The Referentiality of Tenses

1998 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 209-228
Author(s):  
Theo Janssen
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Old Irish ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Context Of Situation

Abstract. This article assumes that tenses in English and Dutch are non-time-based. A verb in the present tense form signals 'verb-in-this-context-of-situation', whereas a verb in the past tense form signals 'verb-in-that-context-of-situation'. It is argued here that the non-time-based analysis of tenses is particularly relevant in cases in which two tense forms should indicate the same time, but have to be interpreted as indicating different times. This discrepancy may occur in the relative use of tenses in various languages (e.g. Classical Greek, Old Irish, Ngiti, and Russian).

‘Colloquialization’ in fiction: A corpus-driven analysis of present-tense fiction

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 280-304
Author(s):  
Reiko Ikeo
Keyword(s):  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Spoken Discourse ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fictional Narratives ◽  
Present Tense

Over the past decade, more and more writers have used the present tense as the primary tense for their fictional narratives. This article shows that contemporary present-tense fiction has more lexical and syntactic characteristics which are similar to spoken discourse than past-tense fiction by comparing lexis and structures in two corpora: a corpus consisting of present-tense narratives and a corpus of past-tense narratives. It also discusses how the use of the present tense affects the management of viewpoint in narrative by relating its lexical, structural characteristics to the presentation of characters’ speech and thoughts.

A New Perspective on the Syriac Hwayt Qāṭēl in a Non-Past Context

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 419-431
Author(s):  
Lidia Napiórkowska
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Verbal System ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Cognitive Framework ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
General Linguistics ◽  
And Function ◽  
Meaning And Function

Abstract This article presents a new perspective on the meaning and function of the Syriac construction hwayt qāṭēl used with a non-past reference. Beginning with the traditional method of cross-linguistic comparison, the author contextualizes the construction in question within a pragmatic- cognitive framework of general linguistics, an approach that has so far been largely overlooked in Syriac studies. The language used here for comparison is the literary Christian of Urmi, a modern dialect of Aramaic, whose verbal system presents itself as a valid typological parallel for Syriac. Thus, through analysing the renditions of hwayt qāṭēl in Christian Urmi Neo-Aramaic within the corpus of the New Testament, the semantics and function of the Syriac hwayt qāṭēl receive precise characteristics, followed by an attempt to explain the use of the past tense form hwayt (perfect) for the present-future reference. An additional brief treatment of other command-related forms in Syriac, such as the imperative and imperative-derived constructions, contributes further, more detailed observations on the Syriac verbal system.

scholarly journals Lexical Aspect and the Use of Simple Past Tense by Thai Learners of English

MANUSYA ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Suriya Sriphrom ◽  
Theeraporn Ratitamkul
Keyword(s):  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Sectional Study ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Aspect Hypothesis ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Lexical Aspect ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Cloze Test

This cross-sectional study investigated the use of the simple past tense form by twenty Thai learners of English at two levels of proficiency. A cloze test developed by Ayoun and Salaberry (2008) was adopted. The findings showed that the learners in the high proficiency group used the past tense form more accurately than the learners in the low proficiency group. When verbs were categorized according to lexical aspect, both groups of learners were found to use the simple past tense form most often with telic events as well as with states. This did not correspond to the prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis, which asserts that low-level learners tend to use the simple past tense form with telic events first. The distributional bias in the input could account for the pattern found in this study.

scholarly journals The Golok Dialect and Written Tibetan past-tense verb forms

1979 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. K. Sprigg
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Present Tense

Tibetan orthography looks phonetically challenging, to say the least; and one may well wonder whether such tongue-twisting combinations as the brj of brjes, the blt- of bltas, or the bst- of bstan ever did twist a Tibetan tongue, or whether the significance of these and other such orthographic forms might not have been morphophonemic in origin, with the letters r, l, and s in the syllable initial of forms such as these serving to associate these past-tense forms lexically with their corresponding present-tense forms; e.g. Viewed in relation to Tibetan orthography the past-tense forms of a class of verbs in the Golok dialect seem to support this hypothesis. Table 1, below, contains a number of examples of Golok verbs in their past-tense and present-tense forms to illustrate a type of phonological analysis suited to that view of the r syllable-initial unit in the Golok examples, and, indirectly, in the WT examples too (the symbols b and b will be accounted for in section (B) below).

Producing inflected verbs

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wieke Tabak ◽  
Robert Schreuder ◽  
R. H. Baayen
Keyword(s):  
Picture Naming ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Mechanism Model ◽  
The Past ◽  
Inflected Form ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Dual Mechanism ◽  
As Effects

Four picture naming experiments addressing the production of regular and irregular pasttense forms in Dutch are reported. Effects of inflectional entropy as well as effects of the frequency of the past-tense inflected form across regulars and irregulars support models with a redundant lexicon while challenging the dual mechanism model (Pinker, 1997). The evidence supports the hypothesis of Stemberger (2004) and the general approach of Word and Paradigm morphology (Blevins, 2003) according to which inflected forms are not derived from the present-tense stem, but accessed independently.

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.

Vowel dominance in overregularizations

1993 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 503-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Paul Stemberger
Keyword(s):  
Phonological Processing ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Lexical Frequency ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Several Variables ◽  
Base Form

ABSTRACTWhen children produce regularizations likecomed, not all verbs are equally likely to be regularized. Several variables (e.g. lexical frequency) have been shown to be relevant, but not all the variability between verbs is understood. It is argued here that one predictor is which vowels are present in the base form vs. the past tense form. Using a notion of recessive vs. dominant vowel (where recessive vowels are more likely to be replaced by dominant vowels than vice versa) based on adult phonological processing, it is predicted that regularizations should be likely when the base vowel is dominant and unlikely when the past tense vowel is dominant. Data from 17 children reported in the literature, aged 1;6–5;6, show that this prediction is correct. Implications for the role of phonological variables in the processing of irregular past tense forms are discussed.

scholarly journals О соотношении двух плюсквамперфектов в псковских говорах в сопоставлении с инославянским материалом

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
М. В. Ермолова ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Future Tense ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Subjunctive Mood ◽  
The Past ◽  
Present Tense

There are two pluperfect forms in Pskov dialects: “to be (past tense) + vši-form” and “to be (past tense) +l-form”. The first one has a resultative meaning and should be considered in the row of other perfective forms with the verb to be in the present tense, future tense and in the form of subjunctive mood. The second one has a meaning of discontinuous past. Apparently, it is a grammeme of the past tense and it is opposed to the “simple” past tense by the meaning of the irrelevance of the action to the present. There are similar systems with two pluperfect forms in other Slavic and non-Slavic languages.

scholarly journals RHETORICAL PATTERNS, VERB TENSE, AND VOICE IN CROSS DISCIPLINARY RESEARCH ARTICLE ABSTRACT

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharifah Hanidar
Keyword(s):  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Passive Voice ◽  
Active Voice ◽  
Rhetorical Patterns ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Research Procedure ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Verb Tense

This article investigates research article abstracts in terms of their rhetorical patterns and the use of verb tenses and voice. A total of 40 abstracts were selected from four international journals in the fields of Biology, Mechanical Engineering, Linguistics, and Medicine. A four move model was adopted from Hardjanto (1997) to analyze the structure of the abstracts. The results show that all the abstracts have Move 1, creating a research space; 70% have Move 2, describing research procedure; 85% have Move 3, summarizing principal results; and 85% have Move 4, evaluating results. All the abstracts in medicine have Moves 1, 2, 3 and 4, whereas the most common pattern in Biology is Moves 1, 3 and 4, in Mechanical Engineering Moves 1, 2 and 3, and in Linguistics Moves 1, 2 and 4. This seems to suggest that there is a disciplinary variation in the structuring of RA abstracts in the four disciplines under investigation. With regard to the use of verb tense and voice in each move, the present tense and past tense in the active voice and the past tense in the passive voice were the most frequently used tenses. The present tense in the active voice was frequently used in Moves 1 and 4, while the past tense in the active voice was commonly used in Move 3 and the past tense in the passive voice was frequently found in Move 2. Furthermore, it was found that the present tense in the active voice was frequently used in Biology, Mechanical Engineering and Linguistics, whereas the past tense in the active voice occurred more frequently in Medicine, and the past tense in the passive voice was more frequently found in Mechanical Engineering than in other disciplines. 

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document