About the primitives of aspect across languages (original) (raw)
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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.
Lexical and Grammatical Aspect
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016
The topic of this chapter is the acquisition of lexical and grammatical aspect. Given wide cross-linguistic variation in aspect expression, the learnability issues center around form-meaning associations: how do learners determine the meaning of a certain aspectual form? Focusing on the literature on telicity and on the perfective-imperfective distinction, two main results stand out. Predicate telicity is easier than compositional telicity. The completion entailment of perfective is acquired at different ages across different languages, somewhere between 2.6 and 5. One novel direction of research asks whether aspect is acquired easier in some languages than in others. The answers will uncover possibly universal aspectual primitives and heuristics that guide children with their task of acquiring temporal meanings.
The Category of Aspect and its Compensation in Some Non-Aspectual Languages
In: Nyelv - Stílus - Irodalom. Köszöntő könyv Péter Mihály 70. születésnapjára, Zoltán A. (ed.), ELTE BTK Keleti Szláv és Balti Filológiai Tanszék, Budapest (Hungary) pp 447-451, 1998
The present article offers an interesting analysis of some non-aspectual languages from an aspectological point of view. The author proposes to discuss the question, how do non-aspectual languages express aspectual meanings and illustrates his claims with a number of examples.
DELTA [online], 2019
Aspect in the English language has been described through different categories and terminologies, which might lead teachers and students into some misunderstandings. Considering the importance of understanding the systematic representation of this concept in learning a foreign language, we review and compare the various ways aspect is presented in five of the most traditional descriptive English grammar books. We examined whether aspect is explicitly approached; how it is defined; categorized and whether the types of aspect are clearly explained in terms of meaning. Based on that, we contrasted their classification and terminology with an alternative approach, highlighting ambiguities and common grounds. Keywords : aspect; English grammar; classification; comparative analysis.
The effects of aspectual features in the acquisition of Spanish Preterit and Imperfect
TAML2 Conference in Leiden University, 2018
Acquiring the aspectual difference between Preterit and Imperfect is a difficult process for English speaking learners. This is not surprising if we bear in mind that English does not count on this aspectual distinction. The aim of this work is to study the acquisition of aspect within the framework of the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (LAH). Unlike previous work on this topic (Andersen 1986; Andersen and Shirai 1996; Arche et al. 207; Díaz et al. 2008; Domínguez et al. 2013; González 2003, 2013, among many others), it does not take for granted any aspectual typology but it texts essential aspectual features to understand what lexical aspectual features affect the use of past morphology in Spanish as a second language.
Applications of Cognitive …, 2008
In this paper, we focus on some terminological issues concerning the notion of aspect. We address the notions of grammatical aspect vs. Aktionsart, perfectivity vs. telicity, and imperfectivity vs. progressivity. We observe that these terms are often mixed up in the literature, which leads to some fundamental misconceptions in the theoretical description of different aspectual systems as well as in L1 and L2 acquisition studies. The descriptive approach we follow is strictly empirical and based on spoken production data. For our cross-linguistic comparisons, we draw upon data from native speakers of Czech, English, Dutch, German, and Russian. The theoretical framework of the paper is based on the idea that aspectual markers are not merely grammatical categories with a particular function, but more importantly they denote underlying cognitive concepts. These grammaticalized concepts determine native speakers' preferences in event construal, are language-specific (L1-based), and play a decisive role in second language learning. In order to deal with the difficulties arising in L2 learning, it is crucial to attempt to avoid terminological confusion. We think that this can be achieved by adopting a more conceptual and empirical approach to the analysis of aspect.