Events in Space
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Greek Verb Aspect
Greek Verb Aspect Paul Bell & William S. Annis Scholiastae.org∗ February 21, 2012 The technical literature concerning aspect is vast and difficult. The goal of this tutorial is to present, as gently as possible, a few more or less commonly held opinions about aspect. Although these opinions may be championed by one academic quarter and denied by another, at the very least they should shed some light on an abstruse matter. Introduction The word “aspect” has its roots in the Latin verb specere meaning “to look at.” Aspect is concerned with how we view a particular situation. Hence aspect is subjective – different people will view the same situation differently; the same person can view a situation differently at different times. There is little doubt that how we see things depends on our psychological state at the mo- ment of seeing. The ‘choice’ to bring some parts of a situation into close, foreground relief while relegating others to an almost non-descript background happens unconsciously. But for one who must describe a situation to others, this choice may indeed operate consciously and deliberately. Hence aspect concerns not only how one views a situation, but how he chooses to relate, to re-present, a situation. A Definition of Aspect But we still haven’t really said what aspect is. So here’s a working definition – aspect is the dis- closure of a situation from the perspective of internal temporal structure. To put it another way, when an author makes an aspectual choice in relating a situation, he is choosing to reveal or conceal the situation’s internal temporal structure. -
30. Tense Aspect Mood 615
30. Tense Aspect Mood 615 Richards, Ivor Armstrong 1936 The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rockwell, Patricia 2007 Vocal features of conversational sarcasm: A comparison of methods. Journal of Psycho- linguistic Research 36: 361−369. Rosenblum, Doron 5. March 2004 Smart he is not. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/smart-he-is-not- 1.115908. Searle, John 1979 Expression and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Seddiq, Mirriam N. A. Why I don’t want to talk to you. http://notguiltynoway.com/2004/09/why-i-dont-want- to-talk-to-you.html. Singh, Onkar 17. December 2002 Parliament attack convicts fight in court. http://www.rediff.com/news/ 2002/dec/17parl2.htm [Accessed 24 July 2013]. Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson 1986/1995 Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Voegele, Jason N. A. http://www.jvoegele.com/literarysf/cyberpunk.html Voyer, Daniel and Cheryl Techentin 2010 Subjective acoustic features of sarcasm: Lower, slower, and more. Metaphor and Symbol 25: 1−16. Ward, Gregory 1983 A pragmatic analysis of epitomization. Papers in Linguistics 17: 145−161. Ward, Gregory and Betty J. Birner 2006 Information structure. In: B. Aarts and A. McMahon (eds.), Handbook of English Lin- guistics, 291−317. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Rachel Giora, Tel Aviv, (Israel) 30. Tense Aspect Mood 1. Introduction 2. Metaphor: EVENTS ARE (PHYSICAL) OBJECTS 3. Polysemy, construal, profiling, and coercion 4. Interactions of tense, aspect, and mood 5. Conclusion 6. References 1. Introduction In the framework of cognitive linguistics we approach the grammatical categories of tense, aspect, and mood from the perspective of general cognitive strategies. -
The Semantics of Progressive Aspect: a Thorough Study MOUSUME AKHTER FLORA & S.M
The Semantics of Progressive Aspect: A Thorough Study MOUSUME AKHTER FLORA & S.M. MOHIBUL HASAN Abstract In English grammar, verbs have two important characteristics--tense and aspect. Grammatically tense is marked in two ways: Present and Past. English verbs can have another property called aspect, applicable in both present and past forms of verbs. There are two major types of morphologically marked aspects in English verbs: progressive and perfective. While present and past tenses are morphologically marked by the forms verb+s/es (as in He plays) and verb+d/ed (as in He played) respectively, the morphological representations of progressive and perfective aspects in the tenses are verb+ing (He is/was playing) and verb+d/ed/n/en (He has/had played) respectively. This paper focuses only on one type of aspectual feature of verbs--present progressive. It analyses the use of present progressive in terms of semantics and explains its use in different contexts for durative conclusive and non-conclusive use, for its use in relation to time of reference, and for its use in some special cases. Then it considers the restrictions on the use of progressive aspect in both present and past tenses based on the nature of verbs and duration of time. 1. Introduction ‘Aspect’ has been widely discussed in English grammar with respect to the internal structure of actions, states and events as it revolves around the grammatical category of English verb groups and tenses. Depending on the interpretations of actions, states, and events as a feature of the verbs or as a matter of speaker’s viewpoint, two approaches are available for aspect: ‘Temporal’ and ‘Non-temporal’. -
A Developmental Perspective on the Imperfective Paradox
Cognition 105 (2007) 65–102 www.elsevier.com/locate/COGNIT A developmental perspective on the Imperfective Paradox Nina Kazanina a,¤, Colin Phillips b a Department of Linguistics, University of Ottawa, 401 Arts Hall, 70 Laurier ave. East, Ottawa, Ont. K1N 6N5, Canada b Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland, 1401 Marie Mount Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA Received 30 April 2006; revised 23 August 2006; accepted 4 September 2006 Abstract Imperfective or progressive verb morphology makes it possible to use the name of a whole event to refer to an activity that is clearly not a complete instance of that event, leading to what is known as the Imperfective Paradox. For example, a sentence like ‘John was building a house’ does not entail that a house ever got built. The Imperfective Paradox has received a number of diVerent treatments in the philosophical and linguistic literature, but has received less attention from the perspective of language acquisition. This article presents developmental evidence on the nature of the Imperfective Paradox, based on a series of four experiments con- ducted with Russian-speaking 3 to 6 year olds. Despite the fact that Russian is a language in which the morphological form of imperfectives is highly salient and used appropriately at a very young age, younger children show a clearly non-adultlike pattern of comprehension in our experiments. The results from Experiments 1 and 2 suggest that Russian-speaking children incorrectly ascribe completion entailments to imperfectives. However, Experiments 3 and 4 indicate that the children recognize that imperfectives can describe incomplete events, and that their problem instead concerns their inability to Wnd a suitable temporal interval against which to evaluate imperfective statements. -
Tense, Aspect, and Mood in Shekgalagari Thera Crane
UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2009) Tense, Aspect, and Mood in Shekgalagari Thera Crane 1. Introduction and goals Shekgalagari (updated Guthrie number S.31d (Maho 2003) is a Bantu language spoken in western Botswana and parts of eastern Namibia. It is closely related to Setswana, but exhibits a number of phonological, morphological, and tonal phenomena not evident in Setswana. It has been described by Dickens (1986), but its complex Tense, Aspect, and Mood (TAM)-marking system remains largely undescribed. This paper represents an effort to initiate such a description. It is by no means complete, but I hope that it may spur further investigation and description. Data were collected in the spring semester of 2008 at the University of California, Berkeley, in consultation with Dr. Kemmonye “Kems” Monaka, a native speaker and visiting Fulbright Scholar from the University of Botswana. All errors, of course, are my own. Data for this paper were collected as part of a study of Shekgalagari tone and downstep involving Dr. Monaka, Professor Larry Hyman of the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of this paper. Data are drawn from the notes of the author and of Professor Hyman, and from personal communications with Dr. Monaka. Because the aim of the study was not the description of the TAM system as such, a number of forms were not elicited and are missing from this document. All need further investigation in terms of their semantics, pragmatics, and range of uses. Particular areas of interest for future study are noted throughout. 1.1. Structure of paper Section 2 gives a general introduction to tone in Shekgalagari and important tone processes, including phrasal penultimate lengthening and lowering (2.2), spreading rules including grammatical H assignment (with “unbounded spreading”; 2.3) and bounded high-tone spreading (2.4), and downstep (2.5). -
A'ingae (Cofán/Kofán) Operators
Open Linguistics 2018; 4: 328–355 Research Article Kees Hengeveld*, Rafael Fischer A’ingae (Cofán/Kofán) Operators https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2018-0018 Received May 9, 2018; accepted July 16, 2018 Abstract: The aim of this paper is to show how the TAME system of A'ingae, a language isolate spoken in Colombia and Ecuador, can be captured within the theoretical framework of Functional Discourse Grammar. An important prediction in this theory is that the surface order of TAME expressions reflects the scope relations between them in their underlying representation. An initial analysis reveals that, with three exceptions, the A'ingae TAME system confirms this prediction. Closer inspection of the three exceptions, which concern basic illocution, evidentiality, and quantificational aspect, then reveals that on the one hand, the theoretical model has to be adapted, while on the other hand some of the A'ingae facts allow for an alternative interpretation. Keywords: A'ingae, TAME-systems, Functional Discourse Grammar, quantificational aspect, reportativity, basic illocution 1 Introduction This paper studies the expression of aspect, tense, mood, evidentiality and related categories in A’ingae. The description is guided by the theoretical framework of Functional Discourse Grammar, especially by the hierarchical, layered approach to operators taken in this approach. The idea that operators are in scopal relationships leads to predictions concerning the combinability and ordering of operators that will turn out to be relevant to the A’ingae system as well. In what follows we will first, in Section 2, briefly introduce the A’ingae language. In Section 3 we then present the operator inventory of A’ingae in descriptive terms. -
Semantic Properties of the Israeli Hebrew Verb System
Semantic Properties of the Israeli Hebrew Verb System Nurit Dekel (University of Amsterdam) 1 Introduction Literature dealing with the verb system of Hebrew has presented diachronic descrip- tions over the years. A traditional view of the language is found in grammar books and textbooks (Blau 1967, 1975, Coffin-Amir & Bolozky 2005, Glinert 1994, Schwarzwald 2001), where the verb system of Israeli Hebrew (also referred to as Modern Hebrew elsewhere) is described as having three verb tenses and one modal structure, which is the imperative (Blau 1967, 1975, Coffin-Amir & Bolozky 2005, Glinert 1994, Schwarzwald 2001). There is only one grammar where aspects are mentioned when referring to the verb system (Berman 1978), but are not detailed further. Although claiming to be synchronic, the descriptions in the literature are more diachronic in nature and represent a historical approach to the verb system. I found only one paper, which points at ‘inconsistencies in the verb tenses’ of spoken Hebrew (Borochovsky Bar-Aba 2008: 267–269), but does not provide a detailed analysis or an explanation for the ‘inconsistencies’. Also, the examples in this re- search, although taken from spoken Hebrew, are presented in traditional pronuncia- tion (‘ani ‘eša’er ‘I will stay’ as opposed to the spoken form: ani išaeɣ). None of the mentioned literature deals specifically with the verb tenses of Israeli Hebrew, which seem to be thoroughly different from what is described therein. There is only one book that is concerned explicitly with the spoken variety of Israeli (Hebrew) at all (Zuckermann 2008). In Israeli Hebrew speech many of the traditional verbal forms are absent or used differently than in traditional Hebrew. -
Acquisition of Tense-Aspect Morphology by English Learners of French and Chinese
ACQUISITION OF TENSE-ASPECT MORPHOLOGY BY ENGLISH LEARNERS OF FRENCH AND CHINESE By HONGLI FAN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2005 To My Parents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my advisor, Dr. Theresa A. Antes, for her consistent encouragement, support, and help throughout my doctoral studies and particularly for her assistance with this dissertation. Thanks go to other committee members Dr. Jean Casagrande and Dr. Diane Boxer, especially to Dr. Joaquim Camps and Dr. Chauncey Chu, for their expert input and suggestions on theoretical as well as methodological issues. The guidance from all of these professors and many others at the University of Florida has helped put me on the right track to be a mature and independent scholar. I am also indebted to the following good friends and colleagues: Sophie Ganachaud, Barbara Petrosky, David Petrosky, Bin Li, Jinping Zhu and many others who have helped with the design and analysis of the activities. Finally, my gratitude goes to my husband Xuan Meng for his love and encouragement. It is also important that I acknowledge my son Raymond Meng who has been a sweet and cooperative boy throughout the project. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iii LIST OF TABLES........................................................................................................... -
A Brief Introduction to Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek1
DBSJ 12 (2007): 17–28 A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO VERBAL ASPECT IN NEW TESTAMENT GREEK1 by Andrew David Naselli2 ooks and articles on verbal aspect in NT Greek have been part of B the cutting edge of Greek grammar and syntax for about two dec- ades. The conversation accelerated with the published dissertations of Stanley E. Porter and Buist M. Fanning,3 and by the early 1990s, D. A. Carson observed, “From now on, treatments of the verbal system of New Testament Greek that do not probingly interact with Porter and Fanning will rule themselves outmoded.”4 The growing literature on verbal aspect has validated Carson’s observation, but despite this mass of literature, it “has caused a good degree of unrest,”5 and NT 1Special thanks to D. A. Carson, Jared Compton, Rodney Decker, Phil Gons, and Randy Leedy for examining a preliminary draft of this essay and sharing insightful feedback. 2Dr. Naselli is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in New Testament exegesis and theol- ogy at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, IL. 3Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, ed. D. A. Carson, Stud- ies in Biblical Greek 1 (New York: Lang, 1989); Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testa- ment Greek (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990). 4“An Introduction to the Porter/Fanning Debate,” in Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics: Open Questions in Current Research, ed. Stanley E. Porter and D. A. Car- son, Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 80 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), p. 25. 5Constantine R. Campbell suggests that part of this “unrest” stems from the fol- lowing: (1) “the way in which it is perceived that verbal aspect threatens to undermine traditional analyses of Greek. -
Aspect, Modality, and Tense in Badiaranke
Aspect, Modality, and Tense in Badiaranke by Rebecca Tamar Cover A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Line Mikkelsen, Chair Professor Lev Michael Professor Alan Timberlake Spring 2010 Aspect, Modality, and Tense in Badiaranke © 2010 by Rebecca Tamar Cover 1 Abstract Aspect, Modality, and Tense in Badiaranke by Rebecca Tamar Cover Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Professor Line Mikkelsen, Chair Most formal analyses of the semantics of tense, aspect, and modality (TAM) have been developed on the basis of data from a small number of well-studied languages. In this dissertation, I describe and analyze the TAM system of Badiaranke, an Atlantic (Niger- Congo) language spoken in Senegal, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau, which manifests several cross-linguistically unusual features. I develop a new semantic proposal for Badiaranke TAM that explains its distinctive properties while also building on the insights of earlier analyses of TAM in more commonly studied languages. Aspect in Badiaranke has two initially surprising features. First, the perfective is used to talk not only about past events (as expected), but also about present states (not expected). Second, the imperfective is used to talk not only about ongoing or habitually recurring eventualities (as expected), but also about future and epistemically probable eventualities, as well as in consequents of conditionals and counterfactuals (not expected). I develop a modal explanation of these patterns, relying on the distinction between settled pasts and branching futures (Dowty 1977, Kaufmann et al. -
Modal and Temporal Aspects of Habituality Nora Boneh and Edit Doron in M
Modal and Temporal Aspects of Habituality Nora Boneh and Edit Doron in M. Rappaport-Hovav, E. Doron and I. Sichel (eds.) Syntax, Lexical Semantics, and Event Structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1. Introduction In this paper, we explore the modal characteristics of habituality, and the relation of habituality to imperfectivity. We have already argued in previous work (Boneh and Doron 2008) for the existence of a habituality modal operator Hab which is independent of imperfective aspect. Here we defend this analysis further, in particular in the face of reductionist views such as Ferreira (2005), who treats Hab as reducible to imperfectivity of plural events, and Hacquard (2006), who treats imperfective aspect as reducible to modal operators such as Hab/Prog. The reductionist views of Ferreira and Hacquard seem natural for languages with imparfait -type morphology expressing both continuity and habituality, such as the Romance languages. For us, the existence of this type of morphology shows that it is indeed natural to present habituals as ongoing. Yet we do not believe in the reduction of Hab to imperfectivity, or vice-versa. Rather, we assume that the output of the modal operator Hab is the input to aspectual operators, normally the imperfective aspect, since Hab is stative, but not exclusively. We show that Hab can be the input to the perfective aspect as well. Thus, it is possible to separate habituality from imperfectivity. The paper mainly discusses languages such as Hebrew, English, Polish, which lack perfective/imperfective viewpoint morphology, though they may encode verbal lexical aspect morphology (Polish), or other viewpoint aspectual morphology such as the progressive (English). -
The Two Be's of English
Understanding English Grammar Chapter 11 Copyright © 2010 Thomas E. Payne The Two be 's of English 1 THOMAS E. PAYNE Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon and SIL International 1. Introduction Standard approaches to English grammar usually identify two 'be verbs' – one a lexical or copular verb and the other an auxiliary (see Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman 1999: 53, Greenbaum & Quirk 1990: 36, Berk 1999: 151, Azar 2002: A6, Teschner & Evans 2007: 51, Böjars & Burridge 2001: 166–167, to name a few). Common textbook examples of these two uses of be are given in (1a, b) respectively: (1) a. She is a doctor. LEXICAL VERB They are hilarious. Malcolm was the leader. This is for you. We 're in the kitchen. There were three dogs in the yard. b. She is waiting. AUXILIARY The vase was broken by the workers. We were devastated by the tragedy. In this article I would like to make two claims – an easy claim and a more difficult one. The easy claim is that the distinction illustrated in (1) is spurious. All the examples of be in (1) are prototypical auxiliaries. As described by Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 92), these are CORE AUXILIARIES . The more difficult claim is that indeed there is a morphosyntactic difference between be as a lexical main verb and be as an auxiliary, but that difference is not the standard one illustrated above. The syntactic distinction between lexical and auxiliary be is more insightfully motivated by the semantic distinction between ACTIVE BE and STATIVE BE . Both of these claims have profound consequences for theoretical approaches to the basic clause structure of Modern English, and to English language pedagogy.