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Tense and Aspect Across Languages
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Tense and Aspect Across Languages

A special issue of Languages (ISSN 2226-471X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 October 2021) | Viewed by 51844

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Henriëtte de Swart

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Languages, Literature & Communication, Utrecht University, Trans 10, 3512 JK Utrecht, The Netherlands
Interests: cross-linguistic semantics; tense and aspect; indefinites; negation; bi-directional optimality theory
Dr. Bert Le Bruyn

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Languages, Literature & Communication, Utrecht University, Trans 10, 3512 JK Utrecht, The Netherlands
Interests: cross-linguistic semantics; tense and aspect; (in)definites; L2 acquisition; parallel corpus research

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Variation across languages has always fascinated linguists, but in the past, it has mostly been investigated in form-related subdisciplines (phonology, morphology, syntax). The idea that variation in form has an impact on meaning makes it possible to connect typological insights to universal principles underlying formal semantics (Matthewson & von Fintel 2008) and to analyze patterns of form-meaning relations across languages (de Swart 2010, Legendre et al. 2017). With new methodologies such as parallel corpus research, psycholinguistic experiments and innovative field work, it has become possible to provide solid empirical ground for formal approaches to meaning across languages. Recent insights in the ways languages grammaticalize temporal reference and event structure underscore the need to dive deeper into cross-linguistic variation (Binnick 2010). The current state of the art in the literature motivates the focus of this special issue on the cross-linguistic semantics of tense and aspect. We aim to bring together a series of papers that use innovative empirical methodology to investigate tense and aspect across languages, and to exploit the insights to advance linguistic theory. We welcome contrastive and comparative analyses of languages or language varieties in a synchronic or diachronic perspective. Topics include, but are not restricted to:

  • Foundational issues, such as what we can infer from parallel corpora for tense and aspect across languages, how we should address the limitations that parallel corpus research brings along, and how corpora and psycholinguistic experiments complement each other.
  • Dimensions of synchronic and diachronic variation, such as what we can learn from the investigation of micro-variation (language varieties/language time slices) for meso- and macro-variation of tense and aspect, as well as language change.
  • Case studies on specific tense or aspect categories, in a particular set of languages/language varieties/language slices/language families and their impact on linguistic theory.
  • Tense-oriented vs. aspect-oriented languages and how their comparison can advance linguistic theory.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400-600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editors ([email protected]; [email protected]) or to Languages editorial office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the special issue. Full manuscript will undergo double-blind peer-review.

Tentative completion schedule:
• Abstract submission deadline: 1 June 2021
• Notification of abstract acceptance: 1 July 2021
• Full manuscript deadline: 1 October 2021

Selected References:

Binnick, Robert (ed.)(2010). The Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Legendre, Geraldine, Michael Putnam, Henriette de Swart, Erin Zaroukian (eds). (2017). Optimality-Theoretic Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Matthewson, Lisa & Kai von Fintel (2008). Universals in Semantics, the Linguistic Review 25, 139-201.

De Swart, Henriëtte (2010). Expression and interpretation of negation: an OT typology. Dordrecht: Springer.

Prof. Dr. Henriëtte de Swart
Dr. Bert Le Bruyn
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

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Keywords

  • Tense and aspect
  • cross-linguistic semantics
  • linguistic theory
  • parallel corpora
  • psycholinguistic experiments
  • field work
  • synchronic variation
  • diachronic variation

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Published Papers (16 papers)

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4 pages, 284 KiB  
Editorial
Introduction: Tense and Aspect across Languages
by Bert Le Bruyn and Henriëtte de Swart
Languages 2023, 8(1), 33; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8010033 - 19 Jan 2023
Viewed by 2435
Abstract
Variation across languages has always fascinated linguists, but in the past, cross-linguistic variation has mostly been investigated in form-related subdisciplines (phonetics/phonology, morphology, syntax) [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

39 pages, 1920 KiB  
Article
Aspectuo-Temporal Underspecification in Anindilyakwa: Descriptive, Theoretical, Typological and Quantitative Issues
by Patrick Caudal and James Bednall
Languages 2023, 8(1), 8; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8010008 - 23 Dec 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1879
Abstract
Many so-called ‘zero tense’-marked (which we define as morphologically reduced and underspecified inflections) or untensed verb forms found in tenseless languages, have been characterized as context dependent for their temporal and aspectual interpretation, with the verb’s aspectual content (either as event structure or [...] Read more.
Many so-called ‘zero tense’-marked (which we define as morphologically reduced and underspecified inflections) or untensed verb forms found in tenseless languages, have been characterized as context dependent for their temporal and aspectual interpretation, with the verb’s aspectual content (either as event structure or viewpoint properties) being given more or less prominent roles in their temporal anchoring. In this paper, we focus on a morpho-phonologically reduced inflectional verbal paradigm in Anindilyakwa (Groote Eylandt archipelago, NT, Australia), which is both temporally and aspectually underspecified, and constitutes an instance of zero tense as defined above. On the basis of a quantitative study of an annotated corpus of zero-inflected utterances, we establish that in the absence of independent overt or covert temporal information, the temporal anchoring of this ‘zero tense’ exhibits complex patterns of sensitivity to event structural parameters. Notably we establish that while dynamicity/stativity and telicity/atelicity are to some extent valuable predictors for the temporal interpretation of zero tense in Anindilyakwa, only atomicity (i.e., event punctuality) and boundedness categorically impose a past temporal anchoring—this confirms insights found in previous works, both on Anindilyakwa and on other languages, while also differing from other generalisations contained in these works. Our analysis also shows that unlike several zero tenses identified in various languages (especially in Pidgins and Creoles), Anindilyakwa zero tense-marked dynamic utterances do not correlate with a past temporal reading. Rather, we show that Anindilyakwa seems to come closest to languages possessing zero tensed-verbs (or tenseless verbs) where boundedness monotonically enforces a past temporal anchoring, such as Navajo and Mandarin Chinese. We also show that aspect-independent temporal information appears to determine the temporal anchoring of all zero tense-marked unbounded atelic utterances (both stative and dynamic) in Anindilyakwa—a fact at once conflicting with some claims made in previous works on zero tenses, while confirming results from past studies of Indigenous languages of the Americas (especially Yucatec Maya), concerning the role of temporal anaphora in the temporal interpretation of ‘tenseless’ verb forms. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)
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37 pages, 575 KiB  
Article
Decomposing Perfect Readings
by Ruoying Zhao
Languages 2022, 7(4), 251; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7040251 - 27 Sep 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1862
Abstract
The previous literature established the set of ‘perfect’ readings, including experiential/existential, resultative, recent past, hot news, the Present Perfect Puzzle, the lifetime effect, and the lack of narrative progression. On the other hand, it has been noted that the present perfect in some [...] Read more.
The previous literature established the set of ‘perfect’ readings, including experiential/existential, resultative, recent past, hot news, the Present Perfect Puzzle, the lifetime effect, and the lack of narrative progression. On the other hand, it has been noted that the present perfect in some languages other than English, as well as similar tense/aspect constructions in other languages, falls into the category of a ‘general-purpose past perfective’, namely a tense-aspect constructionsharing some properties with the English present perfect while not being subject to constraints such as the lifetime effect and the Present Perfect Puzzle. In this paper, I propose that the general-purpose past perfectives are presuppositionally neutral tense/aspect constructions that allow the standard past perfective reading. If a language has presuppositionally stronger alternatives for the past perfective (presupposing anaphoricity, uniqueness, etc.), by the Presupposed Ignorance Principle (PIP), the presuppositionally neutral past perfective form will be felicitous only if the presuppositionally stronger alternatives cannot be used. Otherwise, the presuppositionally neutral past perfective will behave like a general-purpose past perfective in the above sense. I argue that this competition is the source of many of the perfect readings observed. I further argue that the cross-linguistic variation in this respect follows from the available alternatives languages have. I illustrate this idea with three groups of languages: (i) English; (ii) French, German, Italian; and (iii) Mandarin Chinese, each illustrating a different set of alternatives available, in both the temporal and aspectual domains. This analysis allows me to decompose various perfect readings that come from different sources and make better predictions regarding which of these readings a tense/aspect construction in a given language has. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)
26 pages, 2646 KiB  
Article
Interpretation of Imperfective Past Tense in Spanish: How Do Child and Adult Language Varieties Differ?
by Isabel García-del-Real and Angeliek van Hout
Languages 2022, 7(3), 237; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030237 - 13 Sep 2022
Viewed by 2451
Abstract
Some studies on the L1 acquisition of aspect in various child languages have discovered that imperfective aspect is acquired later than perfective aspect, whereas others find early adult-like performance. A variety of explanations has been advanced, particularly problems (i) with the semantics of [...] Read more.
Some studies on the L1 acquisition of aspect in various child languages have discovered that imperfective aspect is acquired later than perfective aspect, whereas others find early adult-like performance. A variety of explanations has been advanced, particularly problems (i) with the semantics of imperfective aspect in combination with telic predicates, (ii) inferring the intended temporal antecedent in a discourse, and (iii) reasoning about an agent’s intentions to complete the event when observing a situation of an event in progress. The current study aimed to disentangle which of the purported explanations can best explain the acquisition patterns. Twenty-three Spanish monolingual children (mean age 5;11) and 17 adults were presented with telic sentences with one of two aspectual tenses in Spanish (pretérito indefinido and pretérito imperfecto). Using a picture-selection task and presenting the sentences either in a narrative setting or in a non-narrative setting, participants were prompted to choose between complete, ongoing, and incomplete situations. In the non-narrative setting children’s interpretation of imperfecto was adult-like, but in the narrative setting it was not. The target-like interpretation in the non-narrative setting reveals that the semantics of imperfecto in telic-imperfective sentences has been acquired (contra explanation i). Furthermore, Spanish five-year-olds did not depend on cues for agent intentionality when interpreting the imperfecto (contra explanation iii). The discrepancy between narrative and non-narrative setting suggests the challenge lies in discourse integration (supporting explanation ii). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)
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23 pages, 1651 KiB  
Article
Tense and Aspect in a Spanish Literary Work and Its Translations
by Gijs Mulder, Gert-Jan Schoenmakers, Olaf Hoenselaar and Helen de Hoop
Languages 2022, 7(3), 217; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030217 - 12 Aug 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2655
Abstract
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, [...] Read more.
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). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)
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23 pages, 1812 KiB  
Article
Linear Lengthening in Iwaidja: An Event-Quantifying Intonation at the Phonology to Semantics/Pragmatics Interface
by Patrick Caudal and Robert Mailhammer
Languages 2022, 7(3), 209; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030209 - 8 Aug 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4134
Abstract
This paper investigates the meaning of a specific intonation contour called linear lengthening intonation (LLI), which is found in the northern Australian language Iwaidja. Using an experimental field work approach, we analysed approximately 4000 utterances. We demonstrate that the semantics of LLI is [...] Read more.
This paper investigates the meaning of a specific intonation contour called linear lengthening intonation (LLI), which is found in the northern Australian language Iwaidja. Using an experimental field work approach, we analysed approximately 4000 utterances. We demonstrate that the semantics of LLI is broadly event-quantificational as well as temporally scalar. LLI imposes aspectual selectional restrictions on the verbs it combines with (they must be durative, i.e., cannot describe ‘punctual’, atomic events), and requires the event description effected by said verbs to exceed a contextually determined relative scalar meaning. Iwaidja differs from other northern Australian languages with similar intonation patterns in that it does not seem to have any argument NP-related incremental or event scalar meaning. This suggests that LLI is a decidedly grammatical, language-specific device and not a purely iconic kind of expression (even though it also possibly has an iconic dimension). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)
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23 pages, 5905 KiB  
Article
Perfective Marking in the Breton Tense-Aspect System
by Éric Corre
Languages 2022, 7(3), 188; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030188 - 21 Jul 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2341
Abstract
The tense-aspect system of Breton, a continental Celtic language, is largely under-described. This paper has two main goals. First, it gives an overview of the numerous verbal morphosyntactic constructions of Breton, with the aim of evaluating how they carve up the tense-aspect domain. [...] Read more.
The tense-aspect system of Breton, a continental Celtic language, is largely under-described. This paper has two main goals. First, it gives an overview of the numerous verbal morphosyntactic constructions of Breton, with the aim of evaluating how they carve up the tense-aspect domain. The second goal is to zero in on one particular set of constructions, namely, perfect-like constructions. In particular, it investigates the use of the present perfect in narrative and oral discourse, compared to two other competing constructions, the simple past and the past perfect. In the spirit of de Swart and Le Bruyn’s Time in Translation project, we adopt a parallel corpus-based approach from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and its Breton translation. We develop an account of the distinction between these temporal forms, in particular the present and past perfects, drawing on the interaction between rhetorical relations and temporal structure. Results show that in written narrative stretches, the simple past is the norm; however, in dialogues, the present perfect is required in cases of ‘weak’ narration, and if the past situation is somehow felt to be currently relevant, even if the situation refers to an explicit past time. However, the past perfect occurs in narrative stretches within the dialogue, in cases of ‘strong’ narration, especially if the situation described is anaphorically tied to a temporal antecedent. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)
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21 pages, 1407 KiB  
Article
Parallel Corpus Research and Target Language Representativeness: The Contrastive, Typological, and Translation Mining Traditions
by Bert Le Bruyn, Martín Fuchs, Martijn van der Klis, Jianan Liu, Chou Mo, Jos Tellings and Henriëtte de Swart
Languages 2022, 7(3), 176; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030176 - 7 Jul 2022
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4001
Abstract
This paper surveys the strategies that the Contrastive, Typological, and Translation Mining parallel corpus traditions rely on to deal with the issue of target language representativeness of translations. On the basis of a comparison of the corpus architectures and research designs of the [...] Read more.
This paper surveys the strategies that the Contrastive, Typological, and Translation Mining parallel corpus traditions rely on to deal with the issue of target language representativeness of translations. On the basis of a comparison of the corpus architectures and research designs of the three traditions, we argue that they have each developed their own representativeness strategies: (i) monolingual control corpora (Contrastive tradition), (ii) limits on the scope of research questions (Typological tradition), and (iii) parallel control corpora (Translation Mining tradition). We introduce normalized pointwise mutual information (NPMI) as a bi-directional measure of cross-linguistic association, allowing for an easy comparison of the outcomes of different traditions and the impact of the monolingual and parallel control corpus representativeness strategies. We further argue that corpus size has a major impact on the reliability of the monolingual control corpus strategy and that a sequential parallel control corpus strategy is preferable for smaller corpora. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)
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26 pages, 4510 KiB  
Article
Time Reference in Mandarin Relative Clauses
by Hongyuan Sun and Hamida Demirdache
Languages 2022, 7(3), 170; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030170 - 5 Jul 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2147
Abstract
In this paper, we investigate constraints on the time reference of embedded clauses in Mandarin. We show that while English past-tensed embedded clauses disallow later-than-matrix readings in intensional contexts on a de dicto construal, Mandarin relative clauses with bare predicates yield temporally free [...] Read more.
In this paper, we investigate constraints on the time reference of embedded clauses in Mandarin. We show that while English past-tensed embedded clauses disallow later-than-matrix readings in intensional contexts on a de dicto construal, Mandarin relative clauses with bare predicates yield temporally free readings across the board. We argue that the contrast between the temporal interpretations of bare embedded clauses in Mandarin vs. past-tensed embedded clauses in English is not due to a putative contrast between ‘tenseless’ languages (as Mandarin is traditionally assumed to be) and ‘tensed’ languages such as English. Mandarin is indeed not tenseless, but rather has a covert Non-Future tense, restricting the reference time of bare sentences to non-future times. Moreover, Mandarin superficially tenseless embedded clauses with overt—be it perfect, perfective, durative/progressive—aspectual marking do not allow later-than-matrix readings on a de dicto construal, just like tensed embedded clauses in English. We conclude that the freedom of interpretation of bare embedded clauses in Mandarin cannot be imputed to null semantically underspecified tense, but rather to null semantically underspecified aspect. Our analysis provides, to our knowledge, the first arguments for Non-Future tense in embedded contexts. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)
23 pages, 4434 KiB  
Article
Perfect-Perfective Variation across Spanish Dialects: A Parallel-Corpus Study
by Martín Fuchs and Paz González
Languages 2022, 7(3), 166; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030166 - 1 Jul 2022
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3660
Abstract
To analyze crossdialectal variation between the use of a Present Perfect form (Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto) and a Perfective Past form (Pretérito Indefinido) in Spanish, we make use of two converging methodologies: (i) parallel corpus research, where we compare different [...] Read more.
To analyze crossdialectal variation between the use of a Present Perfect form (Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto) and a Perfective Past form (Pretérito Indefinido) in Spanish, we make use of two converging methodologies: (i) parallel corpus research, where we compare different translations of the same text (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone) into specific standardized written varieties of Spanish (Peninsular, Mexican, Argentinian), and (ii) an elicitation forced-choice task, where native speakers of each of the cities in which these standardized written norms are produced (Madrid, Mexico City, Buenos Aires) have to choose between the Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto and the Pretérito Indefinido as the most natural filler for a blank in contexts extracted from the novel. Results from these two tasks do not align completely. While the data from our parallel corpus work indicate a wider distribution of Perfect use in the Mexican translation than in the Peninsular and the Argentinian ones, the elicitation task shows that only the choices of the speakers of Madrid (Castilian Spanish) and Buenos Aires (Rioplatense Spanish) converge with their respective translations patterns. Since the distribution observed in the Mexican translation not only goes against the elicitation data, but also contradicts previous findings in the literature, we abandon it in further analyses. In the second part of the paper, through a detailed annotation of the Peninsular and Argentinian corpora, we show that the constraints allowing Perfect use in each of these standardized varieties respond only to some features previously advanced in the literature. While both dialects allow for experiential and resultative readings of the Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto, Castilian Spanish also prefers the use of this marker to locate an event in the hodiernal past. On the other hand, Rioplatense Spanish systematically defaults to the Pretérito Indefinido in these cases, displaying a more restricted distribution for the Perfect form. Both dialects also seem to exhibit a preference for the Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto in continuative contexts. Our work thus provides two crucial take-home messages: (i) understanding crossdialectal variation in written language is crucial for advancing crosslinguistic generalizations about tense-aspect phenomena; and (ii) combining parallel corpus and experimental methodologies can help us understand in a more thorough way the distribution of Perfect and (Perfective) Past forms across dialects. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)
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28 pages, 1266 KiB  
Article
The Discovery of Aspect: A Heuristic Parallel Corpus Study of Ingressive, Continuative and Resumptive Viewpoint Aspect
by Maarten Bogaards
Languages 2022, 7(3), 158; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030158 - 24 Jun 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2273
Abstract
Languages differ in how systematically and obligatorily they encode conceptual categories such as tense and aspect. By drawing on large parallel corpora, these differences can be exploited heuristically: expressive obligatoriness and the systematicity of a conceptual category in one language can function as [...] Read more.
Languages differ in how systematically and obligatorily they encode conceptual categories such as tense and aspect. By drawing on large parallel corpora, these differences can be exploited heuristically: expressive obligatoriness and the systematicity of a conceptual category in one language can function as a probe for other languages that do not (evidently) encode it. This study applies this method—called heuristic translation mining (HTM)—to viewpoint aspect in Mandarin (an aspect-oriented language) and Dutch (a non-aspect-oriented language). Specifically, it takes the Mandarin aspect markers 起来-qilai (“ingressive”) and 下去-xiaqu (“continuative”) and collects translation strategies for these markers from a corpus of five Mandarin novels and their Dutch translations. The outcomes are methodological, descriptive and theoretical in nature. Methodologically, it is shown how conceptual templates consisting of temporal boundaries and phases facilitate annotating specific types of viewpoint aspect consistently. Descriptively, the exercise indicates at which linguistic levels viewpoint aspect may be encoded in a non-aspect-oriented language. Theoretically, conducting an HTM analysis with several aspect markers at once makes it possible to quantify (non-)marking of conceptual content; it turns out that the types of viewpoint under study correspond to varying marking frequencies, which may correlate with conceptual complexity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)
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48 pages, 695 KiB  
Article
Differences between Russian and Czech in the Use of Aspect in Narrative Discourse and Factual Contexts
by Berit Gehrke
Languages 2022, 7(2), 155; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7020155 - 20 Jun 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2815
Abstract
The aims of the paper are twofold. First, it provides a systematic qualitative corpus study into differences between Russian and Czech in the use of aspect in chains of single, episodic events, as well as in habitual contexts, which takes into account the [...] Read more.
The aims of the paper are twofold. First, it provides a systematic qualitative corpus study into differences between Russian and Czech in the use of aspect in chains of single, episodic events, as well as in habitual contexts, which takes into account the role of verb class, aspectual affixes, discourse relations, and other factors contributing to the overall aspectual interpretation in a given sentence. The findings suggest that while Russian makes narrative progression and habituality visible already on the verb forms, by employing exclusively perfective and imperfective verb forms, respectively, Czech relies more heavily on the context itself and uses (im)perfective verb forms mostly to signal duration vs. change of state. The second part of the paper addresses differences in aspect use between the two languages in so-called general-factual contexts (presuppositional and existential). Against the background of the empirical findings of the corpus study, I argue against the received view that Czech makes use of imperfective verb forms to mark existential readings. The presuppositional reading of imperfective forms, which I assume to be related to the process/durative reading of imperfectives, is argued to exist in both languages. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)
28 pages, 2485 KiB  
Article
Nobody’s Perfect
by Anne Bertrand, Yurika Aonuki, Sihwei Chen, Henry Davis, Joash Gambarage, Laura Griffin, Marianne Huijsmans, Lisa Matthewson, Daniel Reisinger, Hotze Rullmann, Raiane Salles, Michael David Schwan, Neda Todorović, Bailey Trotter and Jozina Vander Klok
Languages 2022, 7(2), 148; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7020148 - 13 Jun 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 5119
Abstract
This paper challenges the cross-linguistic validity of the tense–aspect category ‘perfect’ by investigating 15 languages from eight different families (Atayal, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, English, German, Gitksan, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, Mandarin, Niuean, Québec French, St’át’imcets, Swahili, and Tibetan). The methodology involves using the storyboard [...] Read more.
This paper challenges the cross-linguistic validity of the tense–aspect category ‘perfect’ by investigating 15 languages from eight different families (Atayal, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, English, German, Gitksan, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, Mandarin, Niuean, Québec French, St’át’imcets, Swahili, and Tibetan). The methodology involves using the storyboard ‘Miss Smith’s Bad Day’ to test for the availability of experiential, resultative, recent-past, and continuous readings, as well as lifetime effects, result-state cancellability, narrative progression, and compatibility with definite time adverbials. Results show that the target forms in these languages can be classified into four groups: (a) past perfectives; (b) experientials; (c) resultatives; and (d) hybrids (which allow both experiential and resultative readings). It is argued that the main division is between past perfectives, which contain a ‘pronominal’ tense, on the one hand, and the other three groups on the other, which involve existential quantification, either over times (experiential) or over events (resultative). The methodological and typological implications of the findings are discussed. The main conclusion of the study is that there is no universal category of ‘the perfect’, and that instead, researchers should focus on identifying shared semantic components of tense–aspect categories across languages. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)
35 pages, 4187 KiB  
Article
Variation in Aspect Usage in General-Factual Contexts: New Quantitative Data from Polish, Czech, and Russian
by Dorota Klimek-Jankowska
Languages 2022, 7(2), 146; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7020146 - 7 Jun 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3225
Abstract
This study aims to account for the variation in aspect choices in factual imperfective contexts in Polish, Czech, and Russian. A series of online questionnaires were conducted wherein the native speakers of the tested languages were asked to fill in the missing verbs [...] Read more.
This study aims to account for the variation in aspect choices in factual imperfective contexts in Polish, Czech, and Russian. A series of online questionnaires were conducted wherein the native speakers of the tested languages were asked to fill in the missing verbs for two types of existential contexts (neutral and resultative) and four types of presuppositional factual contexts (weakly and strongly resultative with a focus on the initiator or the result state of the past event). We show that neutral existential factual contexts generally elicited significantly more imperfective choices than resultative existential factual contexts. Additionally, there was a trend towards a higher usage of imperfective in weakly resultative presuppositional contexts as compared to strongly resultative presuppositional contexts, suggesting that the less emphasis is placed on the result state the more likely the choice of imperfective aspect is for the expression of the temporal indefiniteness of factual contexts. Russian showed a significantly higher proportion of imperfective uses than Polish and Czech, with Czech being intermediate. We argue that these observations result from the fact that in all types of factual contexts (both existential and presuppositional) there is an interaction between two types of TEMPORAL (IN)DEFINITENESS of the past event: (i) temporal (in)definiteness at the micro-level (first phase syntax-vP) (depending on the position of the time variable within the temporal event of the past complex event) and (ii) (in)definiteness of the past event at the macro-level (second phase syntax–AspP and TP) (related to the position of the past event relative to the utterance time). We show that both discourse-level information and verb-level information interact in determining these two types of (in)definiteness, and they do it differently in Polish, Czech, and Russian. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)
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20 pages, 693 KiB  
Article
The Aspectual Meaning of Non-Aspectual Constructions
by Tom Koss, Astrid De Wit and Johan van der Auwera
Languages 2022, 7(2), 143; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7020143 - 2 Jun 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3211
Abstract
The distinction between perfective and imperfective aspect has been identified in many languages across the world. This paper shows that even languages that do not have a dedicated perfective—imperfective distinction may endow a verbal construction that is not specifically aspectual with a perfective [...] Read more.
The distinction between perfective and imperfective aspect has been identified in many languages across the world. This paper shows that even languages that do not have a dedicated perfective—imperfective distinction may endow a verbal construction that is not specifically aspectual with a perfective value. The crucial diagnostic for identifying perfectivity in a given non-aspectual construction is a difference in the temporal interpretation of clauses involving that construction, licensed by the actionality class of the main predicate: while stative verbs have a present interpretation, dynamic verbs yield a non-present (past or future) interpretation. This pattern of interaction is triggered by a phenomenon that has been referred to as the ‘present perfective paradox’, i.e., the impossibility of aligning dynamic situations with the time of speaking while at the same time conceptualizing them in their entirety. The latter type of construal is argued to be the main function of perfective aspect. The range of non-aspectual constructions with underlying perfective semantics includes ‘iamitive’ markers, an evidential, an epistemic supposition marker, a focus marker, a polar question marker, and a declarative marker. These constructions come from typologically different and genetically unrelated languages, illustrating the cross-linguistic salience of the category of perfective aspect. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)
33 pages, 2494 KiB  
Article
Not…Until across European Languages: A Parallel Corpus Study
by Henriëtte de Swart, Jos Tellings and Bernhard Wälchli
Languages 2022, 7(1), 56; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010056 - 1 Mar 2022
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4285
Abstract
We present a parallel corpus study on the expression of the temporal construction ‘not…until’ in a sample of European languages. We use data from the Europarl corpus and create semantic maps by multidimensional scaling, in order to analyze cross-linguistic and language-internal variation. This [...] Read more.
We present a parallel corpus study on the expression of the temporal construction ‘not…until’ in a sample of European languages. We use data from the Europarl corpus and create semantic maps by multidimensional scaling, in order to analyze cross-linguistic and language-internal variation. This paper builds on formal semantic and typological work, extending it by including conditional constructions, as well as connectives of the type as long as. In an investigation of 7 languages, we find that (i) languages use many more different constructions to convey this meaning than was expected from the literature; and (ii) the combination of polarity marking (negation/assertion) strongly correlates with the type of connective. We corroborate our results in a larger sample of 21 European languages. An analysis of clusters and dimensions of the semantic maps based on the enlarged dataset shows that connectives are not randomly distributed across the semantic space of the ‘not…until’-domain. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tense and Aspect Across Languages)
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