Interactions Between Viewpoint Aspect and Situation Aspect: A Case Study of Alternating Intransitive Constructions in Thai

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing an internal temporal constituency of situations denoted by alternating intransitive constructions (AIC) in Thai in order to subclassify them, and investigating interactions between two viewpoint-aspect markers, namely kamlaƞ and jùu, and each subtype of AICs. According to the scope of a profile on the causal chain, the AICs in Thai are arranged into two main groups, i.e., the AICs denoting a simplex causal situation and the AICs denoting a complex causal situation. In each group, they are further subclassified according to the situation aspect of the denoted situations. In analyzing the interactions between viewpoint aspect and situation aspect, I show that kamlaƞ and jùu both function as imperfective viewpoint-aspect markers because they interact with situation aspect at the phase of the situation without any reference to the boundaries. However, they are distinguished in terms of the semantics of the forms themselves and the semantics of the phase they profile. On the one hand, kamlaƞ functions as a dynamic imperfective viewpoint-aspect marker in that it profiles the dynamic phase of the situations and construes them as on-going processes. On the other hand, jùu functions as a stative imperfective aspect marker. Unlike kamlaƞ , jùu can profile either a static or a dynamic phase. If jùu co-occurs with a static situation, the situation will be construed as a persistent state. If jùu co-occurs with a dynamic one, it refers to the progressive situation, which is viewed as stative. Since the grammatical aspect marker jùu is grammaticalized from the lexical verb meaning ‘to exist,’ there is a remnant of that meaning when jùu functions as a grammatical aspect marker. Consequently, the grammaticalized viewpoint-aspect marker jùu conveys the meaning that there exists a static or dynamic situation on the time line at the reference time or the speech-act time.