The Functional categories of the Verb- Spring Term 2011- Ileana Baciu
The Category of Aspect
1. Introduction
0.0 Freed (1976) defined ‘Aspect’ as ‘a notion of Time, distinct from Tense, that refers to the internal temporal structure of events and activities named by various linguistic forms [….] in terms of such things as inception, duration, completion..’
The definition suggests that Tense and Aspect, as functional categories that delimit the lexical category Verb, ‘merge/interconnect’ in more ways than one.
The two categories are not only related morpho-syntactically (Aspect like Tense is realized by verb inflections and auxiliaries) but also ‘semantically’. The definition says that both Aspect and Tense partake of the notion ‘Time’ but in distinct ways. The verbal category of Aspect and the verbal category of Tense are tightly related as they both pertain to the domain of Time.
Let us consider the following pair of sentences:
(1) a) John read a book.
b) John was reading a book (when the phone rang / at 3 o’clock).
Both sentences describe the situation: ‘John read a book’. The difference between the sentences in (1) is not in terms of Tense (both are in the past tense) but in terms of Aspect.
The sentence in (1a) presents the situation as a whole, as completed, as closed, while the sentence in (1b) presents only some internal phases/stages in the development of the situation; we do not know when John began reading the book or whether he finished reading it – we only know that his reading was unfolding in Time when the phone rang/at 3 o’clock.
Intuitively, Aspect predicates about the size of a situation (the whole of it or only parts of it) while the contribution of Tense is to locate that situation in time. Both Tense and Aspect pertain to the domain of Time as situations, irrespective of their size, occur in time.
The generally accepted definition of the category of Tense is that Tense represents “the chronological order of events in time as perceived by the speaker at the moment of speaking’.
The important characteristic of Tense (viewed as the grammaticized form of Time, roughly the present tense, the past tense and the future tense, is that it locates the time of the situation described in the sentence relative to the moment of speaking[1]. This means that we cannot conceive of a past or future event unless we have a present moment of time in mind (e.g., Marianne arrived lastnight cannot be interpreted unless the hearer has a ‘today, a present moment of time’ in mind with respect to which Marianne’s arrival can be located).
This is why Tense is characterized as being a deictic category (oriented towards the time of the speaking ego): it relates different kinds of situations to the Speech Time and structures them by the relations of simultaneity and sequence (see the Category of Tense).
Aspect, on the other hand, is not a deictic category, but rather informs us about the contour or quality of the event/state as viewed by the speaker at a given moment in time (i.e reference point).
1.0.Following Comrie (1976), we could state the difference between Tense and Aspect as one between situation-internal time (Aspect) and situation-external time (Tense).
The term ‘aspect ’ was imported into the Western grammatical tradition from the study of Slavic grammar in the early nineteenth century, it being a loan translation from the Slavic term ‘vid ’ which is etymologically cognate with the words ‘view ’and ‘vision ’, hence the term viewpoint aspect has been widely adopted in current literature. (Smith 1991).
In traditional grammars, the notion ‘Aspect’ is restricted mostly to the perfective -imperfective distinction expressed by inflectional morphemes on the verb or by special function morphemes within a verbal complex. From this perspective, the most widely accepted definition is Comrie’s (1976: 3-4) who, quoting Holt, (1943) defines “aspects” as " different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation….[2]”.
The perfective provides a holistic,summarizing or unifying view upon the situation described in the sentence, while the imperfective is concerned with the temporal constituency of a situation which is presented as divided up into internal phases, there being no concern for the whole situation.
In Comrie’s own words “ another way of explaining the difference between perfective and imperfective meaning is to say that the perfective looks at the situation from outside, without necessarily distinguishing any of the internal structure of the situation, whereas the imperfective looks at the situation from inside, and as such is crucially concerned with the internal structure of the situation, since it can look backwards toward the start of the situation and look forwards to the end of the situation, and indeed is equally appropriate if the situation is one that lasts through all time, without any beginning and without any end” (Comrie, 1976:4). In present day linguistics this is known as ‘viewpoint aspect’ (Smith 1991) or grammatical aspect(de Swart,1998).
The viewpoints are similar across languages but not identical. That is why knowing a language includes knowing the semantic value of the viewpoints and their distribution.
There are various ways in which languages grammaticize the perfective – imperfective aspectual opposition.
For instance, Russian and Chinese use different affixes to distinguish between the two aspects.
English and Dutch avail themselves of syntactic means to signal the opposition: for instance, the contemporary English form ‘He is working’ (be + V-ing) developed historically from ‘He ison/at working’ (in time, the prepositions, reduced to a or o, disappeared).
Languages like Romanian, French or Old Greek make use of syncretic means to signal the opposition (i.e., the grammatical markers of Aspect have fused with those of Tense). For instance, the Romanian prezent and imperfect signal imperfective aspect while tenses such as the perfect compus, the perfect simplu, the mai mult ca perfect signal perfective aspect.
In English, the opposition perfective–imperfective has not been fully grammaticized but the opposition non-progressive – progressive is compatible with it. Progressive aspect is signalled by distinct morphological marking: be – ing (e.g., He is/wasrunning). Perfective aspect (also called “simple / indefinite aspect”) is rendered by the simple temporal form of the verb with no distinct morphological marking (e.g., He ran).
1.1. In current literature, the “modern” concept of “Aspect” reflects a “double life”. It is still used to refer to the presentation of events through grammaticized viewpoints such as the perfective and imperfective, (‘viewpoint/grammatical’ aspect), but lately, the use of the term has broadened to include the inherent temporal structuring of the situations themselves, the internal event structure or Aktionsart; this is known in current literature as ‘situation/eventuality-type aspect’ or ‘lexical aspect’
The term ‘situation-type aspect’[3] (Smith, 1991) will be employed to refer to the classification of verbal expressions into states, activities, accomplishments, achievements (introduced by Vendler, 1957/1967)and semelfactives (introduced by Smith 1991)
The latter view of Aspect originated in the classification of verb meanings in the philosophy of action (cf. Ryle,1949; Kenny,1963,Vendler,1957/1967).
The entities that verbal expressions categorize as states, activities, events(i.e. accomplishments and achievements) are situationsor states of affairs.
These idealized situation types represent the temporal classifications of actualsituations/states of affair that people make on conceptual and cognitive grounds. (Smith 1991).
The situation types differ in the temporal properties of dynamism, durativity and telicity[4] (boundedness). The classification is discussed in detail in the following subchapter.
The examples below illustrate the situation types mentioned above as well as their temporal properties (Smith 1991:6):
(i)States are static, durative: love Susan, know the answer, live in London, be widespread, enjoy life;
(ii)Activities are dynamic, durative, atelic: laugh, stroll/walk in the park, push a cart, drink beer, swim, run;
(iii)Accomplishments are dynamic, durative and telic: build a house, walk to school, learn French, drink a bottle of beer, smoke a cigarette;
(iv)Achievements are dynamic, telic, instantaneous: win the race, reach the top, find a watch, recognize a friend, discover a treasure, arrive, leave;
(v)Semelfactives are dynamic, atelic, instantaneous: tap, cough, knock, hit, flap a wing, hiccup, slam/bang the door, kick the ball.
From this perspective, Smith(1991)defines ‘Aspect’ as ’ the semanticdomain of temporal structures of situations :‘
Both viewpoint (or grammatical) aspect and situation type aspect convey information about temporal factors such as beginning,end and duration, hence they interact in language.’ (Smith1991:5).
The aspectual meaning of a sentence is a composite of the information from both components.
1.2. The ‘grammatical/viewpoint aspect’, perfective and imperfective, is often not clearly distinguished from the ‘(inherent) lexical aspect/situation-type aspect’ since both components convey information about temporal factors of a situation such as beginning, end and duration. Although these two domains are related, it has been also argued that we need to draw a clear line between them.
Distinguishing between the semantic contribution of aspectual operators (such as for instance the ‘progressive’ in English) and the (lexical) semantic properties of verbal predicates to which aspectual operators are applied is necessary in order to account in an adequate way for their systematic interactions, as they are manifested in what is known as the ‘imperfective paradox’ (Dowty, 1977, 1979) or ‘partitive puzzle’ (Bach, 1986), for instance.
1.2.1 First and foremost, ‘situation-type aspect` on the one hand, and ‘viewpoint aspect’ or `grammatical aspect,` on the other hand are realized differently in the grammar of a language, i.e. they differ in their linguistic expression (Smithn1991):
a)viewpoint/grammatical aspect is signalled by a grammatical morpheme; it is therefore distinguished as an overt category (i.e. it exemplifies the notion of an overt category)
b)situation-type aspect (eventuality type) is signalled by a constellation of lexicalmorphemes. Situation/eventuality types are distinguished at the level of the verb constellation (i.e. the verb and its arguments (subject and objects)) and the sentence. The situation types play a role in the grammar of a language, although they lack explicit morphological markers (Smith, 1991). Since situation types are not `grammaticized` by contrasting morphemes (i.e. have no single grammatical marker), situation type aspect could be taken to exemplify the notion of a covert category. Situation types play a role in the grammar of a language, although they lack explicit morphological markers. (Smith, 1991:10)
The two components of the aspectual system of a language interact with each other in all languages, although across languages, aspectual systems vary considerably, especially the ‘grammatical/viewpoint’ subsystem. Situation types can be distinguished as covert categories in all languages (Smith, 1991).
1.2.2 Since ‘Aspect’ has been assumed to be defined as the interaction of the lexical meaning of the verb, the nature of its arguments (subject and objects) and grammatical inflection, aspectual meaning holds for sentences rather than for individual verbs or verb phrases. (Verkuyl 1972, Dowty 1979, Smith 1991, etc).
Sentences present aspectual information about situation/eventuality type and viewpoint. Although they co-occur, the two types of information, as already mentioned, are independent, the receiver of the message being aware of how much of the situation is presented and to what situation type it belongs. Consider the aspectual information conveyed to a receiver of the examples in (2) below (Smith 1991:5):
(2)a)Mary walked to school.
b)Mary was walking to school.
c)Mary walked in the park.
Example (2a) presents a situation that is characterized as telic : it has a goal/outcome, a ‘natural endpoint’ (signalled by the expression `to school`).
This information is given by the non-finite component of the sentence, namely [Mary walk to school] which includes the verb and the participants/the arguments [Mary] and [to school].
The situation is described as ‘closed’, ‘complete’ (perfective viewpoint), i.e. as having occurred at a time previous to ‘now’. This information is given by the finite part of the sentence, in this particular case the ‘past tense morpheme’ on the verb.
Example (2b) presents part of the same situation but does not convey whether the goal was reached. The receiver gets only a partial view of the situation (imperfective viewpoint). This is signalled by the `progressive` form of the verb.
Example (2c) presents a complete/closed situation ( perfective viewpoint) that does not involve the reaching of a goal; the event was simply terminated.
As can be seen, aspectual information is given by the linguistic forms of the sentences:
(i)situation type is signalled by the verb and its arguments (the non-finitepart of the sentence), while
(ii)viewpoint is signalled by a grammatical morpheme, usually part of the verb or verb phrase. (Smith 1991).
The perfective viewpoint gives information about endpoints (a full view of the situation as in (2a,c)), while the imperfective gives information about internal or other stages or phases (a partial view of the situation as in (2b) )
.An important point made by Smith (1991) is that the domain of Aspect offers choices within a closed system to the speakers of a language. There is a small, fixed set of viewpoints and situation/eventuality types; one of each must be chosen whenever a sentence is framed.. What is meant by this is that speakers` choices in presenting actual situations are limited by conventional categorization, conventions of use and the constraints of truth.
Before we embark upon discussing the interaction between the two components of the aspectual system we consider it necessary to dwell on the characterization of the two components separately, in turn.
2.0Eventuality/Situation Type Categories
2.1 The identification of eventuality/situation types has been extremely important for the analysis of a number of linguistic phenomena. (Filip, 1999:16)
a)First, they are indispensable for the description of grammatical/viewpoint aspect and the distribution of adverbials in natural languages. Instrumental and adverbial adjuncts in sentences are in fact modifiers of the situation as such (expressed by the verb and its arguments) and not of the verb alone.
b) Second the fine-grained semantic distinctions that underlie the classes play an important role in the syntax-semantics interface in the domain of argument structure i.e. participant structure. Predicates differ in the number of arguments (participants) they take and in the interpretation assigned to the arguments. The number of arguments and their interpretation is due to the event(uality) structure of the respective predicate.
c)Third, eventuality/situation types play a role in the understanding of such grammatical phenomena as the choice of auxiliary in Italian, German, Dutch and French (Zaenen, 1987,1988,1993)
Given the important role played by verbs in the grammar of natural languages the assumption is that verbs as lexical items contain in the lexical entry besides categorial and phonological information, semantic information which is expressed by its ‘event(uality) structure’.
The assumption (Davidson 1966) is that each and every verb has an ‘event variable’ (=e) as part of its semantic structure. The letter ‘e’ is an abbreviation for the fact that the verb may be used as a predicate to denote an eventuality/situation that is characterized as ‘dynamic’ and hence can be located in place and time. The presence of the event variable ‘e’ accounts for the semantic interpretation of adverbials and other modifiers. Adverbials, progressive form, instrumentals, etc are modifications of event(ualities) not of verbs per se. Let’s consider the following example borrowed from Davidson (apud Cornilescu 1995:206):
(3)Jones buttered the toast in his bedroom with a knife at midnight
The sentence describes an event(uality) (=e) namely that of ‘toast-buttering by Jones’. This sentence consists of the predicate ‘butter’ which expresses a certain relation with two nominal phrases, in this particular case, “Jones” and “the toast”. The presence of the two nominal phrases (NPs) are essential for the semantic (and syntactic) well-formedness of the sentence.
Our knowledge of themeaning of the verb butter includes knowledge of the verb’s participant/argument structure), i.e. knowledge of the number of participants/arguments involved in the situation described by the predicate.
Syntactically, the two NPs function as the ‘subject’ and the ‘direct object’; from a semantic point of view, each nominal phrase is associated with a semantic /participant role: Jones is understood as Agent or Doer and the toast as the Patient or Undergoer. These two NPs are the arguments of the verb.
The prepositional phrases (PPs) are not related to the verb ’butter’ at all, i.e. they are not part of the participant structure (meaning) of the verb. Their role is to make precise the location in time and space of the situation described by the predicate.
Knowledge of the verb’s participant structure is made possible by the ‘event(uality) structure’ ( the ‘eventuality/situation types that the respective verb instantiates) i.e. the meaning of the respective verb.
In current linguistic theory the ‘meaning’ of verbs is represented by certain conceptual configurations , labeled as lexical conceptual structure (=LCS) which ultimately represent the decomposition of the verbs ‘meaning’ into more elementary predicates such as DO, CAUSE, BECOME. The meaning of the verb ‘butter’ can be represented as follows:
(3’)butter: [x DO] CAUSE [y COME BE with butter}
The letters ‘x, y’ are called ‘variables’ and, within the sentence in (3) above, they are Jones (for x) and the toast (for y).[5]
On the other hand, the three prepositional phrases ( =PPs) ‘in the bedroom/with a knife/at midnight ‘ are sentence constituents that are not obligatorily required, but are not excluded by the verb ‘butter’.
These constituents are called ‘adjuncts’ or ‘modifiers’. These constituents characterize the entire event(uality) (i.e. the verb and its arguments) offering supplementary information concerning the location in place and time, of the eventuality of ‘toast-buttering by John’.
The role of the event variable (‘e’) in the lexical entry of the verb ‘butter’ is therefore to account for the semantic contribution of modifying adverbials (i.e. adjuncts).
2.1.1 An important point that we would like to insist upon is the type of entities that the classification into situation/eventuality types concerns, since there is a common confusion as to whether it concerns particular/actual situations (i.e. actual occurrences of eventualities) or their linguistic representations. The answer to this problem is given in the following quotation from Filip, H. (1999):