This volume brings together insights from leading scholars in the field of grammatical aspect to examine the multifaceted nature of this pivotal linguistic resource used to express temporal meaning. The contributors explore the many ways in which linguistic research can move beyond canonical semantic analyses of aspect, which still focus to a great extent on objective temporal features of what can be called 'situation models', i.e. integrated cognitive representations of designated states of affairs. The chapters in this volume widen this outlook by concentrating on less typical contexts in which aspectual constructions are used, e.g. for affective purposes, to mark the epistemic status of situations, or to shape narrative structures. This focus on non-prototypicality is also reflected in the languages investigated, many of which are understudied with respect to their aspectual constructions, including several African languages and the sign language Kata Kolok. The volume adopts a multidisciplinary methodological approach, and introduces possible directions for future research based on experimental studies, fieldwork research, and translation mining.

All work is work in progress. The ideas developed in this work could be (and probably will be) developed further, revised, and expanded. But it was time to write them down and send them out. Some of these ideas about linking had their origins in my 1987 dissertation. However, this work has grown beyond the dissertation in a number of important ways. The most important of these advances lie in, first, articulating aspectual roles as linguistic objects over which lexical semantic phenomena can be stated, and over which linking generalizations are stated; second, recognizing that syntactic phenomena may be classified as to whether or not they are sensitive to the core event of event structure; and third, recognizing the modularity of aspectual and thematic/conceptual structure, and associating that modularity with a difference between language-specific and universal language generalizations. The three chapters of the book are organized around these ideas. I have tried to state these ideas as strong theses. Where they make strong predictions I have meant them to do so, as a probe for future research. I hope that other researchers will take up the challenge to investigate, test and develop these ideas across a wider realm of languages than I --as one person --can do.

The papers in this volume investigate the semantics of aspect from both a theoretical and a crosslinguistic point of view, in a wide range of languages from a number of different language families. The papers are all informed by the belief that a thorough exposure to the expression of aspect crosslinguistically is crucial for progress in understanding how the semantics of aspect works and what the semantic basis of aspectual distinctions is. The languages discussed include Russian, English, Dutch, Hebrew, Mandarin, Japanese and Kalaallisut. The issues discussed in this volume include the centrality of measuring and counting in an understanding of telicity; the importance of the singular/plural distinction in the study of aspect; the importance of homogeneity as a property of event types; the flexibility of lexical classes; and the interaction between expressions of aspect and the particular morphosyntactic structure of a language.

This volume examines the multifaceted nature of (grammatical) aspect. The chapters explore less typical contexts in which aspectual constructions are used, and draw on data from a range of languages, many of them understudied, including several African languages and the sign language Kata Kolok.

In the light of growing insights into the universal temporal-semantic nature of aspectual distinctions, today's aspectology has broadened its attention from restrictedly event-defining functions of aspect on the sentence level towards its primary perspectival functions on the discourse/situation level. Hereby it attempts to relate these functions to each other in ways that stimulate consistently language processing on a more solid perceptual-conceptual and pragmatic basis. Reflecting in various ways this general tendency. The 13 papers collected in this volume are oriented to four fields of research: (1) Developmental properties of aspect and tense; (2) Ideo-pragmatic and conceptual-semantic correlates of aspect and the perspectival organisation of discourse; (3) Aspect, case and discourse; (4) and Aspect in literary discourse. The editor's Introduction gives a comprehensive survey of contemporary aspectology and its development towards a proper integration of discourse/situation conditions. Besides cross-linguistic considerations (including English), the languages analyzed specifically are Russian, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, French and Finnish.

This volume offers a variety of perspectives on two of the main topics situated at the crossroads between lexical semantics and syntax, namely: (a) aspect and its correspondence with syntactic structure; and (b) the delimitation of syntactic structures from verb classes. Almost from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, it has been assumed that verbs invoke a mental image about the way in which eventualities are distributed over time. When it comes to determining time schemata, the lexical class to which the verb belongs represents a first step. Speaking about verb classes does not exclusively mean a semantic similarity; rather, verb classes exhibit a bundle of common features and thus show a set of recursive behavior patterns. Beyond the meaning of the verb, both semantic and syntactic factors, together with pragmatic ones, play a decisive role when establishing the aspectual classification of an eventuality. The contributions collected in this book approach the aforementioned lines, either analyzing the relationships between aspect and syntactic structure or traversing the path from a verb class to its syntactic manifestation. Some of them stress diachronic filiations, while others include processes of word formation in the debate; some of them focus on certain classes, such as movement verbs or psychological verbs, while others examine specific constructions. A number of chapters also discuss relevant theoretical issues concerning the analysis of aspect. In sum, the kaleidoscopic view provided by this book allows the reader to delve deeper into one of the most controversial – as well as exciting – topics within current linguistics.

This book sheds new light on the puzzle of psychological predicates in a cross-linguistic perspective by looking at them from a variety of angles at the interfaces between event structure, lexical and viewpoint aspect, syntax and information structure. The individual chapters focus on Polish and Spanish psych verbs, which manifest new overt contrasts that often remain covert in languages such as English, e.g., aspectual distinctions, the peculiarities of dative constructions, or the role of information structure in determining the word order. One of the main contributions of the book lies in positing a new typology of basic event types enriched with the initial boundary events. Moreover, due attention is devoted to dative experiencers as compared to accusative experiencers. Although couched in the generative tradition, the main insights presented in this collection are theory neutral and may be of interest to linguists of all persuasions.

The Caucasus is the place with the greatest linguistic variation in Europe. The present volume explores this variation within the tense, aspect, mood, and evidentiality systems in the languages of the North-East Caucasian (or Nakh-Daghestanian) family. The papers of the volume cover the most challenging and typologically interesting features such as aspect and the complicated interaction of aspectual oppositions expressed by stem allomorphy and inflectional paradigms, grammaticalized evidentiality and mirativity, and the semantics of rare verbal categories such as the deliberative (‘May I go?’), the noncurative (‘Let him go, I don’t care’), different types of habituals (gnomic, qualitative, non-generic), and perfective tenses (aorist, perfect, resultative). The book offers an overview of these features in order to gain a broader picture of the verbal semantics covering the whole North-East Caucasian family. At the same time it provides in-depth studies of the most fascinating phenomena.

An introductory text in linguistic semantics, uniquely balancing empirical coverage and formalism with development of intuition and methodology. This introductory textbook in linguistic semantics for undergraduates features a unique balance between empirical coverage and formalism on the one hand and development of intuition and methodology on the other. It will equip students to form intuitions about a set of data, explain how well an analysis of the data accords with their intuitions, and extend the analysis or seek an alternative. No prior knowledge of linguistics is required. After mastering the material, students will be able to tackle some of the most difficult questions in the field even if they have never taken a linguistics course before. After introducing such concepts as truth conditions and compositionality, the book presents a basic symbolic logic with negation, conjunction, and generalized quantifiers, to serve as the basis for translation throughout the book. It then develops a detailed compositional semantics, covering quantification (scope and binding), adverbial modification, relative clauses, event semantics, tense and aspect, as well as pragmatic phenomena, notably deictic pronouns and narrative progression. A Course in Semantics offers a large and diverse set of exercises, interspersed throughout the text; those labeled “Important practice and looking ahead” prepare students for material to come; those labeled “Thinking about ” invite students to think beyond the content of the book.

The aim of this book is to show the way forward to a coherent view of language in which the achievement of the formalist paradigm is strengthened to the extent that its claims are weakened. A formal theory such as generative grammar is a special theory which is to be subsumed in a general theory of linguistic communication that also includes pragmatics. The tension between the psycho-formalist and the socio-functional views could be resolved in a synthesis whereby both the psychological and social natures of language are fully acknowledged. Semantics and pragmatics, representing these two natures in the study of meaning, have distinct goals, which can be defined more clearly and pursued more effectively to the extent that both their distinctness and their interdependence are recognized.