Encoding counterfactuality in Chinese, syntactically

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-45
Author(s):  
Haiyong Liu
Keyword(s):  
Causal Relationship ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Past Time ◽  
Tenseless Languages

Abstract In this article, I demonstrate how past time-reference, modality, negation, conditional, and the causal relationship between the protasis and the apodosis work together to generate counterfactuality in Chinese, syntactically. I study two syntactic means that can help construe counterfactuality in Chinese. First, I study the case of the specialized complementizer yaobushi ‘if not for’ based on Ippolito and Su (2009) by arguing that the causal clausal relationship and the overt or covert modality are obligatory in yaobushi counterfactual; in particular, I resort to the inherent negative entailment of the modal adverb cai ‘not until’ that satisfies the exhaustive operator to account for the needed negation in cai apodosis. Second, I propose that a hypothetical conditional clause with a past time-reference guarantees past counterfactuality in Chinese. I extend the morphological past-tense exclusion operator for counterfactuality (Iatridou 2000) to a more general and more pragmatic past time-reference to include tenseless languages like Chinese. I also show the special typological status of past tense and past counterfactual.

The functional roles of lexical devices in second language learners’ encoding of temporality: A study of Mandarin Chinese-speaking ESL learners

2019 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Ma ◽  
Gita Martohardjono ◽  
William McClure
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Functional Roles ◽  
Past Time ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Esl Learners

AbstractThe present study investigates the functional roles of two lexical devices, past-time temporal adverbials and frequency adverbs, in Mandarin Chinese-speaking ESL learners’ encoding of temporality in their English interlanguage. The results of the present study indicate that past-time temporal adverbials are facilitative in Mandarin Chinese-speaking ESL learners’ encoding of past time. Meanwhile, the existence/absence of the matrix agreement, which is a linguistic device that has not been discussed in previous studies, may also lead to learners’ different reactions. The results of the present study also show that the introduction of frequency adverbs is associated with a higher usage rate of the present tense and causes more difficulty in a past tense context. This association is found to exist not only in learners’ data, but also in English native speakers’ data. The present study contributes to our understanding of the development of second language learners’ expression of temporal locations and relations.

A Perfect Marker in Israeli Sign Language

1999 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irit Meir
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Future Time ◽  
Past Time ◽  
Aspect Marker ◽  
The One ◽  
Aspectual Markers ◽  
Core Meaning ◽  
Prior Event

In this paper I argue for the existence of an aspectual marker in Israeli Sign Language (ISL) denoting perfect constructions. This marker is the sign glossed as ALREADY. Though this sign often occurs in past time contexts, I argue that it is a perfect-aspect marker and not a past tense marker. This claim is supported by the following observations: (a) ALREADY can co-occur with past, present and future time adverbials; (b) its core meaning is to relate a resultant state to a prior event; (c) it occurs much more in dialogues than in narrative contexts. Further examination of the properties and functions of ALREADY in the language reveals that it shares many properties with perfect constructions in other languages. In addition, it is shown that the co-occurrence of ALREADY with various time adverbials, as well as with the durational aspectual modulation, gives rise to a rich aspectual system in the language. This aspectual system is compared to similar systems in other languages. The ISL system turns out to be very different from that of Hebrew on the one hand, while showing significant similarities to that of ASL. However, there are also some differences between ISL and ASL aspectual markers, which might be due to the relative youth of ISL, and to the different source for the aspectual marker: a verbin the case of ASL, and an adverb in ISL.

scholarly journals Contradictory (forward) lifetime effects and the non-future tense in Mandarin Chinese

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherry Yong Chen ◽  
E. Matthew Husband
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Future Tense ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Tenseless Languages ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Lifetime Effects

Lifetime effects refer to the inferences about the life/death of the individual in sentences with individual-level predicates like ‘Mary is/was blue-eyed’. In English, contradictory lifetime inferences arise when the subject denotes one living and one dead individual (e.g. Saussuredead and Chomskyliving #are/??were both linguists.), but no such inferences arises in Mandarin Chinese, a language that has been considered “tenseless” due to the lack of past tense morphemes. This paper investigates the online processing of contradictory lifetime effects and presents additional empirical observations about “forward lifetime effects”, which suggest that both covert past tense and tenseless accounts of Chinese are inadequate for capturing temporal interpretations in this language; instead, finite clauses in Chinese display a Future/Non-Future distinction and are likely to possess a tense node. We discuss our findings in relation to the typology of tense as well as implications for other superficially tenseless languages.

1 Samuel 2:6: Time and Wayyiqtol in Hannah’s Song

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Ethan C. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Samuel 2 ◽  
Past Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
1 Samuel

Abstract This article challenges the ideas that we should either re-read the form or appeal to a present tense rendering of וַיָּעַל in 1 Sam 2:6. Instead, I argue that the prospect of gnomic semantics due to the surrounding participles is leveraged to highlight a past time wayyiqtol “he raised up.” This past time makes sense of the context both within the poem itself (1 Sam 2) and the preceding narrative (1 Sam 1). What is more, a past tense meaning of וַיָּעַל is corroborated by recent robust linguistic research of the form. Reading the wayyiqtol as past makes reference to a specific, historical action done to Hannah. This reference to the past tightens the cohesion of and provides further coherence for Hannah’s narrative (1 Sam 1) and her song (1 Sam 2).

scholarly journals Il ‘passato discontinuo’ come categoria semantico-funzionale nella lingua russa contemporanea

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mara Leone
Keyword(s):  
Functional Category ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Past Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
National Corpus

The paper discusses verbal markers of the past tense with a meaning roughly characterizable as ‘past and not present’ or ‘past with no present relevance’ in contemporary Russian. This type of past time reference (defined as ‘discontinuous’) is opposed to standard past markers, which normally do not provide any information about the present domain. Aim of the study was to find and analyse one of the possible realizations of this semantic-functional category in contemporary Russian through particular uses of the imperfective aspect. The analysis has been done on the russian national corpus.

scholarly journals Processing Tenses for the Living and the Dead: A Psycholinguistic Investigation of Lifetime Effects in Tensed and “Tenseless” Languages

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherry Yong Chen
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Surface Form ◽  
Temporal Reference ◽  
Chinese Speakers ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
Binary Feature ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Tenseless Languages ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Lifetime Effects

Lifetime effects refer to the inferences about the life/death of the individual in sentences like ‘Mary is/was blue-eyed’. In English, contradictory lifetime inferences arise when the subject denotes one living and one dead individual, as neither tense is appropriate for the English copular, whereas no such intuition arises in Mandarin Chinese, a language that has been considered “tenseless” due to the lack of grammaticalised tense morphemes. In this thesis, I argue, with psycholinguistic evidence from online processing of contradictory lifetime inferences as well as empirical observations about "forward lifetime effects", that both covert past tense and tenseless accounts of Chinese are inadequate for capturing the temporal interpretations in this language: (1) Chinese speakers encountered reading time disruption for sentences with contradictory lifetime inferences, even though such sentences are judged as acceptable in an offline task; (2) Chinese bare predicates cannot be used when the subject involves one living and one yet-to-be-born individual. Taken together, these pieces of evidence suggest that the Chinese bare predicates are likely to possess a tense node with a Future/Non-Future distinction. I further suggest that Tense is a universal functional category that possesses a binary feature distinction, with a split between either Past/Non-Past or Future/Non-Future: all languages have a Tense Phrase in their hierarchical structure, although some languages lack overt marking of tense on nominals or verbs (or both). A new theory of tense is needed to account for the cross-linguistic variation on the surface form and the underlying homogeneity of temporal reference in language. (This is a revised version of my thesis.)

Past time reference in learner English

1998 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter G. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Conversational Discourse ◽  
Temporal Framing ◽  
Past Time ◽  
Communicative Strategies ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Interpretive Skills ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract A “concept-oriented” analysis of past time reference in the English of two French learners provides insight into the communicative strategies employed by advanced language learners. Although these learners have a limited command of past tense morphology, they nevertheless manage to establish past time reference in conversational discourse, utilising alternatives to morphological marking such as the use of adverbial phrases, implicit framing established by prior discourse, or “nil” framing, relying on assumed shared knowledge or the interlocutor’s interpretive skills. The two varieties of “learner English” differ significantly: one features a substantially higher number of morphologically marked verbs, with increasing explicitness in temporal framing; the other makes much greater use of implicit framing, with a substantial and unexpected increase in reliance on discourse-based frames. Neither learner shows evidence of linear or stage-wise development which would correspond to “rule-governed” acquisition of new knowledge.

How to Control the Present: A Unified Account of the Nonpast Uses of the Aorist Indicative

2016 ◽  
Vol 136 ◽  
pp. 92-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arjan Nijk
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Grammar ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Verbal System ◽  
Past Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Asymmetry ◽  
Present Tense

Abstract:This article addresses the asymmetry between the two main aspectual paradigms in the Classical Greek verbal system: the imperfective and the aorist (perfective). Whereas the imperfective has separate indicative forms for present and past time reference, i.e. the ‘primary’ and the ‘secondary’ indicative, the aorist only has a secondary (‘past’) indicative. I argue that this asymmetry is not only morphological but also semantic. That is, while the secondary imperfective indicative (the ‘imperfect’) is confined to past time reference, the secondary aorist indicative is used not only to refer to the past but also to the present. It then enters into aspectual competition with the primary imperfective indicative (the ‘present’). Based on R.W. Langacker's (2011) Cognitive Grammar account of aspect, I distinguish five types of context in which a present tense form with perfective aspect is a desideratum, and argue that here the secondary aorist indicative is used to fulfil this function. Moreover, I present a diachronic account of the origin of this remarkable asymmetry, arguing that the aorist indicative was never a past tense to begin with.

scholarly journals SOME FEATURES OF THE FORMS OF PAST TIME IN THE LESGIN LANGUAGE

2021 ◽  
pp. 114-119
Author(s):  
A. E. Azizkhanova ◽  
V. M. Ragimova
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Past Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Moment

In the Lezgi language, the forms of the past tense differ from other forms of tense in their multiplicity and diversity. They can express a wide variety of shades of temporary relationships. According to the correlation of the time of the action with the moment of speech or with the time of the performance of another action, the past tense forms can indicate such temporal shades as completeness or incompleteness, duration or non-duration, reality or unreality of the action.

scholarly journals Verbal forms on -i(r) in the Khakass language

2019 ◽  
pp. 66-72
Author(s):  
I. L. Kyzlasova ◽  
K. V. Kicheeva
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
The Real ◽  
Verbal Form ◽  
Past Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
The Subject ◽  
First Time ◽  
Time Plan

In article values of a verbal form – are defined -i(r) and other its derivatives, many of which are described in the Khakass language for the first time. Authors consider that the form -i(r) is connected with obligatory existence of a pertseptor concerning which there is an observed action: in close proximity or in a distance, eyes speaking or the char-acter, in the real or past tense. Verb form – and (p) and a participle form -iɣan / -igen coincide with the plan of the pre-sent, and observed action takes place just before the observer's eyes. The form -idyr / -idir also refers to the present, but the observed action takes place in some distance from the perceptor (observer). The form of the verb -yenan transfers the action to the past-time plan. The verbal adverb form -iryp / -irip, -idyryp / -idirip designates minor action of a komitativny situation. The form of conditional inclination -yz / -ise denotes that the observer is the subject of action.

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