A Theory of Aspectuality

A Theory of Aspectuality PDF

Author: Henk J. Verkuyl

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-05-30

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 9780521564526

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Sentences may pertain to states or processes or events. They may express duration, frequency, habituality, and many other forms of temporality. How do they do this? It is the aspectual properties of sentences in natural languages which allow the user to express a temporal structure, and Henk Verkuyl presents a unified formal system to account for them. He explains aspectuality in terms of the opposition between terminative aspect and durative aspect, and describes the way in which terminative aspect is compositionally formed on the basis of semantic information expressed by different syntactic elements, in particular the verb and its arguments. The aim is to determine which semantic conditions make a sentence terminative; but at least ten different forms of durative aspectuality are also treated. All are drawn into a theory which can account for both terminative and durative aspectuality together. A Theory of Aspectuality draws together into a coherent whole the author's thinking on the subject over the last twenty years, and will interest all those working on aspect and the semantics of noun phrases. It promises to be a major new contribution to our understanding of the subject.

Perspectives on Aspect

Perspectives on Aspect PDF

Author: Henk J. Verkuyl

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2006-01-17

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1402032323

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This book offers both a retrospective view on how theories of aspectuality have developed over the past 30 years, and presents current, new directions of aspectuality research. The articles in this book take a wide crosslinguistic scope including aspectual analyses of the following languages: English and two varieties of English: African American English and Colloquial Singapore English, Italian, French, Bulgarian, Czech, Mandarin Chinese, West-Greenlandic, Wakashan languages, and Nahk-Daghestanian languages.

Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect

Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect PDF

Author: Susan D. Rothstein

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2008-03-20

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 9027291586

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The papers in this volume investigate the semantics of aspect from both a theoretical and a crosslinguistic point of view, in a wide range of languages from a number of different language families. The papers are all informed by the belief that a thorough exposure to the expression of aspect crosslinguistically is crucial for progress in understanding how the semantics of aspect works and what the semantic basis of aspectual distinctions is. The languages discussed include Russian, English, Dutch, Hebrew, Mandarin, Japanese and Kalaallisut. The issues discussed in this volume include the centrality of measuring and counting in an understanding of telicity; the importance of the singular/plural distinction in the study of aspect; the importance of homogeneity as a property of event types; the flexibility of lexical classes; and the interaction between expressions of aspect and the particular morphosyntactic structure of a language.

Aspectual Issues

Aspectual Issues PDF

Author: H. J. Verkuyl

Publisher: Stanford Univ Center for the Study

Published: 1999-01-01

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 9781575862002

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This collection explains Henk J. Verkuyl's theory on time and quantity presented in his 1993 volume, A Theory of Aspectuality. The selected works presented in this follow-up volume explore the consequences of this theory for a number of areas. In particular, Verkuyl addresses issues in the following areas: habituality; the interaction between tense and aspectuality; the role of temporal Path structure in distributive and collective quantification; and the differences and correspondences in the ways in which Slavic, Germanic and Romance languages express aspectuality.

Revisiting Aspect and Aktionsart

Revisiting Aspect and Aktionsart PDF

Author: Francis G. H. Pang

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-02-02

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 9004310886

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In Revisiting Aspect and Aktionsart, Francis G.H. Pang employs a corpus approach to analyze the relationship between Greek aspect and Aktionsart.

Aspectuality

Aspectuality PDF

Author: Sarah Dessì Schmid

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-12-16

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 3110564106

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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 L2 Acquisition of Tense-aspect Morphology

The L2 Acquisition of Tense-aspect Morphology PDF

Author: M. Rafael Salaberry

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 9789027224958

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The present volume provides a cross-linguistic perspective on the development of tense-aspect in L2 acquisition. Data-based studies included in this volume deal with the analysis of a wide range of target languages: Chinese, English, Italian, French, Japanese, and Spanish. Theoretical frameworks used to evaluate the nature of the empirical evidence range from generative grammar to functional-typological linguistics. Several studies focus on the development of past tense markers, but other issues such as the acquisition of a future marker are also addressed. An introductory chapter outlines some theoretical and methodological issues that serves as relevant preliminary reading for most of the chapters included in this volume. Additionally, a preliminary chapter offers a substantive review of first language acquisition of tense-aspect morphology. The analysis of the various languages included in this volume significantly advances our understanding of this phenomenon, and will serve as an important basis for future research.

Tense and Aspect in Han Period Chinese

Tense and Aspect in Han Period Chinese PDF

Author: Barbara Meisterernst

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2014-12-12

Total Pages: 538

ISBN-13: 3110339544

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Many grammatical issues of Archaic and Medieval Chinese still lack a comprehensive analysis. The book provides the first thorough investigation of the syntactic and semantic constraints of the linguistic categories tense and aspect and their relation with the lexical aspect of the verb in Han period Chinese. The author uncovers fascinating details of a language with a highly restricted verbal morphology.

The Chinese Aspectual System

The Chinese Aspectual System PDF

Author: Hongzhi Xu

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-07-22

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9811634084

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This book presents a theoretical study on aspect in Chinese, including both situation and viewpoint aspects. Unlike previous studies, which have largely classified linguistic units into different situation types, this study defines a set of ontological event types that are conceptually universal and on the basis of which different languages employ various linguistic devices to describe such events. To do so, it focuses on a particular component of events, namely the viewpoint aspect. It includes and discusses a wealth of examples to show how such ontological events are realized in Chinese. In addition, the study discusses how Chinese modal verbs and adverbs affect the distribution of viewpoint aspects associated with certain situation types. In turn, the book demonstrates how the proposed linguistic theory can be used in a computational context. Simply identifying events in terms of the verbs and their arguments is insufficient for real situations such as understanding the factivity and the logical/temporal relations between events. The proposed framework offers the possibility of analyzing events in Chinese text, yielding deep semantic information.

Aspect in English

Aspect in English PDF

Author: K. Kabakciev

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-03-09

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 9401593558

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Based on an earlier edition published in 1992 in Bulgarian, this book offers a specific approach to one of the most controversial problems in linguistics. According to it, aspect is the result of a subtle and complex interplay between the referents of verbs and nouns in the sentence. This volume is of interest to researchers of aspect and related problems, theoretical and applied linguists, psycholinguists, philosophers of language, graduate students of general linguistics, English (Germanic), and Bulgarian (Slavic).