Metamodeling is proposed as an answer to the question of how tense and aspect. Prospective and proximative as crosslinguistic categories. Tense, aspect and modality in the use of the turkish evidential permanent dead link. The inventory has been developed over almost four decades of empirical crosslinguistic research. Tense and aspect semantics the main difficulty in writing a chapter on tense and aspect semantics is the selection of topics and authors to mention, providing a fair picture without becoming a sort of annotated list of references, nor a textbook in either semantics or tense and aspect. Modality, tense and aspect systems, formal semantics, tense aspect modality, and perfective and imperfective aspect download. With respect to present perfect, moy 1977 maintains that the tense of the present perfect is the present, whereas the perfect part refers to an aspect. Tense, on the other hand, points out the location of an event in the continuum of events.
Crosslinguistic semantics of tense, aspect, and modality john. Tense, modality, and semantic values rutgers university. Tense, aspect and modality in the languages of the world. Crosslinguistic perspectives on the semantics of grammatical.
This proposal is in line with the grammaticalization hypothesis see e. Cross linguistic semantics of tense, aspect, and modality. Typically the unmarked verb is used for either the timeless habitual or the stative aspect or the past perfective tense aspect combination. This paper discusses the interaction of aspect and modality, and focuses on the puzzling implicative effect that arises when perfective aspect appears on certain modals. Pdf recent advances in the syntax and semantics of tense. Aspect is at the crossroads of the syntax semantics interface and the lexiconsyntax interface. In particular, i compare it to the subjunctive in koine greek, the potential mood in kayardild, and the irrealis mood in amele. This proposal will take us, on the one hand, to support the hypothesis of the identity of haber have, i. Similarly, the semantics of the verbal system in biblical hebrew has been. Pdf the semantics of tense and aspect semantic scholar.
A large number of syntactic and semantic phenomena are concerned by the temporalaspectual modal level of representation. Tense, aspect, and time in the english modality system. Adeline patard, rea peltola and emmanuelle roussel. This is by no means meant as a critique of aikhenvald alone. Modals and perfect morphology laca catalan journal of. There is a proliferation of terms in the study of tense, aspect and modality tam. The semantics of tense, aspect and modality in the languages of the world.
The semantics of tense, aspect and modality in the. First, i compare the yiqtol form to three other irrealissubjunctive forms to show that it belongs in the same crosslinguistic category as these other verbal moods. Tenseaspectmood commonly abbreviated tam or tense modality aspect abbreviated as tma is a group of grammatical categories which are important for the understanding of spoken or written content and which are marked in different ways by different languages tam covers the expression of three major components of words which lead to or assist with a correct understanding of the. The aspectual contribution of tenses and the semantics. The semantics of underrepresented languages in the americas. The inventory has been developed over almost four decades of empirical cross linguistic research. On the interaction of aspect and modal auxiliaries springerlink. I show that this puzzling behavior, originally discussed in bhatt.
Tense, aspect and coercion in a crosslinguistic perspective. Tense and aspect in english university of washington. Crosslinguistically viable treatment of tense and aspect in. Electronic publications 87581 freely accessible full text publications plus those not yet available due to embargo. Possible worlds semantics in technical work on natural language semantics, modality is analyzed with the machinery of possible worlds semantics, developed by logicians for the arti. Aspect, tense and modality uvadare digital academic repository. The semantics of tense, aspect and modality in the languages. Evidentiality and epistemic modality in old catalan. One problem faced by pargram was that the semantics of tense aspect could not necessarily be read off. The contributions deal with structurally divergent languages, setting to the fore some less studied forms coding aspect, revisiting or challenging certain conventionalized views on aspectual categories and shedding light on interactions between aspect and modality. This book brings together formal semanticists with a crosslinguistic perspective andor those working on lesserknown languages, and typologists interested in semantic theory, to discuss semantic variation in the specific domain of tense, aspect, and mood modality. In general, discussions of crosslinguistic categories like evidentiality, tense, aspect, aktionsart, modality, number, and person are devoid of any interest in making precise what it is that qualifies them to be considered categories in the first place cf. In some cases, several terms appear to refer to phenomena that are functionally very similar.
Introduction here is a rough sketch of what i take to be an attractive, albeit na. Epistemic modality and evidentiality in a crosslinguistic perspective, 103. The grammatical correlates of these contours and attitudes are the categories of tense, aspect, and modality. Metamodeling of tense and aspect in a crosslinguistic. Tense is less central to badiaranke than aspect, in the sense that all badiaranke sentences are marked for aspect, but not all are marked for tense. But it is not always clear what the relation between those terms is. Tense, aspect, modality, and evidentiality john benjamins. The semantics of the progressive and the perfect in english toshiyuki ogihara university of stuttgart 1 introduction the purpose of this paper is to investigate the progressive and the perfect in english, and to provide a framework which accounts for the semantics of these two constructions. There is a proliferation of terms in the study of tense, aspect and modality. Pdf evidentiality and epistemic modality in old catalan. Crosslinguistic semantics of tense, aspect, and modality. An international journal of hispanic linguistics 61.
Pdf applying an exhaustivity operator in update semantics. The distinctions between she read that book, she used to read. In addition, i suggest that an alternative definition for imperfective based on altshuler 2014 better accounts for yiqtols aspectual interpretations, and in place of modality, i suggest that yiqtol patterns with irrealis forms rather than modal forms crosslinguistically according to the pattern laid out by cristofaro 2012. Crosslinguistic generic categories like evidentiality, tense, aspect. Semantic maps and the identification of crosslinguistic. Kevin grasso hebrew university of jerusalem academia. Conversely, root modals, unlike epistemic modals, may not in general take logical scope over tenses again, when they occur in the same clause. Sdrt framework in short, i will put forth some sort of formal toolbox for the treatment of tense and aspect, with crosslinguistic and historical purposes. This item appears in the following collections faculty of arts 22770. Interaction with tense and modality, on the one hand, and argument structure on the other. The volume proposes original semantic analyses on items marking grammatical aspect. Crosslinguistic semantics of tense, aspect, and modality jstor.
Temporal interpretation and crosslinguistic variation publish. Localizing crosslinguistic variation in tense systems. Her research focuses on the diachrony of french grande grammaire historique du francais 2019, linguistic change jfls, 2015 and the semantics pragmatics of tense, aspect and modality journal of pragmatics, 2014. Epistemic modalities and evidentiality in crosslinguistic. Recent advances in the syntax and semantics of tense, aspect. Some issues about the perfect brucart catalan journal. To the extent that these crosslinguistic parallels turn out to be valid, the question arises as. After an introductory chapter that provides an overview to theoretical issues in tense, aspect, modality and evidentiality, this volume presents a variety of original contributions that are firmly empiricallygrounded based on elicited or corpus data, while adopting different theoretical frameworks. Thus, present perfect would be considered a tense aspect form. It is a fact that tense, aspect and modality together form one of the most recurring and active areas of research in contemporary syntax and semantics, as well as in other disciplines of linguistics.
Be advised that many of the verb forms which are traditionally called tenses in grammar books and foreign language textbooks are actually aspects. It reveals crosslinguistic variations in the structuring of these vast fields of enquiry and clearly demonstrates the relevance and interplay of. Annotation of tense and aspect semantics for sentential amr. In general creoles tend to put less emphasis on marking tense than on marking aspect. The present chapter describes a range of formal semantic accounts of tense 10438 and aspect, constituting a modest portion of the vast literature on tense and 10439 aspect e. See goddard 2006 goddard, 2008 goddard, 2012, wierzbicka 1994, 2002, peeters 2006, and. Aspect and modality in kwa languages studies in language. However, esl texts commonly refer to it as the english modality system 667. This volume explores the extremely rich diversity found under the modal umbrella in natural language. Evidentiality and its relation to epistemic modality.
The semantics of aspect and modality will be of interest both to linguists working on temporality, as a general phenomenon in language, and hebraists investigating the semantics of the verbal forms in biblical hebrew. The semantics of aspect and modality semantic scholar. This might be the case with continuous and progressive aspect, or irrealis, potential and. Semantic maps and the identification of crosslinguistic generic categories. The complexity of tense and aspect systems, the crosslinguistic variation in those systems, as well as the variation in linguists analyses of tense and aspect and their underlying assumptions, make tense and aspect di cult to implement in this way. In general, discussions of crosslinguistic categories like evidentiality, tense, aspect, aktionsart, modality, number and person are devoid of any interest in making precise what it is that qualifies them for being considered categories in the first place cf.
Tense, aspect, and mood are usually indicated with separate invariant preverbal auxiliaries. The crosslinguistic semantics of tense, aspect, and modality. Crosslinguistic perspectives on the semantics of grammatical aspect. Offering a crosslinguistic perspective on the encoding of modal meanings that draws on novel data from an extensive set of languages, the book supports a view according to which modality infuses a much more extensive number of syntactic categories and levels of syntactic structure than. Modality across syntactic categories oxford scholarship. Introduction here is a rough sketch of what i take to be an attractive, albeit nave, picture its attractiveness i take to be obvious.
Crosslinguistic annotation of tense and aspect syntax and. The contributions deal with structurally divergent. Isbn 9789027200969 hb, 9789027263902 ebook volume 11 issue 1 yapei li, siqi lyu. Actually, this is an oversimplification, since it ignores a distinction between two types of epistemic readings, as i discuss further below. On the interaction of aspect and modal auxiliaries. Epistemic modality and perfect morphology in spanish and french. The crosslinguistic adaption of timeml has brought up various challenges korean morphology stando. Tense, aspect and mood categories across languages sle 2019. Through this very tight selection of 15 papers originally delivered during the 6th chronos colloquium, tenses, aspect and modality are investigated both at the descriptive and theoretical levels, involving many different indoeuropean and nonindoeuropean languages. This volume explores phenomena which come under the heading of epistemic modalities and evidentiality in more or less wellknown languages germanic, romance, baltoslavic, hungarian, tibetan, lakandon and yucatec maya, arwakchibchan kogi and ika.
A diachronic cognitive approach to the semantics of modal verbs. The focus is on the nature of 10440 the ingredients assumed, including the pairs w, t of possible worlds w 10441 and moments t of time in montague 1973, expansions of the moments t. This volume explores the thesis that in the group of west african languages known as kwa, aspect and modality are far more central to the grammar of the verb and the clause than tense. Zeevat published applying an exhaustivity operator in update semantics, in. Available online at cross linguistic perspective andor those working on lesserknown languages, and typologists interested in. Evidentiality and its relation to epistemic modality kasper boye university of copenhagen crosslinguistic generic categories like evidentiality, tense, aspect, number and person are entrenched in linguistic theory. Tense, aspect and modality are among the most challenging discussed areas of language.
Most formal analyses of the semantics of tense, aspect, and modality tam have been. It is well known that the aktionsartlexical aspect of a predicate influences the temporal interpretation and the aspectual marking of a sentence, and also that languages differ with respect to which aktionsart properties feed into the tense aspect system see e. On my treatment, badiaranke aspect is inextricably with modality. This revised tel aviv university dissertation provides a general semantic theory for the tense aspect modal verb system of english and biblical hebrew.
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