Imperfective Morphology Research Articles

The interaction of idioms and aspect in Polish

AbstractThis study contributes to a longstanding discussion on the status of aspectual morphology and the aspectual architecture in Slavic by investigating aspectual properties of perfective and imperfective VP idioms in Polish. The investigation reveals that only lexical prefixes which can result in idiosyncratic meanings are part of basic perfective VP idioms. Building on the idea that little v is a demarcation line for idiomatic meanings, it is concluded that lexical prefixes are vP-internal. It is also shown that basic imperfective VP idioms are compatible with some superlexical prefixes and basic perfective VP idioms are compatible with secondary imperfective morphology, which suggests that such morphology is vP-external. Further semantic analysis of the interaction of basic imperfective VP idioms with different classes of superlexical prefixes shows that the compatible ones measure over some scale associated with vP-external material or the temporal trace of an (idiomatic) event. In contrast, the incompatible ones measure over a scale encoded by a verbal predicate or impose semantic restrictions on its argument and hence they intervene in the semantics of a VP idiom. Based on stacking facts and the interaction of different classes of superlexical prefixes with secondary imperfective morphology, two classes of superlexical prefixes are distinguished: high (projected above secondary imperfective) and low (projected below it). These observations are compatible with the view that aspectual morphology is separated from PFV and IPFV operators. The former may merge lower in the hierarchy, and the latter act at the level of AspP as phonologically null operators.

An SLA-Informed and Cognitive Linguistic Approach to the Teaching of L2 Catalan Tense-Aspect

This article explores the relationship between second language acquisition and language teaching presenting the design of a teaching sequence on past tenses that integrates the results of research on tense and aspect in a second language (the Aspect and Discourse Hypotheses and Input processing instruction). By implementing the principles of cognitive linguistics, the article presents the design of activities to teach the meanings of perfective, imperfective, and perfect morphology with the introduction of the notions of space of action, verbal action, and the speaker's point of view. All concepts are illustrated with activities implemented in a Catalan classroom at the University of Cardiff (A1 and A2 levels).

Naturalistic Use of Aspect Morphology in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children.

Grammatical morphology often links small acoustic forms to abstract semantic domains. Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children have reduced access to the acoustic signal and frequently have delayed acquisition of grammatical morphology (e.g., Tomblin, Harrison, Ambrose, Walker, Oleson & Moeller, 2015). This study investigated the naturalistic use of aspectual morphology in DHH children to determine if they organize this semantic domain as normal hearing (NH) children have been found to do. Thirty DHH children (M = 6;8) and 29 NH children (M = 5;11) acquiring English participated in a free-play session and their tokens of perfective (simple past) and imperfective (-ing) morphology were coded for the lexical aspect of the predicate they marked. Both groups showed established prototype effects, favoring perfective + telic and imperfective + atelic pairings over perfective + atelic and perfective + atelic ones. Thus, despite reduced access to the acoustic signal, this DHH group was unimpaired for aspectual organization.

Remarks on Epistemic modality in Brazilian Portuguese

The paper claims that Brazilian Portuguese imperfective morphology, represented by / -ia /, in epistemic modal verbs, tinha que / devia / podia EPISTEMIC, is underdetermined, in particular it allows a past perspective. However, the perspective is not a temporal projection that scopes over the epistemic modal (Rullmann & Matthewson, 2018 ), nor a covert belive that (Hacquard, 2006, Viana Mendes, 2019), but an effect of the semantics of modal verbs and the imperfective morphology. Modal verbs search for an anchor (KRATZER, 2018). The semantics of imperfective allows two anchor situations: the situation, s<s0, and the speech situation, s0; present imperfective - deve/pode/temque - has only one anchor situation: the speech situation,s0. The paper explores the double reading of the imperfective morphology. It is is an exercise into Kratzer’ lecture (2018). The anchor in the situation shifts the context of evaluation to the past. It seems to be a monster. The orientation is present with respect to the shifted context. If s0, the actual situation, is targeted by the modal, the perspective is present and the orientation is (in line with Ferreira, 2018). There are contexts where it is possible to distinguish the two readings. Evidential contexts support the proposal.

The Arabic Imperfective

‮This paper argues that the imperfective verb form in Standard Arabic does not express an ‘imperfective’ meaning, but rather marks the default lexical form of the verb, and is therefore analogous to the English infinitive. The progressive and habitual readings cross-linguistically typical of the imperfective are derived in Arabic by applying covert progressive and habitual operators to this infinitival base. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that imperfective verbs receive an eventive interpretation in certain contexts, an interpretation incompatible with the stativity of progressive and habitual readings. Additional scopal evidence indicates that the progressive applies at the verb phrase level, not at the word level at which the imperfective morphology itself is found.‬‎

The Aspect Hypothesis: Development of Morphology and Appropriateness of Use

According to the aspect hypothesis (Andersen & Shirai, 1996; Bardovi-Harlig, 2000), perfective morphology emerges before imperfective morphology, it is first used in telic predicates (achievements and accomplishments) and it later extends to atelic predicates (activities and states). The opposite development is hypothesized for imperfective morphology. This study proposes to investigate the emergence of preterite and imperfect morphology in Catalan to examine if the aspectual characteristics of predicates can account for the emergence of morphology and also appropriate use. Past verbal forms in narratives produced by three multilingual learners of Catalan as a foreign language were coded for appropriateness of use, morphology, and lexical aspect. An aspectual analysis of the data provided support for the aspect hypothesis, because achievement and accomplishment predicates in general were inflected for preterite morphology more frequently than were activity and state predicates, and the opposite was found for the emergence of imperfect morphology. The aspectual trends, however, varied for individual learners, tasks, and developmental stages. An analysis of the appropriate use of preterite and imperfect forms showed that morphology was used appropriately in almost all contexts. Prototypical combinations of morphology and aspect tended to be used more appropriately than nonprototypical combinations, as supported by other studies (Cadierno, 2000; Camps, 2002; Giacalone-Ramat, 2002).

Applied linguistics

06–162Ansary, Hasan (Shiraz U, Iran; ansary2877@yahoo.com) &amp; Esmat Babaii (Teacher Training U, Iran), The generic integrity of newspaper editorials: A systemic functional perspective. RELC Journal (Sage) 36.3 (2005), 271–295.06–163Barnbrook, Geoff (U Birmingham, UK; G.Barnbrook@bham.ac.uk), Usage notes in Johnson'sDictionary. The International Journal of Lexicography (Oxford University Press) 18.2 (2005), 189–201.06–164Brumfit, Christopher, Rosamond Mitchell, Brenda Johnston, Peter Ford (U Southampton, UK) &amp; Florence Myles, Language study in higher education and the development of criticality. International Journal of Applied Linguistics (Blackwell) 15.2 (2005), 145–168.06–165Byrnes, Heidi (Georgetown U, USA), Perspectives. The Modern Language Journal (Blackwell) 89.4 (2005), 582–616.06–166Camps, Joaquim (U Florida, USA), The emergence of the imperfect in Spanish as a foreign language: The association between imperfective morphology and state verbs. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (Mouton de Gruyter) 43.3 (2005), 163–192.06–167Cook, Guy (The Open U, UK; g.cook@open.ac.uk), Calm seas or troubled waters? Transitions, definitions and disagreements in applied linguistics. International Journal of Applied Linguistics (Blackwell) 15.3 (2005), 282–301.06–168Els, Theo van (U Nijmegen, the Netherlands; t.vanels@ru.nl), Multilingualism in the European Union. International Journal of Applied Linguistics (Blackwell) 15.3 (2005), 263–281.06–169Hanks, Patrick (Brandeis U, USA &amp; Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, Germany; hanks@bbaw.de), Johnson and modern lexicography. The International Journal of Lexicography (Oxford University Press) 18.2 (2005), 243–266.06–170Herschensohn, Julia, Jeff Stevenson &amp; Jeremy Waltmunson (U Washington, USA), Children's acquisition of L2 Spanish morphosyntax in an immersion setting. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (Mouton de Gruyter) 43.3 (2005), 193–217.06–171Hjörne, Eva (Göteborg U, Sweden; eva.hjorne@ped.gu.se) &amp; Roger Säljö, The pupil welfare team as a discourse community: Accounting for school problems. Linguistics and Education (Elsevier) 15.4 (2004), 321–338.06–172Hood, Susan &amp; Gail Forey (U of Technology, Sydney, Australia; sue.hood@uts.edu.au), Introducing a conference paper: Getting interpersonal with your audience. Journal of English for Academic Purposes (Elsevier) 4.4 (2005), 291–306.06–173Juul, Holger (U Copenhagen, Denmark; juul@hum.ku.dk), Grammatical awareness and the spelling of inflectional morphemes in Danish. International Journal of Applied Linguistics (Blackwell) 15.1 (2005), 87–112.06–174Juzwik, Mary M. (Michigan State U, USA; mmjuzwik@msu.edu), What rhetoric can contribute to an ethnopoetics of narrative performance in teaching: The significance of parallelism in one teacher's narrative. Linguistics and Education (Elsevier) 15.4 (2004), 359–386.06–175Katz, Stacey (U Utah, USA; skatz@hum.utah.edu) &amp; Johanna Watzinger-Tharp, Toward an understanding of the role of applied linguists in foreign language departments. The Modern Language Journal (Blackwell) 89.4 (2005), 490–502.06–176Leung, Constant (King's College, U London, UK), Convivial communication: Recontextualizing communicative competence. International Journal of Applied Linguistics (Blackwell) 15.2 (2005), 119–144.06–177Lind, Marianne (Bredtvet Resource Centre, Norway), Conversation – more than words: A Norwegian case study of the establishment of a contribution in aphasic interaction. International Journal of Applied Linguistics (Blackwell) 15.2 (2005), 213–239.06–178Mautner, Gerlinde (Vienna U of Economics and Business Administration, Austria), Time to get wired: Using web-based corpora in critical discourse analysis. Discourse &amp; Society (Sage) 16.6 (2005), 809–828.06–179Otani, Hiroaki (Hoshi U, Japan; hiroaki-otani@jcom.home.ne.jp), Investigating intercollocations – towards an archaeology of text. The International Journal of Lexicography (Oxford University Press) 18.1 (2005), 1–24.06–180Pahl, Kate (U Sheffield, UK; k.pahl@sheffield.ac.uk), Narratives, artifacts and cultural identities: An ethnographic study of communicative practices in homes. Linguistics and Education (Elsevier) 15.4 (2004), 339–358.06–181Sawyer, R. Keith (U Washington, USA; keith@keithsawyer.com) &amp; Sarah Berson, Study group discourse: How external representations affect collaborative conversation. Linguistics and Education (Elsevier) 15.4 (2004), 387–412.06–182Solbjørg, Aud (Skulstad U Bergen, Norway; aud.skulstad@eng.uib.no), Competing roles: Student teachers using asynchronous forums. 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The emergence of the imperfect in Spanish as a foreign language: The association between imperfective morphology and state verbs

This descriptive study analyzed the emergence of the imperfect in the written production of 30 beginning learners of Spanish. The analysis focused on the use of the imperfect and the morphological marking of state verbs. The results follow the patterns predicted by the aspect hypothesis (Andersen and Shirai, 1994), and support some refinements of the proposed stages of spread of the imperfect across aspectual classes. A detailed analysis of the category of state verbs showed that these verbs do not behave as a homogeneous category with regard to past tense marking. The possibility of the application of associative mechanisms of learning (Pinker and Prince 1994) was explored based on the past tense marking of irregular and regular verbs in connection to the stages of acquisition proposed by the aspect hypothesis, but not enough evidence was found to strongly support the application of such learning mechanisms.

TELICITY IN THE SECOND LANGUAGE. Roumyana Slabakova. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2001. Pp. xii + 236. $77.00 cloth.

Research in the acquisition of perfective and imperfective morphology has been expanding in SLA from morpheme studies to semantic, syntactic, and textual research. This volume contributes to the growing literature on the acquisition of aspect by investigating the acquisition of telicity (i.e., predicates with and without endpoints, such as Claire ate an apple vs. Clare ate apples) from a UG perspective. The hypotheses that are examined are: (a) to what extent learners transfer L1 values onto their L2, (b) whether L2 learners are capable of resetting parameters, (c) whether the acquisition of telicity co-occurs or is subsequent to the acquisition of other constructions (e.g., particles, resultatives, and double objects), and (d) whether the acquisition of these related constructions clusters with the acquisition of telicity.

What particle verbs have to do with grammatical aspect in early child English

The current study investigates the relation between aspect and particle verbs in the acquisition of English. Its purpose is to determine whether children associate telicity, as argued in previous studies, or rather perfectivity, which entails completion of a telic situation, with their early particle verb use. The study analyzes naturalistic data of four monolingual children between 1;6 and 3;8 from CHILDES acquiring English as their first language. On the one hand, it finds that children use both –ed and irregular perfective morphology with simplex verbs before particle verbs. They further use imperfective before perfective morphology with particle verbs. These findings suggest that there is no correlation between telic particle verbs and perfective morphology, as would have been predicted on an account which claims that lexical aspect of predicates guides the acquisition of grammatical aspect (Olsen &amp; Weinberg 1999). On the other hand, the study finds that the children’s particle verbs denote telic situations from early on, but not half of them were used to refer to situations that are also completed. This finding questions analyses which claim that, at an initial stage, children will only interpret predicates as telic if they refer to situations that are at the same time completed. Completion information is not necessary for children in order to use particle verbs correctly for telic situations, as would have been predicted on an extended account along the lines of Wagner (2001). As a conclusion, it is suggested that the divergent findings result from a difference in methodology. While restrictions of perfective and imperfective morphology to particular classes of lexical aspect pertain to the production of grammatical aspect morphology, perfective and imperfective viewpoints on situations pertain to the level of interpretation of telic and atelic situations.&#x0D;

The Use of Tense-Aspect Morphology in Spanish Oral Narratives: Exploring the Perceptions of Advanced Learners

In a study of the use of verbal morphology in oral narratives by advanced learners of Spanish, eight participants recounted two oral narratives, one a segment of a silent film and the other a personal experience. The learners then commented, in an immediate retrospective protocol, on their use of perfective and imperfective morphology. The reported reasons for their selection of aspectual morphology can be grouped into four categories: (1) the nature of the narrative task, (2) lexical aspect, (3) the role of the narrator in constructing discourse, and (4) the impact of instruction. Some of the reasons for tense-aspect morphological selections have implications for research methodology in future studies on the acquisition and use of tense-aspect morphology, while others invite reflection on teaching practices and on the role and utility of teaching and learning grammatical rules.

Where the Progressive and the Resultative Meet

This paper surveys the progressive and resultative morphology of Japanese, Chinese, Korean and English, and argues that although the distinction between perfective and imperfective is the most fundamental of aspectual distinctions, analysis of these languages reveals that this distinction can sometimes be murky. A unified account of the imperfective morphology in these languages is presented which relies on the interaction of inherent aspect and viewpoint aspect markers (Smith 1991). It is suggested that the differences among these languages are the results of the different patterns and degrees of grammaticization of their imperfective markers.