Perspectives on Aspect (original) (raw)
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This compilation presents various perspectives on the concept of aspect in linguistic theory and analysis. Contributors explore topics such as aspectual composition, the role of quantization in direct objects, and the interplay between adverbial quantification and atelicity. Key discussions include the relationship between event semantics and language diversity, contributing to a broader understanding of how aspect shapes grammatical structures across different languages.
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Conceptual inconsistencies and sidestepping compositional aspect may wreak havoc on aspectology
Godishnik na Shumenskiya universitet, 2022
This paper is a response to a publication in the 2022 Shumen University Yearbook which strives to explain aspect in several European languages, mainly English and Bulgarian but also French, Spanish, Italian. The attempt is generally unsuccessful despite the correct description of separate phenomena, e.g., Vendler's aspectual schemata. The major flaw is the total disregard for the theory of compositional aspect in its different versions and for the phenomenon of compositional aspect itselfdiscovered half a century ago, in 1972, by the Dutch linguist Henk Verkuyl. The theory of compositional aspect, although frequently misconceptualized in linguistics, is universally recognized as the only approach that can adequately describe the phenomenon in languages that lack verbal aspect.
Aspect and Quantification: An Iterative Approach
This paper presents an approach to the aspectual in uence of DP arguments in order to unify two diverging traditions of aspectual semantics, which seem to contradict each other in the aspectual classi cation of verbs like to eat: Krifka 1992] or Verkuyl 1995] assign no aspectual class to these verbs in isolation. Instead, the aspect of whole verbal projections of these verbs is calculated. The in uence of DP arguments (semantically, generalized quanti ers) is considered in this calculation. But linguists like Vendler 1967] and Dowty 1979] classify verbs like to eat without taking into account the in uence of di erent kinds of DP arguments. These two traditions are reconciled in terms of the proposed approach. It is based on an elaborate notion of iteration that involves pragmatic reasoning in a well-de ned way. The coverage of aspectual theories can be extended in this approach to expressions whose classi cation was problematic till now, e.g., expressions like to see twenty zebras or verbal projections with the quanti er all the. Thanks to Michael Herweg, Tibor Kiss, the participants of the 10th Amsterdam Colloquium, and the participants of the conference`Facts and events in the semantics of natural language' in Trient, where I presented parts of this material, for their valuable comments and suggestions.
Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect
Litrguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) provides a platform for original monograph studies into synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Studies in LA confront empirical and theoretical problems as these are currently discussed in syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, and systematic pragmatics with the aim to establish robust empirical generalizations within a universalistic perspective.
2021
This synchronic study presents a new onomasiological, frame-theoretical model for the description, classification and theoretical analysis of the cross-linguistic content category aspectuality. It deals specifically with those pieces of information, which, in their interplay, constitute the aspectual value of states of affairs. The focus is on Romance Languages, although the model can be applied just as well to other languages, in that it is underpinned by a principle grounded in a fundamental cognitive ability: the delimitation principle. Unlike traditional approaches, which generally have a semasiological orientation and strictly adhere to a semantic differentiation between grammatical aspect and lexical aspect (Aktionsart), this study makes no such differentiation and understands these as merely different formal realisations of one and the same content category: aspectuality
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Semantics, 2021
Introduction: lexical aspect and aspectual classes 2 The four aspectual classes in Vendler (1957) 3 States 4 Achievements and momentaneous events 4.1 The criterion of "truth at a moment of time" 4.2 Predicates of momentaneous events in the progressive 4.3 Semelfactives 4.4 Delimiting achievements from accomplishments 5 Durative adverbial modifiers 5.1 Vendler: durative adverbials are modifiers of activity and state predicates 5.2 Homogeneity is not applicable to activities, only to states 5.3 Durative adverbials apply to cumulative predicates and derive quantized ones 5.4 Durative adverbials apply to homogeneous predicates 6 Telicity: lexical aspectual classes and aspectual composition 6.1 Telicity and the imperfective paradox, aka partitive puzzle 6.2 Telicity as a constructional property of VPs and sentences 6.3 Aspectual composition 6.3.1 Philological precursors 6.3.2 Verkuyl: telicity of VPs and sentences via the internal DO argument 6.3.3 Krifka: the mereological approach to aspectual composition 6.3.4 Revision of aspectual classes and scales 6.3.5 Quantization puzzles and context-sensitivity of telicity 7 Scales and paths The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Semantics, First Edition.
Aspectual Composition: Surveying the Ingredients
Perspectives on Aspect, 2005
This paper discusses some of the ways in which the notion of compositionality is understood in the literature. It will argued that on a strict (Fregean) view a verb has a constant meaning to make in the aspectual composition independently from the information contributed by its arguments, that the VP (verb+ internal argument/complement) forms a substantive aspectual unit that should be recognizable as such complex aspectual information; and finally, that aspectual composition forces Discourse Representation Theory into revising the way states and events are taken.
The Aspectual Meaning of Non-Aspectual Constructions
Languages
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 perfec...
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De Wit, Astrid, Frank Brisard, Carol Madden-Lombardi, Michael Meeuwis, & Adeline Patard. 2024. Beyond aspectual semantics : explorations in the pragmatic and cognitive realms of aspect. In Astrid De Wit, Frank Brisard, Carol Madden-Lombardi, Michael Meeuwis and Adeline Patard (eds.), Beyond aspec..., 2024
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