. Based on quickly as the most versatile exemplar, the paper develops a semantic account that is uniform both across and within such adverbs. Specifically, I argue that adverbs of change share a common semantic core that selects for dynamic predicates and measures out event duration. I further argue that individual adverbs are not lexically ambiguous, despite their ability to take on different readings—namely rate, extent, narrative, or illocutionary. Instead, these different readings arise through interaction with aspectual and discourse structure, and are further restricted by idiosyncratic scope possibilities. The proposed account of adverbs of change has theoretical implications for the aspectual notion of dynamicity, suggesting that dynamicity is built directly into the mereological structure of events. More concretely, dynamic predicates are claimed to refer to “transitions”, a kind of complex event that labels the change that has occurred. Overall, the paper aims to lay the groundwork for a general theory of verbal change that correctly predicts the implication relations between key aspectual features such as dynamicity, telicity, and durativity.
This dissertation serves a twofold purpose: a semasio-syntactic study of the Sequence of Tense (SOT) phenomenon in Greek, focusing on the 'main clause - na subordinate clause' sequence, and a computational implementation within an LFG/XLE grammar for Greek, within the framework of Lexical Functional Grammar. SOT is examined in terms of the constraints imposed by the matrix verb on the tense of the subordinate clause and how this tense is interpreted. My primary concern revolves around identifying the available interpretations of the embedded verb and determining the factors that influence these interpretations. Since this study belongs to the field of
computational linguistics, I implemented the studied data for the SOT within an LFG/XLE grammar tailored to Greek. This grammar covers a wide array of linguistic
phenomena. Furthermore, it boasts an extensive lexicon of approximately 40,000
wordforms, designed to account for the intricate morphological patterns present in the
Greek language. For the purposes of this study, I embarked on the task of creating two
dedicated corpora, namely the 'oti corpus' and the 'na corpus'. These corpora were
designed to house syntactically and semantically annotated sequences in the form of
'main - oti subordinate clauses' and 'main - na subordinate clauses.' This endeavor
involved retrieving a 330,000-word corpus from the Hellenic National Corpus,
followed by extensive data wrangling to transform it into a linguistic resource. As a
result, this study yields a linguistic resource with the potential for reuse in future
research and analyses. Finally, I propose that the following interpretations of embedded verbs —simultaneous, prior to the matrix, posterior to the matrix verb, and doubleaccess reading—in the context of the SOT phenomenon are compositionally
determined by a combination of tense, grammatical aspect, lexical aspect, and the meaning of both the embedded and main verbs.
Abstract (fr): Acquisition de l'aspect grammatical et du mode d'action chez les apprenants suédophones du français L2 Une étude sur les apprenants suédophones (français 4) au lycée suédois Stanis Yevstifeyev Acquisition de l'aspect grammatical et du mode d'action chez les apprenants suédophones du français L2 Une étude sur les apprenants suédophones (français 4) au lycée suédois Stanis Yevstifeyev Résumé Cette étude cherche à comprendre l'acquisition du mode d'action (l'aspect lexical) et de l'aspect grammatical chez les apprenants suédophones (n=19) au lycée suédois (au niveau français quatre). Le point de départ de cette recherche est l'hypothèse sur la primauté du mode d'action proposé par Andersen (1991) et révisée par des études ultérieures. Le mémoire cherche à établir le rapport entre le mode d'action et l'aspect grammatical dans l'usage du français chez les apprenants au niveau intermédiaire. Les résultats confirment partiellement l'hypothèse sur la primauté du mode d'action. Une tendance inattendue concernant les verbes d'activité employés au passé composé a été identifiée.
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Abstract (en): This study seeks to understand the acquisition of grammatical and lexical aspects among Swedish-speaking learners (n=19) in Swedish high school (at the fourth French level). The starting point of this research is the hypothesis on the primacy of the lexical aspect proposed by Andersen (1991) and revised by subsequent studies. The thesis seeks to establish the relationship between the lexical and the grammatical aspects in the use of French among intermediate level learners. The results partially confirm the hypothesis on the primacy of the mode of action. An unexpected trend concerning activity verbs used in passé composé was identified.
In addition to indicating whether or not events have come to an end at a reference time (temporal function), the opposition between imperfective aspect and perfective aspect in Ecuadorian Siona can also fulfil a discourse function. Imperfective forms of the verb caye ‘to say’ can signal that a speech act will be followed by a reaction or an addition, whereas perfective forms can signal that this is not the case. This discourse function is related to the temporal function through metaphor. This particular discourse function is an addition to the typology of non-temporal functions of verbal aspect.
In this paper, we investigate variable past marking in Australian Aboriginal English as spoken on Croker Island, Northern Territory. Employing data from twenty speakers and both mixed-effects regression and random forests, we show that despite a high degree of individual variability the occurrence or non-occurrence of a past-marked verb is subject to conditioning factors that are known from other varieties of English, most notably lexical and grammatical aspect and marker persistence. Moreover, the constraints governing the preverbal marker bin relate in systematic ways to those governing inflection. Our results suggest that the specifics of contact influence may be less relevant to explaining variable linguistic processes such as past marking than more general discourse-pragmatic and cognitive principles of language variation and change. This has implications for the debate about the uniqueness of creole languages, which have often been considered a language type like no other.
Within linguistic theory, the division of labour between syntax and the lexicon has been a central issue for debate among different architectures of grammar, roughly corresponding to the distinction between memorization and rule governed aspects of language competence. In this article, I give some historical context for these debates, concluding that differences in architectural assumptions are only resolvable ultimately if we are willing to allow these implementational decisions to have consequences for (and make predictions concerning) human behaviours or mental processes. I proceed then to assess the psycholinguistic evidence concerning the lexicon and processing from the cognitive science literature, and offer a reassessment of what this means for the linguistic debates that have dominated discussions of the lexicon to this date. My conclusion will be that some of the comfortable dichotomies often relied on in these discussions are untenable and that some of the classical positions need to be reevaluated.
This article explores the difference of tense and aspect use in Arabic academic writing by native and non-native speakers, driven by the challenges non-native speakers face in accurately conveying temporality in academic contexts. Improving non-native proficiency in Arabic grammar is crucial for enhancing the clarity of their research output. The study data consisted of academic articles written by both groups, specifically focusing on the results and discussion sections. Through qualitative analysis, findings revealed that native speakers demonstrate a strong grasp of grammar, with balanced use of past and present tenses and appropriate aspects, effectively expressing both completed and ongoing actions. In contrast, non-native speakers, particularly those from Indonesian backgrounds, tend to overuse the present tense and active voice, indicating difficulties in fully understanding Arabic’s temporal aspects. These results underscored the need for more intensive language instruction focused on mastering Arabic tense and aspect structures to improve non-native academic writing skills.
This paper investigates the diachronic development of Hungarian word order, focusing on the syntactic position in front of the finite verb in light of the syntactic shift from OV to VO order. The so-called Verb Modifiers (VMs), which precede the verb in Modern Hungarian, showed significant word order variation in earlier periods. It is examined how this variation, and especially the difference between verbal particles and other VMs, can be accounted for. The study concludes that the VM–V order is not a syntactic remnant but a result of a syntactic change that affects all VMs already in the early texts.
Abstract
Purpose. No research to date has investigated the effect of lexical aspect and/or the morphological structures of verbs on the comprehension of Arabic perfective markings by learners of Arabic as a second language (ASL). The purpose of this study is to fill this gap by exploring the extent to which learners’ use of the perfective aligns with the Aspect Hypothesis (AH) assumptions.
Methods. All participants completed a fifteen-item biographical questionnaire to elicit personal background information, such as age, nationality, mother tongue, and level of study at the Arabic Language Unit (ALU). A grammaticality judgment task was also used to examine the learners' comprehension of the perfective markers across the aspectual classes.
Results. Findings showed that the learners’ comprehension of the perfective marking was not determined by the semantic properties of the verbs, as its use was inconsistent with the assumptions of AH. It was found that perfective activities were significantly the most likely verbs to be appropriately perceived by learners at all levels. Telics (achievements and accomplishments) were the next most likely verbs to be accurately realized, while perfective states were the least likely verbs to be accurately identified.
Conclusions. I conclude that the effect of the morphological structures of the verbs and their input frequency on learners’ comprehension of the Arabic perfective was greater than the effect of their semantic properties, as the learners’ use of the Arabic perfective was not congruent with the AH. However, the potential influence of the morphological shapes of the verbs and their input frequency needs further investigation, as this study is the first to explore L2 comprehension of the Arabic perfective.
As a completive adverbial meaning ‘in a short time’, the Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM) ts̍ıt ‘one’ plus the verbal classifier ē sequence can be used in a preverbal but post-subject position to encode clausal dependency. This usage of ts̍ıt-ē is often translated as ‘immediately after’ or ‘as soon as’. While Adverbial ts̍ıt-ē(-á) (ts̍ıt-ē + the delimitative suffix -á) and tsin kín ‘very quickly’ in the sentence-initial position of an independent sentence establish backward linking with the preceding sentence, the subordinator ts̍ıt-ē regulates forward linking of two successive (sub)events. As a completive adverbial, the subordinator ts̍ıt-ē is subject to the telicity requirement, and it also encodes a speaker’s subjective evaluation that marks (un)expectedness. The low attachment of the subordinator ts̍ıt-ē in the subordinate clause accounts for the asymmetries observed in the three environments for how the telicity requirement is satisfied (e.g., whether completion or inchoativity has to be overtly marked): (a) an independent sentence with completive ts̍ıt-ē(-á), (b) a SUB ts̍ıt-ē clause, and (c) the main clause following a SUB ts̍ıt-ē clause. Finally, the fact that a SUB ts̍ıt-ē clause can only precede the main clause, and must be lower than a reason clause calls for further investigation.
This book brings together eleven peer-reviewed chapters of cutting-edge research produced by both established and rising scholars in the field. Given that this volume is inspired by papers from the 25th iteration of the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, the editors track the development of the field in the last quarter century and have organized the volume into three sections (linguistic structure and variation, US Spanish and heritage speakers, applied linguistics) reflecting current research trends. This edited volume will be a welcome resource for advanced undergraduate students, incoming and advanced graduate students, and researchers in the field, as well as Spanish language educators at all levels.
La teoría de Pylkkänen (2008) explica cómo los argumentos que no son seleccionados por la raíz léxica son introducidos en las estructuras sintácticas. En relación con la introducción de objetos indirectos no argumentales, Pylkkänen propone la existencia de un núcleo funcional aplicativo (SApl), que, dependiendo de dónde se ensamble en la estructura sintáctica, se clasifica como bajo o alto. En cuanto a los SApl bajos, Pylkkänen señala que están restringidos a verbos con argumento interno no estativos. Sin embargo, los datos del español muestran que la situación es más compleja, al menos en esta lengua, y que resulta necesaria una reformulación de dichas restricciones (Cuervo, 2003; Pujalte, 2009). En primer lugar, no todo verbo transitivo eventivo permite el agregado de una frase aplicativa. Y, en segundo lugar, no todos los verbos estativos son incompatibles con dativos no argumentales. Estos hechos podrían constituir un problema, ya que inducirían a modificar la teoría. Mostramos, sin embargo, que los verbos estativos no constituyen un contraejemplo y exploramos una reformulación según la cual se mantiene el requisito de transitividad, pero se extiende la restricción sobre la semántica verbal a todos los predicados atélicos y no solo a los estativos.
Several cross-inflectional-language studies claim that reference to time and telicity marked by verbs are difficult for agrammatic speakers. Thus, the PADILIH claims that time reference referring to the past is difficult and AAM claims that the combination of argument structure (transitivity & telicity) and time reference is relatively difficult for agrammatic speakers. It is predicted that a similar phenomenon is observed in the agglutinative Indonesian. Furthermore, filling in the gap in rehabilitation method in the Aphasia Test for Diagnosis, Information and Rehabilitation (TADIR), which currently has no standard guidelines, it is interesting to examine telicity and time reference in addition to the accompanying deficit. BI verbs have the potential to indicate telicity through inherent meaning by referring to the two semantic parameters of time reference including dynamism and durativity, while time reference is simultaneously marked by aspectual adverbs and temporal lexical adverbs. Ten participants were divided into two groups, with one group comprised of agrammatic speakers and a second group comprised of five speakers without brain damage (NBDs) as controls. Agrammatism was determined based on the TADIR, and both groups of speakers were tested with the Test for Assessing Reference of Time (TART) and Verbal Sentence Production (SPP-verbal). The validated sentences have the patterns of subject + verb (intransitive) in basic and derived verb forms. The results of the study, in line with the PADILIH hypothesis both in production and comprehension tasks, show that referring to the past that requires discourse linking tends to be difficult. The performance of agrammatic speakers is lower than that of the controls in both temporal and lexical adverb tasks. However, the AAM hypothesis cannot be fully generalized. In both the production and comprehension tasks the atelic verbs are not difficult; however, telic verbs are difficult. Clinical contribution as a complement of rehabilitation method (TADIR) is the evaluation of the difficulty of derived verbs and time reference, and an adaptive method by manipulating a series of tests that involves three time frames and stresses on especially the forms of derived verbs. This finding has implications for efforts to develop the integrity of sentences triggered by a decrease in the lexical level and the development of the language potential of agrammatic speakers who may be indicated by memory disorders.
This article investigates the way speakers combine different verbal and gestural resources to express aspectual meaning in American English, specifically the way an event is repeated. It identifies stable gestural correlates to the OVER AND OVER adverbial phrase, which involves lexical iteration.
Speakers have been shown to rely on co-verbal gestures to communicate aspectual information along with lexical and grammatical means. However, most of the research has focused on hand gestures, and on comparing the embodiment of different categories of aspect. Cyclic gestures have particularly been found in aspectual contexts, and linked with meanings of motion, either physical or metaphorical, as well as continuity.
We use video datasets of spoken American English belonging to the Distributed Little Red Hen Lab (Steen et al. 2018) as part of the UCLA Library NewsScape Archive. We determine which formal features participate in the expression of iteration, in a variety of articulators (hands, head, eyebrows), and carry out a quantitative analysis, targeting gesture proportion, timing, and duration.
This study shows how gestural components blend in and participate in the expression of grammatical and pragmatic meaning in speech. More specifically, it adds to the ongoing discussion within Construction Grammar about conventionality in multimodal constructions.
Tense-mood-aspect mappings and the variable morphosyntactic structures that express them are a key aspect of language development. For instance, progressive aspect expression in Spanish might present a learnability problem because the language alternates synthetic and analytic forms to encode progressiveness (e.g., como vs. estoy comiendo ‘I am eating’). To date, however, acquisition studies have focused on present temporalities, rather than past or future contrasts. We examine the frequency of selection of these variants and the linguistic factors that significantly condition selection across course levels. For this purpose, four groups of college-level learners (N = 117) and one L1 Spanish group (N = 21) completed a 30-item written preference task. The dependent variable was form selection (synthetic, analytic, or that both were equally possible). The independent variables considered were the dynamicity of the predicate, the presence of a co-occurring adverb, temporality, and verb lexeme frequency. Results showed stable rates of selection across groups, with each selecting synthetic forms in over 50% of contexts. Within-group mixed-effects regression analyses revealed that lexical frequency and temporality, in addition to dynamicity, were relevant predictors of preference, as learners moved from making no distinction between forms to systematic patterns of selection as course level increased.
This article confronts a multifunctional grammaticalized form in Mandarin, the preverbal morpheme yǒu (有). Since its appearance in the Chinese mainland around the 1990s, there has been controversy about whether it is an aspect marker or not. In response to this question, we conducted a questionnaire survey to investigate how native Mandarin speakers generally understand sentences with preverbal yǒu . The results not only show that preverbal yǒu can serve as a perfective viewpoint marker that makes the terminal boundary of an event semantically visible, but also provide evidence of its other function as an existential marker. The concrete function of preverbal yǒu (perfective or existential) depends on pragmatic inference based on the temporal properties of a given situation. With this observation, the paper resolves the controversy of which of these two functions actually applies to preverbal yǒu , and integrates this marker into the broader context of pragmatics-based multifunctionality as it is widely found in Sinitic and mainland Southeast Asian languages.
In many traditions of aspectual analysis, verbs (or, rather, predications) are sorted into Aristotelian types, and grammatical aspects are operators that (a) take tenseless propositions as arguments and (b) change the eventuality type of the proposition. This tradition tells us little about how state and action clauses mean what they mean, because it does not explain how aspectual markers affect the meanings of verbs with which they combine. In the present framework, aspectually sensitive constructions selectively bind to these representations, permuting them. In part 1 of this series (Michaelis, 2022), I argued that by viewing such permutations as operations on a verb's Aktionsart structure, we can explain the relationship between input and output situation types in aspectual mappings effected by verbal morphosyntax. In this article, part 2, I apply this framework to type shifts performed by the English Perfect and Progressive constructions, as well as tenses in English and French.
The article provides an in-depth analysis of aspectuality and its manifestation in Slavic languages. Aspectuality, a functional-semantic category, is explored as a universal linguistic phenomenon expressed through various grammatical, lexical, syntactic, and contextual means. The study highlights the central role of aspect in Slavic languages, distinguishing between perfective and imperfective verbs and the concept of bi-aspectual verbs that function in both aspects depending on context. The article demonstrates the interrelationship between aspect and actionality, analyzing their theoretical foundations and expression features. Actionality, a lexico-grammatical category, describes the internal temporal structure of situations influenced by the semantics of verbal lexemes and phrases. The interaction between aspect and actionality provides a multifaceted expression of aspectual meanings in Slavic languages. The author discusses the historical development of aspectuality, comparing it to other language families, and highlights the classification of actional types proposed by Z. Vendler. This classification is based on dynamism, telicity, and duration parameters, differentiating between states, atelic processes, telic processes, and events. The article concludes that studying aspect and actionality in Slavic languages contributes to a deeper understanding of semantic processes and the interaction between lexical and grammatical categories, which is crucial for developing aspectology and linguistic science.
Zooming in from the grand-scale descriptions of the Mainland Southeast Asian convergence area, this paper focuses on Htanaw, an Austroasiatic language in Myanmar’s Shan State. Close contact with Burmese/Intha, Pa’O, and Shan led to a restructuring of Htanaw, exemplified here by the verb phrase, which exhibits an intriguing mixture of (isolating) Austroasiatic and (morphologically complex) Tibeto-Burman features. The Htanaw VP is internally complex with optional bound morphemes expressing grammatical and semantic categories. Based on original fieldwork data and available published material, this study presents the dynamics of the Htanaw verb phrase patterns and puts them in an areal typological perspective.
摘要
本文關注海南閩語（海口、瓊海、港門）允許表動作發生地點的{在}類 PP 後置於 VP 的特殊分佈。文章認為該罕見特點是受以[ VP - PP ]為固有語序的壯侗語影響的結果，為通過語言接觸從黎語、臨高語借移來的特徵。這種語序改變屬Heine（2008）提出的「不變之變」；各地方言句法限制上的差異則反映受語固有特徵在借移過程中起到的「過濾」作用。
This paper explores the distribution and semantics of the reversative affix un- and the restitutive affix re-, and overall makes a new proposal about the lexical semantics of verbs. I argue that these affixes tell a story of derivational morphology that is based not on categorization of verbs into neat aspectual and decompositional classes, but on the result of the verb’s action on the object and whether or not such a result state permits reversal and restitution. The argument structure of these affixes shows us that morphology interacts with semantics in a true compositional sense, whereby the affectedness of the object is a crucial factor in determining compatibility and composition. I propose an approach to verb meaning that encodes this important information as outcomes: the lifespan properties of the object after the action occurs on it. I propose, formulating the Verb-Root-Outcomes framework, that all verb roots come equipped with sets of outcomes. A wide array of verbs that have been classified as ‘change-of-state’ are shown to have different sub-classes based on the shape of the outcome set, and this also allows a formal definition of what ‘potential’ change could mean. The affixes un- and re- are modeled as result-state modifiers, which are sensitive to the outcomes of the action of the verb stem they attach to, and only attach when their presuppositions about the state of the object are met. Apart from directly comparing reversal and restitution with the same formal notion of equivalence, this approach also allows a transparent representation of event decomposition, whereby change in the object is able to be tracked at a granular level and its importance in determining the success of morphological derivations highlighted. This theory argues for compositional semantic interpretation at a sub-lexical level, while also showing how sentential and pragmatic factors affect verb meaning and derivational affixation .
La présente étude empirique vise à examiner l’influence de l’aspect lexical sur l’acquisition initiale du passé composé et de l’imparfait chez les apprenants sinophones en français langue étrangère, tout en essayant de dégager des difficultés d’apprentissage sous-jacentes. Selon l’hypothèse de l’aspect, aux stades initiaux de l’acquisition, les apprenants associent de manière préférentielle la morphologie perfective aux prédicats téliques (à savoir les verbes d’accomplissement et d’achèvement) et la morphologie imperfective aux prédicats atéliques (à savoir les verbes d’état et d’activité). Les analyses statistiques effectuées ont mis en évidence cette préférence significative chez les apprenants sinophones testés, dont la L1 est connue pour l’absence de la morphologie temporelle, corroborant les résultats obtenus dans des études menées auprès d’apprenants qui marquent la morphologie temporelle dans leur L1. Il en ressort que l’acquisition de la morphologie verbale pourrait être étroitement liée à l’aspect lexical, indépendamment de la présence ou de l’absence de la morphologie temporelle en L1. Les résultats montrent également que les apprenants testés ont eu plus de difficultés à reconnaître l’emploi atypique des temps verbaux par rapport à leur emploi typique, notamment pour les verbes d’état et d’achèvement, et ce, probablement à cause de l’influence du système aspectuel du chinois, lequel présente de notables différences par rapport à celui du français.
Cette étude s’intéresse à l’acquisition du lexique et de son sémantisme en français L2, en s’appuyant sur une méthode de classement des événements, l’analyse en clusters (Majid et al. 2007, 2008, Stathi 2023). Nous avons ciblé les verbes servant à décrire des scènes de collision instrumentée en français langue première (FRL1) et seconde (FRL2), autrement dit des scènes au cours desquelles une action menée par un protagoniste Causeur au moyen d’un Instrument impacte un autre protagoniste, Affecté. Nous avons collecté des récits en FRL1 (n=22) et en FRL2 (arabe syrien L1, n=29) au moyen d’une tâche de verbalisation de clips vidéos montrant des situations de collision, où nous avons fait varier la contiguïté spatio-temporelle entre les différents sous-événements, pour mesurer son influence sur les choix des verbes employés par les deux groupes. Par ailleurs, nous avons réalisé des analyses en clusters couplées à des analyses statistiques sur un corpus de 486 verbes de collision instrumentée pour en observer la distribution selon la condition [± contiguë] et la comparer entre les groupes FRL1 et FRL2. Les résultats révèlent des différences dans la description d’événements de collision instrumentée selon le critère de contiguïté spatio-temporelle [± contiguë] et suggèrent une différence dans la catégorisation sémantique de ces deux types d’événements. En effet, les locuteurs du FRL1 préfèrent utiliser des verbes exprimant le Contact comme toucher ou frapper lorsque la condition est [+ contiguë]. Cependant, dans la condition [- contiguë], les verbes comme jeter ou envoyer, exprimant le Mouvement de l’Instrument, sont privilégiés. Toutefois, les apprenants du FRL2 continuent à employer les mêmes verbes de Contact dans les deux situations, ce qui suggère une tendance à catégoriser ces deux événements de manière semblable. Les analyses montrent également que d’autres critères, comme les caractéristiques physiques de l’Instrument, peuvent également influencer le choix des locuteurs. Ainsi, les analyses en cluster des verbes employés se révèlent pertinentes pour observer la catégorisation cognitive et langagière des événements, car elles permettent d’appréhender le sémantisme des verbes employés autant en L1 qu’en L2, et de comparer les différents patrons de lexicalisation.
抽象的
漢語的助詞「著」是一個用於表達持續性事件的非完整體標記，北京話裡它緊附於謂詞上形成「V著O」式，用例如「墻上掛 著 畫」「他騎 著 車上學去了」。在中國太行山以西的北方漢語方言（簡稱「西北漢語」）裡，助詞「著」有一系列迥異於北京話「著」的語法表現。首先，西北漢語的「著」在標示非完整體時經常遠離謂詞而位於賓語之後，如「<寧夏中寧> 我寫作業 著 呢 我正在寫作業 」。而且，這種「VO著」式可表達的非完整體意義遠多於北京話的「V著O」式，如「<烏魯木齊>路堵死 底 呢 路是堵死的狀態 」。其次，甘肅、青海、新疆的西北漢語裡助詞「著」還可以插在兩個VP之間承擔「連鎖標記」的功能，如「<西寧>家抱住娃娃 著 餵奶著 她正抱著孩子餵奶呢 」，這種「VP1+著+VP2」式的連鎖結構偏離了漢語為「連動型語言」的基本模式。由於「著」的這些特異現象既不見於古漢語文獻，也不見於其他地區的漢語，我們便比較了中國西北民族語（蒙語、藏語、突厥語）的相應表達式，最終證實：西北漢語「著」的各種特異表現源於漢語跟西北民族語接觸引發的創新性演變，其演變機制代表了語言接觸性演變的一種新模式「妥協性創新」。簡言之，兩種語言如果類型迥異，在接觸中就偏向創造一種「各讓一步、達到雙贏」的新形式。
This study presents a syntactic analysis of the different aspectual readings of a gradable predicate in Mandarin Chinese. It is argued that such predicates contain an uninterpretable/underspecified [a dynamic] feature that needs a value. To receive a value, the feature must be in a c-command relation with a functional element. For example, a functional element like the degree adverb hen 'very,' which is in the head of the Degree Phrase, can assign the feature with a negative value, and the predicate has a stative reading. In contrast, a null atelic morpheme in the head of the Inner Aspect Phrase can give a plus value to the predicate and it has an atelic and dynamic reading. The present study also discusses the telic reading of the same kind of predicates functioning either as the main predicate or a secondary one. It is argued that a covert telic morpheme is responsible for the telic reading. The proposed analysis shows that a syntactic account is as plausible as a lexical one, providing a comprehensive understanding of the aspectual readings of gradable predicates in Mandarin Chinese.
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