Aspectual Projections Research Articles

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.

The Structure of r-Nominals in -nie/-cie in Polish and the Factors Conditioning Their Emergence

The aim of this paper is twofold: to establish the structure of deverbal nominals in -nie and -cie which lack argument structure and function as Simple Event and Result nominals, and to specify the factors conditioning their emergence. The proposed analysis is framed in Borer’s exo-skeletal model supplemented by elements of the nanosyntactic approach. The Polish data are puzzling since R-nominals in -nie/-cie show morphological evidence of the verbalising layer in the guise of a theme element alongside aspectual marking. The proposed account includes the aspectual projection of inner aspect in their structure and argues that the licensing of the internal argument is not related to the presence of verbalising morphology or of the inner aspect projection, which in the case of Polish can be multi-layered.. For an R-nominal to emerge, the structure must not contain the projection of viewpoint aspect responsible for the licensing of the full argumental complex. The presence of the VP layer accounts for the ambiguity between simple event and concrete reading. A stem-based R-nominal will arise if there is no root-based R-nominal, e.g. (s)kaleczyć ‘hurt’ —*(s)kalecz—skaleczenie ‘wound’ vs. (po)dzielić ‘divide’—podział ‘division’. Only R-nominals in -nie and -cie will be possible where the presence of an overt verbaliser with a root merged with a nominal or adjectival functor blocks the formation of root-based nominals, e.g. łysy ‘bald’—(wy)łysieć ‘go bald’—wyłysienie ‘a bald patch’—*(wy)łys.

A structural account of the difference between achievements and accomplishments: evidence from Changsha Xiang Chinese

This paper offers an analysis of ka41, an aspectual element in Changsha Xiang Chinese. It is argued that this element occupies a position in the inner-aspectual structure of the clause, between the higher aspectual marker ta21 and the lower elements expressing a lexical result (like clean in wash clean). On the basis of its co-occurrence with various verb types, we treat ka41 as an achievement marker: when present, it blocks any reading in which the denoted event proceeds along a multi-point scale, allowing only the instantaneous, two-point scale reading in which the beginning and the endpoint of the event coincide. On the basis of its syntactic distribution we argue that the syntactic position ka41 occupies is an intermediate aspectual projection (Asp2P) in the inner aspect domain, which is sandwiched between the lowest inner aspectual projection dedicated to telicity and the highest one signaling perfectivity (or realization of the end point). We review the implications of the analysis for the aspectual domain of Mandarin clauses and point out that the intermediate inner aspectual projection (Asp2P) we introduce for Changsha appears to be a suitable syntactic position for the structural analysis of the small set of grammaticalized items generally known as “Phase complements” as well.

Gerunds become prepositional infinitives in Romance Small Clauses: The effects of later Merge to the syntactic spine

AbstractThis article offers a comparative analysis of “predicative” gerunds (“PGs”) and prepositional infinitives (“PIs”), focussing on perception constructions in Spanish (PGs) and European Portuguese (PIs). I demonstrate that these two constructions are diachronically related and that they still have a similar syntax. The evidence discussed suggests that both constructions are Small Clauses headed by a preposition of central coincidence. In PGs, this preposition is merged in a low aspectual projection and incorporates into the verb. In PIs, an evolution of PGs, it is merged later in the structure. This leads to a layering process, i.e. the splitting of a single head into a series of heads and transferring the semantics of one functional head to more heads. Thus, PIs have a more expanded structure than gerunds. Finally, further empirical evidence for this analysis is discussed, such as the insertion of adverbs and the use ofsin(“without”) to negate the perceived event.

Os traços de aspecto lexical e as nominações em -ÇÃO no Português Brasileiro

Este artigo descreve e analisa as nominalizações em -ção, com o objetivo de investigar os fatores que contribuem para que essas construções, no português brasileiro, denotem as diversas leituras observadas, evento, resultado e entidade. Assumimos que essas leituras estão relacionadas: às fases por que passam essas formações durante a sua derivação, considerando os pressupostos teóricos da Morfologia Distribuída (HALLE; MARANTZ, 1993, 1994; MARANTZ, 1997, 2001, 2007, 2013; ARAD, 2003; SIDDIQI, 2009; EMBICK, 2010); à presença/ausência dos traços de aspecto lexical, dinamicidade, duração e telicidade (VENDLER, 1967, SMITH, 1997; CROFT, 2012) nas nominalizações. Propomos que as formações com leituras de evento e resultado passam por uma projeção verbal e, consequentemente, por uma projeção aspectual e as nominalizações com leitura de entidade não passam por uma projeção verbal, dado que são formadas diretamente de nome.

ON SOME PROPERTIES OF THE ASPECTUAL PROJECTION AND VERBAL MOVEMENT IN RUSSIAN AND LITHUANIAN

Set within the generative syntactic framework, the present study explores the aspectual projection in Russian and Lithuanian. As is known, aspect is traditionally regarded to be a grammatical category in Russian, whereas there is no unanimous view on Lithuanian aspect and the latter is perceived within the lexical or lexico-grammatical range. Given the fact that both Lithuanian and Russian exhibit the features of languages with the verb merged low on the syntactic tree, while their general morphosyntactic properties are similar in many respects, e.g., rich verb morphology, tense and agreement systems, the verb may be derived by both prefixation and suffixation. Different aspectual properties present an interesting puzzle. The article aims to provide a formal account for this phenomenon. It is first shown that, similarly to Russian, the Lithuanian verb is positioned low, which is reflected in the regular appearance following manner adverbs. However, due to the varying feature strength of the relevant functional projections in each language, verbal movement in each language is realised differently, which consequently affects the morphemic layout as well as has implications for the aspect-tense correlation in each language. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7220/2335-2027.8.5

APIE KAI KURIAS LIETUVIŲ KALBOS VEIKSMAŽODŽIŲ PRIEŠDĖLIŲ YPATYBES

Šiame straipsnyje lietuvių kalbos veiksmažodžio priešdėliai tirti remiantis Peterio Svenonio meto­dologija. Lietuvių kalbos priešdėliai pasižymi tuo, kad juose sangrąžos dalelytė -si- juda iš veiksma­žodžio galo į poziciją tarp priešdėlio ir veiksmažodžio, tačiau tokia sangrąžos vieta bei priežastys, kodėl sangrąža nekyla virš tam tikros ribos sintaksiniame medyje, lieka neaiškios.Straipsnyje pirmiausia atskleidžiamas frazinis visų lietuvių kalbos veiksmažodžio priešdėlių statusas. Toliau, taikant Svenonio kriterijus, priešdėliai suskirstomi į dvi grupes: leksinius ir super­leksinius priešdėlius. Leksiniai priešdėliai kilo iš prielinksnių: jie gali suteikti tiek tiesioginę, tiek perkeltinę reikšmę. Superleksiniai priešdėliai kilo iš dalelyčių: jie gali eiti prieš leksinius priešdėlius sintaksiniame medyje, o jų perteikiama reikšmė nebūna perkeltinė. Remiantis Aleco Marantzo (1988) idiomos konstravimo principu, parodoma, kad sintaksiniame medyje leksiniai priešdėliai atsiran­da (angl. merge) po veiksmažodžio, tačiau juda į poziciją prieš veiksmažodį, kad įgautų rezultato reikšmę, o superleksiniai priešdėliai atsiranda prieš veiksmažodį. Skirtinga priešdėlių atsiradimo vieta paaiškina sangrąžos vietą veiksmažodžio struktūroje: sangrąža visuomet lieka veiksmažodžio komplekso viduje kaip fizinis veiksnio pėdsakas (angl. trace).

Preverbs, aspect and nominalization in Hungarian1

This paper examines the realization of aspect in Hungarian eventive nominalizations. In the verbal domain, aspect is expressed by preverbs, which act as boundedness markers; they indicate telicity, and, when occurring in telic environments, perfectivity. Eventive nominals morphologically derived from verbs can also be associated with preverbs. In this case, the preverbs maintain the same values as with verbs. This leads to the conclusion that, in Hungarian, grammatical aspect is valid category in the nominal domain, as has recently been shown for various other languages. The paper also provides a syntactic approach of the organization of the aspectual projections with verbs and deverbal nominals, which accounts for the fact that preverbs cannot be separated from nominals, whereas they can when occurring with verbs.

Being progressive is just a phase: celebrating the uniqueness of progressive aspect under a phase-based analysis

The identity of phasal boundaries has mostly been considered in light of minimal CP-TP-vP-VP structures. The question this paper addresses is where the clause-internal phase boundary lies in light of more complex structures in which aspectual projections intervene between TP and vP. I claim progressive aspect to be unique amongst aspectual forms in English in that it is part of the clause-internal phase, whilst perfect aspect and all higher functional items are contained within the CP/TP phase. This claim accounts for many peculiar quirks of progressive aspect in English, namely in VP ellipsis, fronting phenomena, idioms and existential constructions. On the theoretical front I argue that this division in the aspectual hierarchy is best understood through a variable approach to phases in which the highest projection within a sub-numeration acts as the phase, irrespective of what that projection is. This denies vP of its exclusivity as the clause-internal phase, and allows the progressive layer to project the phase when present. This approach generally sits in line with the move towards a dynamic understanding of phases, as per Bobaljik and Wurmbrand (2005), Wurmbrand (2012, 2013) and Bošković (2013, 2014).

The phrase structure of phase verbs: An initial contrastive analysis of English and Russian

This squib carries out an initial contrastive analysis of English and Russian phase (a.k.a. aspectual) verbs. Following Fukuda’s (2008; 2009) syntactic account of English, I assume English phase verbs can head one of two aspectual functional projections: H-AspP, located immediately above vP; or L-AspP, located between vP and VP. Applying the same diagnostics to Russian, it appears that Russian phase verbs head only L-AspP. The relation between L-AspP and another structurally similar aspectual projection, AspP, proposed by Mac- Donald (2008a;b), is discussed. We see that L-AspP has a subset of the aspectual properties of AspP. Finally, I note how this approach to Russian phase verbs leads to the expectation that semantic properties of Russian phase verb complements play a role in some of the phase verb complement (in)compatibility patterns. In concrete, I suggest that the aspectual class of the complement plays a role.

Tense anchoring in Chinese

In this paper, we relate the so-called incompleteness effects observed in Chinese to a failure of anchoring tense, i.e., to guarantee a proper temporal reference of a given sentence through syntactic measures. Based on an insight from S. Huang's (2005) plurality analysis of eventuality predicates, we propose to analyze tense anchoring as a process of spelling out an underlying event argument by a variety of morpho-syntactic means. This process may involve event coordination, event subordination, event modification, event quantification, or verb raising to v/T. Furthermore, a three-layered analysis of aspectual projections is adopted to account for a disparity between syntactic and semantic groupings of Chinese aspects, in that syntax and semantics may indeed have different agendas towards securing a temporal reference in grammatical terms. As a result, a unified account can be provided for the incompleteness effects typically associated with middle and inner aspects.

Root infinitives in child second language English: an aspectual features account

This article examines the emergence of finiteness in early second language (L2) English of five consecutive bilinguals (ages 6 to 9). The departure point is Gavruseva’s (2002; 2003) proposal that nonfinite root predicates result from the underspecification of syntactic aspectual heads at the initial state S0. Gavruseva’s ‘underspecification of AspP’ account is developed further by examining the feature contents of aspectual projections in English from a crosslinguistic perspective. It is argued that English, in contrast to Russian and French, lacks the genuine imperfective and perfective morphemes and so makes use of a greater variety of aspectual features (e.g., intrinsic and compositional telicity features, inter alia). It is also proposed that an English verb’s telicity semantics defines its aspectual class and predicts its finiteness status in children’s early grammar. An advantage of the ‘aspectual features account’ is that it explains why statives (inherent atelics) and punctual eventives (inherent telics) show much higher finiteness rates than nonpunctual eventives (an aspectual class defined by a compositional telicity feature) in the child L2 data. Other approaches to the root infinitive phenomenon such as the Truncation Hypothesis (Rizzi 1993=94) and the Morphological Deficit Hypothesis (Haznedar and Schwartz, 1997; Lardiere, 1998; Prévost and White, 2000) cannot explain these finiteness patterns.

The form of Semitic noun phrases

I propose a phrasal-movement analysis of word order in Hebrew and Arabic noun phrases. I argue that the positioning of nominal modifiers with respect to the head of simple nouns cannot be adequately handled by an N-raising derivation. This is so because nouns fail to move as heads in the grammars of Hebrew and Arabic. The only heads that seem to be able to move are those which do not assign genitive case. When modifiers (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, etc.) appear to the right of the noun, it is the noun phrase itself which has raised to the left of the modifier, moving from specifier to specifier and pied piping all the material on its right. In this manner, inverse or mirror image ordering of post-nominal material is accounted for. Some modifiers have the option of appearing pre-nominally as well as post-nominally. I argue that these elements can be merged either as heads governing their complement and assigning genitive case to their sister or to the specifier of their sister, or as specifiers of projections containing a phonetically null head. In the former case, the modifier’s sister is frozen in position, being licensed by genitive case. In the latter case, XP-movement of the sister of the null head is triggered, and agreement or concord is manifested on the modifier. I develop a configurational theory of agreement, which accounts for these phenomena. Many of the signature properties of the Semitic Construct-state fall out from the phrasal movement analysis. Finally, action nominalizations are dealt with. I provide arguments for a syntactic derivation in which a VP is associated with a nominalizing head configured in the clausal hierarchy as a functional head. I show that the position of the nominalizing head is above certain aspectual projections and lower than others. This explains why some adverbials, but not others, may occur inside a derived nominal.

L2 root infinitives uprooted and revisited

Recent work on child L2 acquisition of English demonstrates that root infinitives (RIs) abound in early language (Gavruseva and Lardière 1996, Haznedar and Schwarz 1997). This paper aims to show that current approaches to RIs (Rizzi 1993/94, Prévost and White 2000) fail to account for the correlations between a predicate’s Aktionsart and its finiteness status. For example, it is shown that statives and punctual eventives are quite consistently finite, whereas non-punctual eventives are ‘optionally’ finite in the L2 data from five children (mean age 7;5). An alternative account of the RI effect is developed, suggesting that verbs in the English lexicon are specified either for an inherent telicity feature or a compositional telicity feature and that the respective features are checked in the aspectual projections with different properties. The central assumption is that syntactic aspectual features are underspecified in early child L2 syntax. The child L2 data are shown to be consistent with this hypothesis.