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Tense, Mood and Aspect: a Feature-Geometric Approach

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Tense, Mood and Aspect: a Feature-Geometric Approach TENSE, MOOD AND ASPECT: A FEATURE-GEOMETRIC APPROACH Elizabeth Cowper, University of Toronto Department of Linguistics [email protected] 130 St. George Street, 6th Floor tel: 416-978-1767 Toronto, ON, M5S 3H1 fax: 416-971-2688 Canada Abstract This paper provides a feature-geometric analysis of verbal inflection in English, taking as a starting point the assumption that the syntax and semantics of tense, mood and aspect are based on a small set of component features that combine to give the superficially complex tense forms of any given language. This approach contrasts with theories based on the work of Reichenbach (1947), and is closer in spirit to the work of Stowell (1995) and Schmitt (2001). First, the features of the English Infl system are discussed. Second, the theory of Distributed Morphology is brought to bear on the mapping between the features and syntactic structure, with consequences both for the syntactic structure of English tense forms and for the precise formulation of Vocabulary insertion. All possible manifestations of Infl are shown to exist in English, and the range of expected crosslinguistic variation is discussed. 1 TENSE, MOOD AND ASPECT: A FEATURE-GEOMETRIC APPROACH* 1 Introduction This paper provides a feature-geometric analysis of verbal inflection in English. Feature geometry is widely accepted as an approach to the structure of segments in phonology (Sagey 1986, Rice & Avery 1991, Avery 1996) and has been extended in recent years to tense (Cowper 1999, Cowper and Hall 1999), case (Béjar and Hall 1999) and pronouns (Harley and Ritter 2002). The approach taken here takes as a starting point the assumption that the syntax and semantics of tense, mood and aspect is based on a small set of component features that combine to give the superficially complex tense forms of any given language. Terms like present perfect or simple past, like passive or causative (Chomsky 1981) thus have no status in the theory, but rather refer to superficial clusters of properties derivable from the properties of the elements that make them up. This approach contrasts with theories based on the work of Reichenbach (1947), which begin with a set of basic tenses defined in terms of different orderings of the semantic elements S (speech time), R (reference time) and E (event time), and then relate tense forms rather than inflectional features or morphemes to these basic tenses. It is closer in spirit to the work of Stowell (1995) and Schmitt (2001), which seek to integrate the elements of tense into the syntax of the clause, providing syntactic as well as semantic justification for their analyses. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the features of the English Infl system, with a discussion of each of its component parts. Section 3 provides a theoretical context for the proposal, showing how the theory of Distributed Morphology sheds light on the way the features are mapped into syntactic structure, and also showing how the feature dependency structure sheds light on the details of vocabulary insertion. Section 4 shows that all of the possibilities permitted by the dependency structure are, in fact, found in English. Section 5 briefly discusses 2 some crosslinguistic differences and how they might be accounted for within the proposed theory. 2 English Clausal Inflection The features of the English Infl are given in (1). (1) Infl Proposition Precedence Event qgp Finite/Deixisgg Interval Irrealisg Infl is merely a convenient label that, for the moment, hosts all the elements that make up the inflectional complex. The mapping from the features of Infl to the syntactic projections in the clause will be discussed as the analysis proceeds. The structure in (1) is a dependency tree, formally similar in some respects to those proposed for segment structure by Sagey (1986), Rice and Avery (1991), and Avery (1996), and for pronouns by Harley and Ritter (2002).1 The various elements are monovalent features with syntactic or semantic content, which correspond in some cases to particular inflectional morphemes. Thus, for example, the distinction between an event and a state is represented as the presence or absence of [Event], not as a contrast between two specifications such as [+ Event] and [– Event]. Let us now consider each of the elements making up the English Infl. We begin with [Event] and [Interval], whose content is aspectual. 2.1 Aspect Cowper (1999) argued that the event element, corresponding to the Davidsonian e (Davidson 1967), heads its own syntactic projection. Such a projection has been proposed by many authors (Travis 1993, Stowell 1995, Zagona 1990, among others), and is generally called Aspect Phrase or Event Phrase. In Section 3 we return to the mapping between the features of 3 Infl and the syntactic projections they determine; for the moment let us focus on the features themselves. Implicit in the structure in (1) is the claim that events are, from the point of view of the feature geometry of Infl, more complex than states. That is, clauses denoting events, or propositions about events, contain an element that does not appear in clauses denoting states, or propositions about states. This is consistent with work in the semantics of states and events, but can also be motivated on purely formal grounds. In a theory in which binary oppositions are captured by monovalent features, if one member of such an opposition (Event versus State) can be shown to have a dependent binary opposition (Interval versus Moment), that member can be taken to be the marked member of the opposition. Since it can be shown that eventive clauses in English have two inflectionally distinct varieties, to be discussed below, whereas stative clauses do not, I conclude that [Event] is the marked member of the Event/State opposition. Eventive clauses are thus characterized by the presence of [Event], and stative clauses by its absence.2 Interestingly, [Event] does not seem to correspond to any particular morphological element. It is argued in Cowper (1999) that the event/state opposition is independent of the choice of verb, the telicity of the clause, and the presence of a direct object with accusative case. In principle, any non-progressive clause can be interpreted as describing either an event or a state, although certain modifiers favor one or the other interpretation, as do certain verbs. This ambiguity is illustrated in (2). The (a) sentences in (2) and (3) are stative, while the (b) sentences are eventive. (2) a. Fritz wore a school uniform as a child. (Stative, characterizing sentence) b. Fritz wore a school uniform twice this week. (Eventive) (3) a. Anna was generous. (Stative) b. Katie was generous three times this morning. (Eventive) 4 If [Event] is not licensed by any particular morpheme, it might be thought that it should be optional in all sentences, and that all sentences would therefore be ambiguous between an eventive and a stative reading. Indeed, many sentences are ambiguous in this way, as we have just seen, but there are two specific circumstances under which only an eventive reading is possible. One of these is when the clause in question is the bare infinitival complement of a perception verb, as shown in (4). These sentences are sensible only to the extent that the embedded clause can be interpreted as describing some sort of event.3 (4) a. They saw [the policeman be polite/?intelligent/??burly]. b. We heard [the student heckle/?dislike the teacher]. The second case of an obligatory event reading is when progressive -ing appears, as in the sentences in (5). (5) a. The children were playing in the yard. b. The heckler was being rude. c. ?The gymnast was being tall. This second case follows immediately from the dependency structure in (1). The feature [Interval], a dependent of [Event], encodes imperfective viewpoint aspect (Smith 1991). A perfective event, like a moment, or a temporal point, has no grammatically relevant temporal structure. Comrie (1976) describes a perfective event as having its beginning, middle and end all wrapped up into one. An imperfective event, like an interval, has temporal subparts. In English, an eventive clause is interpreted as perfective unless it is overtly marked, by the feature [Interval], as imperfective. The morphological marking associated with imperfective viewpoint aspect in English is progressive -ing. If [Interval] is a dependent of [Event], and if progressive -ing appears only when [Interval] is present, it follows that any clause containing progressive 5 –ing must necessarily be eventive.4 A second, desirable consequence of the dependency structure in (1) is that stative sentences cannot manifest a perfective/imperfective distinction. 2.2 Tense Having seen the two aspectual features of Infl, let us now turn to the feature most properly associated with Tense. The narrow tense system of English is very simple, consisting of a single opposition traditionally described as [± Past], and implemented here with the monovalent feature [Precedence]. [Precedence] signifies that the IP in whose head it appears is located temporally prior to its temporal anchor. The temporal anchor may be the temporal deictic centre, frequently referred to as the moment of speech, or it may be a higher temporally indexed expression. The term past is often used with this meaning, but since it is also often used to refer to a particular tense form, I avoid using it here. In English, [Precedence] is correlated with one of two different morphemes: the finite past tense marker, often called -ed, and the past participial suffix, usually called -en. The absence of [Precedence] means that the time reference of the IP will be interpreted as simultaneous with its temporal anchor. The remaining features determine the clausal properties traditionally referred to as mood.
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