Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect write by Susan Deborah Rothstein. This book was released on 2008. Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The papers in this volume investigate the semantics of aspect from both a theoretical and cross linguistic 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 cross-linguistically is crucial for progess in understanding how the semantics of aspect 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.
Aspect and Reference Time
Aspect and Reference Time - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Aspect and Reference Time write by Olga Borik. This book was released on 2006-08-31. Aspect and Reference Time available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book investigates the temporal structure of language. It deals with central issues in the understanding of tense and aspect, proposes a new approach to the main problems in the area, and seeks to establish the universal semantic properties of two important and contentious aspectual categories, perfectivity and imperfectivity. Dr Borik develops an original theory of aspect. She shows how this accounts for aspectual categories in Russian, and that it can used to compare Russian to other languages where similar aspectual issues arise. She devotes particular attention to English, a language which appears to have no grammatical categories of perfectivity and imperfectivity. She argues that the semantic properties established for the Russian tense-aspect system are reflected in English, and reveals parallels in the expression of temporal and aspectual information in the two languages. Aspect and Reference Time will interest all scholars of the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of aspect and tense. The author's clear exposition and cross-linguistic approach make it a useful basis for courses at graduate level.
Perspectives on Aspect
Perspectives on Aspect - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Perspectives on Aspect write by Henk J. Verkuyl. This book was released on 2006-01-17. Perspectives on Aspect available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book offers both a retrospective view on how theories of aspectuality have developed over the past 30 years, and presents current, new directions of aspectuality research. The articles in this book take a wide crosslinguistic scope including aspectual analyses of the following languages: English and two varieties of English: African American English and Colloquial Singapore English, Italian, French, Bulgarian, Czech, Mandarin Chinese, West-Greenlandic, Wakashan languages, and Nahk-Daghestanian languages.
Events, States and Times
Events, States and Times - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Events, States and Times write by Daniel Altshuler. This book was released on 2016-11-07. Events, States and Times available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This monograph investigates the temporal interpretation of narrative discourse in two parts. The theme of the first part is narrative progression. It begins with a case study of the adverb ‘now’ and its interaction with the meaning of tense. The case study motivates an ontological distinction between events, states and times and proposes that ‘now’ seeks a prominent state that holds throughout the time described by the tense. Building on prior research, prominence is shown to be influenced by principles of discourse coherence and two coherence principles, NARRATION and RESULT, are given a formally explicit characterization. The key innovation is a new method for testing the definitional adequacy of NARRATION and RESULT, namely by an abductive argument. This contribution opens a new way of thinking about how eventive and stative descriptions contribute to the perceived narrative progression in a discourse. The theme of the second part of the monograph is the semantics and pragmatics of tense. A key innovation is that the present and past tenses are treated as scalar alternatives, a view that is motivated by adopting a particular hypothesis concerning stative predication. The proposed analysis accounts for tense in both matrix clauses and in complements of propositional attitudes, where the notorious double access reading arises. This reading is explored as part of a corpus study that provides a glimpse of how tense semantics interacts with Gricean principles and at-issueness. Several cross-linguistic predictions of the analysis are considered, including their consequences for the Sequence of Tense phenomenon and the Upper Limit Constraint. Finally, a hypothesis is provided about how tense meanings compose with temporal adverbs and verb phrases. Two influential analysis of viewpoint aspect are then compared in light of the hypothesis. The monograph is directed at graduate students and researchers in semantics, pragmatics and philosophy of language. The analysis of narrative discourse that is developed in the monograph synthesizes and builds on prior collaborative research with Corien Bary, Valentine Hacquard, Thomas Roberts, Roger Schwarzschild, Una Stojnić, Károly Varasdi and Aaron White. Daniel Altshuler is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the School of Cognitive Science, Hampshire College and an Adjunct Professor of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Telicity, Change, and State
Telicity, Change, and State - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Telicity, Change, and State write by Violeta Demonte. This book was released on 2012-06-07. Telicity, Change, and State available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This volume presents new work by leading researchers on central themes in the study of event structure: the nature and representation of telicity, change, and the notion of state. The book advances our understanding of these aspects of event structure by combining foundational semantic research with a series of case studies from a variety of languages. The book begins with an overview of the theoretical issues central to the volume, along with a brief presentation of the remaining chapters and the points of contact between them. The chapters, developed within several different theoretical perspectives, promote cross-theory as well as cross-linguistic comparison. The work will interest scholars and advanced students of morphology, syntax, semantics, and their interfaces. It will also appeal to researchers in philosophy, psycholinguistics, and language acquisition who are interested in the notions of telicity, change, and stativity.
