scholarly journals “In the past, we hear that a lot”: Features of and responses to tense and aspect in written Singaporean Academic English

2022 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 107-119
Author(s):  
Steven Adam
Keyword(s):  
Academic English ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
The Past

scholarly journals Tense and aspect in sentence interpretation by children with specific language impairment

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURENCE B. LEONARD ◽  
PATRICIA DEEVY
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
Scene Matching ◽  
The Past ◽  
Present Progressive

ABSTRACTThe aim of this study was to determine whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) are sensitive to completion cues in their comprehension of tense. In two experiments, children with SLI (ages 4 ; 1 to 6 ; 4) and typically developing (TD) children (ages 3 ; 5 to 6 ; 5) participated in a sentence-to-scene matching task adapted from Wagner (2001). Sentences were in either present or past progressive and used telic predicates. Actions were performed twice in succession; the action was either completed or not completed in the first instance. In both experiments, the children with SLI were less accurate than the TD children, showing more difficulty with past than present progressive, regardless of completion cues. The TD children were less accurate with past than present progressive requests only when the past actions were incomplete. These findings suggest that children with SLI may be relatively insensitive to cues pertaining to event completion in past tense contexts.

Zero verb marking in Sranan

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid De Wit ◽  
Frank Brisard
Keyword(s):  
Native Speaker ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
Lexical Aspect ◽  
The Past ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Basic Level

In the Surinamese creole language Sranan, verbs in finite clauses that lack overt TMA-marking are often considered to be ambiguous between past and present interpretations (depending on the lexical aspect of the verb involved) or analyzed as having a perfective value. We claim that these verbs are in fact zero-marked, and we investigate the various uses of this zero expression in relation to context and lexical aspect on the basis of corpus data and native speaker elicitations. It is shown that existing analyses do not cover and unify all the various uses of the construction. We propose, as an alternative, to regard the zero form as present perfective marker, whereby tense and aspect are conceived of as fundamentally epistemic categories, in line with Langacker (1991). This combination of present tense and perfective aspect, which is regarded as infelicitous in typological studies of tense and aspect (cf. the ‘present perfective paradox’, Malchukov 2009), gives rise to the various interpretations associated with zero. However, in all of its uses, zero still indicates that, at the most basic level, a situation belongs to the speaker’s conception of ‘immediate reality’ (her domain of ‘inclusion’). This basic ‘presentness’ distinguishes zero from the past-tense marker ben, which implies dissociation.

Perfective and imperfective from the same source

Diachronica ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
You-Jing Lin
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Pathways ◽  
Temporal Development ◽  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
The Past ◽  
Spatio Temporal

Extensive typological research on spatiotemporal development has shown that directionals tend to start as ‘bounders’, and eventually grammaticalize into perfective or simple-past markers. Meanwhile, recent crosslinguistic studies of tense and aspect have demonstrated that the opposition between perfective and imperfective is the most general contrast expressed via verbal morphology. This paper, however, presents a clear counterexample to the above commonly accepted generalizations. Specifically, rGyalrong languages show a perfective-imperfective distinction, but the past imperfective marker and one of the perfectives developed from the same source — the directional ‘down’. This study thus documents a previously undescribed development, through which a single directional has grammaticalized into two opposing aspectual categories. The unexpected spatio-temporal development presents a challenge to the approach of grammaticalization studies that focuses on ‘major’ developmental pathways.

scholarly journals Real tense and real aspect in mirativity

2015 ◽  
pp. 347
Author(s):  
Teresa Torres Bustamante
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current State ◽  
Time Argument ◽  
Modal Base ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Lifetime Effects ◽  
Usual Interpretation

The goal of this paper is an account of the role of tense and aspect in mirative constructions in Spanish. I propose that the past tense morphology and the imperfect/perfect morphology in Spanish miratives contribute their standard meanings to the semantics of mirativity. I define mirativity as the clash between the speaker’s previous beliefs and the current state of affairs asserted by the proposition. I propose a M operator that relates the speaker’s beliefs and the proposition by ranking the worlds in which the proposition doesn’t hold in the speaker’s previous beliefs as better ones. The past tense is interpreted outside the proposition, and constitutes the time argument of the modal base (doxastic domain). Aspect gets its usual interpretation in the proposition but also in the alternative propositions that order the worlds in the modal base. This way, differences regarding the imperfect mirative and the pluperfect one are accounted for. Finally, the paper also discusses stative miratives, which apparently challenge part of the analysis. I claim that these are not counter examples, but rather confirmation of the analysis, once we account for the interaction between miratives, statives and lifetime effects.

scholarly journals Teaching Georgian as a second language: Modality and Tense (modal unda) 1

2018 ◽  
Vol VI (2) ◽  
pp. 28-36
Author(s):  
Nino Sharashenidze ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Grammatical Category ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
The Third ◽  
Subjunctive Mood ◽  
The Past ◽  
Grammatical Categories ◽  
Modal Semantics ◽  
Language Modality

In the Georgian language, the verb paradigm is distributed among the forms of screeves (Shanidze). A screeve is a complex grammatical category which embraces the characteristics of tense, person, aspect, mood, permansive, resultative, perfect, evidentiality. The agglutinative nature of the language implies the existence of several grammatical meanings in one and the same verb form. The category of modality is expressed by means of adding modal elements to the verb form. The modal element expresses modal semantics, whereas the verb form bears the semantics of other grammatical categories. Thus, in Georgian, a modal construction embraces a combination of several grammatical peculiarities and semantics. The modal element is not usually found with all screeve forms. In order to express a modal content, different modal elements choose different screeves. The categories of tense and aspect are important features of the modal construction. The modal element unda is used with three screeves in Georgian: Present Subjunctive, Second Subjunctive and Second Resultative. Out of these, two are subjunctive mood forms, whereas the third one is the form of the indicative mood. However, as a result of weakening of the functions of the third subjunctive, the screeve of the second subjunctive has acquired numerous functions. One of such functions is to express modality in the past. Acquisition of modal constructions is an important part of language teaching. Modal constructions express the speaker’s attitude. In this regard, at a certain stage of language teaching these constructions are frequently addressed. It is very important for the learner to grasp the rules of formation of these constructions.

scholarly journals Inflectional Forms of Tense in Lutsotso

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-28
Author(s):  
Hellen Odera ◽  
David Barasa ◽  
Atichi Alati
Keyword(s):  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verb Constructions ◽  
The Future

Lutsotso verbs consist of more than one morpheme expressing a particular grammatical meaning. The various morphological affixes attached to the verb indicate agreement, tense, aspect and voice. Tense and aspect morphemes in Lutsotso follow the same order for all types of verb constructions. Although tense and aspect in Lutsotso are deeply intertwined, this paper focuses on tense only. The Lutsotso tense is divided into the present, past and the future. The past and the future are distributed in four degrees as follows: remote, intermediate, near and immediate. Since the verb is the unit of analysis in this paper, we first describe the basic verb form in Lutsotso. This will entail the verb root and other crucial aspects such as the final vowel and the infinitive form that influence it. We also give agreement in the feature, person, number, subject verb markers and object markers. Finally, tense forms in Lutsotso will be discussed beginning with the present, followed by the past and the future.

Perfect and pluperfect: what is the relationship?

1989 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphael Salkie
Keyword(s):  
Present Perfect ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theoretical Literature ◽  
The Relationship

The English (present) perfect (e.g. I have gone) has been extensively studied in the theoretical literature on tense and aspect. The pluperfect (I had gone) has by contrast received relatively little attention, and the relationship between the present perfect and the pluperfect has been virtually ignored. Descriptive grammars of English also tend to say little about the latter two issues, beyond distinguishing cases such as (1)–(6), where the pluperfect seems to be the ‘past of the perfect’, from instances like (7)–(11), where the pluperfect is the ‘past of the past’ (cf. Thomson & Martinet, 1969: 112–13; Berland-Delépine, 1971: 95–6; Guitard, 1966: 206–7; Palmer, 1974: 54):

scholarly journals A binary approach to Spanish tense and aspect: on the tense battle about the past

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paz Gonzalez ◽  
Henk Verkuyl
Keyword(s):  
Binary System ◽  
Formal Semantic ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
The Past ◽  
Binary Approach ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Surgical Operations ◽  
The Way

The present paper aims at accounting for the Spanish Imperfecto, Perfecto, Pluscuamperfecto and the Indefinido by applying three binary tense oppositions: Present vs Past, Synchronous vs Posterior and Imperfect(ive) vs Perfect(ive). For the sixteen Spanish tense forms under analysis a binary approach leads to covering twelve of them. Their relation with the preterital forms outside the range of the three oppositions is accounted for by two surgical operations: (a) the notion of Imperfect(ive) is severed from the notion of ongoing progress by restricting it to underinformation about completion and by seeing continuous tense forms as involving a more complex semantics; (b) the notion of (non-)stative is strictly severed from interference of information coming from the arguments of a verb. These theoretical moves make the way free for a formal-semantic insight into the interaction of Spanish tense and aspect. It also paves the way for a principled distinction between completion and anteriority. Restricted to tense forms pertaining to the past, our analysis sheds light on the struggle for survival of tense forms outside the binary system.

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