This paper provides an analysis of the aspectual properties of deictic-presentative constructions headed by It. ecco and Fr. voici/voilà. It will be shown that even though deictic pointing elements do not constitute verbs, they exhibit verb-like characteristics in some regards. As is the case with certain tense forms, the use of these elements anchors the situation pointed out at the moment of speech and at the same time imposes a perspective of simultaneity, which presents it as temporally unbounded and thus imperfective. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that, based on this temporal-aspectual profile, the different types of subconstructions headed by ecco and voilà also impose aspectual readings that go beyond this internal perspective by highlighting events such as resultative states or inchoative events.

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.

From a cognitive‑semantic perspective, two important conceptual schemas underlie determiner use and the count/mass distinction in languages such as English and French, namely bounding and definiteness. This paper investigates to what extent these concepts are related to noun phrase marking in Guianese French Creole (GFC). The corpus‑based analysis shows that GFC uses bare nouns not only with unbounded entities and in non‑referential and generic contexts, but also for representing singular and plural indefinite and definite referents. At the same time, GFC shows a clear count/mass distinction and also has definite and indefinite determiners. However, in contrast to article languages such as English and French, bounding and definiteness need to be examined alongside semantic‑pragmatic and discourse‑informational criteria in order to explain the use of determiners and bare nouns in GFC. Thus, determiner use as a grammatical individuation strategy clearly has a different weight in GFC, which does not fit into cross‑linguistic typologies of articleless and article languages (e.g. Chierchia 1998). The comparative results on GFC, French and English also serve to evaluate two recent typological claims: while they confirm Le Bruyn et al.’s (2017) hypothesis on a correlation between the richness of the article system and the freedom of bare noun use, Abraham et al.’s (2007) claim of a universally complementary distribution of articles and grammatical aspect distinctions in the verb phrase is not supported by the data.

The relationship between future time and future tense forms in Russian is complex. The forms traditionally attributed to the future tense in certain cases do not refer to future time. Those cases have been previously presented as an inventory not representing a plausible cognitive model and/or attributed to the sphere of modality. In this article, we suggest a data-driven approach applied to the spectrum of meanings of Russian future tense forms. We analyzed corpus data and discovered that 44% of perfective future forms and 22% of imperfective future forms do not unambiguously express future time meaning. Among the non-future time meanings that Russian future tense forms can express are Gnomic, Performative, Implicative, Hypothetical, Alternation, and Stable scenario. Furthermore, we propose that the meanings of the future tense constitute a radial category. Future time reference is the prototypical meaning of the future tense. The remaining meanings comprise extensions connected to the prototypical meaning. We describe the radial category with reference to Langacker’s (2008) model of tense and potentiality. Additionally, we explore the interaction of future tense and modality.

This is the video of the talk that was given by Stefan Th. Gries on Tuesday, December 15, 2020

The Lecture Series is a new initiative by the French Cognitive Linguistics Association (AFLiCo). The Association has held successful biennial workshops (AFLiCo JET) for 10 years now, and the 6th edition was due to take place in Grenoble in the fall of 2020. AFLiCo JET workshops have provided a forum for high-quality research in cognitive linguistics and, more generally, usage-based approaches to language (see e.g. CogniTextes special issue 19). With the COVID-19 crisis preventing us from pla...