The Concept of Semantic Phase and the Different Readings of again (original) (raw)
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A note on repetition in Spanish: volver a + VInf, re-prefixation, and adverbs of repetition
2016
In this paper, we describe the semantics of three types of expressions of repetition that constitute presupposition triggers in Spanish, a verbal periphrasis, adverbs of repetition, and prefixation. We show that the main difficulty in their semantic analysis is that of formulating the minimal presupposition they trigger, and we assume that, in the case of the periphrasis, Ramchand's first-phase syntax templates are better predictors of this minimal presupposition than analyses relying on less fine-grained structures for the VP (such as those merely distinguishing adjuncts from arguments and internal from external arguments). As for the differences between the three types of expression, the periphrasis shows a clearly temporal nature, since it both modifies temporal structure and relies exclusively on temporal orders. Adverbs of repetition do not modify temporal structure and may rely on other types of order. Re1-prefixation in Spanish is confined to expressing the restitution (w...
Una pronominalització inesperada d’alguns sintagmes de mesura temporals
Catalan journal of linguistics, 2022
Catalan partitive case, as well as the clitic en that represents it, is usually described as the case of the indefinite (or bare) direct object of transitive verbs and the indefinite (or bare) postverbal subject of unaccusative predicates. However, in quasicopulative constructions we can find some temporal measure phrases showing partitive case which have the appearance of an adjunct phrase. The paper provides evidence that these temporal measure phrases are not an argument of the verb, but an argument of a syntactic structure where an abstract Place preposition has been incorporated into the verb. This analysis of the partitive case as the inherent case assigned by a Place preposition incorporated into a verb is extended to other Catalan syntactic configurations with verbs which have lost their dynamic meaning, such as passar 'to pass' and portar 'to bring'.
Aspects Of Repetition in Discourse
It is often claimed that language is a system for communicating information. In fact, language has a multiplicity of functions, but when it comes to information, that which is to be given significance is always framed by the known, hence repeated, elements. The organization of language is largely a matter of what is repeated, when, where, why, by whom, how and how often. For the purposes of this analysis, I will take a much broader view of repetition than is normally found in linguistics, considering a cline from local (often idiosyncratic) repeating clauses or phrases to stable units such as lexical items which have become formal, generalized tokens in the language. This is not a paper which proposes a neat solution to some small puzzle in a linguistic model. Rather, it outlines for further study some properties of a very general phenomenon.
Studies in Language Companion Series, 2014
The following article deals with phasal verbs, i.e., verbs referring to a special phase of an entire event. Thus, for instance, start refers to the beginning of an event whereas stop and finish focus on an event's final phase. After a general introduction, I shall show in Section 1.2 that there is a direct line from medieval thinking about event phases to recent semantic theories as they have been developed since the 1960s or so onward. Three influential modern theories are discussed in the second section, namely: (1) Jackendoff 's account of the cognitive mechanism used to delimit events and their initial and final sub-phases; (2) Pustejovsky's theory of the interaction of phasal verbs with their complements; and (3) Partee and Bennett's analysis of phasal verbs within their interval semantics. In the main Section 3 I try to integrate these approaches to the semantics of phasal verbs within a more elaborate and comprehensive model for the semantic description of phasal verbs. The discussion will show that a coherent and descriptively adequate analysis of phasal verbs is possible and that phasal verbs must be recognized as constituting a grammatical class at least in the languages discussed here. 1. In the Anglo-American tradition the term "aspect" has been widely used both for aktionsart phenomena and aspectual classes in the narrow sense, the latter referring for example to grammaticalized aspect in aspectual verb pairs, as most evidently realized in the Slavic languages. This terminological ambiguity should, naturally, be avoided (Engerer & Nicolay 1999: 333). Dowty's, and, by the way, Vendler's "aspectual classes", too, cover, on the background of these "Slavic" inspired distinctions, semantic-temporal aktionsart features, and, in addition, do not comprise, as the term "aspectual class" perhaps suggests, classes of lexical forms, but, in the first place, classes of syntactically analyzable complex expressions.
Actas do 1º Encontro Internacional de Linguística Cognitiva
1999
Reunimos, aqui no Porto, as pessoas que em Portugal estão nessa "onda", rodeando-a de alguns nomes que são autoridade nessa área. Quis dizer aos Colegas de Psicologia, de Filosofia, de Sociologia, de Ailtropologia (os estereótipos começaram aí), o que estamos a fazer num domínio próximo ao deles. Isto é um começo. '' [ADESSE LOCIOI [ ] n, LOCP1 ] ti & [ADESSE LOCIO1 [ ] n, LOCP 2 ] ti + k& [ADESSE LOCIOI [ ] n, LOCP 3 ] ti +I." in which the representation of an entity E, placed at three different places LOCP1, LOCP2, LOCP3 at three different sequential moments ti, ti + k and ti + 1 is clearly pictured. As far as our corpw analysis is concerned, the only problem resides on the fact that it is too schematic, since it could represent the whole of the above mentioned examples but it could also illustrate any other sentences with different verbs and different prepositions. " Tlze Iberian lang~tuges present aizother type of polysenzy thnt is relutecl eitlzer to the spatial insertion of a s~lrface or to tlze sputinl insertioiz of tlze interior o f mz area or volurne, using the sarne preposition en/em " (our translation). Furthermore, in our opinion, the use of em in sentences is ambiguous since it establishes a space insertion of the trajectos within a bounded landmark, but not necessarily an enclosed one7. 011 focusing on the lexicalization patterns, on the one hand, we are struck by the fact that the lexical item passear is not as specific as wandern because, as widely proven by Almeida (1995), the Portuguese language, differently from the German, must not necessarily lexicalize specific action, adopting frequently a generic perspectivization. On the other I-iand, it stands out that andar de carro is conceived as a complex lexicalization pattem, different fi-om the German that lexicalizes it exclusively at verbal level in fahretz. 9 Cienki (1997:6) " A properly common to almost a11 iinage scheinas is that they can be realized i11 eitlier a static or a dyilamic fashion." projet profite du soutien financier de la Fédération de Recherche Allemande (DFG).
Exact repetition or total reduplication? Exploring their boundaries in discourse and grammar
Freywald, Ulrike & Rita Finkbeiner. 2018. Exact repetition or total reduplication? In: Rita Finkbeiner & Ulrike Freywald (eds.), Exact Repetition in Grammar and Discourse. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. 3-28, 2018
In this chapter, we review central criteria that are commonly used to differentiate between '(total) reduplication', understood as a grammatical operation that applies within word boundaries, and '(exact) repetition', which is a pragmatic or discourse-related process that takes place above the word level. The main focus of this article is on the grey area where the two domains meet or even overlap. In anticipation of the remainder of the book we discuss examples from a variety of languages which challenge a neat division into word-bound reduplication on the one hand and discourse-bound repetition on the other. This survey of potentially problematic cases leads to the conclusion that the demarcation line between reduplication and repetition is rather blurred: Neither is reduplication confined to the domain of the word nor is repetition completely excluded from it. Reduplication also occurs at the discourse level, conveying discourse-grammatical information such as topic marking. Conversely, purely pragmatically motivated processes of repetition can also be found within words, for example with derivational affixes and in ideophones. This introductory chapter is concluded by an overview of the articles assembled in this book.
Aspectual Interpretation in Spanish of Adverb-Modified Verbal Forms
2002
express what in the literature is known as "Continuative Perfect", and held that this aspectual variety focalises an event from its beginning until an internal point, without focalising its end. He further proposed a classification of aspectual varieties whose first and foremost division was that between conclusive and inconclusive events. Imperfect and Continuative were regrouped within the first division, Continuative being considered as an aspectual variety different from the Perfect. The aim of the present paper is, in the first place, to cover the possible morphological expressions of the Continuative and study which ones are shared with the Imperfect aspect. We will later establish the restrictions imposed upon them by the different Aktionsarten. We will furthermore analyze the relationships between the Continuative and the Imperfect aspect variety called "continuous", and, lastly, we will provide an explanation for the obligatory use of certain adverbial complements in the Continuative's expression. *. A shorter version of this paper, written in collaboration with Luis García Fernández, was presented in October 2001in Münich at the 27th German Conference on Romance Languages, Linguistic panel « Verbal Periphrases ». I wish to thank in his name and in mine all the comments and suggestions, especially the ones made by Daniel Burgos and Brenda Laca. This paper was supervised by Luis García Fernández, to whom I am greatly indebted. Needless to say, all the errors are mine.