Naive physics vs compositionality in evaluating the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis

Henk J Verkuyl

doi:10.1075/dujal.19004.ver

Abstract

Abstract It will be argued that the LAH suffers from being based on the naive physics originating from ordinary language philosophers, who practiced ontology rather than doing semantics. Their metaphysics turns out to be incompatible with the principle of compositionality. Due to them a verb has been taken as a predicate rather than as a linguistic unit with its own lexical meaning. Therefore the leniency of a verb in the sense of being available for a wide variety of arguments has been underestimated.

Highlights

The title of my contribution to the Leiden SLA-congress was Theoretical Pitfalls for SLA-research into tense, modality and aspect
The present paper will discuss the theoretical foundation of the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (LAH) at a more general level
This allows to focus on unfounded metaphysical assumptions forming the basis for the LAH and to reflect on what a strict compositional approach could mean for L2-research

Summary

Introduction

The title of my contribution to the Leiden SLA-congress was Theoretical Pitfalls for SLA-research into tense, modality and aspect. The use of the periphrastic progressive will not overextend to stative verbs This formulation of the LAH reveals some theoretical assumptions underlying it: in all four points, the assumption that tense forms can be systematically connected with event classes; in 1 and 2, the assumption for Spanish that its pretérito is a perfective past tense rather than a pure tense form without explicitly expressing aspect; and in 3 and 4, the assumption for English that its periphrastic progressive is a potentially universal tense form rather than a peculiarity of English. The present paper argues that a naive-physical perspective on the study of tense and aspect in the past decennia has inevitably been advanced at the cost of compositionality as a linguistic principle governing the construal of phrasal meaning from elementary parts This has put the LAH on the wrong footing. I refer to Verkuyl (2019) for all relevant technical details

At the bottom of a predication

Verb classes

Connecting tense and aspect

Vendler and the Imperfective Paradox

Some conclusive remarks