A Theory of Aspectuality
A Theory of Aspectuality

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.

The Parameter of Aspect
The Parameter of Aspect

Author: C.S. Smith

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-03-09

Total Pages: 479

ISBN-13: 9401579113

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During the period I have been working on this project I have received institutional support of several kinds, for which I am most grateful. I thank the Institute for Advanced Study at Stanford University, and the Spencer Foundation, for a stimulating environment in which the basic idea of this book was developed. The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics at Nijmegen enabled me to spend several months working on the the manuscript. ANational Science Foundation grant to develop Discourse Representation theory, and a grant from The University Research Institute of the University of Texas, allowed me time to pursue this project. I also thank the Center for Cognitive Science at the University of Texas for research support. I thank Helen Aristar-Dry for reading early drafts of the manuscript, Östen Dahl for penetrating remarks on a preliminary version, and my collaborator Gilbert Rappaport for relentIess comments and questions throughout. The individuals with whom I have worked on particular languages are mentioned in the relevant chapters. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to the members of my graduate seminar on aspect in the spring of 1990: they raised many questions of importance which made a real difference to the working out of the theory. I have benefitted from presenting parts of this material publicly, including cOlloquia at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at San Diego, the University of Pennsylvania, Rice University, the University of Texas, and the University of Tel Aviv.

Perspectives on Aspect
Perspectives on Aspect

Author: Henk J. Verkuyl

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2005-11-17

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9781402032318

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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.

Perspectives on Aspect
Perspectives on Aspect

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.

Aspectuality
Aspectuality

Author: Sarah Dessì Schmid

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-12-16

Total Pages: 319

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.

Revisiting Aspect and Aktionsart
Revisiting Aspect and Aktionsart

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. Recent works have tried to predict the meanings that emerge when a certain set of clausal factors and lexical features combine with one of the grammatical aspects. Most of these works rely heavily on Zeno Vendler's telicity distinction. Based on empirical evidence, Pang argues that telicity and perfectivity are not related in a systematic manner in Koine Greek. As a corollary, Aktionsart should be considered an interpretive category, meaning that its different values emerge, not from the interaction of only one or two linguistic parameters, but from the process of interpreting language in context.

The Second Language Acquisition of French Tense, Aspect, Mood and Modality
The Second Language Acquisition of French Tense, Aspect, Mood and Modality

Author: Dalila Ayoun

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2013-07-04

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 902727178X

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Temporal-aspectual systems have a great potential of informing our understanding of the developing competence of second language learners. So far, the vast majority of empirical studies investigating L2 acquisition have largely focused on past temporality, neglecting the acquisition of the expression of the present and future temporalities with rare exceptions (aside from ESL learners), leaving unanswered the question of how the investigation of different types of temporality may inform our understanding of the acquisition of temporal, aspectual and mood systems as a whole. This monograph addresses this question by focusing on three main objectives: a) to contribute to the already impressive body of research in the L2 acquisition of tense, aspect and mood/modality from a generative perspective, and in so doing to present a more complete picture of the processes of L2 acquisition in general; b) to bridge the gap between linguistic theory and L2 acquisition; c) to make empirical findings more accessible to language instructors by proposing concrete pedagogical applications.

The L2 Acquisition of Tense-aspect Morphology
The L2 Acquisition of Tense-aspect Morphology

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.

Modeling Biblical Language
Modeling Biblical Language

Author: Stanley E. Porter

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-03-21

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 9004309365

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Modeling Biblical Language presents articles with some of the latest scholarship applying linguistic theory to the study of the Christian Bible. The contributors are all associated with the McMaster Divinity College Linguistic Circle, a collegial forum for presenting working papers in modern linguistics (especially Systemic Functional Linguistics) and biblical studies. The papers address a range of topics in linguistic theory and the Hebrew and Greek languages. Topics include linguistic model building, temporality and verbal aspect, Greek lexical semantics and Hebrew-Greek translation, appraisal and evaluation theory, metaphor theory, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, and Greek clausal structure. These various areas of linguistic exploration contribute generally to the interpretation and analysis of the Old and New Testaments, as well as to linguistic theory proper.

Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect
Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect

Author: Susan Deborah Rothstein

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 9789027233745

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The papers in this volume investigate the semantics of aspect from both a theoretical and cross linguistic 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 cross-linguistically is crucial for progess in understanding how the semantics of aspect 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.