Restricted and reversed aspectual contrasts

2020 ◽  
pp. 39-57
Author(s):  
Andrew Carnie ◽  
Sylvia L. R. Schreiner
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Scottish Gaelic ◽  
The Past ◽  
Feature Geometry ◽  
Temporal Restriction ◽  
Temporal Ordering

In this chapter, Scottish Gaelic data are presented as evidence for the necessity of two modifications to Cowper’s (1998 and forward) feature geometry for tense and aspectual contrasts. Both modifications involve dependencies on the PRECEDENCE feature, which in Cowper’s geometry of English is responsible for the past tense marker -ed and the past participle morpheme -en/-ed. The first modification is a RESTRICTED feature. This feature is used to encode the temporal restriction between event and reference times in the near perfect and near prospective aspects found in Scottish Gaelic. The second modification is a REVERSED feature, which reverses the temporal ordering of two times. This feature is argued to mark unrestricted and restricted prospective aspects. It is claimed that certain future-like meanings in Scottish Gaelic do not involve a modal feature like IRREALIS but rather the proposed REVERSED feature.

Inflection and Derivation

2019 ◽  
pp. 241-261
Author(s):  
Andrew Spencer
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Personal Pronoun ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Completely Regular ◽  
Auxiliary Verbs ◽  
The Past ◽  
Irregular Verbs ◽  
Categorial Status

The chapter presents an overview of phenomena which pose important problems of description and analysis. I focus on the inflectional system, which has undergone severe attrition and shows idiosyncrasies typical of such systems. For nominals I describe the personal pronoun paradigm and the ‘possessive -s’ clitic/phrasal affix. The controversial categorial status of adverbs in -ly is discussed, while for verbs, all the subcategories prove to be highly problematical. For instance, only 50 irregular verbs distinguish past tense from past participle (e.g. wrote/written), so it is not even clear whether the past participle category is a highly restricted subcategory, with the vast majority of verbs showing past tense/past participle syncretism, or whether this is a case of ‘overdifferentiation’, like the forms am, are, were of the verb BE. On the other hand, the polyfunctionality of the completely regular -ing suffix, which derives verb, noun, and adjective forms, also poses serious unresolved problems. Auxiliary verbs and related phenomena alternate between periphrastic, clitic, and genuinely morphological (affixal) constructions. The chapter concludes with consideration of those aspects of derivational morphology which seem to be indisputably productive, hence part of the grammar, including (certain types of) event nominalization, some cases of double object alternation, and morphosemantic mismatches of the kind electrical engineering ⇒ electrical engineer.

Regional variation in the English verb qualifier system

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Sampson
Keyword(s):  
Regional Variation ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Standard Language ◽  
The Past ◽  
Redundant Data ◽  
Irregular Verbs ◽  
Past Tenses ◽  
English Verb

Nonstandard dialects often use the same form for the past tense and past participle of irregular verbs for which the standard language has distinct forms. One possible reason would be that some speakers have a nonstandard system of verb qualifiers (tense, mood, and aspect markers) in which the past tense/past participle distinction is functionally redundant. Data on spontaneous speech in Britain in the 1990s partly supports this by showing marked regional variation in the use of the Perfect construction. However, some nonstandard past tenses cannot be explained in terms of a nonstandard qualifier system.

scholarly journals Floating affixes in Polish

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Berthold Crysmann
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
General Treatment ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
The Past ◽  
Considerable Debate ◽  
Inflectional Features

The morphosyntactic status of Polish past tense agreement markers has been a matter of considerable debate in recent years (Spencer 1991, Borsley & Rivero 1994, Borsley 1999, Bański 2000, Kupść 2000, Kupść & Tseng 2005). Past tense agreement is expressed by a set of bound forms that either attach to the past participle, or else float off to a host further to the left. Despite this relative freedom of attachment, it is often noted in the literature, e.g., Borsley 1999, Kupść & Tseng 2005, that the combination of verbal host and agreement marker forms a word-like unit. In this paper I will argue that these agreement markers are best analysed as affixes uniformly introduced on the verb whose inflectional features they realise. Building on the linearisation-based theory of morphology-syntax interaction proposed in Crysmann 2003, syntactic mobility of morphologically introduced material will be captured by mapping phonological contributions to multiple lexically introduced domain objects. It will be shown that this is sufficient to capture the relevant data, and connect the placement of floating affixes to the general treatment of Polish word order Kupść 2000.

scholarly journals Art. XVI.—Note on the Past Tense in Marāṭhī

1902 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-421
Author(s):  
Sten Konow
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
The Past

The past tense in Marāṭhī is formed by adding a suffix lā. The same suffix is also used in Bihārī, Oṛiyā, Bengali, and Gujarātī. This form has long been a puzzle to scholars. Mr. Beames, A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India, vol. iii, p. 135, compares the past tense in Slavonic languages; Dr. Hoernle, A Comparative Grammar of the Gaudian Languages, p. 139 f., derives la from the suffix ta of the past participle passive in Sanskrit; and Sir Charles Lyall, A Sketch of the Hindustani Language, Edinburgh, 1880, p. 48 f., thinks that la is a diminutive suffix added to the old past participle passive. This last view is essentially the same as that held by Dr. Grierson, who some time ago, and before I had arrived at any independent opinion regarding the question, told me that he derives la from the Prakrit suffix illa (Hemacandra, ii, 164).

Syntax of the Past Tense in Old Rājasthāni

1936 ◽  
Vol 8 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 695-698 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. S. Paṇḍit
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Passive Construction ◽  
The Past ◽  
Logical Subject ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
And Gender

PROFESSOR J. BLOCH in L'Indo-aryen du Veda aux temps modernes, p. 271 f., has discussed the passage of the passive construction of the past tense of transitive verbs (based on the past participle of Sanskrit) into an active construction in which the verb agrees in number and gender with the logical subject. It is obvious that during the course of this evolution there were periods of fluctuation. An astonishing fluctuation is found in the Rājasthānī MS. Nala kī bāta (R.A.S. Todd Coll. No. 81), written at some date prior to A.D. 1806.

The Past Tense Debate Revisited: Electrophysiological Evidence for Subregularities of Irregular Verb Inflection

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (9) ◽  
pp. 1870-1885 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Regel ◽  
Andreas Opitz ◽  
Gereon Müller ◽  
Angela D. Friederici
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Syntactic Rule ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Electrophysiological Evidence ◽  
Verb Inflection ◽  
Experimental Block ◽  
Irregular Verbs

Neuropsychological research investigating mental grammar and lexicon has largely been based on the processing of regular and irregular inflection. Past tense inflection of regular verbs is assumed to be generated by a syntactic rule (e.g., show-ed), whereas irregular verbs consist of rather unsystematic alternations (e.g., caught) represented as lexical entries. Recent morphological accounts, however, hold that irregular inflection is not entirely rule-free but relies on morphological principles. These subregularities are computed by the syntactic system. We tested this latter hypothesis by examining alternations of irregular German verbs as well as pseudowords using ERPs. Participants read series of irregular verb inflection including present tense, past participle, and past tense forms embedded in minimal syntactic contexts. The critical past tense form was correct (e.g., er sang [he sang]) or incorrect by being either partially consistent (e.g., *er sung [*he sung]) or inconsistent (e.g., *er sing [*he sing]) with the proposed morphological principles. Correspondingly, in a second experimental block, pseudowords (e.g., tang/*tung/*ting) were presented. ERPs for real words revealed a biphasic ERP pattern consisting of a negativity and P600 for both incorrect forms in comparison to the correct equivalents. Most interestingly, the P600 amplitude for the incorrect forms was gradually modulated by the type of anomaly with medium amplitude for consistent past tense forms and largest amplitude for inconsistent past tense forms. ERPs for pseudoword past tense forms showed a similar gradual modulation of N400. The findings support the assumption that irregular verbs are processed by rule-based mechanisms because of subregularities of their past tense inflection.

Mastering the Grammar of Past Tense Counterfactual Sentences: A Pilot Study of Adolescents Attending Low-Income Schools

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Marilyn A. Nippold ◽  
Kristin Shinham ◽  
Scott LaFavre
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Study ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Descriptive Grammar ◽  
The Past ◽  
Significant Difference

<b><i>Background/Aim:</i></b> This pilot study was designed to determine if adolescents had mastered the grammar of past tense counterfactual (PTCF) sentences (e.g., “If Julie had done all of the track workouts, she might have won the state meet”). Of interest was their ability to use the modal, auxiliary, and past participle verbs correctly in the main clause of a PTCF sentence. Prior research had indicated that PTCF sentences were challenging to older children. Hence, we wished to determine if PTCF sentences would continue to challenge adolescents. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> The participants were two groups of adolescents, who were aged 13 and 16 years, and a control group of young adults having a mean age of 22 years (<i>n</i> = 40 per group). Each participant read a set of four fables and completed a PTCF sentence based on the story. Each incomplete sentence contained a subordinate clause that employed the past perfect verb form (e.g., “If the fox <i>had been</i> able to jump higher…”). The participant’s task was to complete the sentence in writing, generating a grammatically correct main clause that contained the present perfect verb form (e.g., “he <i>would have been</i> able to reach the delicious grapes.”). <b><i>Results:</i></b> On the PTCF sentences task, the 16-year-olds earned a higher mean raw score than the 13-year-olds, but the two groups did not show a statistically significant difference. However, the 22-year-olds performed significantly better than the 13-year-olds. It was also found that using the correct form of the past participle verb was the most difficult aspect of the task for all three groups, and that mastering the grammar of PTCF sentences continued into adulthood. <b><i>Discussion/Conclusion:</i></b> The PTCF sentence is a late linguistic attainment, perhaps due to its infrequent occurrence in spoken language. The study offers implications for the concept of grammatical mastery and for the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive grammar.

Preverbation and narrativity in Lithuanian. The distribution of finite simplex and compound verbs in narrative main clauses

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 167-192
Author(s):  
Lea Sawicki
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Text ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Compound Verbs ◽  
Finite Verb

The article deals with the use of simplex and compound (prefixed) verbs in narrative text. Main clauses comprising finite verb forms in the past and in the past habitual tense are examined in an attempt to establish to what extent simplex and compound verbs exhibit aspect oppositions, and whether a correlation exists between the occurrence of simplex vs. compound verbs and distinct textual units. The investigation shows that although simple and compound verbs in Lithuanian are not in direct aspect opposition to each other, in the background text portions most of the verbs are prefixless past tense forms or habitual forms, whereas in the plot-advancing text portions, the vast majority of verbs are compound verbs in the simple past tense.  

Why is this happened? Passive morphology and unaccusativity

1997 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Balcom
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Syntactic Rule ◽  
English Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
Unaccusative Verbs

Zobl discussed inappropriate passive morphology (‘be’ and the past participle) in the English writing of L2 learners, linking its occurrence to the class of unaccusative verbs and proposing that learners subsume unaccusatives under the syntactic rule for passive formation. The research reported here supports and amplifies Zobl' proposal, based on a grammaticality judgement task and a controlled production task containing verbs from a variety of subclasses of unaccusatives. The tasks were administered to Chinese L1 learners of English and a control group of English native speakers. Results show that subjects both used and judged as grammatical inappropriate passive morphology with all verbs falling under the rubric of unaccusativity. The article concludes with linguistic representations which maintain Zobl’s insights but are consistent with current theories of argument structure.

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