scholarly journals The Past Tense Form Development in German Insular Dialects

2019 ◽  
pp. 66-81
Author(s):  
Larisa I. Moskalyuk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Form Development

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.

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).

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 QUOTATIVE USE ACROSS LANGUAGES: THE CASE OF NEW ZEALAND ENGLISH AND GERMAN

2019 ◽  
pp. 041
Author(s):  
Agnes Terraschke
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
Language Variety ◽  
Variable Content ◽  
German Data

Quotatives, the representation of speech, thought, sound effects or embodiments in spoken language, are a common feature of interpersonal communication. Linguistic descriptions of quotatives have predominantly focused on their use within an individual language or language variety. Little is known about how quotative use differs across languages with regard to their forms, variable content and linguistic features. Based on two datasets of informal dyadic interactions, the present research compares how quotatives are used in New Zealand English (NZE) and Standard German by describing the features of quotative use both overall and in relation to the three most commonly used forms in each dataset. The results highlight marked differences in the way quotatives are used in the two languages. Thus, in the German data, quotatives were mostly used for first person singular speakers in the past tense form to convey internal dialogue, while NZE speakers favoured the use of quotatives for direct speech in the past without clear subject preferences.

scholarly journals The Dutch evidential NCI

2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Colleman ◽  
Dirk Noël
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
English Equivalent

Present-day Dutch has two entrenched “grammatical” hearsay evidentials: a construction with zou (originally the past tense form of the verb zullen, cognate with German sollen) and a construction with schijnen (literally, ‘seem’). The closest English equivalent of both constructions is the “evidential nominative and infinitive” (NCI), which pairs an evidential meaning with the morphosyntactic pattern [SBJ be Xed to Inf]. This is a highly productive construction in English, the most typical instantiation of which is be said to. Present-day Dutch has an NCI construction as well, but the lexical possibilities of this construction are limited to a handful of cognition verbs, which — in their NCI use — encode deontic rather than evidential meanings. On the basis of historical corpus data, this paper shows that the Dutch equivalent of English be said to, i.e. gezegd worden te, looked ready at one time to become entrenched as a substantive hearsay construction as well. This paper traces its evolution and explores the questions of why the pattern disappeared and why Dutch, unlike English, did not develop a schematic evidential NCI construction.

Comparing generativist and constructivist accounts of the use of the past tense form in early child Japanese

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 1365-1384 ◽  
Author(s):  
TOMOKO TATSUMI ◽  
JULIAN M. PINE
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Japanese Children ◽  
Early Child ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Verb Inflection ◽  
Distributional Patterns ◽  
Early Use ◽  
General Preference

AbstractThe present study investigated children's early use of verb inflection in Japanese by comparing a generativist account, which predicts that the past tense will have a special default-like status for the child during the early stages, with a constructivist input-driven account, which assumes that children's acquisition and use of inflectional forms reflects verb-specific distributional patterns in their input. Analysis of naturalistic data from four Japanese children aged 1;5 to 2;10 showed that there was substantial by-verb variation in the use of inflectional forms from the earliest stages of verb use, and no general preference for past tense forms. Correlational and partial correlational analyses showed that it was possible to predict the proportional frequency with which the child produced verbs in past tense versus other inflectional forms on the basis of differences in the proportional frequency with which the verb occurred in past tense form in the child's input, even after controlling for differences in the rate at which verbs occurred in past tense form in input averaged across the caregivers of the other children in the sample. When taken together, these results count against the idea that the past tense has a special default-like status in early child Japanese, and in favour of a constructivist input-driven account of children's early use of verb inflection.

scholarly journals An elusive experiental tense construction in Latvian

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 109-153
Author(s):  
Axel Holvoet ◽  
Anna Daugavet
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Precise Location ◽  
Standard Language ◽  
The Past ◽  
Regional Dialects ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Modern Standard

The article is a contribution to the study of experiential and indefinite past-tense forms. It offers an analysis of the Latvian past-tense construction tikt + PPA, which is now a feature of the Latvian standard language though it was originally restricted to Eastern Latvia (probably mainly the High Latvian dialects). It can be characterised as an experiential but has a wider scope than the prototypical experiential, which refers to event types in the past without precise location in time. The Latvian construction with tikt can also refer to events that are more precisely anchored in time and then develops into a non-resultative and non-narrative past-tense form reminiscent of the factual imperfective in Russian. The question is also raised whether differences can be found between the use of the construction tikt + PPA in texts reflecting its distribution in the regional dialects where it used to be indigenous and in the modern standard language.

scholarly journals Japanese n deshita in Discourse: Past Form of n desu

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-56
Author(s):  
Hironori NISHI
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Japanese Linguistics ◽  
Large Corpus

N deshita/datta, which is the past-tense form of n desu/da, has not been explored in depth in studies of Japanese Linguistics. The present study examines a large corpus, and explores the cases of n deshita/datta used for past events and situations. The findings of the present study show that out of the 167 cases of n deshita/datta used for past events and situations in the corpus, 63 cases (37.7%) co-occurred with grammatical elements that require past-tense connections for the preceding item such as the sentential ending particle kke, the tara structure, and the tari structure. For the cases of n deshita/datta that co-occurred with kke, tara, or tari, it was concluded that the grammatical restrictions arising from these elements triggered the occurrences of n deshita/datta. On the other hand, 104 cases (62.3%) occurred without any grammatical elements that require past-tense connections. These cases of n deshita/datta in the corpus were used to express the speaker’s recollection of previously held knowledge, or as part of confirmation seeking utterances for previously held knowledge.

scholarly journals Subjunctive Mood in the Altai Language

2019 ◽  
pp. 74-83
Author(s):  
A. A. Ozonova
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
Auxiliary Verbs ◽  
Subjunctive Mood ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Base Form ◽  
The Future ◽  
Turkic Languages ◽  
Simple Sentences ◽  
Auxiliary Verb

Semantics of subjunctive mood are expressed in most Turkic languages, however, subjunctive mood itself is not always included in the system of grammatical mood forms in descriptive grammars of specific languages. Analytical forms consisting of future tense participles of the main verbs and past tense forms of the auxiliary verbs serve as subjunctive mood markers in Turkic languages (excluding Khakas). In the following article, we analyze the structure, semantics, and functioning of the Altai subjunctive mood. The following analytical forms serve as subjunctive mood markers: -ar/-bas edi и -ɣaj/-baɣaj edi. The first form consists of the future-present tense participial form with -ar/-bas and the auxiliary verb e- ‘to be, to become’ in the past tense form with -di; the second one consists of the desiderative form -ɣaj and the same auxiliary verb e- ‘to be, to become’ in the past tense form with -di. The form -ar/-bas edi is the base form actively functioning as expression of subjunctive mood. In the Altai language, subjunctive mood functions actively in conditional and, less commonly, in conditional-concessive constructions. Subjunctive mood marks the main parts of these constructions and predicates in simple sentences. Subjunctive mood denotes contrafactive situations in the past, and hypothetical situations in the future. Contrafactive situations are not real. They never happened in the past, do not exist in the present, and will not take place in the future. The subjunctive form -ar/-bas edi as a finite predicate in simple sentences also expresses the meaning of non- categoricalness, which is used in dialogues in order to soften the speaker\s declaration of intent or to make a statement less categorical.

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