Aspect and Modality in Indonesian the Case of Sudah, Telah, Pernah, and Sempat

In this paper, I describe four Indonesian aspect markers, sudah, telah, pernah, and sempat, showing that the main opposition between them relies not only on their aspectual meanings, but also on the various modalities they express. The opposition between the very frequent markers sudah and telah is analysed in detail. The syntactic and semantic survey shows that these two markers are not synonyms in most contexts

Aspect and Modality in Indonesian the Case of Sudah, Telah, Pernah, and Sempat

In this paper, I describe four Indonesian aspect markers, sudah, telah, pernah, and sempat, showing that the main opposition between them relies not only on their aspectual meanings, but also on the various modalities they express. The opposition between the very frequent markers sudah and telah is analysed in detail. The syntactic and semantic survey shows that these two markers are not synonyms in most contexts

On the nature of the lexicon: the status of rich lexical meanings

The main goal of this paper is to show that there are many phenomena that pertain to the construction of truth-conditional compounds that follow characteristic patterns, and whose explanation requires appealing to knowledge structures organized in specific ways. We review a number of phenomena, ranging from non-homogenous modification and privative modification to polysemy and co-predication that indicate that knowledge structures do play a role in obtaining truth-conditions. After that, we show that several extant accounts that invoke rich lexical meanings to explain such phenomena face problems related to inflexibility and lack of predictive power. We review different ways in which one might react to such problems as regards lexical meanings: go richer, go moderately richer, go thinner, and go moderately thinner. On the face of it, it looks like moderate positions are unstable, given the apparent lack of a clear cutoff point between the semantic and the conceptual, but also that a very thin view and a very rich view may turn out to be indistinguishable in the long run. As far as we can see, the most pressing open questions concern this last issue: can there be a principled semantic/world knowledge distinction? Where could it be drawn: at some upper level (e.g. enriched qualia structures) or at some basic level (e.g. constraints)? How do parsimony considerations affect these two different approaches? A thin meanings approach postulates intermediate representations whose role is not clear in the interpretive process, while a rich meanings approach to lexical meaning seems to duplicate representations: the same representations that are stored in the lexicon would form part of conceptual representations. Both types of parsimony problems would be solved by assuming a direct relation between word forms and (parts of) conceptual or world knowledge, leading to a view that has been attributed to Chomsky (e.g. by Katz 1980) in which there is just syntax and encyclopedic knowledge

Language Change in Spanish Heritage Speakers: the Interaction Between Lexical and Grammatical Aspect

This thesis focuses on preterit and imperfect usage in the Spanish of Chilean-American heritage speakers. Spanish heritage speakers in the United States are second generation bilinguals who learn Spanish in the home from Spanish speaking parents and learn English from school and the community (Montrul 2002; Rothman 2007). When societal factors limit heritage language exposure, tense and aspect morphology is susceptible to change (Guijarro-Fuentes & Clibbens 2004). Findings of a study on 11 Chilean-American heritage speakers show that production of the preterit is overextending, resulting in less frequent use of the imperfect. Large-scale studies of US Spanish-English bilinguals’ use of the Spanish past tense forms (canté ‘I sang’ preterit vs. cantaba ‘I sang’ imperfect) report changes in how first generation Spanish speakers use these forms (Montrul 2002; Silva-Corvalán 1994; Zentella 1997). The preterit is used to denote events viewed as a complete whole (perfective) and the imperfect denotes incompletion or an action viewed as in progress in the past (imperfective). The current study employed a three part on-line questionnaire that included: (i) a language background and social variables section; (ii) a closed-question section using the story, Ricitos de Oro ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’; and (iii) an open-question section where participants were asked to translate English past tense sentences into Spanish. This study provides an in-depth analysis for the internally-driven motivations for the changing use of the preterit (perfective aspect) and imperfect (imperfective aspect). I account for the overextension of the preterit as a consequence of the interaction between lexical aspect (classification of predicates based on inherent meanings such as states and events) and grammatical aspect (externally coded aspectual properties such as the preterit and imperfect). Spanish heritage speakers are making use of lexical aspect when producing overt aspectual forms. This is similar to how tense and aspect morphology is acquired and produced in children (Slobin 1977). This strategy is a way to use the information provided by lexical aspect, overt morphology, and discursive context to denote the aspectual interpretations of perfectivity and imperfectivity. This study has implications for educators who teach heritage speakers because they are known to have different needs than second language learners (Montrul 2002) and also adds to the literature on Chilean-Americans, an underrepresented group in bilingualism and heritage language studies

An Experimental Comparison of Two Reinterpretation Strategies: Benefits and Challenges of Using Fictional Contexts in Experimental Studies

The paper presents an experimental investigation of two different reinterpretation mechanisms using fictional contexts. First, we discuss the results of a rating study suggesting that fictional contexts allow for certain reinterpretation strategies that non-fictional contexts do not allow for. We also report on a follow-up self-paced reading study whose results are less clear. We hypothesize that the mixed results we observe are due to the fictional material. We discuss some methodological implications for future experimental research making use of fictional contexts