Infinitive Form Research Articles

RESEARCH ON THE USE OF NON-INFLECTIVE FORMS OF THE VERB BY THE STUDENTS OF GJAKOVA

We know that the Albanian language has simple forms of the verb, such as: participle, transitive, past participle, negative, which are then divided into two groups. What piqued our interest about the non-elaborated forms, are the syntactic functional forms of the use of the infinitive in particular (among others), in the essays of students at the Faculty of Education in Gjakova.If we look and analyze the first documents written in Albanian, it is noticeable that the infinitive was very commonly used, even when looking at its phonetic and morphological aspect. Therefore, this formal structure of the infinitive is quite disputable considering its antiquity in our language. In addition to the infinitive, we also have the participle, to which the auxiliary verbs “be” and “have” have been added, we also see that in the essays of our students the syncope is used in most of their writings, without overlooking the apocope. We also have the conjunctive, which shows an action that accompanies or follows the action shown by using another verb, which is also quite utilized in our students' essays. As well as the negative infinitive form, which is formed by placing the word with a negative meaning –pa, before the participle of the verb, which can also be expressed with the negative participle -nuk or -s'. We will present all of this in our research, where we will then show the changes that the formal structure has undergone, be it phonetic, morphological or syntactic, which leaves a lot of room to discuss their linguistic antiquity.

Detecting inflectional patterns for Croatian verb stems using class activation mappings

All verbal forms in the Croatian language can be derived from two basic forms: the infinitive and the present stems. In this paper, we present a neural computation model that takes a verb in an infinitive form and finds a mapping to a present form. The same model can be applied vice-versa, i.e. map a verb from its present form to its infinitive form. Knowing the present form of a given verb, one can deduce its inflections using grammatical rules. We experiment with our model on the Croatian language, which belongs to the Slavic group of languages. The model learns a classifier through these two classification tasks and uses class activation mapping to find characters in verbs contributing to classification. The model detects patterns that follow established grammatical rules for deriving the present stem form from the infinitive stem form and vice-versa. If mappings can be found between such slots, the rest of the slots can be deduced using a rule-based system.

Infinitive as a verb form of the German language

The object of the study is the infinitive of the German language, and the subject is its semantic, structural and functional characteristics, which make it possible to interpret it as a verb form. The authors consider in detail such aspects as the specificity of the infinitive expression of the verbal categorical meaning, which brings it closer to the noun; structural division and microsystem of infinitive forms of the modern German language. Morphological features of the infinitive are considered through the prism of historical changes in the structure of the word in the German language. The authors pay special attention to the syntactic behavior of the infinitive. At the same time, the authors pay special attention to the multifunctionality of the infinitive, which is maximally identical to the nominal parts of speech. At the same time, the authors note the manifestation of the verb character of the infinitive in the ability to form a verb group. The methodological basis of the work is based on a systematic approach to the interpretation of linguistic phenomena in synchrony and diachrony. The theoretical basis of the research is the fundamental principles of general, comparative historical and Germanic linguistics. The comparative method and the method of distributive analysis were used to identify the functional potential of the infinitive and innovative phenomena. The main conclusions of the study are to identify the complexity of interpreting syncretic units to which the infinitive belongs. It was found that during the development of the German language, the infinitive gradually entered its verbal system, losing nominal grammatical features, such as the case paradigm. At the same time, the infinitive acquired verbal signs, as a temporary and collateral meaning. A special contribution of the author is the conclusion that the dual nature of the infinitive, which determines its peripheral position, is the basis for expanding its functional potential, which contributes to the participation of the infinitive in the formation of new grammatical structures/forms. The novelty of the study lies in the identification of such a function of the infinitive as participation in the formation of verb groups, where maximum proximity with the final verb is manifested.

Функціювання повних і коротких форм інфінітива в поезії Миколи Бажана

Functioning of full and short forms of the infinitive in the poetry by Mykola Bazhan. The article analyzes the poems of the Ukrainian poet of the 20th c. Mykola Bazhan in the aspect of the functioning of infinitive forms. It was concluded that the artist prefers full forms of the infinitive, which, like short ones, in contexts realize one or another stylistic function, but, unlike short ones, they can also be neutral textual units. The short form implements the author’s imperative, it is a sign of expression, clarity, categoricalness, imperativeness. A significant number of uses of the short form is determined by rhyme.

Experimental evidence of the production of inflected infinitives by Brazilian Portuguese speakers

The Minimalist Program launched by N. Chomsky (1995) inspired reductionist accounts of Control phenomena, which tried to eliminate ‘PRO’ from the theory of grammar, treating it as a trace (copy) of movement (Martin 1996; O’Neil 1997; Hornstein 1999 et seq.). Such movement theories of Control are directly challenged by the use of inflected infinitives in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), as shown in Modesto (2010). Many supporters of the movement theory, however, have denied the empirical argument, making the claim that inflected infinitives “are not natural in BP” (Rodrigues & Hornstein 2013: 307), not belonging to BP’s “core grammar”. This study, then, presents two experiments in which production of nonfinite inflection is implicitly elicited in a pseudoword oral completion task. Participants from different linguistic geographic varieties (the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo) heard the pseudoverb in its gerundive form and were then prompted to insert the pseudoverb in a sentence frame that would be compatible with both uninflected and inflected infinitive forms. Our results show 73.3% of participants inflected the infinitive to some degree when indirectly primed to do so, and that 40.9% did so, even when not primed. Results also show that while linearly distant plural markings (on the subject) did not influence behavior, adjacent morphosyntactic plural markings (on secondary predicates, for instance) did slightly increase the probability of inflection. Both priming effects and sensitivity to morphosyntactic context seem to indicate that nonfinite inflection is a productive, albeit variable, feature of BP speakers’ I-grammar.

Inchoative verbs in constructions with infinitives in 16th‒17th century Russian sources: Searching for the difference

The article focuses on the study of differences between phase verbs in constructions with infinitive clause in the 16th‒17th century Russian writing. The verbs under discussion are: načati, počati, jati, učati, and stati, as well as the verb byti, which does not belong to phase ones, but competes with them in the simple future tense form. The study is limited to the constructions with auxiliary verbs in the perfective present tense form, i. e., those that refer to the future. The data was collected from the Middle Russian subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus. Contexts from the corpus are classified according to the following parameters: auxiliariness, infinitive, agency/non-agency and telicity/atelicity/punctivity of the predicate in the infinitive form, aspectual semantics of the construction (phasal, iterative, habitual, general factual, durative-continuative meanings), the type of the clause in question, the date and the title of the source, its register and genre. It was found that each periphrastic construction has a unique set of properties associated with the paradigmatic limitations of the auxiliary verb, tendency to occur in a certain clause type, register and genre. The constructions are sensitive to various semantic features of infinitive and aspectual semantics of the context. It is argued that constructions with the verb učnu are less associated with the expression of inchoativity since they are attested in the contexts uncommon for inchoative verbs. Two distinct clusters of periphrastic constructions are distinguished: older constructions with the verbs načnu, počnu and imu and newer ones with the verbs učnu, stanu and budu.

Common Errors of Using Gerundial and Infinitival Forms in EFL Learners’ Writing

This research focused on the common errors that EFL learners included in their writing. The frequent errors that the study focused on were at the micro level, specifically the structures that related to gerund and infinitive forms. The participants were selected from the English language department at one of the Saudi universities. They were undergraduates and passed the English Grammar 1 course in the program and were ready for the English Grammar 2 course. In this study, the participants passed through two phases. In the first phase, they wrote one paragraph individually in the midterm examination. In the following phase, they chose their group and wrote a paragraph during class time. In both phases, students received clear instruction including the topic, the grammatical rules, and the minimum number of sentences. The only difference was that students were allowed to discuss for ten minutes before writing their paragraphs in the second phase. To analyze the data, common errors were identified and classified from writing as groups and individual writing based on gerunds and infinitives. Then, the comparison between common errors was employed to understand learners’ written production when working individually and in groups. The results indicated that learners easily used infinitives better than gerunds. Learners also overused specific words to ensure that they used gerund and infinitive in the correct form. Finally, the same common errors were found and identified in their individual writing and as groups.

Простые глаголы в осетинском и персидском языках в сравнительно-сопоставительном аспекте

The aim of the research is to identify common and unique features of simple verbs in the modern Ossetian and Persian languages. Scientific novelty lies in taking a comprehensive approach to studying the issue: the peculiarities and common features of verb stems, infinitive forms, formation of causative forms, structural and word-formation types of simple verbs in the Ossetian and Persian languages are described. As a result, it has been proved that regular and irregular verbs in the Ossetian and Persian languages have more similarities than differences. Thus, Persian regular verbs form the past tense stem by attaching the suffix -d or -id to the present tense stem, while similar stems in the Ossetian language have the suffix -t or -d; irregular verbs are characterised by the same number of vowel or consonant alternations in the present and past tense stems. It has been found that the Ossetian simple verb does not have a structural and word-formation type equivalent to Persian similar-to-regular verbs. It has turned out that preverbs in the Ossetian language are combined not only with verbs of action and movement and possess aspectual and deictic meanings in addition to spatial meanings.

Çağatayca pūye urmak fiili üzerine etimolojik bir deneme

Bu makalede Molla Muhammed Timur’un Âsâru’l-İmâmiyye adlı Çağatayca Kelîle ve Dimne Tercümesi’nde geçen pūye urmak birleşik fiili ile Ordu yöresi ağızlarında kullanılan puymak fiili arasındaki etimolojik ilişki üzerinde durulmuştur. Mevcut bilgiler ve kaynaklar ışığında pūye urmak fiilinin birinci kısmı pūye’nin Farsça, پوییدن pūyîden “koşma, hızlı hareket etme” mastarının müteradif biçimleri olan پوى pūy~پو pū “koşma, araştırma”, پوينده pūyende “koşan, koşucu”, پويه pūye “koşma, hızlı yürüme, koşarcasına gitme” پويان pūyân “koşan, koşarcasına yürüyen, hızlı yürüyen” kelimeleri ile aynı kelime olduğu anlaşılmaktadır. Pūye urmak fiili zaman içerisinde fonetik değişikliğe uğrayarak Ordu yöresi ağızlarında puymak “uçmak, koşmak, hızla hareket etmek, kaçmak, eğimli bir yerden aşağıya doğru koşarak inmek, hızlıca gitmek” kök fiiline dönüştüğünü düşünmekteyiz. Fiilin köken değiştirerek Farsçadan Türkçeye dönüşümü pūye urmak isim+ yardımcı eylem biçiminden sonra kısalarak puymak biçimine dönüşmesiyle meydana gelmiş olmalıdır. Bu şekilde Farsça menşeli bir kelime köken değiştirerek hem Türkçeleşmiş hem de p>f değişimi sonucu görünüş olarak başka bir Türkçe fiil olan fıymak’a benzediği için teşhis edilmesi zor bir biçime dönüşmüştür.

Vilka faktorer predicerar behärskningen av svenskans preteritumböjning? Om finska gymnasieelevers inlärning av femton vardagliga verb

In this study, we examine how Finnish upper secondary students learning Swedish as a second language inflect Swedish verbs in the past tense. We analyze the answers by 351 students to an online quiz regarding the inflection of 15 common verbs using mixed effects logistic regression modeling. Our results indicate that the correctness of the answers in the verb inflection task can be predicted based on a combination of linguistic and extralinguistic variables. Specifically, with respect to linguistic variables, verb frequency and vowel shift (ablaut) are significant predictors of the correctness of the answers, whereas the traditional distinction between strong and weak verbs is not. With respect to extralinguistic variables, the correctness of the answers is significantly predicted by the students’ gender, age/exposure and level of motivation. Furthermore, we demonstrate through error analysis that, initially, many students follow the same pattern for past tense formation; the verbs’ infinitive form is interpreted as their stem and the past tense suffix -de is overgeneralized to most verbs. On a methodological level, we argue that multivariate analyses allow for a more detailed description of the acquisition order of language structures than what has been achieved by less sophisticated quantitative analyses in prior research, and we encourage other scholars to build on our work by expanding it both in terms of the number of verbs as well as the number of predictor variables.

Феномен репрезентации обобщенного субъекта пословиц и поговорок в чувашском языке

The aim of the research is to identify the multi-level linguistic means of a generalized subject in their correlation by the examples of generalized personal sentences in the Chuvash language. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the consideration of atypical cases of expressing this meaning in proverbs and sayings with participial / adverbial participial and infinitive forms. The obtained results have shown that the proverbial conceptualization of generalization at the structural and content levels has its own national characteristics in the Chuvash language. In the analysed examples, we have been able to make sure that proverbs have a folk origin and a close connection with folklore traditions and peasant mentality.

MORPHOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF BALOCHI VERBS

This study aims to explore the properties of Balochi verbs in Makrani dialect. Verbs in Balochi are focused to see their properties in terms of derivations and inflections along with tense, aspect, number, person, voice, and mood. For this qualitative study (Creswell, 2014), the data have been collected through recording of unstructured interviews from native participants. The data have been analysed through Radford’s (2009) ‘theory of agreement’. In this process, it is found that Balochi, being a pro-drop language, subject agrees with the verb and verb with its subject. It is also found that verbs in Balochi have various properties and these properties are generalized by tense, number, mood, voice, and person. It is found that there are four moods in Balochi which are indicative, subjunctive, imperative and optative. The analysis of the study also shows that future simple and present simple have equal range of tense structure; in other words, they have the same structure. Numbers in Balochi sometime have zero formats and sometime singular nouns carry suffix ‘ئے=a/e=agreement’ and plural suffix ‘آں=aan=agreement’.Voice in Balochi always carries infinitive form of the verb. The study also finds that Balochi has different personal ending suffixes for each person. Keywords: Balochi, Inflections, Makrani, Morphology, Suffixation, Verbs

Note su infiniti flessi in chianino: un approccio cartografico

In this article, we investigate a morpho-syntactic phenomenon in Chianino similar to the inflected infinitive discussed for Romance. Chianino is an Italo-Romance variety spoken in the southeast of the province of Siena. The analysed structures involve pairs of inflected verbs merged together. The candidates for the higher verb of the pair are (i) the root of the modaldové‘must’ and (ii) the subjunctive form ofavé‘to have’. The second element of the pair can only be a non-suppletive inflected infinitive form of the verbèsse‘to be’, as in the cases of the second person singulardev-ess-i‘you must be’ andabbi-ess-i‘you have to be’ (meaning: ‘you should be’). From a pragmatic point of view, the double inflected formsavé+èssecan only have epistemic readings, whiledové+èssecan also have a jussive connotation. After having briefly introduced the variety under investigation, we will discuss observational and introspective data. We will then proceed to a formal analysis. Adopting a cartographic approach, we consider the second element of the pair as a head located in a dedicated functional projection within the syntactic architecture.

Supine Remnants in Modern Czech Written Discourse: Corpus-based Study

In the article, based on the material of the Czech National Corpus, namely corpora series “SYN version 8” (4.5 billion tokens large), the functioning of the remnants of the old Czech supine in the modern Czech discourse is considered. The forms of the old Czech supine, as is commonly believed, were supplanted even before the Baroque era by infinitive forms. An analysis showed that supine as a grammatical category is absent in the modern Czech and that its only representation reveals in the combination of the verb jít ‘to go’ with the form spat ‘to sleep’, which differs from the form of the infinitive spát by the brevity of the vowel sound.

Paradigmatic Uniformity: Evidence from Heritage Speakers of Spanish

Subject-verb agreement mismatches have been reported in the L2 and heritage literature, usually involving infinitives, analyzed as default morphological forms for fully specified T-heads. This article explores the mechanisms behind these mismatches, testing two hypotheses: the default form and the surface-similarity hypotheses. It compares non-finite and finite S-V mismatches with subjects with different persons, testing whether similarity with other paradigmatic forms makes them more acceptable, controlling for the role of verb frequency. Participants were asked to rate sentences on a Likert scale that included (a) infinitive forms with first, second and third person subjects, and (b) third person verbal forms with first, second and third person subjects. Two stem-stressed verbs (e.g., tra.j-o ‘brought.3p.past’) and two affix-stressed verbs (e.g., me.ti-o ‘introduced.3p.past’), varying in frequency were tested. Inflectional affixes of stem-stressed verbs are similar to other forms of the paradigm both phonologically and in being unstressed (tra.j-o ‘brought.3p.past’ vs. trai.g-o ‘bring.1 p.pres’), whereas affixes of affix-stressed verbs have dissimilar stress patterns (me.ti-o ´introduced.3p.past’ vs. me.t-o ‘introduce.1p.pres’). Results show significantly higher acceptability for finite vs. non-finite non-matching, and for 1st vs. 2nd person subjects. Stem-stressed verbs showed higher acceptability ratings than affix-stressed ones, suggesting a role for surface-form correspondence, partially confirming previous findings.

언어유형론적 관점에서 본 한국어와 일본어의 사역이동 - 사역 수단을 나타내는 선행동사(V1)를 중심으로 -

This paper aims to point out the possibility that the verb-framed languages of Japanese and Korean are prone to express the co-event of caused motion, according to Talmy’s typology. In this paper, I examine the frequency of co-events which will be expressed as V1, in particular the Japanese verb infinitive forms and the Korean conjunctive morpheme ‘-e’ and ‘-a’. As a result, this examination shows that the means of caused motion were greater than that of the manner. It can be said that the importance is low in the expression of caused motion. Additionally, there were many V1 expressions in this study that were neither means nor manner, they were mainly action verbs, verbs including foreground or background information, and verbs of spontaneous motion. Completing the entirety of caused motion by specifying other aspects of caused motion can be seen as a competent strategy. The results of sub-classifying the caused motion of the two languages can be linked to the results of this paper in that the means were greater than the manner of caused motion.

Лечебники XVII–XVIII вв. из сибирских архивов: структурно-грамматический аспект

The article presents a comparative study of two medical books from the Siberian archives dating back to the 17 th –18 th centuries: Tobolsk Lechebnik (TL) kept in Tobolsk Book Depository, and Altai Lechebnik (AL) stored in Altai Museum of Local Lore – both stemming from the text of the medical book called "Prokhladnyi Vertograd (The Cool Garden)" from the collection of the Rumyantsev Museum (PV). Our findings show that Siberian medical books demonstrate different degrees of structural and grammatical transformation of the source PV text, conventionally considered by the authors of the research to be a list, which is chronologically closer to the original text. It was established that TL can be regarded as a list derived from the PV, and AL – a source reflecting a further stage in the process of text generation in the institutional medical discourse. We claim that the intentional and grammatical perspective of the medical text formation is associated with the modal variability of verbal lexemes: the prevailing in PV and TL personal verb forms reflect the presence of the subject of speech as an agent in special communication; in AL these are replaced by infinitives which transform the real modality of the message about an action "from experience" (in PV and TL) into a syntactic categorical imperative.It was also determined that the subject of the action expressed by personal verb forms is typically generalized (in this case, special actions of the doctor and the patient can be detected through the difference in the verbal lexemes). The subject is not grammatically defined with the infinitive verb forms.

Problems of teaching verb categories (contact, version and passive voice) of the Georgian language to non-native speakers

Teaching Georgian to non-native speakers, it is important to focus on categories students' first languages lack or express them in a different way. The paper discusses the formation of indirect contact, neutral version, and passive voice in verbs. Infixes -in- and -evin- are used to form forms of indirect contact. They are added to infinitive forms without markers - -in- is used with stems containing vowels, and - evin- with stems without vowels. At the same time, prefix a- is added to verbs at the beginning, and the thematic marker -eb at the end. Like all other thematic markers, the latter disappears in the second series of conjugation. Deriving version forms is a little more complicated, as there are neutral version forms without markers and with the prefix a-, subjective and objective version forms with the prefix i- for the first and second persons and u- for the third person in both singular and plural forms. Neutral version is formed with the prefix a- in verbs with eb- and ob- thematic markers apart from several exceptions and verbs with the am- thematic marker, apart from one exception (as version is impossible in the third series of conjugation, examples are in the first and second series of conjugation): a-šen-eb-s - a-a-šena, a-tbob-s - ga-a-tbo, a-b-am-s - da-a-ba). Thematic markers make no difference in forming subjective and objective version forms. If a verb is semantically able to have subjective and/or objective versions, verbs in the first and second series of conjugation take forms of subjective and/or objective version. Forms of subjective version use prefix i-: c'ers – i-c'ers, dac'era – da-i-c'era. In forms of objective version, verbs take the prefix i- in the first and second person and u- in the third person, both singular and plural. Like in the forms of indirect contact, the aforementioned rule of using person markers can be put to use: m-i-c'ers is me, g-i-c'ers is šen, u-c'ers is mas/mat, gv-i-c'ers is čven, g-i-c'ert is tkven, u-c'eren isini mas/mat. As for the passive voice, it can be formed with prefixes (i- and e-), a suffix (-d) and without any markers. Thematic markers and the presence/absence of a vowel in the infinitive play a role in forming verbs in the passive voice. In the passive voice, prefixes are added to verbs with single stems (without thematic markers) and verbs with -av, -am, -op, -i thematic markers, those with vowel interchange, and some verbs with the -ob thematic marker. Verbs with a vowel in the infinitive form the passive voice the thematic stems of the second series of conjugation: xat’va – i-xat’eba, e xat’eba; breca – i-briceba, e-briceba, while stems without vowels form the passive voice from the infinitive without markers. There are several such verbs with -av and -eb thematic markers, verbs with -i, -am and -eb thematic markers and some verbs with the -ob thematic marker: šek’vr-a – i-k’vreba, e-k’vreba; da-d-eba – i-deba, e-deba; č'r-a – i-č'reba, e-č'reba; dadgm-a – i-dgmeba, e-dgmeba; ga-q’op-a – i-q’opa, e-q’opa; da-xrč-oba – i-xrčoba, exrčoba. Verbs with a vowel and the -eb thematic marker, apart from two exceptions, form the passive voice with the suffix -d from the thematic stem of the second series of conjugation: šen-eb-a – šen-d-eba. The passive voice is formed without markers from verbs with the -ob thematic markers. The thematic stems of the second series of conjugation are used as the roots: ga-tb-ob-a – tb-eb-a. The passive voice with suffixes (with the -d suffix) is formed only in verbs with the - eb thematic marker. The passive voice markers is formed only in some verbs with the -ob thematic marker. Other verbs can form the passive voice only with the i- and eprefixes. Verbs in the passive voice with the prefix e- have only two persons (emaleba is mas). Other passive voice forms can have only one person (imaleba is, c'itldeba is, idgmeba is, išleba is, iq’opa is, igrixeba is, xmeba is). The author hopes that this approach to these problems can help Georgian language learners.

Sonic masquerading in Israeli popular music: self-Imitation, accent, and mockery

ABSTRACT The Mistaʿarvim are Jewish undercover agents who masquerade as Arabs in order to infiltrate Palestinian and other Arab societies in the service of the Israeli military. The first Mistaʿarvim unit, which served in the pre-1948 Palmach Zionist militia, was based on Jews of Arab origin. Arabs in appearance and in speech, these undercover Jewish agents masqueraded as Arabs to blend into Arab communities without raising suspicion. They successfully executed their operations only by transforming their Arab selves into a performative imitation of ‘Arabs’ as Others. Complying with the Zionist binary separation between ‘Arabs’ and ‘Jews’ as two different identities, they broke their originally hyphenated Jewish-Arab identity, and in return they gained heroic acceptance into the exclusively Jewish nation in Israel. In this article, we examine how the military-oriented tactic of histaʿarvut (the infinitive form of acting as Mistaʿarvim) sheds light on performative acts in the field of popular music, whereby a Jewish Israeli identity is asserted through a ‘masked’ performance of Arabs. As an act of self-imitation, ‘cultural histaʿarvut’ includes symbolic borrowing of visual, linguistic, or musical elements from Arab and Palestinian cultures in order to stage a masked performance that ‘crosses’ the cultural lines to ridicule or demean Arabs and their culture, as a means of Jewish Israeli entertainment. Drawing on this, we introduce the term ‘sonic masquerading’ to elaborate on the specific performative uses of the Arabic accent and musical features as an example of cultural histaʿarvut in the work of the Israeli musicians Shefita, Daniel Saʿadon, and Tuna.

Perspectival usages of French past time verbal tenses: an experimental investigation

AbstractIn this paper, we carried out two experimental studies to investigate whether verbal tenses, in their perspectival usages, give access to the speaker’s perspective. Study 1 is an annotation study in which annotators evaluated corpus excerpts as expressing situations or narrating events in a subjective or objective way. We manipulated access to the verbal tense: half of the annotators saw the tense of the verbs, and half saw only infinitive forms of the verbs. Study 2 is a self-paced reading experiment in which we examined how native speakers of French process utterances with the Passé Simple when it is preceded byaujourd’hui(semantic incompatibility solved pragmatically by perspective-taking),hier(semantic and pragmatic compatibility) anden ce moment(semantic incompatibility which cannot be solved pragmatically). The results of Study 1 suggest that the subjective interpretation of an utterance is not triggered by its verbal tense. Study 2 questions the idea that perspective-taking is a component of speaker’s subjectivity. In general, our experimental findings do not support the hypothesis that verbal tenses give access to speaker’s subjectivity, a theoretical hypothesis which has never before been directly experimentally tested.