Arche, María J.

Greenwich Academic Literature Archive

Dr María J. ArcheUniversity of GreenwichTELIC,  Stuttgart 12th January 2017§Heterogeneous events§Do not entail the culmination of the situation §Tackle the heart of the relation between:§Telicity§ Heterogenous events§ not event terminus/completion/telos§Perfective viewpoint aspect§ Perfective: supposed to bring completion; interval bounded§ Properties of perfective viewpoint when an accomplishment has not culminated in Spanish. § Semantics and morphosyntax correspondences of viewpoints, more complex than previously thought –see Arche 2014a for an overview.§Within one given language one form can correspond to more than one meaning§Different arrays of meanings for apparently the same form across languages§ Imperfective: different readings; vast body of literature § modality involved etc. Arregui, Rivero & Salanova 2014, a.o.§What about the Perfective? §Monolithic and simplex semantics within a given language and across languages?§Does not seem so (e.g., Altshuler 2014, a.o.)§For the sake of the discussion, I will focus on cases such as (1):(1) Pedro coloreó el castillo durante tres horas, pero no terminó.Pedro colour-pfve.3ps the castle for three hours,       but   not finished‘Pedro coloured the castle for three hours but he did not finish to’1. Quality of the eventuality: true accomplishments?2. Semantics of the perfectiveparaphrases as perfective progressive3. Syntax-semantics of the temporal modifiers that seem to foster nonculmination in these cases“For x time”4. The compatibility of the overt clause declaring the lack of culmination explicitly “not finish to” (vs. not completely).§A sort of correlation among these elements§Which may point to the availability of PARTITIVE semantics in the perfective in Spanish. True accomplishment? yes1.1. Culmination is possible(2) Pedro coloreó el castillo durante tres horas y lo terminó.Pedro coloured.pfve the castle for three hours and it finished‘Pedro coloured the castle for three hours and he finished it’§à The event is susceptible of culminating per se, ergo, it is not an activity.• The sentence Pedro coloreó el castillo durante tres horas Pedro colored.pfve the castle for three hoursis vague with respect to culmination. It is compatible with both scenarios, one where there is no culmination and another one where it is (Arche 2014a).• In a similar way in which we speak about vagueness in temporal ordering in the so-called Independent temporal construal observed in relative clauses (Stowell 1993; Arche2001 for Spanish).1.2. Ok after “finish”(3) √Pedro no terminó de colorear el castilloPedro did not finish to colour the castle(4) *Pedro no terminó de pasear. *ACTIVITIESPedro not finish strolling§ (not) finish + accomplishments: ok only (Pustejovsky1988)§Elided VP same kind of eventuality§ In all these cases, the perfective can be  paraphrased with what can be called “perfective progressive”:(5) Pedro estuvo coloreando el castillo durante tres horas, pero no terminó.Pedro was.pfve coloring    the castle for three hours,      but not finished.N.B. Note that this form IS NOT equivalent in any sense to an imperfective progressive (the typical form known as progressive in short).(6) Pedro coloreó el castillo, pero no terminó.Pedro coloured the castle, but not finished (to)§OK for some speakers, but many react by adding a “for-time” modifier.(7) Pedro coloreó el castillo durante tres horas,  pero no terminó.Pedro coloured.pfve the castle for three hours, but not finished§Why does this adverbial make the sentence better?§What does it mean?§For three hours gives us the size of an interval§Which interval?(8) Pedro coloreó el castillo durante tres horas…Pedro coloured.pfve the castle for three hours …(8) is true even if Pedro coloured the castle for five hours. (Arche 2014)§Which interval?§The Topic Time/ Assertion Time? Klein 1994§The Event Time? §à The interval we want to assert (the TT, AstT), rather than the interval of the whole event per se.§For three hours can give us only part of the interval the event may extend over.§For-time adverbials sharply contrast with in-time adverbials:(9) Pedro coloreó el castillo en tres horas.Pedro coloured the castle in three hours§cannot be true if it took Pedro five hours to colour the castle.§cannot be continued by “not finish to”(10) *Pedro coloreó el castillo en tres horas, pero no terminó.Pedro colured the castle in three hours, but not finishedEn tres horasin three hours à interval of the whole actual eventDurante tres horasfor three hours à interval of the assertion§Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria 2004: temporal adverbials are modifiers of the Assertion Time or the Event Time.durante-timefor-timeAspPAstT Asp’AstT for-PP   Aspº           EvtTen-time                  in-timeAspPAstT Asp’Aspº             EvtTEvtT in-PP§Both for-time & in-time give the size of an interval§Hence both are compatible only with perfective (in Spanish)v For-time: measures the Assertion Time, hence the interval can give us only PART of the Event Time. v In-time: measures the Event Time (à bounds the whole event– and that is why it is not okay with activities or states.) • Both used in the literature as expressions marking incompatibility with culmination(11) *Pedro coloreó el castillo en tres horas pero no terminó/no del todo.Pedro coloured.pfve the castle in three hours but not finished/not completely• However, as noticed by Demirdache & Martin 2015, it is not the case that both are equally compatible with any case of nonculmination. This seems to be the case in the Spanish cases contemplated here: (12) Pedro coloreó el castillo durante tres horas pero no terminó.Pedro coloured.pfve the castle for three hours     but not finished(13) ??*Pedro coloreó el castillo durante tres horas pero no del todo.Pedro coloured.pfve the castle for     three hours   but not completely(14) Pedro estuvo coloreando el castillo durante tres horas, pero no terminó.Pedro was.pfve colouring the castle for three hours but  not finished(15) ??* Pedro estuvo coloreando el castillo durante tres horas, pero no del todoPedro was.pfve colouring the castle for three hours but not completelyu*Pfve progressiveu*For-timeu*Not completelyu√Pfve progressiveu√ For-timeu√ not finished to1. For-time: partitive2. Perfective is progressive: partitive3. “Not finished to”: compatible with those cases that allow for perfective progressive and for-time adverbials§Spanish perfective may be a partitive perfective§Viewpoint aspect properties are responsible for making the partial completion available (Arche 2014a; Demirdache & Martin 2015)§Array of cases small scale. Not all verbs yield equally acceptable sentences when culmination is negated. §Koening & Davis 2001; Martin & Schaeffer 2015; Demirdache & Martin 2015: lexical semantics seems a factor.§Creation/non-creation/performance verb differences §Non-creation verbs yield the best formed sentences in Spanish (Arche 2014c)§The cases where the mentioned correlations hold are agued to be accounted for by the properties of the syntax-semantics of viewpoint aspect, that is:§Where the perfective can be paraphrased by a perfective progressive. In these cases, the perfective is homophonous to the non-progressive one but different syntax-semantics as in Arche2014a (next slide)(16) Pfve Progressive (analytical & synthetic)Estuvo coloreando/coloreówas.pfve coloring/colouredTPT               AspP 1[past]AstT AspP2Asp AspP2(overlap)Interval’   AspAsp          EvtTP(within) (-ing)/∅ EvT [color the castle](17)   Non-progressiveTPT          AspPaux [past]      AstT AspPAsp           EvtT(overlap)EvtT VP§Altshuler, D. 2014. A typology of partitive aspectual operators. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 32: 735-775.§Arche, M.J. 2001. A note on distributivity and the independent temporal construal. Working Papers in Linguistics of the Institute Ortega y Gasset. Madrid.§Arche, M.J. 2014a. The construction of viewpoint aspect: the imperfective revisited. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 32: 791-831. §Arche, M.J. 2014b. About the primitives of aspect across languages. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 32:711-733.§Arche, M.J. 2014c. Viewpoint aspect and agent control in Spanish non culminating accomplishments. Talk delivered at Chronos XI, Pisa June 2014.§Demirdache, H. & F. Martin. 2015.  Agent control over non-culminating events. In Barrajón et al (eds.), Verbal Classes and Aspect, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 185-217.§ Koenig, J. P., & Davis, A. R. 2001. Sublexical modality and the structure of lexical semantic representations. Linguistics and Philosophy, 24(1): 71-124. §Martin, F., & Schäfer, F. 2015. Sublexical modality in defeasible causative verbs. Modality across Syntactic Categories. Oxford University Press, Oxford.§ Stowell, T. (1993). Syntax of tense. Ms., University of California, Los Angeles.

The semantics of viewpoint aspect in nonculminating accomplishments

http://gala.gre.ac.uk/16480/1/16480%20ARCHE_Semantics_of_Viewpoint_Aspect_2017.pdf

The semantics of viewpoint aspect in nonculminating accomplishments

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Greenwich Academic Literature Archive