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Aspect, the perfective-imperfective contrast, is a universal phenomenon, part of man's cognitive organization to reflect objective/subjective reality by conceptualizing referents of verbs and of nominals/NPs standing for participants in situations as temporal entities, residing in speaker-hearers' heads and interacting between each other. Aspect is instantiated across languages through two archetypes: verbal aspect (VA) - grammatical, as in the Slavic languages, including Ukrainian; compositional aspect (CA) - complex semantico-syntactic, sporadically dependent on pragmatic discourse elements, as in English. The paper explores Ukrainian language data to, first, confirm that CA, realized mainly as a very complex interplay of sentence components, exists not only in CA languages but, albeit peripherally, also in VA languages, including Ukrainian. Second, to find out how Ukrainian aspect is realized in sentences with biaspectual verbs and particular numbers of situation-participant NPs: three, two, one. The referents of verbs and of nominals/NPs standing for participants in situations in both VA and CA languages are part of the never-ending process of thinking and perpetual resorting to memory and is not some abstract self-contained system of symbols divorced from human cognition. Phrased otherwise, aspect, especially CA, cannot be understood within the domain of traditional grammar and mainstream linguistics with their naivist notions ignoring man's cognitive capacity and maintaining, inter alia, that nominals/NPs are concrete/physical or abstract entities. The study of matter is ordained to physics. Linguistics is obliged to investigate not the material world but how language reflects this world and other possible (imaginable) worlds. A simple analogue is a woman in a mirror: it is not a material object but an image of a woman; likewise, a woman referred to through language is not a material object but a token of a woman. Hence, NP referents of material things are not physical entities but images of such entities, fully describable, and their kineticism is handled by verb referents, whereby the intricate CA mechanism, which is cognitive, can be observed, albeit peripherally, also in VA languages, including Ukrainian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a literary corpus study of four grammatical tenses across four European languages. The corpus consists of a selection of eight chapters from Javier Marías's Spanish novel Así empieza lo malo 'Thus bad begins', and its translations to English, Dutch, and French. We annotated 1579 verb forms in the Spanish source text for tense, and, subsequently, their translations in the other languages, distinguishing between two registers within the novel, i.e., dialogue and narration. We found that the vast majority of the Spanish tenses are translated one-to-one to their counterparts in the three languages, especially in narration. In dialogue, we found several deviations, which we could partially account for within an Optimality Theoretic approach by appealing to the notion of markedness along two different typological dimensions, namely, tense (present versus past) and aspect (imperfective versus perfective). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison of emerging signed languages and creole languages provides evidence that, when language is emerging, it prioritizes marking the novelty of information; is readily recursive; favors the manner of action (aspect) over the time of action (tense); develops inflection readily only in a visual, as opposed to aural, mode; and develops derivational opacity only as the result of drift over long periods of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper examines Hausa verbal compounds in terms of the division of regular verbs (verbs in the "grade system") into verbs which have a High or Low tone first syllable. The focus of the paper is the surprisingly small number of transitive L-verbs (verbs beginning with a Low tone - "grade 2") and their limited use of compound markers which contrasts strongly with the frequency of transitive H-verbs (verbs beginning with a High tone) and their markers. I also describe several devices (e.g. grade-switching and covert subjects) which "allow" the formation of verbal compounds with transitive L-verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at analyzing verbal suffixes in Sadri with special focus on tense and aspect inflections. The Sadri past tense and the future tense are marked by morphemes /-l-/ and /-b-/ respectively. But, there are some exceptions found in imperfective and perfective aspects in the past tense which are marked with or without the past tense marker /-l-/. The future tense marker /- b-/ is absent in the third person singular in all aspects. Likewise, the perfective aspect morpheme in Sadri is /-y ~ -i-/. The perfective aspect morpheme /-y/ gets attached to the vowel ending verbs and /-i-/ get inserted in the consonant ending verbs. The Sadri imperfective is marked by morpheme /-at ~ -t /. The morpheme / -t / is attached to the vowel ending and /-at / to the consonant ending verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Domínios de Lingu@gem is the property of Dominios de Lingu@gem and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, the interplay of modal markers with the lexical aspect of the verb in Han period Chinese is at issue. Abraham and Leiss (Modality-aspect interfaces: Implications and typological solutions, 2008) propose a strong and possibly universal relation between the verbal aspect and either the root/deontic or the epistemic reading of a modal verb based on data from the Germanic languages. In this article, this hypothesis will be checked against the data of Late Archaic and Early Middle (Han period) Chinese. It will be proposed that a relation similar to that in the Germanic languages can also be established for Chinese at least for the root modal values, despite the obvious differences between the aspectual and modal system of Chinese and that of the Germanic languages. As in the Germanic languages, root modal verbs in general select verbs/predicates which are compatible with the perfective aspect, i.e. [+TELIC] verbs. Due to the fact that epistemic readings have not developed yet for modal auxiliary verbs, the constraints proposed in Abraham and Leiss for the epistemic reading of modal verbs in combination with imperfective or [−TELIC] verbs cannot be confirmed for LAC and EMC. Epistemic modality is expressed by sentential adverbs which take an entire proposition as their complement. These are less confined in their selectional restrictions than modal auxiliary verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Euphemism is a common linguistic phenomenon. A short introduction to euphemism in English and Chinese will benefit our future intercultural communication. Three grammatical approaches in English euphemism were analyzed in light of cognitive grammar: negation, postmodification and aspect. Thanks to negation, profile and base are changed, resulting in the prominence of "NOT" and the shift of cognitive reference point. Postmodification makes the head noun the trajector in a relational profile, hence reducing the prominence of the modifier. Aspects help to turn a bounded scene into an unbounded one and hence change the cognitive focus. These will be benefit for human's communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under a generative framework, this paper investigates the properties of the AVonly restriction on complementation and how it comes about across many Formosan languages. It is found that the AV-only complements occur as a nonfinite defective vP without any formal feature and that they are tenselss and subjectless--temporal markers must attach to the matrix verb; the embedded object, if any, is required to move to the matrix subject position to get case. The AV-only restriction is attested not only in restructuring constructions but also in non-restructuring ones. In both types, the matrix verbs are highly restricted: in the first type, the matrix verb is restricted to a restructuring verb and in the second type, the matrix verb is limited to a verb that projects an external argument. In restructuring contexts, the matrix external argument, if there is one, is inert and creates no intervention effects for the shifted embedded object; in non-restructuring contexts, the matrix external argument blocks the raising of the embedded object, thereby preventing the embedded verb from occurring in the non-AV transitive form. The AV-only restriction is due to multiple factors, most important of which is a locality condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I discuss some arguments presented in the previous research against the deletion-based account (i.e., the Reduction Analysis) of the Mandarin bǐ- comparative, which include the lack of the subcomparative, the lack of the embedded standard, and the distribution of the quantificational adverb dōu in this construction. Working with an Agree-based theory of selection and a featural account of PF-deletion, I show that a deletion-based account does capture these facts. The proposal is built on the assumptions that i) deletion may rescue some illegitimate representations caused by uninterpretable features at PF (Wurmbrand 2014; see also Merchant 2009; Bošković 2011; and others) and ii) the bǐ-constituent contains a small clause (i.e., vP) and lacks all the higher functional clausal heads (e.g., T, Asp, Mod, etc.) (cf. Pancheva 2006). 2006). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Nebrija de Lingüística Aplicada a la Enseñanza de Lenguas is the property of Revista Nebrija de Linguistica Aplicada a la Ensenanza de Lenguas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The English tense and aspect systems have always been a problematic issue in translation, especially when a language as discrepant as Arabic is involved. Novice translators, as it is the case with university students, face difficulties in finding equivalent translations for tense and aspect either in Arabic or in English. More specifically, Moroccan learners not only find difficulty in translating the English present perfect- in both its simple and progressive reflexesinto Arabic, but they also fail to choose the correct equivalent English tense for the Arabic perfect and imperfect aspects. Building on some studies conducted mainly by Arab researchers (such as Bouras, 1999; Al-Fallay, 1999; Sekhri, 2009; Reishaan and Ja'far 2008; Kechoud, 2010; Mansour, 2011; and Abu Joudeh et al, 2013) who dealt with almost the same issue, this study describes some of the errors made by Moroccan undergraduate students in the area of tense-aspect translation. To achieve this, 63 Moroccan undergraduate university students were tested. The test was analysed carefully and the results we have achieved so far justified our claims. This study also tries to provide an explanation for the problem, as well as suggest some solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to highlight the aspect marker in Sihai Language. Sihai Language belongs to the Naga groups of the Tibeto-Burman language Family (Grierson, 1904 vol. iii, part iii). It is spoken in the northern side of Ukhrul District, 32 km away from Ukhrul town. The number of speaker of this language is about 1200 (Census of India 2011). The present paper discusses the following aspect markers in Sihai language: simple aspect, progressive aspect, perfective aspect and irrealis or unrealise aspect. These aspects markers are suffixes which are attached to the verb roots. Simple aspect expresses the habitual or universal truth of an event which is indicated by the morphemes -e and -i. These two morphemes have the following allophones -ke, -mi, -pe, -ye, and -ŋi. Progressive aspect expresses an event which is going on and is indicated by the morpheme -lile. Perfective aspect expresses an event which is completed and is indicated by the morpheme -ne. Irrealis or unrealise aspect expresses an event which will be carried out in the near future and is indicated by the suffix -nuroi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bodos are living in different parts of Assam for centuries. They speak a language called Bodo that belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family of languages and it is one of the Associate state languages in Assam. It is a recognized language in the 8[sup th] Schedule of Indian constitution. Tense and Aspects are the grammatical categories, used in the grammatical description of verbs. Tense refers to the absolute location of event or action in time, e.g., past, present or future. And aspect refers to how an action or event is to be viewed with respect to time; it expresses actual location in time. The present paper is an attempt to look into the inflectional processes of the tense and aspect of Bodo. The paper will discuss the use of various types of Tense and Aspect markers found in Bodo. Bodo uses mainly three type of tenses, viz., Past, Present and Future. Past and future have separate tense markers, but present tense has no separate tense marker in this language. The past tense marker is {-mɯn} and the future is {-gɯn}. The present tense is used in the verbs as unmarked. There are four types of aspects found in this language, namely, Habitual, Progressive, Perfective and Perfect. The inflectional processes are 'verb + aspect', 'verb + aspect + tense', 'verb + tense' and 'noun + tense', etc. It is hoped that this analysis of tense and aspect in Bodo will help us in understanding tense and aspect in Bodo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the syntax, morphology, and semantics associated with the verbal aspect in the Russian language. Topics discussed include the prefix-verb compound (PFV) in the Russian language, the role of inflection in the Russian language, and the use of verbal prefixes in the Russian language.

The article examines the values and behaviours of verbal periphrases in the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Cronica de una muerte anunciada (Chronicle of a Death Foretold). The first part analyses the main syntactic-semantic characteristics of these periphrastic constructions according to their aspectual, temporal and contextual values. The second part is devoted to the presentation of the structure of the novel, its location in time and space and the narrators and protagonists. The third part is an analysis of verbal periphrases in the novel by Garcia Marquez which aims at demonstrating the important role of these periphrastic structures in the configuration of the novel. The first sentence contains the verbal periphrasis iban a matar which is significant for the further development of events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several semantic and syntactic distinctions, which have largely been neglected in the Vietnamese linguistic literature, are drawn together in this paper in a comparative context with other better-studied languages in order to indicate that Inner Aspect is projected within the VP shell and independently of the projection of Outer Aspect - a structural proposal originally advanced by Travis (2010). Overall, Vietnamese with its isolating character and rigid word order provides us with unusually direct evidence for an articulated VP structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Novitas-ROYAL is the property of Novitas Royal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article discusses the differences and similarities between the aspectual systems of the Manipuri and Kannada languages in India. Aspects are defined as the beginning or duration or completion or repetition of the action of the main verb. Manipuri has two types of aspects, the progressive and perfect aspects, and each category may be classified into sub-categories as non-future and future.

The article discusses the potential of combining learner corpus research with experimental studies in order to fine-tune the understanding of learner language development. It illustrates the complementarity of the two methodological approaches with data from an ongoing study of the acquisition of the English tense and aspect system by French learners. The first research question relates to the development of accuracy of tense and aspect usage in written production over time; longitudinal learner corpus data is used to answer this question. Its results are then incorporated into an experimental study that addresses the second research question, which seeks to uncover reasons why some tense and aspect features remain difficult to master even for advanced L2 learners. The first part of the article reviews the status of longitudinal research in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and describes the Longitudinal Database of Learner English (Longdale) used for the study. The second half of the article presents the results of the learner corpus analysis. These reveal that over a period of 3 years, learners' tense and aspect errors decrease. However, the English progressive continues to present considerable learning difficulties. Two follow-up experiments investigated which elaborations of the progressive epistemic schema L2 learners continue to find difficult. They showed that advanced learners master the most salient elaboration of the present progressive (i.e., ongoingness, including extended ongoingness). By contrast, their understanding of less core uses (i.e., planned events) is much less precise. The article concludes with suggestions for the teaching of tense and aspect to advanced EFL learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents some novel and hard-to-access data from Kalkoti, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in northern Pakistan. The particular focus is on showing how this Shina variety in a relatively short time span has drifted apart from its closest known genealogical relatives and undergone significant linguistic convergence with a Kohistani variety in whose vicinity Kalkoti is presently spoken. Among other features, we explore what seems like an ongoing process of tonogenesis as well as structural "copying" in the realm of tense and aspect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Maetagused is the property of Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folkloristics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A novel analysis of aspectual verbs is proposed according to which aspectual verbs are heads of functional projections rather than main verbs taking clausal complements. As a case study, four Japanese aspectual verbs are analyzed: those that express inception ( hajime- 'begin'), continuation ( tsuzuke- 'continue'), and termination ( oe- 'finish', and owar- 'end'). Employing data from previous studies, Japanese aspectual verbs are shown to exhibit the following two characteristic behaviors: (i) they occasionally exhibit mono-clausal properties, and (ii) they impose different selectional restrictions on their verbal complements. These behaviors are characteristic of aspectual verbs cross-linguistically. This paper argues that these behaviors of Japanese aspectual verbs are accounted for if they are analyzed as heads of aspect phrases, the functional heads that encode aspectual information about events. In particular, it is proposed that (a) aspect heads occur in two positions in a clause, where they select for syntactic realizations of different event types, and (b) individual aspectual verbs are distributed differently between these two head positions based on the event types they select. The proposed analysis is shown to account for previously unaccounted for correlations between passivizability of the aspectual verbs and the event types of the verbal complements, as well as interactions between the Japanese aspectual verbs, subject honorification, and the focus particle -dake 'only'. Finally, cross-linguistic data from previous studies on aspectual verbs in German, Italian and other Romance languages, and Basque are discussed and shown to provide further support for the proposed analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of RUSC: Revista de Universidad y Sociedad del Conocimiento is the property of Fundacio per a la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study suggests that Intermediate High and Advanced speakers produce aspectually valid constructions in Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) in large part because they are doing more than assigning aspect to lexical categories (Lexical aspect hypothesis), but because they are assigning lexicalized meaning to discrete verbs, for example govorit' (imperfective)-'to talk,' but skazat' (perfective)-'to say.' Analysis of the data from 55 OPIs conducted with second language (L2) Russian speakers ranging from Intermediate High to Superior confirms three hypotheses: (a) the proportion of aspectual utterances that owe their correctness to lexicalization decreases as proficiency increases; (b) aspectual competence as demonstrated by the greater number of aspectually non-lexicalized verbs in the speech of L2 Russian speakers rises with proficiency level; (c) a decrease in the proportion of lexicalized verbs in an examinee's speech correlates positively with an increase in the variety of verbs used. Other findings include a relative paucity of unprefixed verbs of motion in the corpus and a high ratio of lexicalized forms of skazat''to say,' and their distribution did not correlate with proficiency levels in either direction. The high ratio of aspectually lexicalized items in the corpus and the aspectual inaccuracies to which they lead have implications for teaching students who are approaching Intermediate High and Advanced levels of proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studii de Ştiintă şi Cultură is the property of Studii de Stiinta si Cultura and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article studies the discoursive functioning in three photographs of covers published on April the first 1965, two from the Última Hora newspaper and the one Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, wich focus on the first 1964 military coup birthday. For this, we will use the theoretical framework of the french Discourse Analysis, founded by Michel Pêcheux. We aim to understand how the notion of silence and discoursive heterogeneity materialize in the photos and captions of the selected cuts, noting how meanings are woven in the relationship between verbal and image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the status of the Aspect and Aktionsart categories, as well as the relationship between them. The analysis was based on a comparison between the Romance and North Slavonic languages, with particular emphasis on Polish and Spanish. From the typological point of view the first one can be classified as an aspect + cases type and the second one belongs to the article + tense languages. Therefore it analyses some differences between Spanish tenses pretérito and copretérito, as well as perfective and imperfective Aspect in Polish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Eesti Rakenduslingvistika Ühingu Aastaraamat is the property of Eesti Rakenduslingvistika Uhing (ERU) / Estonian Association for Applied Linguistics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studii de Ştiintă şi Cultură is the property of Studii de Stiinta si Cultura and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this dissertation entitled "Tense and Aspect: A Pedagogical Linguistic Study" an attempt is made to find out the most insightful way of explaining and teaching the concepts of 'tense' and 'aspect' in English. The present research argues that the learners need to acquire a functional use of tenses and aspects which would aid them to communicate in English. As there are several views on tense and aspect, it is essential to find out which concept is more insightful and useful for the learners at under graduate level to learn tense and aspect with ease. The grammar aspect should not be taught in isolation, feeding the students with only rules without exposing them to the real situations. The teaching of grammatical categories should be functional and situational. The study is carried out by taking the concepts of the three well known grammarians on tense and aspect. The concepts are taught to the learners over a period of time through various examples and pair based-tasks. The teaching was followed by a test which assessed the learners' understanding on the items that have taught. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the complex aspectual system in Chechen language. Morphologically, there are marked perfective and imperfective oppositions. There are also a habitual aspect and two kinds of progressive aspect, the durative progressive and the focalized progressive, which can in turn combine with other aspectual oppositions. In addition, there is a full-fledged iterative aspect, which can be marked as perfective, imperfective, habitual and progressive.

Copyright of Alfa: Revista de Lingüística is the property of Alfa: Revista de Linguistica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This work presents a classification of Zenzontepec Chatino (ZEN) verbs based on which allomorphs of aspect markers they select. The selection depends on several interrelated factors including verbal semantics, valency, derivational morphology, and phonological factors, but it is partly lexically determined. Until now, aspect marking in Chatino has defied concise description (Rasch 2002 and Pride 2004) because previously documented varieties have undergone considerable phonological and morphological reduction, wiping out some of the earlier systematic patterns. ZEN, on the other hand, is conservative in these respects. In addition to describing the ZEN verb classes in synchronic terms, I demonstrate that they line up well with Kaufman's (1987) proposed verb classes for Zapotec and Proto-Zapotec. With slight modification, Kaufman's system applies to Proto-Zapotecan, the parent language of Zapotec and Chatino. The basic system has remained stable through time, despite elaborations and innovations in the individual languages. This study also documents in Chatino several derivational morphemes and a progressive aspect prefix reconstructed for Proto-Zapotec (Kaufman 1993), showing that they are of Proto-Zapotecan vintage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In the literature on evidentiality and epistemic modality, semi-copular verbs have hardly been discussed. One of these unstudied semi-copulas is French se faire (‘become’), a pronominal verb taking a subject complement. It can be considered a product of the conjoined action of lexicalization and grammaticalization of the reflexive construction. Although its basic meaning is aspectual, expressing a change of state (‘become’), it is nowadays developing a non-dynamic meaning, involving no change of state at all. This paper addresses two central questions: [(i)] what is the exact meaning effect of se faire compared to other evidential semi-copulas such as sembler and paraître? [(ii)] how does this usage relate to the other usages of this multilayered verb and how exactly is subjectification taking place? As to (i), it will be shown that, although se faire expresses indirect evidentiality based on inference, it does not express appearance, unlike verbs such as ‘seem’. Rather, it has a factive meaning that comes rather close to what has been called direct evidentiality. As to (ii), it will be argued that, in a first stage, se faire has been increasingly used in contexts that display subjective perspectivation of the change of state. Then, it has lost its dynamic meaning by means of the mechanism of virtual change. On the whole, this evolution attests a new subjectification path leading from aspect (change of state) to evidentiality, which, interestingly, is confirmed by the Spanish cognate verb hacerse (‘become’). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The interpretation of Japanese temporal clauses depends on an intricate interplay between a number of factors including, in addition to the temporal connective, the tense and aspectual properties of the embedded clause as well as the matrix clause. This paper presents a detailed survey of these interactions and a model-theoretic compositional analysis which improves significantly over previous proposals in terms of attention to empirical detail and internal simplicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, we will show that the well-known distinction between idiomatically combining expressions (ICE) and idiomatic phrases (IP) is not as clear-cut and uniform as has been assumed in the literature: for example, we show that V one''s head off idioms can neither be neatly classified within one class nor within the other. We compare our approach to these idioms with two recent formal accounts that neglect some insights from the cognitive linguistics framework: on the one hand, Jackendoff''s account of these idioms fails to recognize the systematic syntax-semantics correspondences provided by the Talmian typology of motion events; on the other hand, Glasbey''s lexical storage-based account of their aspect fails to recognize the metaphorical process that determines their atelic interpretation. More generally, we also show how, despite generative claims to the contrary, various conceptual processes can overrule the aspect provided by grammar. We conclude this paper by showing that even part and parcel IPs like kick the bucket can be shown to have a partially compositional nature, whereby a strict, dichotomic division between ICEs and IPs does not seem to be empirically adequate. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article deals with the grammaticalization of the lexical meaning of QUO "to cross, pass" in Mandarin Chinese. QUO displays two aspectual/temporal values, known as the experiential suffix -guo and the phase complement guo respectively. The first indicates that in the past there is at least one instance of the event represented by the sentence and the second that an expected event has occurred and is now over. The experiential suffix refers to indefinite occurrences, whereas the phase complement refers to definite occurrences. These two values can be unified at a theoretical level. Aspectual QUO is concerned in all cases with the location of events in time: it situates an event in the (relative) past and it indicates either that among past events there is at least one occurrence of this type of event (suffix -guo), or that a particular (previously identified) event has passed, that is, entered the class of the past events (phase complement guo). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aspect hypothesis ( Andersen & Shirai, 1994 ) proposes that language learners are initially influenced by the inherent semantic aspect in the acquisition of tense and aspect (TA) morphology. Perfective past emerges earlier with accomplishments and achievements and progressive with activities. Although this hypothesis has been extensively studied, there have been no analyses of the frequency, form, and function of relevant types and tokens in the input. This article reports the results of 2 corpus-based studies investigating how various features of the input—frequency distributions, reliabilities of form–function mapping, and prototypicality of lexical aspect—affect TA morphology. Study I determined the relative frequency profiles of exemplars of English TA and employed various statistics to determine the associations between particular verb–aspect combinations. Study II expanded the aspect hypothesis, examining whether native speakers judge the most frequent forms in isolation to be more prototypical in lexical aspect. Analyses were then matched against acquisition data for different TA patterns by adult learners of English ( Bardovi-Harlig, 2000 ) to determine whether the verbs' acquisition order is determined by their frequency, form, and function in the input. Rather than testifying to the effect of 1 factor alone, the results suggest that frequency, distinctiveness, and prototypicality jointly drive acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the interaction of aspect and modality, and focuses on the puzzling implicative effect that arises when perfective aspect appears on certain modals: perfective somehow seems to force the proposition expressed by the complement of the modal to hold in the actual world, and not merely in some possible world. I show that this puzzling behavior, originally discussed in Bhatt (1999, Covert modality in non-finite contexts) for the ability modal, extends to all modal auxiliaries with a circumstantial modal base (i.e., root modals), while epistemic interpretations of the same modals are immune to the effect. I propose that implicative readings are contingent on the relative position of the modal w.r.t. aspect: when aspect scopes over the modal (as I argue is the case for root modals), it forces an actual event, thereby yielding an implicative reading. When a modal element scopes over aspect, no actual event is forced. This happens (i) with epistemics, which structurally appear above tense and aspect; (ii) with imperfective on a root modal: imperfective brings in an additional layer of modality, itself responsible for removing the necessity for an actual event. This proposal enables us to solve the puzzle while maintaining a standardized semantics for aspects and modals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Bulgarian and Slovenian constructions with a dispositional reading and no apparent dispositional marker, such as Bulgarian Na Ivan mu se raboteše. Such a sentence combines a dative logical subject Ivan with an inflected verb raboteše ‘work’, and roughly corresponds to ‘Ivan was in a working mood’, so does not entail that Ivan worked. I argue that such constructions consist of two core ingredients that account both for their syntactic properties, and for their modal flavor as dispositions. One ingredient is an Imperfective Operator in Viewpoint Aspect as the source of modality. Such an Operator resembles in syntactic and semantic properties both the Progressive Operator in so-called English Futurates such as For two weeks, the Red Sox were playing the Yankees today, and the Spanish modal Imperfecto. The other ingredient is a High Applicative Phrase with an oblique subject, which, other than determining syntactic properties, contributes to a difference in modal flavor with English Futurates. English Futurates denote plans, and a hypothesis is that this is due to their nominative subjects being paired to a presupposition giving them control over the intended event. By contrast, the Slavic constructions in this paper denote dispositions, not plans, because their oblique subjects cannot be paired with a similar presupposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Advanced programming techniques such as metaprogramming and computational reflection, as well as the more recent paradigm of aspect-oriented programming (AOP), serve important objectives of software engineering such as modularization and adaptability. In this tool presentation paper, we briefly overview this area and present Reflex, a portable tool for flexible metaprogramming and AOP in Java. Reflex provides both structural and behavioral facilities adopting a uniform model of partial reflection. This allows selective and fine-grained control of where and when reflection occurs. The facilities of Reflex make it easy to experiment with (combinations of) advanced uses of AOP and reflection without reinventing the wheel or being limited to a specific AOP language. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article offers instructions for learning the aspectual clusters of Russian language.

The article focuses on sentence construction in British English and discusses two types of verbal pro-forms--"do" and "do so." The argument supporting a structural deficiency of the "British do" as a verbal also shows the prosodic and semantic inequality of the two types of verbal pro-forms. The decompositional approaches to pronouns--analyzed by Cardinaletti and Starke's and Déchaine and Wiltschko's 2002 research--could extend to other functional aspects in the clause. Topics include anaphora and true elisions.

The study of SLA began around the beginning of the 70s with the emergence of both theoretical and empirical studies. Undoubtedly, the acquisition of tense/aspect, besides other topics, has attracted much interest from. researchers. This study investigated the use of telic and atelic verb forms in the oral production of Turkish speakers of English (non-native speakers or NNSs) and native speakers of English (NSs). To elicit how the foreground and background of narrative formed; which tense/aspect is preferred in the foreground and background, each participant produced one monologue whose topic was retelling a film. The results showed that the discourse of non-native speakers exhibit target-like qualities not only in terms of usage of verbs according to their inherent semantic aspect of verbs only but also in terms of distribution of verb types in the foreground and background of discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an exploration into the teaching and understanding of various linguistic expressions of point-of-view and time relation tenses in the classical Greek language. The author highlights the distinctions between imperfect, perfect, and aorist verb form tenses. Issues of voice and aspect are discussed along with their interrelation to each other. Several teaching methods are examined relating to common forms and expressions used in the English and Spanish languages, both common reference points for classical language students.

Validity of dynamic temporal reasoning is semantically characterized for English and Dutch aspectual adverbs in Discourse Representation Theory. This dynamic perspective determines how the content needs to be revised and what information is preserved across updates, when the order of premises is considered relevant. Resetting contextual parameters relies on modelling the basic aspectual polarity transitions and temporal reasoning extensionally. For intensional aspectual adverbials the speaker's attitudes regarding past alternatives to and possible continuations of the current state come into play. Additional considerations are offered for generalizing this system to the full logical space for linguistic universals, lexicalized quite differently in Dutch and English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the superficial similarity of verb tense forms in English and Portuguese, semantic aspect often plays a critical role in the translation of one to the other; hence, the translator may be required to specify information or make explicit certain elements of meaning which are only implicitly present in the original Portuguese. Moreover, numerous verbs require an English-speaking translator to interpret multivariate forms in Portuguese in order to render the text into English. In the text analyzed, over 70% of the inflected verb forms required careful interpretation of the context and situation to choose an appropriate translation, and 67% of these “problematic” verbs have more than one possible option, depending on the aspect(s) to be emphasized. These results emphasize the link between semantic competence (aspect) and pragmatic competence (the ability to match form and function within context) in the composition of a general translation competence. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article first outlines the theory of the predicative and enunciative operations (TOPE) developed by Antoine Culioli and his associates. It then shows how this theory enables one to analyse such linguistic units as the verbal prefix z- in Ikwere, spoken in Nigeria, and, more precisely, the way they operate in the language. We find that behind the various uses of z- is an invariant meaning element which consists of introducing a ranking between p and p', i.e., two constituent values of a given unorganized notional domain, such that the domain is finally organized. It is further argued that the TAM (Tense-Aspect-Modality) category, which z- is related to, is constructed by the utterance in which z- occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]