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The question of the roles of grammatical aspect and of lexical aspect for the inference of temporal relations has richly been investigated from a theoretical point of view in various fields of languages sciences. Nevertheless, previous studies do not formulate similar conclusions, and thus they trigger different predictions for experimental testing. In contrast, the role of coreference patterns did not receive as much attention as grammatical and lexical aspect have received. As such, in this study we experimentally assess the roles of grammatical aspect (perfective vs. imperfective), lexical aspect (activities vs. accomplishments) and coreference patterns (same vs. different agents) in English. By means of an annotation study, we establish that fewer chronological relations emerge in passages with the imperfective aspect and coreference of agents (i.e. the actions are performed by the same agent). Then, by means of a temporal evaluation task, we show that synchronous relations are favoured in narrative passages that describe activities and lack of coreference of agents (i.e. the actions are performed by different agents). To interpret the results, we suggest that the comprehenders’ inference of temporal relations is influenced on the one hand by linguistic biases and on the other hand by their expectations of coherence. We discuss the findings from a cross-linguistic perspective.

The verb jau5 ‘have’ in Cantonese can be placed immediately before the verbal or adjectival predicate, forming “jau5 + predicate” construction (henceforth pre-predicate jau5), and pervious analyses consider the pre-predicate jau5 as the preposed perfective marker –zo2. The same construction “you ‘have’ + VP” renders ungrammaticality in Mandarin, with the post-verbal perfective –le being its only form. In this paper, contra previous analyses, I argue that pre-predicate jau5 and post-verbal perfective –zo2 cannot be equivalents. Following S.F. Huang's (1981) ideas on determiner quantifiers, I propose that Cantonese pre-predicate jau5 ‘have’ is an assertive existential quantifier operating in the domain of verbs and their event time, which gives rise to two assertive meanings: (i) When the situation is interpreted as non-specific, pre-predicate jau5 asserts at least one occurrence of the event; and (ii) when the situation is interpreted as specific, jau5 asserts the actualization of the natural final endpoint or the explicit bound of the situation. The existential nature of jau5 ‘have’ is inherently borne out in the lexical semantics of “have”, and the proposed analysis reveals that when assertive existential quantification performs in situations, assertions are sensitive to (i) the lexical aspect of the verbal predicates and (ii) the specificity of the situation. It leads to the theoretical implications that: (i) endpoints/boundaries of situations should be linguistically differentiated between actualized and potential ones, following Dahl's (1981) proposal; and (ii) stage-level stative patterns are more like events than states in its endpoint properties.

This study aims at examining and accounting for the scope of the temporal effect of phrase boundaries. Previous research has indicated that there is an interaction between boundary-related lengthening and prominence such that the former extends towards the nearby prominent syllable. However, it is unclear whether this interaction is due to lexical stress and/or phrasal prominence (marked by pitch accent) and how far towards the prominent syllable the effect extends. Here, we use an electromagnetic articulography (EMA) study of Greek to examine the scope of boundary-related lengthening as a function of lexical stress and pitch accent separately. Boundaries are elicited by the means of a variety of syntactic constructions. The results show an effect of lexical stress. Phrase-final lengthening affects the articulatory gestures of the phrase-final syllable that are immediately adjacent to the boundary in words with final stress, but is initiated earlier within phrase-final words with non-final stress. Similarly, the articulatory configurations during inter-phrasal pauses reach their point of achievement later in words with final stress than in words with non-final stress. These effects of stress hold regardless of whether the phrase-final word is accented or de-accented. Phrase-initial lengthening, on the other hand, is consistently detected on the phrase-initial constriction, independently of where the stress is within the preceding, phrase-final, word. These results indicate that the lexical aspect of prominence plays a role in determining the scope of boundary-related lengthening in Greek. Based on these results, a gestural account of prosodic boundaries in Greek is proposed in which lexical and phrasal prosody interact in a systematic and coordinated fashion. The cross-linguistic dimensions of this account and its implications for prosodic structure are discussed.

This paper presents a semantic analysis of the perfect aspect in Niuean (Polynesian). We argue based on novel data that the Niuean perfect shares many properties with the English perfect, but also several striking differences. The Niuean perfect disallows universal perfect readings, can induce inchoative readings, and with some event-types allows present in-progress readings. We analyze the Niuean perfect as introducing inchoative semantics: it adds an initial change-of-state to the predicate to which it attaches, and places that change-of-state inside the Perfect Time Span. Our findings cast doubt on a model of grammar whereby lexical aspectual operations such as inchoativization are strictly separated from viewpoint aspectual operations such as the perfect. We argue for a flexible approach whereby different components of meaning (inchoativity, a Perfect Time Span restriction, current relevance effects) can be introduced at different levels and combined in different ways by languages to produce surface cross-linguistic variation.

The imperfective paradox (IP) refers to the fact that the imperfective-progressive yields completion entailment with atelic predicates (e.g., Livia was pushing the chair → Livia pushed the chair = true) but not with telic predicates (Livia was peeling the tangerine → Livia peeled the tangerine = not necessarily true). The paper questions whether L2 learners too – like adult native speakers – are sensitive to the IP. Ninety-nine adult L2 Italian learners with different L1s and proficiency levels underwent a novel version of the completion judgment task based on event sub-intervals. In this task, learners did not assess if imperfective and perfective events in a video clip was completed but when. Analysis of reaction times and of interruptive-clicks showed that beginner and intermediate L2 learners – unlike native speakers – did not differentiate the patterns of completion between perfective and imperfective predicates and between telic and atelic predicates. It is possible that – at initial stages of acquisition – such aspectual oppositions are still underspecified. These results challenge the predictions of the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis.

This article presents the verbal suffix -ite in Totela (Bantu, Namibia and Zambia), which has variable temporal interpretations based both on lexical aspect (situation type) and on discourse context. The same -ite-marked predicate may be interpreted as referencing a situation that is past (resultative-like readings) or present (progressive-like readings) with respect to utterance time. The suffix is analyzed as having the aspectual function of a stativizer, asserting a relevant property of the utterance's subject. Temporal interpretations with respect to utterance time (or other perspective time) are derived from principles of relevance: the state described by an -ite-marked predicate is interpreted so that it answer the current question under discussion in discourse. The -ite suffix, most likely related to a historical resultative, still specifies a result state, but the temporal specifications of that result state are weakened and must be inferred through context. Cross-linguistic comparison of -ite with other markers that have both perfect/resultative and progressive readings suggests that the pragmatic notion of relevance ⿿ and not only commonalities in temporal semantics (e.g. focus on post-state; stativizing functions) ⿿ may be a key factor in the perfect/resultative/progressive connection.

It was observed in earlier studies on Singaporean English (e.g. Ho and Platt, 1993 ) that the past tense was used in marking present as well as past habitual aspect. Ho and Platt’s main thesis had proposed that the use of past tense in Singaporean (Colloquial) English was as a marker of lexical perfectivity rather than tense, and that, phonetic factors aside, the lexical aspect of the verb itself determined whether or not the past tense would be used at all to mark past time reference. The use of already as a marker of both perfect aspect and grammatical perfectivity, equivalent in function to Mandarin Chinese le , has also been observed by Bao (1995, 2005) , and it is questioned to what extent such forms are in competition with one another. Little attention, however, has been afforded to the study of past tense in non-past environments in Singaporean (Colloquial) English, including those that may be considered to be, in some accounts, grammatically imperfective in terms of aspect marking, and ambivalent in terms of realis or irrealis marking. The present study isolates the use of past tense in marking future anteriority in realis conditional clauses and their semantic equivalents (where it is used to mark not only lexical perfectivity but grammatical perfectivity as well), in marking present habitual aspect, in expressing future plans, and in performative uses. It is questioned why the past tense can share with already some of its functions of marking grammatical perfectivity (but with non-past time reference), and why such perfective environments that can support a strongly realis function in a contact dialect are correspondingly situations for generating meanings of potentiality and irrealis in standard usage. The study also compares such uses with the distribution of the positive-declarative, periphrastic do -auxiliary in the history of English, a form that was claimed to function as a perfective marker in Middle and Early Modern English ( Denison, 1993; Ziegeler, 2006 ). Many such uses were found in similar environments to those in which the non-temporal past tense is found in Singaporean Colloquial English.

This paper examines extensions in present perfect (PP) usage in a corpus of police media reports published on the web in Australia, following previous work on extensions in the uses of the PP in oral narratives ( Engel and Ritz, 2000 , Ritz, 2007 , Ritz and Engel, 2008 ). The following were examined: proportion of tenses in the corpus, lexical aspect of VPs, co-occurrences of the PP with temporal adverbials, and discourse characteristics. The latter were the main focus of the paper, and patterns in PP usage in relation to rhetorical and information structures were examined in detail. The results show that PP clauses are almost as frequent as simple past clauses; that the PP appears frequently in sequences expressing temporal progression, and that it is often combined with a range of adverbials, including past dates and times. It is also argued that police usage of the PP can be seen to give rise to mirative effects, with consequences at the level of discourse usage. In particular, the PP is favoured for introduction of new/unexpected discourse information, while the SP is used in-between clauses in the PP to continue a sub-segment. I use and extend Caudal and Roussarie's (2006) viewpoint analysis of perfects that have acquired perfective past meanings as well as Vikner's (1985) three two-place relations system for the representation of tenses, and propose that the non-standard PP in Australian English can be represented as having a result stage filling a temporal interval between a past reference time and a present one, the extended-now. I suggest that such an interval is exploited to give rise to various meanings and discourse effects.

This paper examines parallels in semantic structure between noun phrases and verbal predicates in constructions in which they are mutually constraining and contribute to the expression of lexical aspect and grammatical aspect. One of the main claims pursued here is that such interactions are semantically motivated: it is the nominal argument linked to the Incremental Theme role that interacts with the aspectual semantics of verbal predicates and sentences, at least in the most typical cases. I will show how such interactions, which appear to be procedural and directional, can be described declaratively within a constraint-based (or unification-based) framework. This area intersects with lexical semantics, morphology and it poses intriguing problems to the mapping between syntax and semantics. It also provides an excellent basis for cross-linguistic studies and for exploring how nouns and verbs relate to the ontology of individuals and eventualities. The data is mainly drawn from English and Slavic languages, which are compared to German and Finnish.

The development of past tense verbal morphology among second language learners has been associated with the lexical-semantics of verbal predicates, or the saliency and frequency of past tense morphology. The relative effect of the above-mentioned factors was analyzed in written and orally elicited narratives of 14 classroom learners of English (native speakers of Spanish in their home country). The results show that the effect of the cognitive saliency of frequent and irregular verbal morphology appears to be more important than the effect of lexical aspect in the beginning stages of development of inflectional endings. The results were analyzed from the perspective of two distinct cognitive processes in the development of inflectional endings in a second language: lexical (item) learning versus rule-based learning. The above-mentioned findings are discussed in terms of the potential value of developmental sequences for second language acquisition.

The present study investigates how readers' representations of narratives are constrained by three sources of temporal information; grammatical aspect, lexical aspect, and the duration of intervening events. Participants read short stories in which a target event with an intrinsic endpoint or not (lexical aspect: accomplishments/activities) was described as ongoing or completed (grammatical aspect: imperfective/perfective). An intervening sentence described either a long or short duration event before the target situation was reintroduced later in the story. The electroencephalogram time-locked to the reintroduction of the target event elicited a larger N400 for perfective versus imperfective accomplishments, and this effect occurred only after short intervening events. Alternatively, the N400 to targets in the activity condition did not vary as a function of grammatical aspect or duration of intervening events. These results provide novel insight into how the temporal properties of events interact to constrain the availability of concepts in situation models.

This paper investigates the degree to which, in a Moraic Phonology framework, coda weight can be seen as responsible for nuclear length in several varieties of French. First, I outline the distribution of vowel length as detailed in conservative variants of French (Passy, 1913; Grammont, 1928). The proposed analysis discusses several length-related processes that are claimed to result from a very simple operation: the removal of an association line that links the moraic tier to certain terminal segments in the melody. Extraprosodicity at the word-level is shown to play a crucial role in determining which elements qualify as mora-bearing units. The second part carries the same analysis into the realm of a variety of regional French, that of Lower Normandy (LNRF), where length contrasts regulate a large part of the phonology. Two features stand out as separating LNRF from Conservative French: the lexical aspect of length — considerably more enhanced in LNRF — and the relationship between nucleus length and the weight of a subset of latent coda consonants — sporadic in Conservative French, systematic in LNRF.