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Two stem formations are known in the Baltic simple preterit system: the āpreterit and ē-preterit. This paper discusses the prehistoric background of the ā-preterit. Previous studies have indicated at least two Slavic categories comparable to the Baltic ā-preterit: the thematic aorist with the middle-intransitive meaning and the ā-aorist of the second stem in -a-. Based on the comparison of the Baltic ā-preterit and the Slavic ā-aorist, the Balto-Slavic ā-aorist is reconstructed, while the comparison of the middleintransitive thematic aorists in Slavic and some ā-preterit in Baltic allows for the reconstruction of the Balto-Slavic thematic aorist. Recent investigations have shown that the middle-intransitive thematic aorist in Proto-Balto-Slavic may have developed from the Indo-European middle root-aorist. On the other hand, the origin of the Balto-Slavic ā-aorist remains subject to debate, but it seems clear that the ā-aorist acquired a durative function in Balto-Slavic. Building on these previous studies, it is argued in this paper that the Baltic ā-preterit developed through a merger of at least two different Balto- Slavic categories. The article will also describe both how the merger might have taken place, and how the Baltic ā-preterit might have been organized through the merger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how pluractionality is expressed in Macuxi (Cariban), a South American Indigenous language spoken in Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela. Cross-linguistically, the multiplicity of an action can be expressed by means of specialized pluractional morphemes affixed on verbs, via adverbs, or by reduplication. Previous work on Macuxi claimed that the iterative suffix -pîtî indicates a multiplicity of actions, whereas verbal reduplication is mentioned but scarcely described, and is associated with the interpretation of multiple events. Based on data from context-based elicitation, we show that verbal reduplication is impacted by Aktionsart (activity and semelfactive verbs, which denote unbounded, atelic events, have a higher tendency to be reduplicated) and that reduplicated verbs are often associated with an intensity interpretation. On the other hand, the suffix -pîtî functions as a pluractional marker that encodes a multiplicity of events and is predictable via a Lasersohnian analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that the notion of telicity was simply defined by English linguists as a situation which tends towards a goal, this paper will additionally explain and define telicity in the English language. Moreover, the issue of telicity in the Serbian and Romanian relevant linguistic literature has been scarcely analysed. This paper aims to ascertain and define telicity as an indispensable semantic characteristic of Serbian and Romanian verbs. Since the paper proves that the concept of telicity can be detected in languages other than English, telicity can and should be considered a linguistic universal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annual Review of the Faculty of Philosophy / Godisnjak Filozofskog Fakulteta is the property of Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Slavia Meridionalis is the property of Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Slavic Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Malay corpus shows that the verb 'sampai' (arrive) can occur with the preposition 'ke-' as in 'Sharifah Aini mahu segera sampai ke kampung itu' (Sharifah Aini want to arrive at the village immediately). 'Sampai" can also occur with the preposition 'df - as in 'Nisa terbangun ketika sampai di Tanjung Malim.' (Nisa awoke when she arrived at Tanjung Malim). Based on data in the corpus, it is discovered that 'sampai' occurs in two locative preposition patterns which are locative direction preposition (ke) and locative position preposition (di). 'Sampai-ke' occurs as an accomplishment (which has the features + duration and + telic), meanwhile 'sampai- di' occurs as an achievement (which focuses on felicity). Accordingly, this paper will examine the emergence of locative preposition patterns with 'sampai'. It will determine whether the verb 'sampai' is classified as an achievement verb or an accomplishment verb. Data is amassed from two novels, titled Buih and Nani. Data from both novels were electronically recorded and inputted into the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) Malay corpus data base. The analysis will be based on the aspectual features of the verb focusing on the Aktionsart s representation decomposition classes (Van Valin, 1997, 2005). This paper will further explain the situation that 'sampai di-' and 'sampai ke-' can occur in sentences. It also concludes that 'sampai' should occur with the locative preposition 'di', not with the preposition 'ke' based on the semantics properties of the verb 'sampai' as an achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annual Review of the Faculty of Philosophy / Godisnjak Filozofskog Fakulteta is the property of Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents a newly defined system of the grammatical categories aspect, aktionsart and verb type (character). The aim is to explain the existence of semantically marked perfective verbs in Czech which express the last phase of the process expressed by the imperfective verb and/or its effective/resultative character – the successful completion (e.g. dočkat se and čekat). There are similarities in German and other languages (e.g. suchen and finden, search and find). The paper describes not only the position of these verbs in the aspectological system, but the relations between the two given verbs (the effective and the imperfective) as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aspect refers to different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation. It is divided into grammatical and lexical aspects. The focus of “grammatical aspect” is on the event being completed, in progress, or prospective, while in “lexical aspect”, such characteristics as dynamicity, duration, and telicity are considered based on the inherent meaning of the verb. Predicates referring to future are usually different from those denoting past or present; the events related to the past have happened, those related to the present are in progress, and a prospective event refers to the possibility of its occurrence in future, thus being neither true nor false at the moment of speaking. Speakers talk about the events related to future in various syntactic and morphological forms with different degrees of certainty. The objective of this paper was to analyze the prospective aspect of Aktionsart in Persian based on a functional approach so as to determine which aspectual classes could be used in prospective aspect. The data were collected from the spoken and written sentences used in the websites, mass media, and daily conversations. Considering data showed that most state verbs, due to the non-agentivity of their subject, cannot denote prospective aspect, but in some cases context is determinative in representing prospectivity. The distinction between progression and prospective aspect in activity verbs is mostly context-dependent. Progression in achievement verbs usually refers to the events that will happen imminently, while the possibility of the event to happen imminently or distantly from the present moment can be represented in accomplishments with regard to the context. Therefore, perfective, imperfective, and perfect aspects could represent prospective aspect of Aktionsart in Persian regarding some contextual characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studies in Polish Linguistics is the property of Jagiellonian University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics is the property of Nordic Council for Reindeer Husbandry Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper offers a syntactic and semantic analysis of the Czech construction with intensive meaning, derived from the prefix na- and the clitic pronoun se. The analysis is framed in scalar approaches to verbal prefixation (Součková 2004, Filip 2008, Kagan 2015). For the verbal lexical semantic representation, we make use of the event structure from the Generative Lexicon framework (Pustejovsky 1991, 1995), which is a representation of the internal makeup of events in terms of subevents or phases. The research is based on data extracted from the Czech Ten Ten 2017 corpus, using the Sketch Engine query program (Kilgarriff et al. 2004). The application of Pustejovsky's event structure theory allows us to shift the attention to the whole event denoted by the construction, thus allowing for an alternative analysis of the Czech verbal construction with intensive meaning, traditionally analyzed as the result of a word formation process. After briefly outlining the Generative Lexicon theory, we analyze the role of each individual component of the Czech verbal intensive construction with the prefix na- and the clitic pronoun se. First of all, we consider the role of the clitic morpheme se, to understand whether it behaves as a reflexive pronoun. Secondly, we examine the role of the prefix na-, comparing its quantificational function in the transitive construction and in the intensive one. Thirdly, we consider the function of the genitive direct object. We then analyze the semantic features of the subject-participant, to determine whether it does co-occur with adverbs of intentionality. Lastly, we devote attention to the telicity of the verbal predicates appearing in the Czech intensive construction, to understand which kind of events they denote in terms of Pustejovsky's event structure theory, and where the event focus lies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Prilozi Proucavanju Jezika is the property of Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper deals with the interaction of verbal aspect and the type of verb situation (Aktionsart) by analyzing the influence of semantic characteristics such as stativity, duration and telicity on aspect in English and Romanian. The paper argues that aspect is related to boundedness in the sense that perfective aspect “binds” the situation which has a goal, while imperfective aspect does not. Thus the semantic notion of boundedness provides a more detailed and deeper analysis of situations with the distinctive feature [+ goal] by pointing out whether the goal was actually reached or not.

The variation of the two past tense auxiliaries (HAVE and BE) is a well-studied phenomenon in European languages, especially in the West Germanic varieties. So far, however, the situation in Eastern Yiddish has not been examined. This paper focuses on auxiliary selection in these Yiddish dialects based on data from the Language and Culture Archive of Ashkenazic Jewry , which were collected in the 1960s. Like most of the current works on this topic, the following analysis uses and discusses Sorace's (1993, 2000) Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy, which allows to examine the Yiddish structures in light of historical and diatopic evidence from other Germanic varieties, particularly German and Dutch. The main focus is on intransitive verbs that show a high degree of variation—state verbs, controlled and uncontrolled motional process verbs, and change-of-state verbs. However, the Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy also has weaknesses, as is demonstrated in the following. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aspect and Aktionsart are both categories that codify information on the internal temporal structure of states of affairs. In traditional studies on aspectuality, a very strict distinction between them is usually made. Aspect is an obligatory grammatical (morphosyntactic) verbal category, which must therefore be expressed in all languages whose verbal systems allow it. Aktionsart is a lexical verbal category and is not subject to such restraints in individual languages. This “bidimensional” perspective – widespread in Linguistics and even more so in Romance Linguistics (see, among many others, Bertinetto 1986; Smith 1991; Squartini 1998) – contrasts with a less common “unidimensional” approach (De Miguel 1999; Verkuyl 1972, 1993). The latter advocates the semantic identity of what, in terms of the linguistic analysis of individual languages, is considered either grammatical or lexical aspect.In this paper, an analysis of aspectuality as a semantic-functional category comprising both aspect and Aktionsart will be introduced by means of a new unidimensional model, which has an onomasiological background and is based on frame semantics (see Dessì Schmid 2014, 2019). In accordance with many studies on cognitive semantics, aspectuality is defined as the structuring of states of affairs through delimitation or bounding (see, e.g., Smith 1997; Bickel 1997; Langacker 1987, 2006; Talmy 1996, 2000); this delimitation principle is further developed and applied in a highly extended and structured way.The paper will focus on French examples but will also consider some data from other Romance languages, although it is applicable to any individual language.

Copyright of Diachronica is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present paper aims at presenting a short study of the prefixed forms of the Polish verb pić ('to drink') (napić, wypić, popić, przepić, opić, zapić, etc.) and their French equivalents found in two parallel corpora: Glosbe and Reverso Context. In the fi rst part, selected theoretical approaches concerning the verbal prefixation in Polish are discussed, with particular attention to the hypothesis of "perfective hypercategory" by Włodarczyk and Włodarczyk (2001b). The second part focuses on the results of the contrastive Polish-French analysis. The research is carried out in the general framework of the Aktionsarten theory and tries to discover by which linguistic means (grammatical and/or lexical) the French language expresses different semantic values conveyed by the Polish prefixes. The results of the analysis are appropriately formalized according to the principles of the object-oriented approach by Banyś (2002a, b), i.e. described by the syntactic-semantic schemes (which, after several changes of specification, can be applied in the machine translation programs). The purpose of the investigation is, therefore, twofold: theoretical, since it is the matter of discovering certain relations between two languages expressing differently a given linguistic phenomenon, and practice, which consists in formulating interlinguistic correspondence rules for the purpose of the Polish-French translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on aspectual progressives in English and accounts for the interaction of the progressive aspect and Aktionsart by treating verbs as lexically underspecified for stativity and punctuality. Since Vendler (1957), it has largely been assumed that state and achievement verbs are incompatible with progressives (e.g. * I am knowing the answer and * I am recognising a mistake ). Yet, according to Dowty (1972, 1979), Mourelatos (1978), Bach (1981) and Biber et al . (1999), among others, there are progressives that are resistant to this line of analysis (e.g. We are living in London and John is dying ). The present account reconciles these positions by proposing that verbs are partially underspecified for aspectual type in the lexicon. More specifically, the proposed account follows Van Valin & LaPolla (1997) in treating Vendler's (1957) verb classes in terms of bundles of binary-valued features, namely [±static], [±telic] and [±punctual]. However, unlike in Van Valin & LaPolla (1997), these features are not fully specified in lexical entries. States are lexically unspecified for the distinctive feature [static]. The feature [punctual], which characterises achievements, likewise remains unspecified in the lexicon. The key idea of the present account is that the value of any unspecified feature F is resolved once in a given context by the use of certain adverbials and so on. By invoking the notion of ‘underspecification', it is possible to accommodate counterexamples to Vendler's (1957) claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper approaches Ancient Greek aspect from a modern systemic functional framework. Its primary claim is that three metafunctions or dimensions (ideational, textual, and interpersonal) are necessary but also sufficient to account for all of the individual main clause verbs in historical narrative. The basic semantic value of the present and aorist aspects in Ancient Greek is the ideational meaning of unboundedness vs. boundedness. This opposition has led to opposite values on two other levels of meaning: (a) a textual meaning of background vs. foreground, discourse cohesion, and anticipation; and (b) an interpersonal meaning of internal vs. external perspective. This paper aims to apply this three-dimensional approach to a semantic analysis of a number of excerpts from Thucydides’ Histories III, to find out what the default metafunction is in narrative, and to demonstrate the balanced interplay between all three levels of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Persian, two of the verbal constructions used for expressing futurity – the Past Simple and the Future Simple – are built around the past form of the main verb. This paper seeks to demystify this connection between the past and the future by investigating how these past forms contribute to the expression of futurity and setting this within an overall analysis of the future constructions in this language. Based on the form of the main verb in 940 sentences with verbal future constructions, six constructions were identified and categorized into future-oriented past constructions (FPST), which include the Past Simple and the Future Simple, and future-oriented present constructions (FPRT), which include the Present Simple, the Present Progressive, the Present Subjunctive and the WANT construction. A construction grammar approach together with Reichenbach and neo-Reichenbach terminology was then utilized to distinguish the differing relations between tense, aspect, mood and speaker perspective, and assign syntactic-semantic maps in terms of features such as level of formality, perfectness, intended future, certainty and inner aspect (aktionsart) to each of the FPST and FPRT constructions. It is argued that the use of the past form of the main verb in the Past Simple and the Future Simple (FPST constructions) owes much to aspectual and ontological factors, with the past element indicating certainty, perfectness and a speaker perspective of looking back. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractAspect refers to different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation. It is divided into grammatical and lexical aspects. The focus of “grammatical aspect” is on the event being completed, in progress, or prospective, while in “lexical aspect”, such characteristics as dynamicity, duration, and telicity are considered based on the inherent meaning of the verb. Predicates referring to future are usually different from those denoting past or present; the events related to the past have happened, those related to the present are in progress, and a prospective event refers to the possibility of its occurrence in future, thus being neither true nor false at the moment of speaking. Speakers talk about the events related to future in various syntactic and morphological forms with different degrees of certainty. The objective of this paper was to analyze the prospective aspect of Aktionsart in Persian based on a functional approach so as to determine which aspectual classes could be used in prospective aspect. The data were collected from the spoken and written sentences used in the websites, mass media, and daily conversations. Considering data showed that most state verbs, due to the non-agentivity of their subject, cannot denote prospective aspect, but in some cases context is determinative in representing prospectivity. The distinction between progression and prospective aspect in activity verbs is mostly context-dependent. Progression in achievement verbs usually refers to the events that will happen imminently, while the possibility of the event to happen imminently or distantly from the present moment can be represented in accomplishments with regard to the context. Therefore, perfective, imperfective, and perfect aspects could represent prospective aspect of Aktionsart in Persian regarding some contextual characteristics.Keywords: Prospective Aspect, Aktionsart, Grammatical Aspect, Functional Approach, Persian IntroductionOne function of language is to represent things that happen in the world and the participants involved in those situations are named reference and predication. The phenomena in the world or “state of affairs” are grouped into 4 basic types: situation, event, process, and action (Van Valin and Lapolla, 1997: 82). Based on these states of affairs, Vendler (1967) classified verbs into 4 main types, including state, activity, achievement, and accomplishment, which are known as “lexical aspect” or “Aktionsart”. These classes are distinguished by characteristics, such as stativity, telicity, and duration. States do not involve action, lack an inherent endpoint, and usually refer to internal feelings, properties, and locations. Activities involve action but have no inherent endpoints. Achievements are instantaneous changes of state that create a new situation, while accomplishments are the changes of state that take place over a longer time (Pavey, 2010:94-98).Grammatical aspect that is expressed by some auxiliaries and inflections (Comrie, 1976: 9) is sometimes called “viewpoint aspect” (Smith, 1997: 126) or “outer aspect” (Travis, 2010: 2). For example, in the sentence “Ali david” (Ali ran), it seems that the speaker is looking at the situation from outside, while in “Ali dārad mi-davad” (Ali is running), the internal structure of the situation is focused on without considering its beginning and end and the sentence “Ali dar Olympic-e 2025 mi-davad" (Ali runs in the Olympic Games in 2025) refers to an event that may happen in future. These sentences have perfective, imperfective, and prospective aspects, respectively. As Dinsmore (1982) has stated, we talk about situations as they happen chronologically. Different structures in Persian, such as simple past, present progressive, and some perfect structures, can represent prospective aspect. This paper investigated prospective aspect of Aktionsart in Persian based on a functional approach in order to determine which aspectual classes could denote prospective aspect. The data were gathered from the written and spoken sources used in the websites, mass media, and daily conversations. The data were classified into different lexical aspects and those having prospective aspect were then investigated. Materials and MethodsTemporal information related to eventualities is stated in various ways in different languages. For instance, tense refers to an event situation regarding other tenses, such as past, present, and future, while aspect refers to internal temporal constituency of that situation; hence, they refer to situation-external time and situation-internal time, respectively (Comrie, 1976: 5). Events referring to future, which are known as prospective as Cheung (2017) has noted, need the two components of futurity and expectancy of the event. According to Coghill (2010), differences in the form and function of prospective construction and future tense reflect different origins and ages of the two mentioned constructions. The difference is that prospective construction refers to the present state that exists before a future situation and may or may not occur. In other words, it does not predict a future situation. Furthermore, prospective forms, which accept inanimate subjects, differ from intention forms (Nevskaya, 2005). According to Rafiei (2017), 4 constructions represent prospective forms of in Persian: present progressive with “dāštan” (to have), “xāstan” (to want), “raftan” (to go), and the idiomatic construction “dar šorof-e” with infinitive and verb “be”. In Persian, some aspectual classes can represent events occurring in future, which was investigated in this paper. Discussion and ConclusionIn the recent grammar books of Persian, the auxiliary “xāstan” (“to want”) that is inflected for person and number, besides implying the past stem of the main verb, is mostly introduced as a future construction (Bateni, 1969; Shafaei, 1984; NatelKhanlari, 1991; Anvari and Givi, 1991; Lazard, 1992; Mahootiyan, 1997), while future can be expressed in other syntactic or morphological forms as well. As Dahl (2000: 313) has stated, there is a preparatory context in prospective aspect that is already in place at the time of speaking and its outcome is an extrapolation, while a state of affair is predicted in a dedicated future tense. For example, the sentence “Goldān dārad mi-oftad” (The vase is falling) refers to an event that may occur imminently despite progression of the achievement verb or in the sentence “Vaghti man residam, zang mi-zanam” (When I arrive, I will call), the achievement verb in perfective aspect refers to an event that may occur after speech time in future. In “Ta fardā, nāme rā nevešte-am” (Till tomorrow, I will have written the letter), the perfect aspect of the accomplishment verb actually refers to the completion of the verb in future. In this sentence, the temporal adverb and positive form of the sentence are the important factors for denoting future. Investigating prospective aspect of Aktionsart in Persian in this study revealed that state verbs could not denote prospective aspect due to non-agentivity of their subjects and their contexts were determinative in most cases. Activity verbs in perfective, imperfective, and perfect aspects could refer to prospective aspect if they had some adverbs denoting future time. Imperfective aspect in achievement verbs usually refers to imminent future as noted by Rezai (2012) and Gyarmathy (2015). Depending on the existence of a future temporal adverb and the positive form of a verb, accomplishment verbs in imperfective and perfect aspects could denote prospective aspect and otherwise, their common function would be understood.

Copyright of Journal for Languages & Literatures of the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad / Zbornik za Jezike i Knjizevnosti Filozofskog Fakulteta u Novom Sadu is the property of Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper describes an exploratory approach to two related aspectual phenomena, non-culminating accomplishments and non-culminating construals of implied-result verbs, in the Bantu languages Xhosa and Nyakyusa. While documented for a diverse array of languages, leading to the identification of some cross-linguistic commonalities and axes of variation, these phenomena have so far not been studied for any continental African language. Both Xhosa and Nyakyusa license non-culminating accomplishments but differ regarding the felicity of such construals with different sub-types of accomplishments in relation to event progress, a decisive factor being that Nyakyusa possesses verbal partitive morphology. Concerning the non-culmination of implied-result verbs, both languages show such readings and support prior cross-linguistic findings that zero change readings are more readily available with agentive subjects. The data further point to the potential role of causative morphology as a parameter of variation to be considered in further comparative research on these verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with verb-particle constructions in Italian, i.e. complex predicates formed by a verbal base and a modifying post-verbal particle. In recent years a lot of interest has been devoted to these constructions in the Germanic languages, and investigation has been focusing mostly on their structure. Recently, some studies have shown that similar constructions also exist in the Italian language. Our contribution adopts a constructionist approach and aims at improving our knowledge of the properties of verb-particle constructions in Italian with particular reference to semantics and Aktionsart. The paper shows that Italian post-verbal particles contribute to the Aktionsart of verb-particle constructions. Even though Italian does not present a coherent system of actional particles, there are nonetheless some traces of regularity. One case in point is the emergence of a specific verbparticle construction with via ’away’ that developed an actional function. The paper also discusses the diachronic and synchronic relationship between verbal prefixes and post-verbal particles, trying to determine whether these two strategies cooperate or compete in the expression of locative and aspectual meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The observational point of departure in this paper is that infinitivals (in Dutch and German) have no tense. Apparent counterexamples to this claim can be shown to involve aspect/Aktionsarten rather than tense. There is consequently no reason to posit any of the functional shell structure associated with tense. Hence, the infinitival markers (zu, te) may be assumed to be in (or close to) the VP. This is in accordance with the observation that these infinitival markers are always directly adjacent to the verb, which makes them similar to the verbal participial prefix ge-. A Minimalist account of zu/te, which is similar but not identical to ge-, is proposed. The question is then raised how zu (originally a true local-allative preposition) could have become a verbal prefix, and relevant diachronic data are adduced. Finally it is shown that a functionalist, or 'cognitivist', theory of grammaticalization like Haspelmath's misses the point in a number of ways. A more formalist theory of 'grammaticalizing reanalysis' is proposed as a better alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A good number of lexical and grammatical models make use of systems of meaning representation which are based on a theory of event structure. Theories of event structure quite often take aspectual features as the backbone for the semantic representation of symbolic units, i.e predicates and constructions. One of the most comprehensive and detailed proposals for the aspectual characterization of both lexical units and argumental constructions can be found in the Lexical Constructional Model, which in turn is based on the system for semantic representations from Role and Reference Grammar. However, such a system presents some drawbacks, which stem mainly from not establishing a neat distinction between what is properly lexical and what is contributed by higher constructional units in the denotation of specific events. Taking such a distinction as a basic premise for a sound characterization of events, in this paper a reassessment of the typology of aspectual classes from these models is made; this critical revision is followed by a hierarchical reorganization of such aspectual classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of transparent gerunds in Spanish, as in ¿Qué llegó [silbando ] Juan? 'What arrived [whistling ] Juan?', using a decomposition of Aktionsart in a series of syntactic heads. A traditional analysis of these secondary predicates as adjuncts would undermine well-established syntactic principles restricting movement and extraction. We argue that these transparent gerunds should be analyzed as syntactic constituents merged as part of the syntactic projections associated with Aktionsart. More precisely, they qualify as RhemePs - assuming Ramchand's First Phase Syntax system - thus allowing their arguments to be extracted. Well-attested differences between Spanish and English gerunds will be explained in our analysis by proposing that the Spanish gerund projects as PathP (given it carries a path preposition), whereas English gerunds are simply RhemeP (lacking any sort of preposition). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Actionality (also referred to by labels such as "lexical aspect" or "aktionsart") is the semantic dimension that encodes the constituent phases and boundaries of situations. Despite its central role in aspectual interpretation, careful language-specific descriptions and typological surveys of actional systems have been rare thus far. In this introduction, we describe the steps that lead to the compilation of the present special issue. We discuss several theoretical and methodological challenges that both field linguists and typologists face when investigating actional systems in the languages of the world and we point out some of the important insights to be gained from such endeavors. We then proceed to give an overview of the individual and varied contributions that make up this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mesqan is a South Ethio-Semitic tongue which is mainly worn in day-to-day message by a people of 179,737 communities in the Gurage Zone, Ethiopia, whose linguistic skin was not well expressed. The inner aspire of this paper is to offer a complete account of tense, aspect, mood and aktionsart structures of the Mesqan tongue. The paper is expressive in character, as the lessons are mostly worried with telling what is really being in the tongue, and mostly rely on main linguistic facts. The linguistic facts, i.e. the elicited grammatical facts regarding tense, aspect, mood and aktionsart, were composed from local speakers of the tongue during 12 months of fieldwork mannered among 2011 and 2012 in four Mesqan villages and in Butajira, the managerial hub of the Mesqan Woreda. The perfective aspect in the tongue emphasizes the endpoint of the oral state with dynamic verbs, but the imperfective aspect relates with the lexical semantics of the verb, which can be practical when their purposes with stative and dynamic verbs are evaluated. Concerning tense, the past and the non-past tense in the tongue are distinguished by assisting verbs and a verb in the imperfective aspect is able to happen with states in the past and in the non-past, i.e. present or future. Future time can also be uttered by an anticipated act throughout the grouping of the future. In addition, an action happening in the past and still around in the tongue is marked by a zero morpheme in the present perfect. Concerning mood, the language has agent-oriented moods that are articulated by verb inflection, and speaker-oriented moods that are articulated by a periphrastic structure. Regarding aktionsart that denotes a specific phase in a verbal condition, like period, regularity, etc. Mesqan has two aktionsarten which are noticeable by periphrastic structures, that is the progressive and the prospective.

This paper analyses passivisation in chiShona within the Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) theoretical framework. We treat passives as operations on the argument structure of a verb, represented as a nested list just like causatives. We describe passive typology and explicate its morpho-syntactic characteristics with regards to complex predication. We conclude, in contradistinction to the valence altering causative counterpart that, though passives are complex morphologically, on the overall, they are not complex predicates. Our conclusions are based on the unavailability of aktionsart alternations, lack of event modification and the inability to be accounted for through argument composition. We reveal that chiShona intransitives passivise, which is evidence that passivisation is a backgrounding rather than foregrounding operation. We examine the relationship between passives and causatives, discovering that different passivisation possibilities are available, which depend on whether the causative type is morphological or periphrastic. Well-formed constructions are accounted for through HPSG formalism and the semantic meta-theory Lexical Resource Semantics constraint satisfaction mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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The aim of the present paper is twofold. It re-examines one meaning of aller + infinitive in French in terms of mirativity, a cross-linguistic category encoding surprising or unexpected information, and it proposes a comparison with two go-constructions in English:go V-ing and the binomial phrase go and V. The analysis is based on a sample of utterances drawn from French and English corpora (Frantext, BNC). It is argued that these constructions express surprise mainly in association with a negative evaluative judgement. It is also contended that mirativity intersects with Aktionsart. In French, aller + infinitive introduces a comment on the initial boundary. In English, a range of aspectual shades of meaning are conveyed by the two go-constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a typology of partitive aspectual operators based on whether an operator: (i) requires (non-)proper event parts in the extension of the VP that it combines with and (ii) imposes a 'maximal stage requirement', which is satisfied when a VP-event culminates or ceases to develop further in the actual world. I provide evidence for such a typology by looking at the Russian imperfective, the Hindi perfective and the English progressive. I argue that each of these languages has a partitive, aspectual operator that fills a distinct cell in the proposed typology. The typology is important because it allows us to dispense with Smith's (The parameter of aspect. Kluwer, Dordrecht, ) notion of 'neutral aspect' used to classify aspectual forms as having properties of both the perfective and the imperfective. In particular, the typology reveals that an operator is perfective if it requires a maximal stage of an event in the extension of the VP that it combines with; an operator is imperfective if it requires a stage of an event in the extension of the VP that it combines with, but this stage need not be maximal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The kernel of the semantic representation of a predicate in Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) is based on its characterization in terms of an Aktionsart typology based on Vendler's (1957) classes plus some additional elements from Smith (1997) and Dowty (1979). This means that event structures are mainly considered a lexical phenomenon pertaining to predicates, and only occasionally higher predicational structures are considered in event construction. Even though this approach is adequate to a great extent, there are still some problems in the approach taken in RRG. The most significant drawback is that non-lexical aspects appear intermingled with predicate-only features, which leads to misinterpretations and misclassifications of predicates. Consequently, it sees more sensible to bring a functional model of grammar like RRG to a compromise position and, thus, consider in what ways different units identified as belonging to the different layers in RRG's syntactic projections 'conspire' in the final aspectual characterization of events. In this line, this paper will propose a classification of aspectual features in terms of the levels found in the functional projection of the clause as devised in RRG, namely the Predicate Level (the domain of Aktionsart typology), the Nucleus (where morphological aspect has scope) and the Core (the locus for what will be described as 'aspectuality' features). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore some previously unanalysed interactions between verbal aktionsart and prepositional complementation in Norwegian, namely the alternations between a DP object and PP complements with på ‘on/at’ and til ‘to/at’. We argue that a simple account based on [±telic] or [±quantized] features cannot be correct. Instead, we generalize the notion of path and homomorphism, and integrate it in a syntactic theory of how complex events are built up compositionally. The path structure introduced by the PP interacts with the path structure of the VP to produce complex events based on ‘homomorphic unity’ in much the same way as has been argued for in the Verb + Nominal domain (Krifka 1992). Specifically, an extended location (a på-PP) in the complement of and activity verb (in our terms, a process subevental projection) gives rise to a non-directed path for the event; a point location ( a til-PP) in the complement of an accomplishment verb (one which in our terms will contain a result subevental projection) gives rise to the specification of an endpoint.

Copyright of Lenguas Modernas is the property of Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Filosofia y Humanidades and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, we argue that by making a careful distinction between the notions of inchoativity and telicity, we can gain new insight into how changes of state can be expressed in natural language. Our argument is based on an analysis of Spanish reflexive psychological verbs (SRPVs) such as aburrirse 'to be/become bored' and enfadarse 'to become angry.' We present diagnostics that clearly support the claim that while these verbs are inchoative, they are not telic, nor do they denote changes of state. Additional tests indicate that these verbs are not dynamic, either; however, we show that they lack dynamicity for different reasons: aburrirse verbs, because they are stative; enfadarse verbs, because they denote truly punctual eventualities. We present a formal semantic analysis using the event ontology proposed in Piñón (). This analysis allows us to capture very naturally the similarities and differences between the two subclasses of SRPVs, to characterize their inchoativity, and to distinguish it from telicity. In addition, it supports a view of the Vendlerian aspectual classes on which the achievement class describes truly punctual eventualities and excludes certain predicates commonly (if not universally) assumed to belong to this class, such as the so-called degree achievement verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Verba: Anuario Galego de Filoloxia is the property of Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Servicio de Publicaciones and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Synthetic and Analytical Means of Expressing Aktionsart in the Ukrainian and Serbian Languages The paper analyzes the aktionsart verb classes and aktionsart constructions as means of expressing aktionsart in the Ukrainian and Serbian languages. We single out four complexes of aktionsart meanings: phasal, determinative, plural, and gradual. For each of them, we determine the type and composition of the means of expression with the aim of observing the mutual relationship between these means and the similarities and differences in their functioning in the analyzed languages. Based on the analysis, we conclude that analytical means, although not central, are relatively represented in both languages, especially in the sphere of qualitative aktionsart, and that, although there are appropriate word-formation models in both languages, the Serbian language favors analytical, and the Ukrainian synthetic means of expressing aktionsart. Syntetyczne i analityczne środki wyrażania akcjonalności w języku ukraińskim i serbskim W artykule przeanalizowano aktionsarten czasowników oraz konstrukcji jako sposoby wyrażania akcjonalności w językach ukraińskim i serbskim. Wyróżniamy cztery klasy znaczeń akcjonalnych – fazowość, determinatywność, mnogość i stopniowość – i dla każdego z nich ustalamy typ i skład środków wyrażania w celu zdefiniowania wzajemnych relacji między tymi środkami, jak też podobieństwa i różnice w ich funkcjonowaniu w analizowanych językach. Na podstawie przeprowadzonej analizy dochodzimy do wniosku, że środki analityczne, choć nie centralne, są stosunkowo często reprezentowane w obu językach, zwłaszcza w sferze jakościowej aktionsart, i że choć w obu językach istnieją odpowiednie modele słowotwórcze, to język serbski jest bardziej skłonny do analitycznych, a ukraiński do syntetycznych środków wyrażania aktionsarten.

Abstract In Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), based on stativity, telicity, and punctuality, verbs are classified into six classes named state, activity, achievement, accomplishment, semelfactive, and active-accomplishment. The predicates in these classes can take one, two, or three argument(s) according to the number of participants involved in an event as well as the argument structure of the verb. Three-place predicates need three distinct arguments and they exhibit some abstract or concrete transition or movement in their conceptual structure. The argument in three-place predicates, undergoing alternation, can appear in more than one syntactic format; that is to say, in unmarked structures, direct object is ‘râ’-marked and the indirect object is accompanied by a preposition. This is while in marked or alternate form, the preposition is deleted and the non-macrorole argument receives the role of direct object. In Persian, like many other languages, the frequency of three-place predicates, in comparison with one and two-place predicates, is low, but knowing their behavior is significant for better applying them in related contexts. Employing framework of RRG, this paper, aims to investigate alternation in three-place predicates of Aktionsart in Persian. The data are collected from various web sites, newspapers, books, and also daily conversations. Data analysis shows that state verbs do not undergo alternation; This is mainly because common characteristics of state verbs are their non-action nature and being low transitive or intransitive. Most verbs in this class need one or two argument(s) and low number of three-place predicates in this class, shows no alternation due to stativity and low transitivity. Motion active-accomplishment verbs, however, are more prone to alternation; concrete transition from an actor to a recipient is common among these verbs. Some three-place predicates in achievement class, have alternation; while alternation in accomplishment class, leads mostly to ungrammatical structure. Generally speaking, alternation in three-place predicates is the result of marked selection of the recipient, and is mostly observed in motion active-accomplishment verbs; the reason is non-stativity and high transitivity of this subclass in comparison to other verb classes. Keywords: Alternation; Three-place predicates; Aktionsart; Role and Reference Grammar; Persian Introduction [do' (x, ø)] CAUSE [BECOME predicate' (y, z)] Three-place predicates have an agent-like participant, a recipient, and a theme, which is typically taken as some abstract or concrete things or information conveyed by an agent to a recipient (Margetts and Austin, 2007). The existence of three distinct arguments is obligatory in three-place predicates (Tabibzadeh, 2007). The three-place predicate in clause (2a) has three distinct arguments, while the lack of prepositional object in (2b), and the lack of direct object in (2c), leads to ungrammatical clauses. (2) a. (Ɂu) čand qâšoq Ɂâb (râ) be bimâr dâd-ø. (s/he) some spoon water (OBJM) to patient give-PST.3SG ‘(S/he) gave some spoon of water to the patient.’ b. ? (Ɂu) čand qâšoq Ɂâb (râ) dâd-ø. (s/he) some spoon water (OBJM) give-PST.3SG ‘?(S/he gave some spoon of water.’ c. ? (Ɂu) be bimâr dâd-ø. (S/he) to patient give-PST.3SG ‘?(S/he) gave to the patient.’ Thus said, in three-place predicates, the existence of three distinct arguments, including agent, recipient and theme is taken for granted, i.e., Agent is the argument which initiates an event or an action, theme is the argument which is being possessed in an abstract or concrete manner, and recipient is the one which possess something (Rezai and Hooshmand, 2012). In the unmarked form of three-place predicates, indirect object is accompanied by a preposition, but in a marked or alternate form, it is râ-marked and placed in the direct object position. In most languages, according to Newman (1998) and Nass (2007: 214), the verb ‘give’ dâdan, is the prototype of three-place predicates. The alternate structure of (2a) above, is (3), in which the indirect object is râ-marked and placed after the agent in a marked structure. (3) (Ɂu) bimâr râ čand qâšoq Ɂâb dâd-ø. (s//he) patient OBJM some spoon water give-PST.3SG ‘(S/he) gave the patient some spoon of water.’ Although it seems that clauses (2a) and (3) are semantically analogous, closer investigations indicate that some factors, such as information structure, and argument prominence are involved in bringing about nuanced meanings. Furthermore, argument alternation does not hold true in all classes of action type. Verbs in RRG, are classified into state, activity, achievement, accomplishment, semelfactive, and active-accomplishment. This categorization is grounded upon stativity, telicity, and punctuality (Van Valin, 2005, p.33). States entail no action, and their subclasses include existence, cognition, emotion, possession, and perception verbs. Action verbs are dynamic and lack punctuality and telicity. Subclasses of action verbs are motion, performance, consumption, creation, and directed perception verbs. Achievement verbs are telic and occur in a short time; therefore, there is an overlap between their start and end points. Accomplishment verbs are telic, like achievement verbs, but they occur in a durative time. Semelfactives are punctual, but they lack telicity. Active accomplishment verbs are dynamic and telic, but they are non-punctual. There are different views regarding alternation in three-place predicates of Aktionsart. Krifka (2003) classifies the views in three general classes, namely monosemy, polysemy, and information structure view. The monosemy view holds that the propositional object construction and direct object construction have the same meaning and they are related to each other by a syntactic derivation, which is not sensitive to the meaning of the verbs. In polysemy view, verbs opt for the syntactic environment in which they occur. In information structure view, differences in the information structure are being focused. Materials and Methods The present study seeks to find out the possibility of alternation in different three-place predicates and its relation to Aktionsart in Persian. This is intended to figure out what verb classes undergo argument alternation. The data for the present study come from different web sites, books, newspapers, and also daily conversations. Having three arguments in a clause was the essential criterion for choosing data. The related data were then classified based on Aktionsart, in different groups and their alternations were investigated. The considered classes are states, active-accomplishments, achievements, and accomplishments. Insofar as the second argument in three-place arguments is mostly râ-marked, instead of activity class, active-accomplishment class is included in this study. What differentiate activity and active-accomplishment classes are markedness and referentiality of the object in the latter class. Discussion and Conclusion Investigating alternation in three-place predicates, regarding different classes and subclasses of Aktionsart, leads to the following results. State verbs denote no action and include existence, cognition, emotion, possession, and perception verbs. As the state verbs entail no action, they mostly need one or two argument(s) to convey the related meaning. Therefore, there is a low frequency of three-place predicates in this class and if there is any, the alternation leads to ungrammatical structure. The subclasses of action verbs include motion, performance, consumption, creation, and directed perception verbs. Among them, motion verbs are more prone to alternation. In (4a), the action verb has three arguments; direct object is râ-marked and indirect object is accompanied by a preposition. The alternation of this clause is (4b) in which the preposition is deleted and indirect object is râ-marked. (4) a. Lebâs-e garm râ be bače pušând-ø. clothes-Ez[1] warm OBJM to baby put on-PST.3SG ‘S/he put the warm clothes on the baby.’ b. Bače râ lebâs-e garm pušând-ø. baby OBJM clothes-Ez warm put on-PST.3SG ‘S/he put the warm clothes on the baby.’ The common characteristic of motion verbs is transitivity and they include transferring energy from an actor to an undergoer. The alternation in performance verbs entails having some concrete themes. In (5a), the direct object is râ-marked and the indirect object is accompanied by a preposition.The alternation of this clause is (5b) in which the indirect object is râ-marked and placed after the actor. (5) a. Ɂu čâei râ be mâ tâɁârof kard-ø. s/he tea OBJM to us offer do-PST.3SG ‘S/he offered the tea to us.’ b.Ɂu mâ râ čâei tâɁârof kard-ø. s/he us OBJM tea offer do-PST.3SG ‘S/he offered us the tea.’ Some active performance verbs include abstract theme. In most cases, alternations of the clauses containing these verbs, lead to ungrammatical clauses. Other subclasses of activity verbs do not undergo alternation due to having abstract theme or low transitivity. Some achievement verbs have alternation, and alternation in accomplishment verbs mostly leads to ungrammatical structures. Generally speaking, transitivity and physical transfer between an actor and an undergoer are determinant in the alteration of three-place predicates. Furthermore, in classes which show alternation, information structure view can be applied, that is, differences in information structure lead to various forms. Therefore, arguments appear in the clauses according to their prominence. [1]. Ezafe in Persian links a head noun to its modifiers and complement with an unstressed morpheme –e. (See Ghomeshi, 1997 for more discussion.)

Copyright of International Journal of Language Academy is the property of Rota Kariyer and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The senior thesis is a relevant discourse genre to prove academic knowledge and to obtain a university degree. The descriptions of this kind of genre have been focusing on the lexical-grammatical and discursive rhetoric level; as well as in the process of construction and defense of the thesis. The semantic level, however, has been scarcely studied. This paper describes the characteristics of the authorial attribution of knowledge given by the semantic representation of utterances of the introduction and conclusion section. The corpus comprises 364 senior theses of four disciplines. First, we extracted utterances with explicit authorial attribution. Secondly, we constructed the semantic representation of statements according to the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). According to the results, we can highlight the use of the first person plural as the first argument of verbs of activity in structures do' (x, [pred' (x, y)]), mainly in the conclusion section. The thematic role perfomer presents a high frequency in all four disciplines. Speaker and judger are also very frequent in the x argument. Consequently, the most common macro-role is Actor. Finally, it is interesting to note the potential of using RRG in academic discourse analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]