Perfective aspect and “Contained Perfectivity”

Abstract

This paper proposes an account of the syntactic basis for determining the relationship between event structure and ‘time-structure’ in simple tenses. In general, event telicity corresponds to temporal boundedness. But there are cases of mismatch, as in (1) and (2): (1) John broke glasses (for an hour); (2) They gave up for a while. It is argued that such cases arise vP-externally in (Viewpoint) Aspect, and concern the mapping from Event-time to Reference-time. The present paper proposes an account of the syntactic relations that underlie the temporal relationship between Reference Time and Event Time, with the goal of explaining (a) the basis for event/ET homomorphism, (b) the typical cases of ET/RT temporal homomorphism, and (c) the circumstances that allow non-homomorphism. Temporal relations are constructed derivationally, starting with event structure. Event structure itself is defined in lexico-syntactic structure, and is not altered in derivations. It is homomorphic with Event-time. Event-time can appear to be altered via partitive antecedence relations with RT.