Tense, Aspect

Sarah Dessì Schmid Aspectuality Sarah Dessì Schmid Aspectuality An Onomasiological Model Applied to the Romance Languages ISBN 978-3-11-056207-1 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-056208-8 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-056410-5 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Library of Congress Control Number: 2019947559 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2019 Sarah Dessì Schmid, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston This book is published with open access at www.degruyter.com Cover image: Andyworks/iStock/gettyimages Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com Preface to English Edition This is the English translation of the book Aspektualität, which was published in 2014 in the Journal of Romance Philology’s series of supplements (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie) by De Gruyter publishers. Except for minor corrections, the German text has been retained unchanged. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the people who contributed in many ways to the English version of this book and without whose support it would not have been possible. The idea for an English translation came from Lia and Daniel, when I hadn’t even thought of it. Daniel encouraged me in this undertaking in every possible way. My heartfelt thanks to both of them. I would like to thank Sam Featherston, Neil Huggett, Andrew Duane and – especially – Tessa Say very warmly for their mother-tongue competence, as well as the long phone calls, rich in linguistic content and empathic laughter. My deepest gratitude goes to Reinhild Steinberg – who loves language games as much as I do – for her generous and highly competent help as well as for her precious friendship in preparing the English manuscript in all its phases up to its publication. I am greatly indebted to De Gruyter publishers – especially to Ulrike Krauss, Christine Henschel and Gabrielle Cornefert – for their unfailing kindness and patience and their experi- enced support throughout this project. Tübingen, July 2019 Open Access. © 2019 Sarah Dessì Schmid, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110562088-202 Preface This book is a slightly revised version of my Habilitation (post-doctoral) thesis which was successfully presented in June 2012 to the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Tübingen, and then to the University of Stuttgart in February 2013. The core of the research is the presentation of a new theoretical model for classifying and interpreting the aspectual contents of states of affairs. In this book, I develop a set of descriptive and analytical tools at the conceptual level, which may be applied crosslinguistically and are therefore suitable for language comparison, but nevertheless may also be used for detailed analyses of specific phenomena in individual languages. In retrospect, I recognise in this a recur- ring – more or less conscious – motivation in my research, namely, the wish to combine the different thematic domains in which I work and the passions that drive me: grammar and semantics, linguistics and language philosophy. As with any work of this sort, I have travelled a long way, but not alone. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have accompanied me on this journey and have contributed in many ways to the making of this book. First of all, I would like to thank Peter Koch with all my heart. Always with the right questions at the right time, he has accompanied the process from con- ception to completion of the book with tireless enthusiasm and his typically respectful and constructively critical nature. I am especially grateful to him for sharing his human and intellectual greatness with me and for his generosity in past years and now once again on a daily basis. I would also like to affection- ately thank Achim Stein, who gave me wonderful years in Stuttgart and opened up new horizons. He not only showed me new ways and perspectives in research as well as in the university realm, but also continuously supported my project with many helpful suggestions, not least by granting me the freedom needed to pursue it. I cannot be grateful enough for that. My sincere thanks also go to Johannes Kabatek and Tilman Berger not just for their willingness to take on additional reviews of my work, but also for important advice, remarks and helpful criticism, which have unquestionably contributed to the development of this book. I would also like to thank them for their special sense of humour that often filled our discussions with gaiety. For valuable suggestions, bibliographic references, attentive and constructively critical reading of the text, and last but not least encouraging words of friendship, I owe thanks to those dear friends who are an example and a help to me every day: Heidi Aschenberg, Andrea Fausel and Daniela Marzo. Open Access. © 2019 Sarah Dessì Schmid, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110562088-203 VIII Preface Many colleagues and friends, not only of the institutes of Romance and Slavic languages and literature in Tübingen, Stuttgart and all of Germany, with whom I was able to discuss aspectuality on numerous occasions, have substantially contributed to the development of this book in its various phases. They have listened, commented and shared fruitful discussions with me, provided valuable bibliographical references, offered to present and discuss my project in front of an audience while it was still in the making, offered their expertise as native speakers, helped me deal with the flood of work from other areas and given me much-needed support with their friendship and affection. I can acknowledge here only a few of these people, but those who are not mentioned are by no means forgotten – my sincere gratitude goes to them all: Tanja Anstatt, Vahram Atayan, Asencion Bailen, Gabriele Beck-Busse, Martin Becker, Christine Blauth-Henke and her daughter Julia, Klaus Böckle, Daniel Bunčić, Giuseppe Burgio, Eva Erdmann-Schwarze, Ljudmila Geist, Paul Gévaudan, Jochen Hafner, Antonio Junco, Wiltrud Mihatsch, Carla Miotto, Rosina Nogales, Daniela Pirazzini, Nicoletta Rivetto, Marie-Rose Schoppmann, Stefan Schreckenberg, Maria Selig, Reinhild Steinberg, Liane Ströbel, Carola Trips, Eva Varga, Chrisoula Vernarli, Valentina Vincis, Richard Waltereit and all the other participants in the Tübingen colloquia on Wednesday evenings, as well as all the other colleagues and friends at the Institute of Linguistics/ Romance Studies of the University of Stuttgart and the Institute of Romance Languages and Literature of the University of Tübingen. I would like to thank Andrea Fausel, Annika Franz, Jürgen Freudl, Lara Schleyer, Daniel Schmid and Martin Sinn for their efficiency, precision and patience in proofreading, even under great pressure of time at various stages of the work. Additional thanks go to Daniel Schmid for drawing the figures and images. I am especially indebted to Claudia Polzin-Haumann, Günter Holtus and Wolfgang Schweickard for including my work in the Journal of Romance Philology’sseriesofsupplements(BeiheftezurZeitschriftfürromanische Philologie), as well as to the publishers De Gruyter – especially to Ulrike Krauss and Christine Henschel – for their always exceptionally friendly and competent support through the various difficulties which tend to arise on the path to publication of a long project. The privilege of working in a discipline where the boundaries between work and private life are not necessarily clear-cut means that many of the friends I would like to thank have already been mentioned above. Once again, and a little more privately, I would like to extend special thanks to them and to all my other friends and my family for their patience and their readiness to Preface IX support me – especially my dear parents, as well as my siblings, whether by birth or by affection: Alessandra and Alessandro, Luca and Daniela. To my husband Daniel – without whom this book would not have been possible – and to my son Leonhard I owe thanks for unlimited support and constant encouragement, and for loving distraction and cheeky laughter at work-intensive moments. Certainly, this was not always easy for them, but they have shared the load and accompanied me with rarely finite patience, even as far as the examples that appear in this book. I owe all this and much more to them – the sounds and images of my verbal and nonverbal world. Tübingen, June 2014 A few days after this preface was written my dear and beloved teacher and friend Peter Koch died unexpectedly. He had been looking forward to the publication of this book with joy and pride, as he always enjoyed the successes of people who were close to him as if they were his own. We had forged many plans for the next few years and were very happy about our cherished academic exchanges and close personal contact which we re-established in October last year. I painfully miss his laughter and his wisdom, and

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