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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]

The paper focuses on a two aspectual morphemes in Moksha Mordvin (

Our knowledge about tense, aspect and modality (TMA) in the Oceanic languages of Melanesia has so far been severely limited by the lack of available data. Habituality in particular, as one of the less described TMA categories, has not yet been widely discussed for this group of languages. Based on corpus data and elicitations, we give a detailed overview of four languages, identifying common trends and addressing specific questions of general concern. These include the relation of habituality to (im)perfectivity and the relation between habituality and irrealis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A compositional analysis is provided of temporal perspective and orientation (Condoravdi 2002) of modals in Dutch, English, Gitksan (Tsimshianic), and St'át'imcets (Lillooet Salish). Modals interact freely with the tense-aspect architecture in each language. Temporal perspective is determined by an operator scoping over the modal, usually tense, while temporal orientation is determined by aspectual operators below it (and further restricted by the diversity condition). In contrast to much of the literature, it is argued that epistemic modals can scope under past tense. Modal-temporal interactions behave in predictable ways in Dutch, Gitksan, and St'át'imcets, whereas the English system is more idiosyncratic and partly lexicalized. [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]

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the existence of translation universals by investigating the use of aspect in modal contexts in translated and non-translated legal Polish and by analysing the observed differences with reference to insights from cognitive linguistics. Corpus analysis highlights significant distributional differences in the use of the two aspectual forms of Polish verbs (imperfective and perfective) in modal contexts. I argue that cognitive mechanisms called 'chunking' (Langacker 1988; Bybee 2006) and 'entrenchment' (Bybee 2010) underlie these differences. I show that what may at first glance seem as behaviour unique to the translation process, is in fact caused by general cognitive processes. The study has implications for both translation studies and cognitive linguistics: it offers support for the basic assumptions about the usage-based nature of linguistic knowledge and highlights the importance of taking these assumptions into consideration when investigating the translation process and translation universals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

In many languages, including Turkish, Bulgarian or Norwegian, present perfect morphology is ambiguous between an aspectual interpretation and the expression of indirect evidentiality, more in particular inference or hearsay ( Izvorski, 1997 ). In languages such as Washo (Hokan) or Hare (Athapaskan), morphemes that express indirect evidentiality can also be used to express mirativity ( DeLancey, 2001; Aikhenvald, 2004, 2012 ). In Turkish, the present perfect can express all three semantic interpretations: present perfect (PPA), indirect evidentiality (IE), and mirativity (MIR). The question therefore arises what common element links these three interpretations and the particular pairings observed (PPA-IE, IE-MIR, PPA-IE-MIR). Previous accounts such as Bybee and Dahl (1989) and Izvorski (1997) only account for a single link in the triad: PPA-IE. We propose that a proper account of the relations between PPA, IE, and MIR requires that mirativity be redefined in terms of ‘sudden discovery or realisation’ ( Adelaar, 1977, 2013; Mexas, 2016 ). This redefinition allows us to explain the link between PPA, IE, and MIR in terms of the temporal nature of the traditional aspectual classes: states, processes, accomplishments, and achievements ( Vendler, 1967; Mourelatos, 1981 ). Indirect evidentiality can then be viewed as the evidential counterpart of an accomplishment in the aspectual sense, while the category of mirativity should be viewed as the mirror image of achievements. We will propose a formal semantic analysis that can capture this insight and account for the specific pairings observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Verbal systems can give prominence to tense, aspect, or mood. The morphology of the verbal system within biblical Greek provides important evidence to suggest that Greek is an aspect-prominent language, though one that also incorporates tense within the indicative mood. Certain traditional grammatical labels inappropriately treat Greek as though it were instead a tense-prominent language like English (e.g. the use of "present" or "tense formative" outside of the indicative mood). We need to reform our descriptive labels and general conception of Greek accordingly. In doing so, the simplicity and beauty of the Greek verbal system emerges, offering pedagogical advantages for teachers of Greek and challenging exegetes to properly account for Greek's particular configuration of tense, aspect, and mood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we provide an analysis of the function of Polish verbal prefixes and German verbal particles in aspectual composition of incremental theme predicates (ITP) such as eat and drink. Incremental theme verbs (e.g. eat, drink) are well known for the fact that the referential properties of the incremental theme arguments (ITA) affect the telicity of the whole predication. In the Slavic languages, only prefixed incremental theme verbs result in a telic predication. Since in many cases prefixed verbs are perfective, it is often assumed that telicity results from perfectivity. We argue that grammatical aspect is not necessary for achieving a telic ITP, since there are perfective ITPs that do not result in a telic predication. Rather (a)telicity is dependent on the semantic content of the verbal prefix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Language: Meaning & Form / Valoda: Nozime un Forma is the property of University of Latvia 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.)

Opportunistic perception verbs ('see', 'hear', as opposed to explorative perception verbs, 'look', 'listen') express the opportunity for perception and are condition- oriented (exposure, i.e. the perceiver's exposure to a percept), not participant- oriented, in their aspectual structure. The Baltic languages, as other languages in Central, East, and Northern Europe, have specific perception verbs, which are a subtype of opportunistic perception verbs, for the expression of restricted exposure. The lexical character of specificity in Baltic--unlike Russian where it is integrated into a rigid grammatical aspect system--is more favorable for uncovering the underlying semantic factors of specificity, which differ across perceptual systems. Restrictedness of exposure is a scale rather than a dichotomy, and cross-linguistic comparison in parallel texts reveals that specificity is a scale with much variation as to where the borderline between specific and non-specific perception verbs is drawn in the languages of the area. Obscured perception verbs, which emphasize difficulty in discrimination, are another set of condition-oriented perception verbs in Baltic and Russian and are closely related to specific verbs synchronically and diachronically. This paper describes non-specific, specific, and obscured perception verbs in the Baltic languages and attempts to capture their variability within six dimensions (morphology, area, diachrony, specificity, modality, obscured verbs). A pre-condition for this endeavor is a critique of earlier approaches to the semantics of perception verbs. Nine major biases are identified (nominalism, physiology, discrete features, vision, paradigmatic modelling, aspectual event types, dual nature models, participant orientation, and viewing activity as control). In developing an alternative, the approach greatly profits from Gibson's ecological psychology and Rock's theory of indirect perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Jezikoslovlje is the property of University of Osijek, Faculty of Philosophy 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 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]

Medieval Greek had three future periphrases making use of a finite verb and an infinitive: μέλλω + INF, ἔχω + INF, θέλω + INF + Given the parallel nature of the periphrases as well as the fact that the infinitive existed in both a perfective and an imperfective version, it might be expected that these future-referring forms developed aspectual distinctions in similar ways. However based on papyrological evidence from AD I and AD VI this article shows that this was not the case. Rather, each future periphrasis seems to follow its own path towards the aspectual distinction which is a hallmark of the Modern Greek verbal system:μέλλω+ INF has a much higher ratio of imperfective infinitives than the two other periphrases especially in AD I, ἔχω+ INF starts out using only the perfective infinitive when referring to the future, and θέλω + INF distinguishes for aspect before it gains future meaning. The difference in aspectual usage is explained both by the semantics of the respective auxiliaries and by different oppositional relations (modal and temporal) that the periphrases enter into. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Finisterre-Huon Papuan language Nungon, like related languages, shows fusion of tense marking with number marking. Nungon is remarkable among Finisterre-Huon languages for an aspectual distinction conflated with evidentiality, and for the development of a formally marked realis Remote Future tense inflection with a formally unmarked irrealis counterpart. This paper presents the entire Nungon verbal inflectional system, including tense, aspect, status, subject and object indexing, referent tracking, and evidentiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the case of Spanish Perfecto simple and Imperfecto from the perspective of the cross-linguistic proposal in Altshuler's () 'A typology of partitive aspectual operators', pointing to ways in which the Spanish data suggests refinements for Altshuler's proposal. In particular: (i) the paper provides evidence from Spanish that sheds doubts on Altshuler's proposal that temporal asymmetry should be built into the semantics of Landman-style partitive operators in a manner that guarantees that the worlds quantified over match the actual world in the past; (ii) following Altshuler's observations regarding differences between events being 'completed' vs. events 'not continuing', the paper provides a comparison between examples from Spanish and Russian to argue that more than one notion of 'complete-event' is actually needed; (iii) expanding on Altshuler's proposal to link habitual readings to plural events, the paper examines the case of Spanish Perfecto vs. Imperfecto, showing that both modality and plurality play a crucial role in generating habitual readings. The paper also discusses the relative role of semantics and pragmatics in the interpretation of aspectual operators, comparing some aspects of Altshuler's proposal to Arregui et al. (). Together, the various examples strengthen the case for a semantics of aspect grounded on a fine-grained ontology that brings together both temporal and modal dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a typology of partitive aspectual operators based on whether an operator: (i) requires (non-)proper event parts in the extension of the VP that it combines with and (ii) imposes a 'maximal stage requirement', which is satisfied when a VP-event culminates or ceases to develop further in the actual world. I provide evidence for such a typology by looking at the Russian imperfective, the Hindi perfective and the English progressive. I argue that each of these languages has a partitive, aspectual operator that fills a distinct cell in the proposed typology. The typology is important because it allows us to dispense with Smith's (The parameter of aspect. Kluwer, Dordrecht, ) notion of 'neutral aspect' used to classify aspectual forms as having properties of both the perfective and the imperfective. In particular, the typology reveals that an operator is perfective if it requires a maximal stage of an event in the extension of the VP that it combines with; an operator is imperfective if it requires a stage of an event in the extension of the VP that it combines with, but this stage need not be maximal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tense is traditionally assumed to express temporal relations between the time of the event and the moment of speech, whereas aspect expresses various views on one and the same event. In Klein (), it was argued that the intuitions which underlie this viewing metaphor can be made precise by a time-relational analysis as well. In his article 'Aspect vs. relative tense: the case reopened', Jürgen Bohnemeyer challenges one important point of this analysis, the equation of aspect and relative tense in the English perfect and in temporal forms of few other languages. In the present comment, it is argued that this is indeed a simplification, which does not speak, however, against a time-relational analysis of aspect in general. The main lines of such an analysis for the English perfect are sketched. It is shown that it naturally accounts for differences between the simple past and the present perfect, as well as for the oddity of constructions such as Einstein has visited Princeton or Ira has left yesterday at five. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a constructionist approach to viewpoint Aspect by exploring the idea that it does not exert any altering force on the situation-aspect properties of predicates. The proposal is developed by analyzing the syntax and semantics of the imperfective, which has been attributed a coercer role in the literature as a de-telicizer and de-stativizer in the progressive, and as a de-eventivizer in the so-called ability (or attitudinal) and habitual readings. This paper proposes a unified semantics for the imperfective, preserving the properties of eventualities throughout the derivation. The paper argues that the semantics of viewpoint aspect is encoded in a series of functional heads containing interval-ordering predicates and quantifiers. This richer structure allows us to account for a greater amount of phenomena, such as the perfective nature of the individual instantiations of the event within a habitual construction or the nonculminating reading of perfective accomplishments in Spanish. This paper hypothesizes that nonculminating accomplishments have an underlying structure corresponding to the perfective progressive. As a consequence, the progressive becomes disentangled from imperfectivity and is given a novel analysis. The proposed syntax is argued to have a corresponding explicit morphology in languages such as Spanish and a nondifferentiating one in languages such as English; however, the syntax-semantics underlying both of these languages is argued to be the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The syntactic correlates of the diachronic process of subjectification within grammatical constructions, unlike that of discourse markers and connectives, do not include a cancellation of syntax. This can make the identification of subjectification within some grammaticalization processes difficult to identify. Pairs of purportedly synonymous constructions, such as continuative aspectual markers in Spanish, offer an ideal site to explore how certain linguistic contexts, through frequency, can come to be associated with more or less subjectivity. Six forms are included in this study: the phasal adverbs aún 'still' and todavía 'still' and the 'phasal periphrastic' (Laca 2000) constructions including (semi-)auxiliaries: seguir 'follow' + V ndo and continuar 'continue' for positive polarity, and the corresponding seguir sin 'follow without' + INF and continuar sin 'continue without' + INF for negative polarity. In a variationist study of 481 occurrences of these forms from 1760-1860 in Corpus Diacrónico del Español (CORDE) and 2762 occurrences from 1975-1980 from Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA), it is found that the difference between these 'synonyms' is linked, on the one hand, to contextual elements indicative of subjectivity, and on the other, to register. Furthermore, it is suggested that variation due to differing levels of subjectivity and register variation may share some characteristic patterns in the distribution of grammatical features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal for Languages & Literatures of the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad / Zbornik za Jezike i Knjizevnosti Filozofskog Fakulteta u Novom Sadu is the property of Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad 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 article, we report the results of a self-paced reading experiment designed to investigate the question of whether or not advanced French and German learners of English as a second language (L2) are sensitive to tense/aspect mismatches between a fronted temporal adverbial and the inflected verb that follows (e.g. *Last week, James has gone swimming every day) in their on-line comprehension. The L2 learners were equally able to distinguish correctly the past simple from the present perfect as measured by a traditional cloze test production task. They were also both able to assess the mismatch items as less acceptable than the match items in an off-line judgment task. Using a self-paced reading task, we investigated whether they could access this knowledge during real-time processing. Despite performing similarly in the explicit tasks, the two learner groups processed the experimental items differently from each other in real time. On-line, only the French L2 learners were sensitive to the mismatch conditions in both the past simple and the present perfect contexts, whereas the German L2 learners did not show a processing cost at all for either mismatch type. We suggest that the performance differences between the L2 groups can be explained by influences from the learners’ first language (L1): namely, only those whose L1 has grammaticized aspect (French) were sensitive to the tense/aspect violations on-line, and thus could be argued to have implicit knowledge of English tense/aspect distinctions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present study addresses a novel proposal on the categorization and description of the modal features in estar por + infinitive and estar para + infinitive, both of which have been analyzed as aspect perisphrastic constructions in the near past. This characterization embraces their prototypical meanings along with the epistemic and/or facultative required by some meanings expressed by modality. Notwithstanding, the qualitative analysis of these has focused on the (eventually asystematic) bringing together of notions such as intentionality, inchoateness, capability, etc. Henee, the methodology combines quantitative analyses with more quality-oriented diachronic and synchronic analyses. As a result, a corpus was elaborated, which was formed by 2443 samples extracted from CORDE, CREA, in RAE. This made it possible to validate and confirm [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

In the interplay of aspect and quantity in the Finnish system of object-marking the opposition between the partitive object and the (morphologically heterogeneous) total object plays a central role. The received view holds that the partitive object indicates incompleteness of the event in one way or another: it is used if the event does not take place at all (negation); if the aspect is unbounded; or if the quantity of the object referent is open (unbounded). The total object is used in affirmative sentences that indicate bounded aspect together with a closed quantity affected in full. Recent grammars have crystallized the three conditions of the partitive into a hierarchy of decreasing strength: negation > aspect > quantity: negation triggers the partitive irrespective of both aspect and quantity, and unbounded aspect triggers it irrespective of quantity. The article elaborates the hierarchy and argues that the aspectual function of the partitive is in fact not monolithic but consists of three different sub functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An article comparing the linguistics of Czech to those of Russian is presented in which the author discusses an allegedly unique use of the imperfect aspect case of Czech in the description of events called the Contextually-Conditioned Imperfective Past (CCIP). Information is offered on the author's research in the Czech National Corpus for verb constructions using this particular construction and figures on the frequency of such constructions in literary, technical, and journalistic texts written in Czech.

This review treats both Campbell’s book Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek specifically as well as his view of verbal aspect in Greek more generally. In the assessment of the latter, two points receive particular attention: (a) his desire to replace tense with spatial proximity/remoteness as the underlying semantic category encoded by the indicative, and (b) his identification of the perfect with imperfective aspect. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Some examples of iterative aspect, especially in French literature, show a highly complex structure : the iteration does not concern a single eventuality, but a combination of eventualities. In order to deal with these facts, we introduce a new category in the grammar of aspect : the cluster of eventualities. Through the analysis of attested examples, we describe the semantic properties of this new entity, which appears useful also for the analysis of some singulative sequences. [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.)

The toneless aspect mark -guo is generally viewed as a perfective marker with experiential function. It appears to be subject to a number of semantic constraints, such as discontinuity, repeatability or recurrence, reversibility, and indefinite reference. This article demonstrates that ‘experiential’ is only one of the three main local functions of -guo. Crucial to the determination of the local function of a -guo clause is the boundedness of the verb constellation: ‘experiential’ (atelic situation, typically Activity verbs), ‘deresultative’ (telic situation, typically Accomplishment and Achievement verbs), and ‘ex-habitual’ (stative verbs). We will first elucidate these three local functions and clarify various semantic constraints of -guo before examining a small corpus of 300 -guo sentences to ascertain the distribution of its local functions in authentic texts. Then we will analyze how these functions are manifested in other languages. The evidence suggests that -guo is untypical as a perfective marker; rather, cross-linguistically the lexico-grammatical exponents of the experiential, deresultative, and ex-habitual functions suggest that -guo behaves more like a perfect marker, hence the ‘perfective paradox’. This paper is intended to be a contribution to general and contrastive aspectology. [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: The aim of this article is to account for tense/aspect and mood based differential subject and object marking. We propose an analysis in terms of an optimization procedure between two general potentially conflicting constraints, the faithfulness constraint Identify, which requires the A and the P argument to be identified, either by case or by the context, and the markedness constraint Economy, which penalizes case marking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to explore the factors of encoding the (im)perfective aspect in French and in Serbian. Actually the perfective tenses in both languages introduce in discourse the so-called total eventualities but unlike the French Imperfect, which expresses only the so-called non total eventualities, the Serbian Imperfective perfect can sometimes express total eventualities too. We characterize such a property of aspectually non transparent tenses by the notion of aspectual non rigidity. We are trying to explain why the Imperfective perfect (IP) in Serbian is not aspectually rigid, unlike the French Imperfect. Our analyses show that the absence of aspectual rigidity of IP is an optimal solution to the problem of expressing the so-called total eventualities from atelic inputs in absence of some mechanism of aspectual transformation like aspectual coercion. [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]

The Polish and Portuguese languages use different means of representing the category of aspect. Verbal periphrases are some of the most representative exponents of aspect semantics in Portuguese. In the absence of the estar+a+infinitivo periphrasis in the Polish language, the aim of the study was to find means of expressing the values represented by the above mentioned periphrastic structure available in the Polish language. The authors believe that the objective can be successfully accomplished by analysing translations into Polish of authentic Portuguese statements containing the verbal periphrasis estar+a+infinitivo. The analysis shows that the presented verbal periphrasis has its Polish equivalents mainly in imperfecti-ve verb forms. Moreover, the use of imperfective verb forms and adverbial constructs which do not contribute new aspectual values to the overall value of the statement but merely specify what is contained in the verbal form can be observed in the analysed examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The systematic differences between the resultative constructions in Germanic languages and those in Romance languages have posed numerous problems, many of which still constitute the ground for heated debates among linguists from various theoretical backgrounds. Changing the point of view largely adopted in the literature, centered on the existence/non-existence of AP resultatives in Germanic, respectively Romance languages we argue in this paper that there are AP resultatives in Romanian, but only if they are built on accomplishment-type verbs. English resultative constructions can be built on activity, as well as accomplishment-type verbs; whereas Romanian allows only resultatives built on accomplishment verbs. [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]

The article focuses on (non-textual) reduplicative constructions in Estonian. From the formal point of view, reduplication in Estonian is total reduplication. From the semantic point of view, reduplication in Estonian reveals three main types: 1) intensifying reduplication, e.g. vana-vana mees 'old-old man'; 2) quantifying reduplication, e.g. (aina) inimesed ja inimesed 'only people and people'; 3) aspectual reduplication, e.g. jookseb ja jookseb 'is running and running'. The article will focus on intensifying reduplication. This type of reduplication is represented by the largest number of constructions, and here the opposition between scalar and totality reduplication is most clearly manifested. Scalar reduplication is manifested in coordinate constructions, comparative constructions, and genitival attributive constructions. At this coordinate reduplication is mostly asyndetic. Totality reduplication occurs in the form of relative and equative constructions. The reduplicative constructions in Estonian will be compared with similar constructions in other Finno-Ugric languages, mainly Finnish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a crosslinguistic study into the acquisition of form-to-meaning correspondences in the domain of aspect. How may form affect the acquisition process and how may meaning do so? The results from aspectual comprehension experiments with Dutch, Italian and Polish L1 learners reveal that both form and meaning properties affect the acquisition path and lead to developmentally different patterns across languages. The semantics of perfective aspect is acquired earlier than imperfective aspect. Moreover, there is a surprising discrepancy in the understanding of perfective aspect. Whereas Dutch and Polish children have acquired the completion entailment of their Present Perfect and perfective aspect respectively by the age of 3, Italian 3-year-olds perform at chance with their Present Perfect. These results do not support the hypothesis of Uniformity of Aspect Acquisition, which claims that certain aspectual notions (in particular, perfective aspect) are acquired around the same age independent of the language-specific encoding. Instead I put forward an acquisition theory of form-to-meaning correspondences that is sensitive both to form – Morphological Salience, namely, the idea that the semantics of morphologically salient paradigms is acquired early – and to meaning – Semantic Complexity, namely, the idea that the semantics of simple aspectual operations is acquired early. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

* JasonRothmanThe University of Iowa (USA)Native-like use of preterit and imperfect morphology in all contexts by English learners of L2 Spanish is the exception rather than the rule, even for successful learners. Nevertheless, recent research has demonstrated that advanced English learners of L2 Spanish attain a native-like morphosyntactic competence for the Preterit/Imperfect contrast, as evidenced by their native-like knowledge of associated semantic entailments (Goodin-Mayeda and Rothman 2007, Montrul and Slabakova 2003, Slabakova and Montrul, 2003, Rothman and Iverson 2007). In addition to an L2 disassociation of morphology and syntax (e.g., Bruhn de Garavito 2003, Lardiere 1998, 2000, 2005, Prévost and White 1999, 2000, Schwartz 2003), I hypothesize that a system of learned pedagogical rules contributes to target-deviant L2 performance in this domain through the most advanced stages of L2 acquisition via its competition with the generative system. I call this hypothesis the Competing Systems Hypothesis. To test its predictions, I compare and contrast the use of the Preterit and Imperfect in two production tasks by native, tutored (classroom), and naturalistic learners of L2 Spanish. aspect English/Spanish morphological performance second language (L2) acquisition [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences in the interpretation of would-conditionals with simple (perfective) and perfect antecedent clauses are marked enough to discourage a unified view. However, this paper presents a unified, Lewis-Stalnaker style semantics for the modal in such constructions. Differences in the interpretation of the conditionals are derived from the interaction between the interpretation of different types of aspect and the modal. The paper makes a distinction between perfective and perfect aspect in terms of whether they make reference to or quantify over Lewis-style events. In making reference to Lewis-events, perfective aspect is shown to be incompatible with counterfactual would-conditionals. The so-called 'epistemic flavor' of perfective conditionals about the future is derived from the use of diagonalization as an interpretive strategy called upon to resolve reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the Korean suffix -te, which has been variously analyzed as a marker of tense, aspect, tense-aspect, mood, mood-tense, or evidentiality. I argue against all of these approaches and propose instead that -te is a spatial deictic past tense, which triggers an evidential environment. It refers to a certain past time when the speaker either observed an event or some evidence of the event within his (her) perceptual field. Thus, the denotation of-te is 'overlap', not between the speaker's perceptual field and the event itself, but between the speaker's perceptual field and the evidence of the event at the past reference time. To account for this denotation, I propose an 'evidence trace' function as well as a 'speaker's perceptual trace' function (cf. M. Failer, J Semantics 21:45-85, 2004). My analysis shows that suffixes like -ess (which is traditionally analyzed as a perfect) play two roles, as an indirect evidential and a perfect, depending on whether they appear with the spatial deictic tense -te or with a simple deictic tense. I argue that in Korean two distinct tense systems--the regular tense-aspect system and the spatial deictic tense-evidential system--exist in parallel. Thus the proposed analysis allows evidentials to be subsumed under the formal theory of tense, aspect, and mood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]