Tense and aspect in Xhosa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Stefan Savić
Keyword(s):  
Single Point ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Reference Time ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Speech Time ◽  
Pragmatic Function ◽  
Preceding Discourse ◽  
Remote Past

This dissertation investigates the semantics of each tense and aspect in Xhosa. Since tense and aspect perform important pragmatic functions, the analysis takes into account the correlation between the verb and the wider discourse in which it is embedded. Tense reflects the temporal relation between the time of the utterance (speech time) and an interval the speaker makes the assertion about (reference time). The Remote Past and the Remote Future tenses differ from their Recent/Immediate counterparts in that they denote events which occurred in a significantly different situation than the speech time and/or events in the surrounding discourse. Aspect does not only indicate the relation between the time occupied by the real world event and the reference time chosen by the speaker. The Perfective aspect represents an event as a unique change-of-state that pertains to a single point on the timeline which at the same time functions as the reference time. By contrast, for the Imperfective aspect temporally links the event to a contextually provided reference time, e.g. the utterance time, a time adverbial, a period of time previously introduced in the preceding discourse, or the interlocutors’ shared experience. At the pragmatic level, the Perfective aspect tends to introduce an event’s resulting state into the discourse, whereas the Imperfective aspect tends to rule it out. Like the Imperfective aspect, the Anterior and the Prospective aspects assert an event’s occurrence from a contextually defined reference time. They refer to the consequent and the preparatory states of an event, respectively. On the pragmatic level, the Anterior aspect may also indicate that the truth-conditionality of the event’s resulting state is contradicted in the immediate discourse. This study shows that tense and aspect temporally represent different means of temporally assigning an event to a particular portion of the timeline. I further argue that aspect indicates whether the reference time is provided in the context (Imperfective, Anterior, Prospective) or whether it is introduced by the verb itself (Perfective). Furthermore, this study shows that aspect exhibits a pragmatic function by laying focus on different parts of the event that are relevant in the upcoming discourse.

A cross-linguistic investigation of the combinational possibilities of the ‘for X time’ adverbial with different aspectual verb classes

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-231
Author(s):  
Athina Sioupi
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Information ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Verb Classes ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Viewpoint Aspect

The paper observes that the Vendler classification is not sufficient as a classification of verbs, since it cannot explain why some telic verbs, such as change of state (COS) verbs and degree achievements (DAs) appear with the durational adverbial (d-adverbial) ‘for X time’ in Greek, in English and in German, while some atelics like semelfactives appear with the frame adverbial (f-adverbial) se X ora (‘in X time’) in Greek. In the spirit of Iatridou et al. (2003) it is proposed that the d-adverbial ‘for X time’ tests not only for (a)telicity but also for (im)perfectivity. It also argues that the two d-adverbials in Greek ja X ora and epi X ora (‘for X time’) are to be found with different grammatical (viewpoint) aspect: the former with perfective aspect and the latter with imperfective aspect. This is due to the fact that the ja X ora gives not only durative temporal information but also a lexical aspectual one, while the epi X ora gives only a durative temporal.

scholarly journals Some general thoughts on tense and aspect in Modern Greek

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-54
Author(s):  
Robert Bielecki ◽  
Kamil Trąba
Keyword(s):  
Reference Time ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
Event Time ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Speech Time ◽  
Semantic Dimension

Abstract The morphological categories belonging to the semantic dimension of Tense in Modern Greek, as it is traditionally conceived, seem to be distinguished by means of non-homogeneous criteria. In this paper the temporal and aspectual meanings are treated separately. In consequence, Modern Greek has at its disposal (i) six Tenses and (ii) two Aspects. The meanings of the six Tenses are captured systemically by means of three Time-points: (i) Event Time, (ii) Reference Time and (iii) Speech Time, which are referred to each other in the order given by means of the relations of (i) previousness and (ii) simultaneity. In turn, the meanings of the two Aspects are captured by means of the notions of (i) Shortness and (ii) Longness, which are identified as the bedrock of the aspectual oppositions in Modern Greek. Other aspectual meanings such as Termination, Inchoativity, Completion, etc. are conveyed by the lexical stems of the appropriate verbs linked with the affixal markers of the two Aspects.

scholarly journals PERNYATAAN KALA DAN ASPEK DALAM BAHASA ARAB: ANALISIS SEMANTIK VERBA

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Tajudin Nur
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
The Other ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Future Tense ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Auxiliary Verb

This research was a qualitative research using structural linguistic method. The findings showed that the conjugation of the perfect verbs (ma>dhi) into imperfect verbs (mudha>ri’) can reveal the concept of semantic time and aspect. It was found that the conjugation of verb from perfect (ma>dhi) to imperfect (mudha>ri’) expresses semantical concept of tense and aspect. Perfect verb expresses past tense, present tense, future tense, and perfective aspect, while imperfect verb expresses present tense, future tense, and imperfective aspect. The other constituents which had a role in expressing tense and aspect were auxiliary verb of kana, the particles of qad, sawfa, lan, and sa- prefix. The auxiliary verb of kana had a role to express past tense in the case of equational sentence or if it precedes imperfect verb, while if it precedes  perfect verb, it expresses perfective aspect. The particle of qad expresses perfective aspect if it precedes perfect verb (ma>dhi), while the particle of sawfa, lan, and sa- prefix express future tense. In addition, to clarify the tense in Arabic adverb of time standing beside the verb also was used.

scholarly journals Does the acquisition of aspect have anything to do with aspectual pairs?

2004 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 39-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Vladimirovna Gagarina
Keyword(s):  
Strong Preference ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Lexical Meaning ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Speech Time ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
The Moment

The purpose of this research was to trace the developmental steps in the acquisition of aspectual oppositions in Russian and to examine the validity of the 'aspect before tense' hypothesis for L1-speaking children. Imperfective/perfective verbs and their inflections, as well as aspectual pairs, were analysed in the first five months of verb production (and the respective months in the input) in three children. Additionally, the first four months of verb production were investigated in one boy with less data. Verb forms marked for the past and for the present occur simultaneously in all children. These early forms relate to 'here and now' situations: verbs marked for the past denote 'resultative' events that are perceived by the children as occurring during the speech time or immediately before it, while verbs marked for the present typically denote on-going events. Thus, with early tense oppositions (or tense morphology) children mark aspectual contrasts in the moment of speech: evidence in favour of the 'aspect before tense' hypothesis. A strong preference in using the perfective aspect for the past and the imperfective aspect for the present events has been found in both adults and children. Further, only very few aspectual pairs were documented within the analysed period (from the onset of verb production to the period when children produce rule-driven inflectional forms). The productive use of the finite forms of perfective and imperfective verbs doesn't concord with the ability of the productive use of the contrastive forms of one lemma. Data suggest that children (start to) learn aspectual forms in an item-based manner. The acquisition of aspectual oppositions (aspectual pairs) is lexically dependent and is guided by the contextual 'thesaurus'. Aspectual pairs are learned in a peace-meal way during much longer, than observed for this article, period of time. Generally, aspect is not learned as a rule, also because there are no (uniform) rules of forming of aspectual pairs, but as the 'satellite' of the inherent lexical meaning of verbs of diverse Aktionsarten. The issues addressed here are relevant for other Slavic languages, exhibiting the morphological category of aspect.  

scholarly journals On inchoative states. Evidence from modification of Polish perfective psych verbs by degree quantifiers

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-79
Author(s):  
Ewa Willim
Keyword(s):  
Event Structure ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Lexical Aspect ◽  
Measure Function ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Psych Verbs ◽  
The Subject

AbstractThe special properties that psych(ological) verbs manifest cross-linguistically have given rise to on-going debates in syntactic and semantic theorizing. Regarding their lexical aspect classification, while verbal psych predicates with the Experiencer argument mapped onto the subject (SE psych predicates) have generally been analyzed as stative, there is little agreement on what kinds of eventualities object Experiencer (OE) psych predicates describe. On the stative reading, OE psych predicates have been classified as atelic causative states. On the (non-agentive) eventive reading, they have been widely analyzed as telic change of state predicates and classified as achievements or as accomplishments. Based on Polish, Rozwadowska (2003, 2012) argues that nonagentive eventive OE psych predicates in the perfective aspect denote an onset of a state and that they are atelic rather than telic. This paper offers further support for the view that Polish perfective psych verbs do not denote a change of state, i.e., a transition from α to ¬α. The evidence is drawn from verbal comparison and the distribution of the comparative degree quantifier jeszcze bardziej ‘even more’ in perfective psych predicates. It is argued here that in contexts including jeszcze bardziej ‘even more’, the perfective predication denotes an onset of a state whose degree of intensity exceeds the comparative standard. While a degree quantifier attached to the VP in the syntax contributes a differential measure function that returns a (vague) value representing the degree to which the intensity of the Experiencer’s state exceeds the comparative standard in the event, it does not affect the event structure of the perfective verb and it does not provide the VP denotation it modifies with a final endpoint. As the perfective picks the onset of an upper open state, perfective psych predicates typically give rise to an atelic interpretation.

scholarly journals Aspects of the Indo-European Aorist and Imperfect

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Hollenbaugh
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Imperfective Aspect

Abstract The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) tense-aspect system has been reconstructed since the time of Delbrück (1897) as containing a fundamental opposition between two aspect-denoting stems: An Aorist stem, denoting perfective aspect, and a Present stem, denoting imperfective aspect. This reconstruction is, for practical reasons, based almost entirely on Greek and Vedic. Re-examining the Homeric and R̥gvedic data, I argue on semantic grounds against this century-old understanding of the tense-aspect system of PIE. In its place, I reconstruct the “Aorist” indicative as denoting perfect aspect (not perfective), and the “Imperfect” indicative as a simple past tense (not imperfective). Evidence for this reconstruction is based on the consistent usage in the R̥gveda of the Aorist in the meaning ‘have done X’ (with present reference) and the Imperfect in the meaning ‘did X’ (especially in narrative contexts)—a distribution which frequently has a precise match in Homer.

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.

scholarly journals Der Gebrauch des Perfekts – Ein Erklärungsmodell aus thailändischer Perspektive

2011 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Korakoch Attaviriyanupap
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Speech Time ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Present Tense

In grammar and textbooks of German as a foreign language the German perfect tense (Perfekt) is mostly presented as an alternative to the preterite tense (Präteritum). However, the German perfect tense itself deserves greater attention due to its wide range of usages. This tense can mark events with reference points located either before, simultaneous with and even after the speech time. For Thai learners of German it has been established that difficulties in learning how to use the German perfect tense are not primarily concerned with problems of choosing between the perfect and the preterite but rather between the perfect tense and the present tense. This paper focuses on the aspect of "completeness", comparable to the perfective aspect, leading to different effects in the usage of the German perfect. Since German is mostly learned as a second foreign language after English, a contrastive analysis of similarities and differences between the perfect tenses in English and German have to be included in the analysis. In the conclusion, a possible description of the German perfect tense for learners of German as a foreign language is suggested.

scholarly journals Aspect and Narrative Event Segmentation

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel P. Feller ◽  
Anita Eerland ◽  
Todd R. Ferretti ◽  
Joseph P. Magliano
Keyword(s):  
Human Cognition ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Event Duration ◽  
Event Segmentation ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Structure Information ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
Grammatical Aspect ◽  
Segmentation Task ◽  
Narrative Event

Time is central to human cognition, both in terms of how we understand the world and the events that unfold around us as well as how we communicate about those events. As such, language has morphological systems, such as temporal adverbs, tense, and aspect to convey the passage of time. The current study explored the role of one such temporal marker, grammatical aspect, and its impact on how we understand the temporal boundaries between events conveyed in narratives. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants read stories that contained a target event that was either conveyed with a perfective (e.g., watched a movie) or imperfective aspect (e.g., was watching a movie) and engaged in an event segmentation task. Events described in the perfective aspect were more often perceived as event boundaries than events in the imperfective aspect, however, event duration (long vs. short) did not impact this relationship in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 demonstrated that readers were sensitive to grammatical aspect and event duration in the context of a story continuation task. Overall this study demonstrates that grammatical aspect interacts with world knowledge to convey event structure information that influences how people interpret the end and beginning of events.

The history of tense and aspect in the Sogeram family

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-208
Author(s):  
Don Daniels
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relative Tense ◽  
The Common ◽  
New Feature ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Past Tenses ◽  
Remote Past

Abstract This paper presents an overview of the tens-aspect system in the Sogeram languages of Papua New Guinea. Taking the Proto-Sogeram reconstruction in Daniels (2015, 2020) as a starting point, I outline the innovations that have taken place in daughter languages and discuss the patterns of change that emerge. The study confirms a variety of known cross-linguistic tendencies, such as the common occurrence of the analytic-to-synthetic and aspect-to-tense pathways of change. More notable trends include the diachronic stability of the present and most remote past tenses; the instability of the middle pasts and future; the stability of the relative semantic ordering of tenses; the absence of a pathway leading from relative-tense to absolute-tense marking; and the ability of innovative tenses to be inserted anywhere into the five-way tense system of Proto-Sogeram. The study also illustrates how featural systems can interact over time, at first by introducing a new feature value in one system which can combine with values from another (as with the Manat habitual), and then, if the featural distinction is lost, creating a pattern of distributed exponence (as in Mum).

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