The Aspectual Meaning of Non-Aspectual Constructions

Abstract

The distinction between perfective and imperfective aspect has been identified in many languages across the world. This paper shows that even languages that do not have a dedicated perfective—imperfective distinction may endow a verbal construction that is not specifically aspectual with a perfective value. The crucial diagnostic for identifying perfectivity in a given non-aspectual construction is a difference in the temporal interpretation of clauses involving that construction, licensed by the actionality class of the main predicate: while stative verbs have a present interpretation, dynamic verbs yield a non-present (past or future) interpretation. This pattern of interaction is triggered by a phenomenon that has been referred to as the ‘present perfective paradox’, i.e., the impossibility of aligning dynamic situations with the time of speaking while at the same time conceptualizing them in their entirety. The latter type of construal is argued to be the main function of perfective aspect. The range of non-aspectual constructions with underlying perfective semantics includes ‘iamitive’ markers, an evidential, an epistemic supposition marker, a focus marker, a polar question marker, and a declarative marker. These constructions come from typologically different and genetically unrelated languages, illustrating the cross-linguistic salience of the category of perfective aspect.