Situated within the long-established domain of temporality research in Second Language Acquisition, this book aims to provide an update on recent research directions in the field through a range of papers which explore relatively new territory. Those areas include the expression of modality and counterfactuality, the effect of first language transfer, aspectuo-temporal comprehension, aspectuo-temporal marking at a wider discursive level, and methodological issues in the study of the acquisition of aspect. The studies presented explore English and French as second languages, involving both child and adult learners from a range of first language backgrounds in both instructed and naturalistic learning contexts. The studies draw on both spoken and written data which explore various facets of the learners’ second language comprehension and production. The volume offers new, but complementary insights to previous research, as well as pointing to directions for future research in this burgeoning field of study.

Tense, aspect and mood have attracted much attention in the areas of both first and second language acquisition, but scholars in the two disciplines often fail to learn from each other. Western European languages have also been the focus of most studies, but there would be lessons to learn from less studied languages. This volume offers new insights on tense, aspect and mood by bringing together the findings of first and second language acquisition, and comparing child and adult, monolingual and multilingual learning processes that are approached from various theoretical points of view. In addition, it spans over a wide range of less studied languages (Bulgarian, Hebrew, Korean, Russian), and Western European languages are studied from new angles.

The present volume provides a cross-linguistic perspective on the development of tense-aspect in L2 acquisition. Data-based studies included in this volume deal with the analysis of a wide range of target languages: Chinese, English, Italian, French, Japanese, and Spanish. Theoretical frameworks used to evaluate the nature of the empirical evidence range from generative grammar to functional-typological linguistics. Several studies focus on the development of past tense markers, but other issues such as the acquisition of a future marker are also addressed. An introductory chapter outlines some theoretical and methodological issues that serves as relevant preliminary reading for most of the chapters included in this volume. Additionally, a preliminary chapter offers a substantive review of first language acquisition of tense-aspect morphology. The analysis of the various languages included in this volume significantly advances our understanding of this phenomenon, and will serve as an important basis for future research.

Temporal-aspectual systems have a great potential of informing our understanding of the developing competence of second language learners. So far, the vast majority of empirical studies investigating L2 acquisition have largely focused on past temporality, neglecting the acquisition of the expression of the present and future temporalities with rare exceptions (aside from ESL learners), leaving unanswered the question of how the investigation of different types of temporality may inform our understanding of the acquisition of temporal, aspectual and mood systems as a whole. This monograph addresses this question by focusing on three main objectives: a) to contribute to the already impressive body of research in the L2 acquisition of tense, aspect and mood/modality from a generative perspective, and in so doing to present a more complete picture of the processes of L2 acquisition in general; b) to bridge the gap between linguistic theory and L2 acquisition; c) to make empirical findings more accessible to language instructors by proposing concrete pedagogical applications.

Preface -- 1. The semantics of tense, aspect and modality in the languages of the world / Lotte Hogeweg, Helen de Hoop & Andrej Malchukov -- 2. Incompatible categories: Resolving the 'present perfective paradox' / Andrej L. Malchukov -- 3. The perfective/imperfective distinction: Coercion or aspectual operators? / Corien Bary -- 4. Lexical and compositional factors in the aspectual system of Adyghe / Peter M. Arkadiev -- 5. Event structure of non-culminating accomplishments / Sergei Tatevosov & Mikhail Ivanov -- 6. The grammaticalised use of the Burmese verbs la 'come' and .wà 'go' / Nicoletta Romeo -- 7. Irrealis in Yurakaré and other languages: On the cross-linguistic consistency of an elusive category / Rik van Gijn & Sonja Gipper -- 8. On the selection of mood in complement clauses / Rui Marques -- 9. 'Out of control' marking as circumstantial modality in St'át'imcets / Henry Davis, Lisa Matthewson & Hotze Rullmann -- 10. Modal geometry: Remarks on the structure of a modal map / Kees de Schepper & Joost Zwarts -- 11. Acquisitive modals / Johan van der Auwera, Petar Kehayov & Alice Vittrant -- 12. Conflicting constraints on the interpretation of modal auxiliaries / Ad Foolen & Helen de Hoop -- 13. Modality and context dependence / Fabrice Nauze -- 14. Verbal semantic shifts under negation, intensionality, and imperfectivity: Russian genitive objects / Barbara H. Partee & Vladimir Borschev -- 15. The Estonian partitive evidential: Some notes on the semantic parallels between aspect and evidential categories / Anne Tamm -- Index.

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 empirically-grounded based on elicited or corpus data, while adopting different theoretical frameworks. Thus, some chapters rely on large diachronic corpora and provide new qualitative insight on the evolution of TAM systems through quantitative methods, while others carry out a collostructional analysis of past-tensed verbs using inferential statistics to explore the lexical grammar of verbs. A common goal is to uncover semantic regularities and variation in the TAM systems of the languages under study by taking a close look at context. Such a fine-grained approach contributes to our understanding of the TAM systems from a typological perspective. The focus on well-known Indo-European languages (e.g. French, German, English, Spanish) and also on less commonly studied languages (e.g. Hungarian, Estonian, Avar, Andi, Tagalog) provides a valuable cross-linguistic perspective.

Syntax – the study of sentence structure – has been at the centre of generative linguistics from its inception and has developed rapidly and in various directions. The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax provides a historical context for what is happening in the field of generative syntax today, a survey of the various generative approaches to syntactic structure available in the literature and an overview of the state of the art in the principal modules of the theory and the interfaces with semantics, phonology, information structure and sentence processing, as well as linguistic variation and language acquisition. This indispensable resource for advanced students, professional linguists (generative and non-generative alike) and scholars in related fields of inquiry presents a comprehensive survey of the field of generative syntactic research in all its variety, written by leading experts and providing a proper sense of the range of syntactic theories calling themselves generative.

This Handbook is a comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible guide to the topics and theories that current form the front line of research into tense, aspect, and related areas.

This book explores the thesis that in the Kwa languages of West Africa, aspect and modality are more central to the grammar of the verb than tense. Where tense marking has emerged it is invariably in the expression of the future, and therefore concerned with the impending actualization or potentiality of an event, hence with modality, rather than the purely temporal sequencing associated with tense. The primary grammatical contrasts are perfective versus imperfective. The main languages discussed are Akan, Dangme, Ewe, Ga and Tuwuli while Nzema-Ahanta, Likpe and Eastern Gbe are also mentioned. Knowledge about these languages has deepened considerably during the past decade or so and ideas about their structure have changed. The volume therefore presents novel analyses of grammatical forms like the so-called S-Aux-O-V-Other or “future” constructions, and provides empirical data for theorizing about aspect and modality. It should be of considerable interest to Africanist linguists, typologists, and creolists interested in substrate issues.

What is a linguistic category and what kinds of categories do the labels subjunctive, imperative, future, aspect, and modality refer to? The current literature assumes a straightforward mapping between grammatical category and semantic function, and descriptions of well-studied languages cultivate a sense of predictability in patterns. However, as the editors and contributors of "Mood, Aspect, Modality Revisited" show, this predictability and stability vanish once lesser known patterns and languages are studied. While it is feasible to retain certain distinctions among tense, aspect, and mood (TAM) in analysis of specific issues in specific languages, ongoing formal and experimental research seems to indicate that these traditional grammatical distinctions may ultimately be illusionary. "Mood, Aspect, Modality Revisited" seeks more general or fundamental grammatical structures that can encompass the breadth of related concepts traditionally placed in the TAM categories."