Ty chap au comrie, bernard ed shibatani, masayoshi py 1976 da 1976 ti the syntax of causative constructions. However, little is known about how it interacts with other important temporal information, such as recent and distant past. Comrie draws his examples particularly from english and the slavonic and romance languages, but also from arabic, chinese, welsh, greek and a variety of others. If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their conjugation patterns the main tenses found in many languages include the past, present, and future. In some cases, this difference is realized through grammatical information, and in others, lexical information see croft, 2012, for discussion. Such mirative extensions of existing constructions have been observed and analyzed at length for evidentials, yet this paper demonstrates that mirative meanings can. This viewpoint was defended by soga 1983, matsumoto 1985, and others. On the typology of a slavic and romance category using russian and spanish material.
An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related. Pdf event realization and default aspect researchgate. Dr comrie draws his examples particularly from english and the slavonic and romance languages, but also from arabic, chinese, welsh, greek and. An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems cambridge textbooks in linguistics 3 jun, 1976 by bernard comrie hardcover. Comrie is a specialist in linguistic typology and linguistic universals, and on caucasian languages. Whether or not the particular view of generic sentences articulated above is correct, it is quite clear that the study of generic terms and the truthconditions of generic sentences touches on the representation of other parts of the grammar, as well as on how the world around us is reflected in language. The aim of the present book is to provide an introduction to verbal aspect and related concepts. Results show that the majority of participants use pp especially for events that occurred in the indefinite past or continue to have current relevance, which is the normative context in which pp is used comrie, 1976. This includes data values and the controlled vocabularies that house them. While some languages appear to have dedicated mirative constructions, others convey mirative meanings through originally nonmirative categories which acquire mirative meanings in a given context aikhenvald, 2012, p. The chinese aspect system and its semantic interpretation. The interest of this survey is increased by the fact that the author pays much attention to the possible c. In this textbook he introduces readers to the range of variation found in tense systems across the languages of the world, bringing together a rich collection of illustrative material that student and specialist alike will find invaluable.
Grammatical aspect was defined by comrie 1976 1989 as involving the internal unfurling of the process. It is intended for students of individual languages as well as for students of linguistics. Grammatical aspect and l2 learners online processing of. How does verb aspect constrain event representations.
It differs from most other books on aspect in that it is. Grammatical aspect is known to shape event understanding. Effects of a complexitybased approach on generalization. The linked data service provides access to commonly found standards and vocabularies promulgated by the library of congress. Lexical aspect is invariant, while grammatical aspect can be. This article provides updated data from that study, including the addition of data from 3 children, results from naturalistic language. Those goals were to define self adaptive software, to point out some. This book has been quite influential as a standard reference work.
Interaction of lexical and grammatical aspect in language. Cohesive chains in the transfiguration narrative of matthew 17. Verb aspect and perceptual simulations article pdf available in quarterly journal of experimental psychology 2006 627. The lack of effect on imperfective sentences and pictures suggests that each reader represents an inprogress event at varying stages of completion. An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems cambridge textbooks in linguistics.
Bernard comrie department of linguistics uc santa barbara. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise cambridge core to connect with your account. Crosslanguage similarities and divergences bt the grammar of causative constructions t3 syntax and semantics sp 261 ep 312 vl 6 pb academic press cy new york id comrie 1976b er. Lexical aspect refers to verb phrases that are distinguished on the basis of. This systematic account of the data is carefully integrated with a theoretical. Tense and aspect stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. When this translation is to be automated, resolution of the ambiguity. If you look at the aspect system of baltic and slavonic languages, baltic systems actually resemble the earlier stages of slavonic systems comrie, 1976. In addition, this book is bound to be judged in the light of its predecessors in the cambridge textbooks series, notably comrie s two volumes on aspect 1976 and tense 1985, books which are by any standard a hard act to follow. Grammatical aspect and temporal distance in motion.
Bernard comrie defines tense as the grammaticalisation of location in time. In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference with reference to the moment of speaking. While much work in biblical studies has been offered in the form of theological exposition and historical critical speculation of literary origins of the gospels, few modern biblical studies scrutinize the language of these gospels from rigorous linguistic criteria. The acquisition of syntax in children from 5 to 10. Vestnik moskovskogo universiteta, filologiya, 5891, 97122. Whats the difference between iterative and frequentative. This is the first study of aspect, considered as a general linguistic phenomenon. This study presents a corpusbased analysis of the sentential particle lia. An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems cambridge textbooks in l first edition paperback july 10, 1976 4. Purpose in a previous article, we reported that beginning treatment for regular past tense ed with certain types of verbs led to greater generalization in children with developmental language disorder than beginning treatment with other types of verbs.
Some languages have only two distinct tenses, such as past and nonpast, or future and nonfuture. An overview aspect is concerned with the way events relate to time. An introduction to the general linguistic study of aspect. Basics of verbal aspect in biblical greek robert crellin. An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Lexical aspect is distinguished from grammatical aspect. The consistent pattern of results demonstrates that readers construct mental representations of completed events when the perfective aspect is used to describe an event. The perfective aspect views an event as a whole from an external perspective, whereas the imperfective aspect is characterized by explicit reference to the internal temporal structure of a situation, viewing a situation from within comrie 1976. Bernard comrie, cambridge university press, cambridge etc. Frontiers grammatical aspect and temporal distance in. In software engineering a system requirements document written in a natural language nl needs to be translated into one of the formal specification languages for system execution. Topics i have investigated from this crosslinguistic, typological perspective include tense and aspect, transitivity and voice, and numeral systems.
Maya dance the eventdescriptions in 1 are true of events that have not been situated relative to a time line. This paper takes a discourse analytic approach from the field of systemic functional linguistics sfl founded by m. Iterative signals that an action is repeated on a single occasion and differs from the habitual and frequentative, which both signal the repetition occurred on different occasions p. I would hope that the problems mentioned above will highlight the relevance of semantic. Cohesive chains in the transfiguration narrative of. Tense and aspect are important means for organizing discourse as well. Dr comrie draws his examples particularly from english and the slavonic and romance languages, but also from arabic, chinese, welsh, greek and a variety of others. In english, imperfective aspect is realized by using the past progressive verb form, as in was walking, and perfective aspect. However, we did this exclusively from a sentence internal perspective. Suppose we have two phenomena, a and b, each of which is typically. Bybee, pagliuca and perkins 1996 put it very nicely. Datasets available include lcsh, bibframe, lc name authorities, lc classification, marc codes, premis vocabularies, iso language codes, and more.
In this textbook he introduces readers to the range of variation found in tense systems across the languages of the world, bringing together a rich collection of illustrative material. Topics covered include the relation of tense and aspect, the morphology and the semantics of aspect, and structuralist and philosophical approaches. It is shown that the present tense has a general preference for the imperfective aspect, and that the past tense combines more easily with the perfective aspect, while, in the absence of other overt time. System 1022 is a general purpose data management software system which.
To conclude our overview, we present french examples due to kamp and rohrer see van lambalgen and hamm 2005, ch. The emergence of tenseaspect morphology in japanese. The linguistic expression of temporal reference springerlink. The current work uses computermouse tracking spivey et al. We also examine the functions of all pp occurrences in interviews with 23 speakers and explore any innovative uses. In lithuanian, adding a prefix to a verb root renders it perfective, sometimes resulting also in some other semantic change. In the btheory, in contrast, time is ordered according to three relations.