Languages & Linguistics
Perfect Aspect
The perfect aspect in linguistics refers to a verb form that indicates a completed action or state at a specific point in time. It is often used to convey the idea that an action has been finished before a certain time or event. In English, the perfect aspect is typically formed using the auxiliary verbs "have" or "has" followed by the past participle of the main verb.
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10 Key excerpts on "Perfect Aspect"
eBook - PDF- Östen Dahl(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Jouko Lindstedt The perfect – aspectual, temporal and evidential 1. Introduction The perfect has found its way from grammars of Classical Greek and Latin to those of modern European languages – as a term. But it is usually described as part of language-specific tense and aspect systems; there have not been many attempts to explore its nature as a cross-linguistic category, and it is often not even asked whether the “Perfects” of languages A and B are really manifestations of the same typological feature at all, or only happen to share the same name for obscure historical reasons. The perfect and its development in various European languages was one of the focal research areas of the E UROTYP Tense and Aspect Theme Group. The point of departure was Dahl’s (1985: 129–153) important result that a cross-linguistic cate-gory of perfect can be identified empirically, without a preconceived definition of its semantics. The perfects of various languages centre on certain prototypical examples like the following (Dahl 1985: 131); the uninflected verb should be replaced with a properly inflected verb form in each language under investigation: (1) [A says: I want to give your brother a book to read, but I don’t know which. Is there any of these books that he READ already? – B answers:] (Yes,) he READ this book. Obviously, the English Perfect (as in He has read this book , or He’s read this one ) would be a good candidate for an instance of this cross-linguistic gram type (for a definition of the term, see Dahl, this volume). Material about the perfect and related categories was collected by means of a ty-pological questionnaire, referred to as the Perfect Questionnaire – PFQ for short – in the articles of this section (see Appendix 2).
- Ping Li, Yasuhiro Shirai(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Chapter 2 Aspect: Problem of lexicon and morphology In this chapter we outline several of the influential linguistic analyses of aspect in the literature, and examine how these analyses treat grammatical aspect, lexical aspect, and the interaction between the two. We will begin by looking at Comrie's analysis of perfective and imperfective aspect, and then proceed to Vendler's categorization of verbs and times, Smith's two-component theory of aspect, and Klein's view on aspect in terms of the relationship between topic time and situation time. We end with a discussion of how these various linguistic analyses bear on children's acquisition of aspect. 2.1. Grammatical aspect 2.1.1. Perfective and imperfective The grammatical encoding of aspectual notions, which we call grammati-cal aspect, is realized in different languages in different ways, for exam-ple, through the use of inflectional morphology, derivational morphol-ogy, auxiliary, or periphrastic constructions. This variation does not mean, however, that grammatical aspect is wholly idiosyncratic and language-specific in the way it is encoded. Typological studies of how languages of the world encode aspectual notions have uncovered recur-ring patterns of aspectual marking (Comrie 1976; Bybee 1985; Dahl 1985; Bybee and Dahl 1989; Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994). In this section, we characterize these grammatical aspectual patterns and show how they are related to each other. The most basic aspectual opposition that is often encoded grammati-cally is that of perfective and imperfective. As noted in Chapter 1, perfective aspect presents a situation as an unanalyzed whole (external view), whereas imperfective aspect presents a situation from within (internal view). In the following example from English, (1) John built a house. (2) John was building a house. 12 Aspect sentence (1) is aspectually perfective, whereas sentence (2) is aspectually imperfect!ve.
eBook - PDFLanguage Contact in Europe
The Periphrastic Perfect through History
- Bridget Drinka(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
As we examine the evidence presented by these and other scholars in this chapter, we likewise focus on the proposed universal semantic cat- egory PERFECT, in contrast to our usual concentration on the history of the morphosyntactic properties of the perfect, in order to assess the validity of their claims. 3.1 Definitions and Types of Perfect As mentioned in Chapter 1, the definition of the PERFECT category varies widely according to author and theoretical perspective. One of the first decisions that must be made if an accurate definition is to be given is whether the perfect should be characterized as a tense, an aspect, both, or neither. Comrie grap- ples with this issue in his classic works on the topic, Aspect (1976) and Tense (1985). Defining aspect as “different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation” (Comrie 1976: 3) and tense as the “grammaticali- sation of location in time” (Comrie 1985: 1; 35), he observes that the perfect does not fit either of these characterizations precisely. In English, for example, the perfect does not conform to the pattern of other tenses referring to the past (Comrie 1985: 32), nor is it concerned with the internal consistency of the process, event, and the like, but rather relates a state to a previous situation (Comrie 1976: 52). Following tradition, Comrie includes the perfect among the aspects rather than the tenses, 2 and provides the following concise defini- tion: “[T]he perfect indicates the continuing present relevance of a past situa- tion” (1976: 52). He expands on this definition by listing four types of perfects (1976: 56–61): a. perfects of result: the present state is the result of a past situation (1) Mandarin: – le (+ stative verb) dōngxi guì-le ‘things have gotten expensive’ (implication: something caused them to be) (2) Kpelle: ŋaâˋkpεtε ‘I have fixed it’ (implication: it works)
eBook - PDFThe Perfect Storm
Critical Discussion of the Semantics of the Greek Perfect Tense Under Aspect Theory
- Constantine R. Campbell, Buist M. Fanning, Stanley E. Porter(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Peter Lang Group(Publisher)
Furthermore, he is clearly wrong (even in his formulation he contends it is only “most”), as there are a number of general linguists who use this very category in their discussions of aspect (whether they end up accepting it or not, and whether they are always entirely clear on the difference between aspect and Aktionsart ) 36 and some (in New Testament 34 Translation is the focus of his essay, C.R. Campbell, “Breaking Perfect Rules: The Traditional Understanding of the Greek Perfect,” in Discourse Studies and Biblical Interpretation: A Festschrift in Honor of Stephen H. Levinsohn (ed. S.E. Runge; Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2011), 139–55. 35 Campbell, Verbal Aspect (SBG 13), 172. 36 See Porter, “Greek Linguistics,” 48. These “general linguists” include the following (by no means an attempt at a comprehensive list): N.E. Collinge, “Some Reflexions on Comparative Historical Syntax,” Archivum Linguisticum 12 (1960): 79–101, esp. 95–96, who says the “perfect (set apart by stem metaphony and internal apophony and special endings) denoted simple state”; D. Cohen, L’aspect verbal (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989), 67, 110–11, where he speaks of Greek as having three aspects (present, aorist, and perfect) and defines the perfect as indi-cating “statif” as opposed to process by the present and aorist (111); H.J. Verkuyl, A Theory of Aspectuality: The Interaction between Temporal and Atemporal Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 11, where Verkuyl, though ques-tioning the ability to differentiate between aspect and Aktionsart , states that “one may describe one and the same situation as a state, a process or an event,” reflect-ing language of subjective authorial choice very much in keeping with standard aspectual terminology; T.F.
eBook - PDFMarking Past Tense in Second Language Acquisition
A Theoretical Model
- Rafael Salaberry(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
More specifically, grammatical aspect is represented as a functional category AspP (Aspectual Phrase) that varies cross-linguistically (Giorgi and Pianesi, 1997; Schmitt, 2001; Slabakova, 2001; Tenny, 1994; Travis, 1994; Zagona, 1994). In turn, information about lexical aspect is located in a different position in the sentence structure (hierarchically lower than grammatical aspect). The lower functional cate-gory AspP [± telic] is located close to the lexical verb and carries information about lexical aspect In contrast, the higher functional category AspP [± perfective] conveys information about grammatical aspect Delimiting Lexical and Grammatical Aspect 87 The contrastive analysis of the representation of tense-aspect meanings in English and Spanish gives rise to specific hypotheses about L2 acquisition. In English, Giorgi and Pianesi propose that verbs are always perfective (denote bounded events) because 'this is the only way for them to get the correct categorical features and for allowing the derivation to converge' (p. 164). More specifically, given the fact that in English, verbs are not asso-ciated with visible markers of inflectional morphology, the way verbs [+V; -N] are disambiguated from nouns [-V; +N] is through the associa-tion with aspectual features. That is, English associates the feature value [+perfective] to all eventive predicates [+perfective; +V; -N]. In contrast, inn Romance languages (Italian is the example mentioned by Giorgi and Pianesi), the verb does not need to recourse to the aspectual feature of the verb (|>perfective]) because of Italian's rich inflectional morphology (unambiguous association with relevant categorial features). As an evidence for their proposal, Giorgi and Pianesi point out that in contrast with Romance languages, the English present tense does not have a continuous (imperfective) interpretation.
eBook - PDFCognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar
A Volume in Honour of René Dirven
- Sabine De Knop, Teun De Rycker, Sabine De Knop, Teun De Rycker(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Introduction In this paper we will attempt to show and discuss some of the complexities in terminology that regularly come up in theoretical analyses of aspect in cross-linguistic research. Examples of terms that are often confused and that we focus on are grammatical aspect vs. Aktionsart, telic vs. perfective, and imperfective vs. progressive. In our view, this terminological confu- 358 Barbara Schmiedtová and Monique Flecken sion often leads to crucial misconceptions with regard to the functional description of aspectual systems, the way in which L2 acquisition of aspect is viewed, and also how it is taught in schools and language courses. Obvi-ously, our research is especially relevant for the first part of pedagogical grammar, which is that of descriptive adequacy (see Ruiz de Mendoza, this volume), but not for its final part, which is that of providing improved teaching methods. We can merely present a number of relevant linguistic issues and descriptions that we believe should be taken into account by applied linguists writing pedagogical grammars. Disregarding the discussion on the Critical Period hypothesis, one can state that from a learning point of view it seems nearly impossible for ad-vanced learners to have full command of the aspectual distinctions in the target language (e.g., Schmiedtová 2004; Slabakova 2005; von Stutterheim and Carroll 2006). Equally challenging appears to be the task of learning to express temporal relations in non-aspect languages (for example German) by native speakers of aspect-dominant languages (such as Czech or Rus-sian). This is particularly evident in learners’ ways of structuring informa-tion in narratives (e.g., Schmiedtová and Sahonenko, in press; Carroll et al., in press).
eBook - PDF- Artemis Alexiadou, Monika Rathert, Arnim von Stechow, Artemis Alexiadou, Monika Rathert, Arnim von Stechow(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
5. Semantic aspects are probably the syntactic specifier of AspP, rather than the head; similarly for the semantic tenses. This syntactic distinction is ignored, as not relevant for the discussion. 6. As defined, the tenses can be composed with one another. I assume that itera-tion of tenses in the same clause is syntactically prohibited. 7. Tenses can be treated as pronouns (Partee 1973, Heim 1994, Kratzer 1998, von Stechow 1999, Paslawska and von Stechow, to appear, a.o.). 8. Usually, the meaning of perfective, or [BOUNDED] is defined such as the event time is a subset of the reference time, instead of a proper subset, as defined here. Judgments are subtle as to whether in (i) 6pm can be included in the event time: (i) I wrote a squib from 2 to 6pm. 9. The term neutral has not been used in traditional/ functionalist descriptions (e.g., Lindstedt 1985, Dickey 2000) or generative treatments (e.g., Slabakova 1997) of the tense-aspect system of Bulgarian. It remains an open question to what extent neutral is applicable to the rest of the Slavic languages. 10. Perfective morphology in Bulgarian is realized both with prefixes and suf-fixes. Obviously a more careful distinction between the two is needed. That verbal prefixes of Slavic are markers of perfective aspect is commonly ac-knowledged (e.g., Forsyth 1970, Binnick 1991, Krifka 1992, Schoorlemmer 1995, Piñón 2001, a.o.) though often these prefixes contribute to the lexical meaning as well. 11. The perfect, just as the tenses earlier, is represented as an existential quanti-fier over a PTS. Again, nothing hinges on this representation. 12. The perfect, as a relation between evaluation intervals, has a semantics simi-lar to that of the tenses. Thus, labeling the perfect as an aspect rather than tense, is a terminological choice without much significance. 13. One candidate is the passive in (i): (i) The door is opened.
eBook - PDFRelative Tense and Aspectual Values in Tibetan Languages
A Comparative Study
- Bettina Zeisler(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
90 Part I: The concepts of TENSE, ASPECT, and MOOD (ΤΑΜ) irrealis or perhaps better: potential : non-potential, obligatory : non-obligatory, or the like. Inversion in the patterns of markedness may thus be a sign that the underlying conceptualisations differ considerably. Another quite important difference is that the opposition in terms of ASPECT is quite often restricted to the temporal domain of past time refer-ence, whereas the development of the opposition in terms of FRAMING ap-parently starts in the domain of present time reference, see, e.g., the devel-opment in French and Portuguese, section 1.4.2.2, and may then spread to other temporal domains as in English. It is certainly no mere accident that the Perfective Present in the Slavic languages corresponds to an opposition in terms of FRAMING and that a similar opposition (although with somewhat odd patterns of markedness) can be found with the present tense con-structions in the Tibetan languages. It seems that temporal and/or modal con-ceptualisations such as influence/control or relevance in combination, per-haps, with pragmatic features play an additional role in the development of the two systems. As the example of Czech shows, aspect languages of the Slavic type may have two distinct morphemes for the imperfective viewpoint, distinguishing habituality and continuity (Kuöera 1981). One could even think of an equi-pollent opposition between a +totality and a -totality perspective that would allow a subdivision for each of the members. The +totality perspective (X) could then be subdivided into ¿external/resulting (χ), the -totality per-spective (Y) could be subdivided into ¿habitual or ±continuative respec-tively (υ), thus Χ(+χ : -χ/0) : Υ(+υ : -υ/0).
eBook - PDFMalayalam Verbs
Functional Structure and Morphosemantics
- Amanda Swenson(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
The second possibility would be that languages without an overt perfect mor-pheme do not have either an overt or covert morpheme and instead use other 194 | 5 Cross-linguistic variation in the perfect mechanisms, such as lexical/viewpoint aspect, adverbs and context, to yield per-fect interpretations (cf. Mucha 2012, 2013; Bohnemeyer 2009; a. o. for a similar proposal for tenseless languages). An account like Mucha’s proposes that progres-sive marked verbs in Hausa receive a default present interpretation, while perfec-tive marked verbs receive a default past interpretation. However, these defaults can be overridden when the context provides another Topic Time that has a dif-ferent relationship with the Utterance Time than that of the default Topic Time. While Hausa does not allow adverbs alone to override the default contexts, other tenseless languages using default mechanisms, such as Mandarin (following Lin 2006) do. To extend this type of account to the perfect, one might try to say the follow-ing. Perhaps for Universal perfects, the presence of a durative adverb with a pro-gressive or imperfective overrides the default present tense and shifts the inter-pretation to a default present perfect. This type of override would involve a de-fault from a viewpoint aspect simultaneously to both tense and the third category perfect. This would make it more complicated than the overrides previously pro-posed. Similarly, one might say that for an Existential perfect, a perfective marked verb would override the default past interpretation to give a present Existential perfect in those contexts where an Existential perfect is favorable. Two major weaknesses of this type of an account are the following. First, though uncommon, it is possible to have progressive Existential perfects, (67). Secondly, working out how the default account would capture the full range of aspect, tense and perfect interactions is not clear.
- Hella Olbertz(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Aspect 347 present at the moment of speaking or at the reference point (cf. Comrie 1976: 52). Although Prospective and Perfect Aspect are parallel insofar as they have both complex meanings, Perfect Aspect covers a wide area of dis-tinct aspectual meanings, whereas Prospective is a uniform concept which cannot be further broken down. Following Comrie (1976: 56-61), I subdivide Perfect Aspect into Resultative Perfect, Experiential Perfect and Perfect of Recent Past. 9 While the semantic difference between Resultative Perfect and Experiential Perfect is relatively small, the semantic difference between these two on the one hand and Perfect of Recent Past on the other is con-siderable. This section will be subdivided as follows: I will first discuss Prospective Aspect (7.1.2.1.1.), then turn to Resultative and Experiential Perfect (7.1.2.1.2.) and subsequently to Perfect of Recent Past (7.1.2.1.3). I will end with a summary (7.1.2.1.4.). 7.1.2.1.1. Prospective Following Dik (1987: 62), I will define the meaning of Prospective Aspect as follows: (56) PROSPECTIVE ASPECT It is stated at t; that (i) there is some indication at t, that (ii) SoA will obtain after tj In this definition t; is the time corresponding to the moment of speaking or the reference point. Contrary to the complex meaning of Prospective Aspect, the meaning of Future Tense is simplex; it consists only of the second component of the meaning of Prospective Aspect: (57) FUTURE TENSE It is stated at t; that SoA will obtain after tj The periphrastic expression of Prospective Aspect is ir a + infinitive. Consider the following examples: 9. Apart from these three, Comrie (1976: 60) distinguishes a perfect of persistent situation.
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