Aspect Markers Research Articles

Grammatical Representations of the Verb Phrase in Mandarin Chinese: Evidence from Syntactic Priming in Five-Year-Olds

Background/Objectives: Debates regarding how to represent verb phrases (VPs) consisting of the verb plus the complement and the aspectual marker -le in Mandarin Chinese remain an issue. Methods: Syntactic priming under a memory disguise paradigm was employed to investigate the issue using the SVO-ba alternation, where the SVO structure consists of a subject verb object, and the ba structure of a subject ba object verb, in five-year-olds (n = 216), an age with fully fledged grammatical knowledge but little interference from literacy. Results: The results indicate that both the complement and the marker -le should be represented in terms of phrasal rather than morphological structures. When -le is inflected to the verb alone, realization, which makes an event a fact, rather than completion, which makes an event finished, is accomplished. The event must be telicized to a state through a resultative complement to induce reliable production of the ba construction. The postverbal elements represent their own phrasal structure and challenge the verb-centered lexico-syntactic account because there are no additional representations left within a verb. Conclusions: More elicitations of the SVO than the ba invite future neurolinguistic explorations to disentangle the impacts of the frequency and thematic arrangement of agent and patient on grammatical representations cross-linguistically.

Linguistics variation: A case study of Oka - Akoko, Ondo State, Nigeria

The analysis reveals distinct phonological features, such as unique vowel harmony patterns and consonant clusters, that differentiate Ọ̀kà dialects from each other. Syntactic analysis uncovers differences in sentence structure, particularly in verb placement and the use of tense and aspect markers. Lexical comparisons highlight numerous unique terms and expressions in Ọ̀kà, reflecting cultural and environmental influences. This research contributes to the documentation and preservation of the Ọ̀kà dialect, providing insights into the dynamic nature of language and its role in cultural identity. The findings underscore the importance of linguistic diversity and support efforts to promote and sustain minority dialects within larger linguistic communities. It is based on an analysis of phonological and morphophonological features as vowel harmonies and consonant clusters found specifically in both Ọ̀kà dialects and standard Yorùba. Lexical comparisons reveal many hapaxes in Ọ̀kà that illustrate cultural and environmental associations. The study also unpacks sociolinguistic dimensions that shape these variations. This research contributes to the documentation and preservation of the Ọ̀kà dialect, providing insights into the dynamic nature of language and its role in cultural identity. The findings underscore the importance of linguistic diversity and support efforts to promote and sustain minority dialects within larger linguistic communities.

Aspectual Coercion and Lexical Semantics

Abstract In many traditions of aspectual analysis, verbs (or, rather, predications) are sorted into Aristotelian types, and grammatical aspects are seen as operators that (a) take tenseless propositions as arguments and (b) change the eventuality type of the proposition. This tradition tells us little about how state and action clauses mean what they mean, because it does not explain how aspectual markers affect the meanings of verbs with which they combine. In the present framework, aspectually sensitive constructions selectively bind to componential verb representations, permuting them. In part 1 of this series (Michaelis, 2022), I argued that by viewing such permutations as operations on a verb’s Aktionsart structure, we can explain the relationship between input and output situation types of aspectual mappings effected by verbal morphosyntax. In this article, part 2, I apply this framework to type shifts performed by the English Perfect and Progressive constructions, as well as past and present tenses.

Thewo Tibetan’s /ta33/ and /nə33/

Abstract This paper has three aims. First, in its form, this paper uses a narrative style to overtly highlight the iterative process used to identify the meaning of the two suffixes in question. Second, this paper seeks to describe the intricate workings of two verbal suffixes in Thewo Tibetan. Finally, this paper makes a defense of why these two suffixes belong to the category of evidentiality. Thewo Tibetan is spoken in China on the Gansu-Sichuan border. The suffixes /ta33/ and /nə33/ appear either directly after action verbs, or directly after the progressive aspect marker. /nə33/ is used to express that the speaker has sensory information of their claim at the time of the speech act. The temporal nature of the evidence, whether it is sensory information of the act itself or of the results of the act, is determined in part by the semantics of the verb (telic vs non-telic). In contrast, /ta33/ is used to express that at the time of the speech act, the speaker no longer has sensory evidence (but formerly did) of the stated action. Based upon these observations, this paper argues that temporal space and verbal semantics are key to understanding the cognition which underlies interpreting /nə33/ and /ta33/. As such, this paper makes the following three contributions: (1) In its form it provides an anecdote of failures and success along the path to identifying the function and meaning of two evidential suffixes; (2) It introduces two suffixes of the hitherto un-described Thewo Tibetan evidential system; and (3) It gives an in-depth analysis of these suffixes and offers evidence to support the claim that they are evidential suffixes.

Verbal -s Variation in Earlier African American English

The origins of the variable - s-marking patterns of present-tense verbs in earlier African American English (AAE) have been widely argued, with one of the most common arguments stating that the pattern is indicative of the Northern Subjects Rule (NSR), a variable - s-marking rule common in the northern British Isles. I explored verbal - s in the Federal Writers’ Project ex-slave narratives to understand what patterns of - s-marking existed in earlier AAE and how these patterns differed across regions. Statistical analysis suggested no NSR influence in AAE as a whole or within any of the regions, but - s-marking still significantly differed between and within regions. I discuss other possible causes of this variation, including influence from other concord patterns, aspectual marking, and phonotactics, but highlight the difficulty of proposing concrete hypotheses due to change over time and a dearth of data.

The Nature and Structure of Reflexive Verb Constructions

Based on a summary of the features of reflexive verb constructions (ReVCs), this paper proposes that the internal structure of reflexive verb constructions is [VP Spec[V` V R]]. Whether it occurs overtly or covertly, the reflexive constituent is base-generated in the position of the complement of V. Its occurrence in other positions results from movement of the reflexive constituent. Due to the existence of the covert pronoun, the whole reflexive verb constructions cannot assign accusative case to other constituents. Therefore, reflexive verb constructions cannot be followed by an object. The reflexive pronoun introduces reflexive interpretation, as a consequence of which the verb is characterized by reflexivity. A reflexive verb construction operates in the syntax as a complete syntactic object and hence occupies a syntactic position. The whole reflexive verb construction can function as the object in the specifier position of VP and move to the position of the light verb to function as the predicate, followed by a tense or aspect marker.

How L2 Learners Process Different Means of Time Encoding in a Tenseless Language: An ERP Study of Mandarin.

In the past, research on the cognitive neural mechanism of second language (L2) learners' processing time information has focused on Indo-European languages. It has also focused on the temporal category expressed by morphological changes. However, there has been a lack of research on L2 learners' various time coding means, especially for Mandarin, which lacks morphological changes. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we investigated the cognitive neural mechanism of L2 learners with native Indonesian background in processing two time coding means (time adverbs and aspect markers) in Chinese. Indonesian has time adverb encoding time information similar to that of Chinese, but there are no aspect markers similar to Chinese in Indonesian. We measured ERPs time locked to the time adverb " (cengjing)" and the aspect marker "verb + (verb + guo)" in two different conditions, i.e., a control condition (the correct sentence) and a temporal information violation. The experimental results showed that the native speaker group induced the biphasic N400-P600 effect under the condition of time adverb violation, and induced P600 under the condition of the aspect marker "verb + (verb + guo)" violation. Indonesian L2 learners of Chinese only elicited P600 for the violation of time adverbs, and there was no statistically significant N400 similar to that of Chinese native speakers. In the case of aspect marker violation, we observed no significant ERPs component for the Indonesian L2 learners of Chinese. Both groups of subjects induced elicited a widely distributed and sustained negativity on the post-critical words after "verb + (verb + guo)" and "(cengjing)". This showed that the neural mechanism of Indonesian L2 learners of Chinese processing Chinese time coding differs from that of Chinese native speakers.

Denominal conversion verbs and the ‘verb + it’ construction in English

In English, a number of verbs enter a noteworthy, though understudied, combination with a morpheme it, which evidently lacks a referential function. Among these verbs, there are quite a few which were formed from nouns by means of conversion (e.g. to bus it, to au pair it, to verse it, to newspaper it). While some authors assume that the expletive morpheme it in direct-object position functions to enhance a verb’s transitivity, the most recent diachronic study has shown that its influence on transitivity is rather marginal. If transitivization is not the driving force behind the use of the ‘verb + it’ construction, the question as to other functions arises. The aim of this article is to present a new proposal according to which the expletive element is primarily (though not exclusively) an aspectual marker, which, in contrast to the bare verb, expresses telicity (e.g. to bus vs. to bus it). In this function, this element provides the verb it complements with a temporal endpoint. Proceeding from a distinction between (a)telicity and (un)boundedness drawn in the pertinent literature, it will be shown that this endpoint may or may not actually be reached. The aspectual function of the expletive element it is assumed here to co-exist with other functions identified in the few previous works and in the present study. These functions, which are independent of telicity, comprise the expression of necessity, the intensification of activities, the preservation of the verse metre especially in literary texts, and the support of the verbal status of innovative or weakly established denominal conversion verbs.

Adverbia Penanda Aspek dalam Novel Sansai karya Ermanto: Suatu Kajian Morfologi

This study examines the use of adverbial aspect markers in Ermanto's novel Sansai, aiming to revitalize Minangkabau literature by focusing on both cultural and social issues. The research explores how aspect markers influence narrative understanding and temporal dynamics in contemporary Minangkabau prose. Through qualitative document analysis using the Indonesian Language Corpus Linguistic Method (KORTARA), the study identifies and classifies adverbs that denote actions, events, situations, and traits in various temporal contexts. The analysis reveals four types of aspect markers: durative, perfective, imperfective, and inchoative. The novel contains 476 adverbial aspect markers, distributed as follows: 73 durative ("middle"), 64 imperfective ("not yet"), 278 perfective ("already"), and 61 inchoative ("beginning") markers. The perfective aspect "already" emerges as the most frequently used, suggesting a narrative emphasis on completed actions or states. This linguistic analysis provides insights into the narrative structure and temporal nuances of contemporary Minangkabau literature, contributing to a deeper understanding of how language use shapes storytelling and cultural expression. The findings offer a foundation for further exploration of the relationship between linguistic features and literary techniques in regional Indonesian literature.

The syntax of African American English borrowings in the Louisiana Creole tense-mood-aspect system

Abstract This paper presents the typologically unusual case of borrowed tense-mood-aspect morphemes. Data are taken from Louisiana Creole, a critically endangered French-lexifier creole. Over the course of its history, Louisiana Creole has been in contact with local varieties of both French and English, including African American English. It will be shown that points of structural congruity between Louisiana Creole and African American English have facilitated the borrowing of two aspect markers for speakers competent in both varieties. African American English stressed BIN has been borrowed and marks remote past habitual, stative, and completive. The adverb still has been borrowed and subsequently has grammaticalized as a continuative marker via spec-to-head reanalysis. These borrowings are integrated into the inflectional domain as functional heads marking aspect. Their ordering constraints are evaluated relative to a previous hierarchy proposed by Rottet. Discussion of contact-induced change in creole languages has typically been confined to examination of interactions with the lexifier, the language which contributes the majority of a creole’s vocabulary (in this case, French). Fewer studies have presented detailed accounts of how creoles behave when in contact with other languages, meaning that this particular contact context remains undertheorized.

Habitual Aspect Markers in Two Kwa Languages (Ga and Eʋe):The Form and Syntax

Habitual Aspect Markers in Two Kwa Languages (Ga and Eʋe):The Form and Syntax

Tense and Aspect in Balti Language: Morphological Perspective

Pakistan is a multilingual and multicultural country where 72 language diverse languages are used for communication. Gilgit-Baltistan is one of the most well-known northern regions for its stunning natural beauty, distinct landscapes, evergreen forests, snow-capped mountains, and rich cultural heritage. Most of the Gilgit-Baltistan regional languages have been studied historically and culturally, but a few studies address this from a linguistic perspective. Balti language is one of them. Balti is a member of the more extraordinary Tibeto-Burman language family, specifically the Western Tibetan branch of the Tibetan language family. The present study analyses the tense and aspect markers in the Balti language. This study contributes to the regional language of Pakistan and analyzes the language in the morphological domain that is not mostly touched yet; also, studying tense and aspect markers in the Balti language from a morphological perspective is crucial for understanding the language’s nuances within temporal expressions. The present study results show that Balti has a complex system of tense and aspect markers; using the qualitative research design, n= 50 root words (verbs) were collected from the Balti language within the framework of inflectional morphemes of tense markers for this study. Nine markers for tense and some of their aspect, including eḑ, en, s, yoḑ, and yoḑpə: set̪, ʊk, t̪ʊk, and sed̪ʊkt̪ʊk, are identified in the current study. These markers are attached to the corresponding root verbs to indicate the present simple, present progressive, past simple with progressive, future simple, and future participle. The study also develops a deep understanding of various future tense markers as connectors to root words based on the consonant and vowel sounds at the end of root words.

Language transfer in tense acquisition: new evidence from English learning Chinese adolescents

Abstract Distinct from English, Mandarin verbs are not inflected to encode Past Tense, but perfective aspect is typically marked by aspectual markers -le and -guo. Moreover, resultative verb compounds are often viewed as accomplishment verbs, denoting telicity of an event. This study attempts to examine whether such linguistic properties transfer to the acquisition of English. We tested 22 English learning Chinese adolescents in two experiments, respectively using a Story Restatements Task and an Elicited Production Task. Overall, the experiments generated three major findings. First, the participants marked irregular verbs 13 % higher than regular ones. Second, the participants used bare verbs to express English Past Tense 12 % of the situations. Third, the participants adopted Mandarin-like RVCs to denote English Past Tense 10 % of the cases. Taken together, the findings indicate that besides morphophonological transfer, English learning Chinese adolescents adopt Mandarin word-formation rules to encode English Past Tense, which is new evidence of cross-linguistic transfer. We discuss the implications of our findings.

The semantics of Mandarin futurates

Abstract This paper investigates future interpretations in Mandarin declarative root clauses without overt future modals, i.e., Mandarin futurates. Mandarin futurates require future time adverbs and schedulable eventualities, which denote future readings relative to the utterance time or a context-determined past time. Moreover, Mandarin futurates presuppose the existence of a plan in the context and are incompatible with a single perfective aspect marker le1 . To account for these facts, I argue that a covert future modal m-plan is present in futurates and extend the formal analysis for English simple futurates to Mandarin with necessary modifications.

Measuring productive syntactic abilities in Mandarin-speaking children in Taiwan

ABSTRACT Purpose This study aimed to develop a fine-grained measure for evaluating syntactic abilities in Mandarin-speaking children for educational and clinical purposes as a supplement to MLU. Method In total, 99 typically developing children, aged 2;0 to 5;11, living in Taipei, Taiwan, participated in this study. Spontaneous language samples were elicited in free-play situations. The first 100 intelligible utterances were coded with a newly developed scheme: the Mandarin Assessment of Productive Syntax-Revised (MAPS-R). For the examination of concurrent validity, MLU was also computed. Results Significant age-related differences were observed in both MLU and MAPS-R scores. Strong correlations were found between MLU and MAPS-R scores, confirming the validity of MAPS-R as a measure of syntactic development. MAPS-R further revealed that Mandarin-speaking children expanded noun phrases with the general classifier ‘GE’ very early on, followed by a locative expression. Verb expansions began with resultative complements and aspect markers. Sentences with complex predication structures, such as serial verbs/pivotal sentences, were still not widely used when the MLU value is below 4.5. Conclusions The study showed that MAPS-R is a reliable and valid measure that can provide a rich profile of the syntactic development of Mandarin-speaking children. It can be a useful reference for speech therapists to set a baseline for developing language intervention plans and to monitor their outcome.

Exploring the Temporal Expressions in Chinese from the Linguistics Perspectives

Chinese offers an intriguing linguistic terrain for temporal expressions that is vastly distinct from many Indo-European languages, which use verb conjugation structures for this purpose. This paper delves deep into China's nuanced temporal nuances, exploring their implications on time delineation using uninflected verbs. Focusing on contextual clues, adverbs, particles and sentence structure we observe the interaction among these components that ensure clarity and precision when conveying temporal information. Notably, temporal adverbs such as "Gang Gang" and "Gang Cai", when used with aspect markers, create layers of temporal ambiguity which underline how language's inherent flexibility relies on shared contextual understanding. By conducting a comprehensive analysis of Chinese temporal expressions, this paper highlights the adaptability of languages, as well as their mutually reinforcing relationship between grammar and pragmatics, and culture and cognition in communicating time's complexity.

Flavors of Progression in Urban Jordanian Arabic

This study investigates the syntactic and semantic properties of three grammaticalized aspectual markers in Urban Jordanian Arabic (UJA): the particle ʕam, the active participle ʕammal, and the active participle ʔaaʕid. While traditionally perceived as markers of progressive aspect with identical semantics, this study distinguishes itself by unveiling significant syntactic and semantic differences among the three markers. In particular, the study shows that ʕammal functions as an inceptive aspect marker, ʕam marks immediate aspect, and ʔaaʕid signals durative aspect. The study provides evidence for this categorization by showing that the markers can co-occur in the same sentence. Such co-occurrence highlights a hierarchical order among the three markers, with ʕammal merging at the highest position, ʔaaʕid merging at an intermediate position, and ʕam situated at the lowest position. To capture this hierarchy, a fine-grained aspectual system is proposed, where each marker heads its own aspectual projection. Evidence from word order and agreement is provided to support this view. The findings of this study align with Cinque's (2006) theory, illustrating diverse progressive aspectual heads that merge at different levels in the extended verbal projection.

Content-Form Interaction in the Acquisition of Temporal Markers by Mandarin-Speaking Children

Aspect markers (AMs), temporal adverbs (TAs) and temporal nouns (TNs) are used by young Mandarin-speaking children to express time. However, the factors that affect the relative acquisition trajectories of these categories remains unclear. Accordingly, this study adopts Weist’s time-concept model to examine the patterns of acquisition between and within the above three categories of temporal markers in the Mandarin system of time. Specifically, temporal markers were extracted from language samples obtained from 82 Mandarin-speaking children aged 2 to 5 years, who were divided into three groups by age. The results indicated that the token counts and the type counts of temporal markers were significantly higher among the older children, who were also more capable of using more categories of temporal markers, and were more likely to use multiple markers in single utterances. Of the three categories of temporal marker, AMs emerged earliest, and the participants’ repertoires of AMs stopped expanding sooner than their TA and TN repertoires did. As measured by token use, AMs were mastered earliest. Within each of the three categories, the acquisition of temporal-marker subgroups also varied according to two semantic features: temporal remoteness and specificity. The findings were consistent with Weist’s principles, and suggest that language-general time concepts (content) and language-specific syntactic properties (form) interact to shape the acquisition of temporal markers by Mandarin-speaking children, with the additional role being played by the semantic features of temporal remoteness and specificity within each category. Theoretical and clinical implications are also discussed.

Dependent clauses with the conjunction kṳ̀ ‘and’ in Dinka

Dinka, a Western Nilotic language, has a construction in which a clause with dependent syntactic status is combined with a preceding clause of any type by means of the conjunction kṳ̀ ‘and’, which is also used for coordinating both noun phrases and independent clauses. Dependent kṳ̀-clauses, which all have the same syntactic structure, do not express any particular semantic function and normally have fewer markers of tense, aspect and mood than the clause with which they are combined. But they are interpreted as having the same semantic function and generally also the same tense, aspect and mood as that clause.

Temporal interpretations of negation in Karitiana

In this paper, we investigate the behavior of the particle -ki in Karitiana, which acquires a meaning roughly similar to English ‘before’ when it appears in embedded clauses together with the adverbial suffix -t, but otherwise seems to behave as a negative particle in all other instances. Contrary to prior literature that analyzes -ki as a sort of aspectual marker in embedded clauses (cf. Rocha 2016 and Müller and Heleno 2023), we claim that -ki is still truly negation and has the same core meaning of a negative particle be it in matrix or embedded clauses, or adjectival constructions. The temporal meaning of -ki simply arises pragmatically as an implicature from the fact that the event denoted by the embedded clause has not (yet) occurred (as opposed to the event denoted from the matrix clause) and is though expected to occur, yet—even then—the later occurrence of the event is cancellable (which is a key difference from the default interpretation of a temporal clausal connective such as English ‘before’). This will allow to maintain a uniform analysis of the suffix -ki across all of its uses.