Imperfective Aspect Research Articles

O uso do Pretérito Imperfeito e do Pretérito Perfeito do Indicativo em português europeu por estudantes com cantonês como L1

Este trabalho tem como objetivo averiguar que condições de uso implicam mais desvios relativamente ao emprego do Pretérito Perfeito Simples (PPS) e do Pretérito Imperfeito (PI) por aprendentes chineses de PLE, de nível A2 (QECRL), com L1 cantonês, procurando encontrar algumas explicações para a sua ocorrência. A análise, quantitativa e qualitativa, parte do contraste entre o português e o cantonês quanto à marcação do tempo e do aspeto e descreve os desvios mais frequentes num corpus de produções escritas dos estudantes. Face a alguns resultados inesperados, procedeu-se também a uma verificação de ocorrências do Presente em vez do PPS e do PI, como forma de confirmar ou não, possíveis explicações. Os resultados indicam que não parece haver uma transferência direta do valor dos marcadores aspetuais perfetivos e imperfetivos do cantonês para a utilização do PPS e do PI ou do Presente, mas uma transferência da concetualização perfetivo/imperfetivo no cantonês, independentemente do tempo.

Русские глаголы совершенного/несовершенного видов прошедшего времени с аористическим значением и система их китайских соответствий

Русские глаголы совершенного/несовершенного видов прошедшего времени с аористическим значением и система их китайских соответствий

Swoiste sposoby określania czynności przy ich powtórnym opisie

The article is devoted to a separate variety of statements: statements reporting the content of other statements. The author refers to this type of speech as ‘retelling’ (Russian: pereskaz) and points to its use in presenting the content of literary works, journalistic texts, various cultural texts (film, opera, ballet, etc.) and, less frequently, also spoken statements. One typical where these forms occur are headlines reporting on the content of the following text and stage directions. ‘Retelling’ is characterized by specific ways of using the forms of the perfective and imperfective aspects of the verb and the use of temporal forms of the verb, different from the usual dependence of tenses (such as ‘future in the past’). This is justified by their metatextual function. In these cases, there is a transition to the second or even third level of temporal deixis, when events are not presented (as opposed to a simple statement) from the point of view of the ‘here and now’ of the current sender but, instead, presented as elements of the reality already presented in the previous statement and reported from the perspective of its author or recipient/interpreter (who may assume different time perspectives vis-à-vis the content of the presented text). A thorough analysis of the material illustrating the ‘retelling’ in the article reveals specific cases of synonymy between different tense-aspect verb forms.

Definite descriptions of events: progressive interpretation in Ga (Kwa)

This paper demonstrates that the progressive interpretation in Ga is an effect of the interaction between the imperfective aspect and a definite description of events. Crucially, the data from Ga point to the consequences of the view that definite descriptions of events encode the familiarity of the discourse referent and its uniqueness in bearing the property in question. Namely, they yield direct evidentiality and the necessary ongoingness of the event at the topic time. Thus, the paper identifies previously unattested variation in the semantics of the progressive in a cross-linguistic perspective and shows that not only lexical but also grammatical aspect exhibits striking parallelisms with the nominal domain.

Existential and locative constructions in Mandarin Chinese

AbstractDespite previous studies (cf. among others Huang 1987. Existential sentences in Chinese and (in)definiteness. In Eric J. Reuland & Alice G.B. Ter Meulen (eds.),The representation of (In)definiteness, 226–253. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press; Li, Yen-Hui Audrey. 1990.Order and constituency in Mandarin Chinese. Dordrecht: Kluwer; Li, Yen-Hui Audrey. 1998. Two types of existential sentences.Illinois Papers in Linguistics26. 175–191; Pan, Haihua. 1996. Imperfective aspectzhe, agent deletion, and locative inversion in Mandarin Chinese.Natural Language and Linguistic Theory14(2). 409–432), the defining characteristics of existential sentences in Chinese (including potential equivalents oflocative inversionin English) have remained controversial. This is shown to be due to the failure to acknowledge the existence of two different constructions, theexistential construction(ExC) ‘Ø V DP’ where a sentence-initial phrase indicating location (PlaceP) is not required, on the one hand, and thelocative construction(LoC) with an obligatory PlaceP, on the other: ‘PlaceP V DP’. Only the ExC can serve as a diagnostic context for unaccusative verbs, whereas the LoC allows for a wide range of verbs, including a subset of unergative verbs. Furthermore, two types of LoC need to be distinguished, depending on the type of aspect (perfective aspect -levs imperfective aspect-zhe), giving rise to different semantics. Both have, however, in common that the PlaceP occupies the subject position (SpecTP), not the topic position, and that it is merged in SpecTP, not moved there, as evidenced by the systematic lack of a corresponding source structure with the PlaceP in postverbal position.

A REFERENCE BOOK ON THE ASPECT OF BULGARIAN VERBS

The present paper aims at presenting the scientific work “A Reference Book on the Aspect of Bulgarian Verbs” published in 2019. The reference book is intended for foreign students studying Bulgarian but it may as well be a precious guide and a practical handbook for all who are interested in learning and teaching Bulgarian.The idea for writing and publishing this reference book was motivated by the strife of the author to facilitate the acquisition of the language.The reference book begins with brief theoretical comments on the Bulgarian verb. They are presented in a concise and adapted manner with a minimum use of linguistic terminology (with a view to the practical aim of the handbook and the specificity of the audience to which it is directed at).The presence of tables and schemes in the reference book is deliberate since the purpose of the handbook is to provide a quick reference and to make the memorizing of key concepts and verb forms easier.The reference book includes the most common and traditional concepts as well as the most contemporary ideas of the Bulgarian linguistics. Reference to the literature used is included.A list of more than 150 pairs of verbs in the perfective and imperfective aspect arranged in an alphabetical order in a table is included in “A Reference Book on the Aspect of Bulgarian Verbs”. The verbs in these pairs are used quite frequently in Bulgarian speech. The selection is consistent with Bulgarian language learning by foreign students in their first year of studies from the specialties in Medicine, Dental Medicine and Pharmacy and corresponds to A1 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Verbs are not translated into another language but there is an additional blank column in which each foreign student can write a translation equivalent. The illustrative manner of grammar knowledge with appropriate verb forms arranged in tables was quite consciously chosen. The basic pairs of antonyms in the groups of the conjugated verbs are presented with the aim of optimizing the process of mastery of the verbs. The tense system of the Bulgarian language is presented through the nine tenses in it illustrated with examples from the three conjugations.The reference book presents some of the specificities of the Bulgarian verb in a more comprehensible manner and most of all the category verb aspect which is difficult and complex to teach and explain. For the first time the aspect’s functioning is illustrated with examples which are included simultaneously for the two verb aspects. Practical advice for the determination of the verb aspect is supplied and key words and expressions for “identifying” the perfective and imperfective aspect are derived. The connection between the aspect and the verb tense is also presented.“A Reference Book on the Aspect of Bulgarian Verbs” is a valuable tool for all who are interested in studying and teaching the Bulgarian language.

The Synergistic Benefits of Systematic and Random Interleaving for Second Language Grammar Learning

Repeatedly switching between a series of to-be-learned topics, also called interleaved practice, can improve learning over traditional, one-topic-at-a-time blocked practice. We investigated whether interleaving's benefits for second language learning are facilitated by random schedules, wherein training trials follow unpredictable patterns, or by systematically alternating schedules, wherein trials are predictably sorted. Students learned to conjugate Spanish verbs in the preterite and imperfect tenses and then took a 48-hr delayed verb conjugation test. A consistently random (Experiment 1) or systematically alternating schedule (Experiment 2) did not improve learning versus blocking. However, the combination of both types–systematic alternation for study trials and randomization for practice trials–enhanced learning (Experiments 3–4). Thus, neither interleaving schedule alone appears to be sufficient; for verb conjugation skills and likely other materials involving study and problem-solving practice, both are needed. Interleaving's benefits are therefore impacted by the alignment between training schedule and task type.

Mode Mixing Suppression Algorithm for Empirical Mode Decomposition Based on Self-Filtering Method

The Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) is a classic method in time-frequency analysis field which was proposed in 1998. Since it is not limited by signal type, it is generally applied in medicine, target detection and so on. Empirical mode decomposition (EMD) is a pre-processing part of HHT. However, EMD still has many imperfect aspects, such as envelope fitting, the endpoint effect, mode mixing and other issues, of which the most important issue is the mode mixing. This paper proposes a mode mixing suppression algorithm based on self-filtering method using frequency conversion. The proposed algorithm focuses on the instantaneous frequency estimation and the false components removing procedures, which help the proposed algorithm to update or purify the designated intrinsic mode function (IMF). According the simulation results, the proposed algorithm can effectively suppress the mode mixing. Comparing with ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) and mask method, the suppression performance is increased by 26%.

Measuring imperfections of water quality sensors in water distribution networks

Water distribution networks (WDNs) are critical to provide safe, clean drinking water around the globe. However, they are susceptible to accidental or deliberate contamination, potentially resulting in poisoned water, many fatalities and large economic consequences. In order to protect against such intrusions, an efficient sensor network should be placed in a WDN. Finding the optimal placement for water quality sensors is a challenging problem. Several sensor placement strategies have been proposed, but the vast majority of these strategies rely on the assumption that the sensors are perfect. In this paper we provide evidence for the imperfection of water quality sensors, by conducting measurements in an operational environment. We investigate the imperfection of four types of water quality sensors being employed in actual WDNs for the purpose of contamination detection. We describe experiments conducted at the WaDi testbed, a realistic water distribution facility at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. Through these experiments we study the imperfection, sensitivity and degradation of the water quality sensors, under normal conditions (water flow without contaminants present) as well as under attack conditions. It is shown that several aspects of sensor imperfection do occur, including missing values, inexplicable jumps and drifting.

The Effects of Gradual and Indirect Feedback on EFL Learners' Grammar Development and Beliefs

Corrective feedback has received significant attention in English language teaching, and its role has been highly substantial. Considering the importance of corrective feedback in EFL classes, this study aimed at finding the effects of indirect and gradual CF on Iranian EFL learners' grammatical development and their beliefs toward CF. Twenty EFL learners, meeting the criterion of being lower-intermediate in their proficiency, participated in this study and were divided randomly into two groups of indirect and gradual CF. An Oxford Placement Test, Aljaafreh and Lantolf's (1994) regulatory scale, error correction test, writing tasks, and Corrective Feedback Belief Scale were used as data collection instruments. The indirect group received indirect CF based on cognitive theory and the gradual group received feedback based on Aljaafreh and Lantolf's (1994) regulatory scale for four sessions. The findings obtained from Mann-Whitney U tests revealed that the gradual group which received CF based on sociocultural theory was better able to overcome the problems related to simple present and present progressive tenses than the indirect group which received indirect CF based on cognitive theory. The findings also indicated that all learners, both gradual and indirect, preferred receiving CF and both groups always preferred to be corrected and likewise, both groups considered the teacher as the main provider of CF. The results of this study suggest that gradual feedback based on learners’ ZPD was more effective in improving EFL learners’ grammar development. In conclusion, these findings support the idea that social interaction is a prerequisite for cognitive development.

Tense and Aspect in the Academic Writing of Arab L2 Learners of English: A Corpus-Based Approach


 This study aimed at explicating the use of tense and aspect in the academic writing of Arab L2 learners of English. The scope was restricted to two absolute tenses (simple present and simple past), perfective and imperfective aspects, and verb-form errors arising from the deletion or addition of the third person singular-s besides the omission of copula and auxiliary verbs. The study was conducted on the basis of a comparative, quantitative analysis of the target forms between a learner corpus and a similar-sized native one. In pursuing and achieving the stated objectives, it also concentrated on the types and sources of the tense, aspect and verb form errors in learners’ performance. In addition to the significant disparity between the two corpora in terms of the frequency count and percentage of most of the target forms, the findings confirmed learners’ tendency to use more verbs than native speakers. Results also showed that learners’ use of the preterit (simple past), and perfective and imperfective aspects were largely constrained by their L1 grammar and semantic interpretation of verbs (independent of the target language norm). Moreover, the findings revealed some common inconsistent erroneous forms attributed to the omission or addition of the third person singular-s and the omission of copula and auxiliary verbs. Several main factors were identified as potentially responsible for learners’ errors, that is, inconsistency inherent in L2 rules, learners’ limited exposure to (authentic) L2, overgeneralization, redundancy reduction, and language transfer. The findings suggest the need to introduce appropriate pedagogical methods to best present the target language rules.

A functional perspective on the challenges of teaching English tenses to speakers of other languages: The case of adult speakers of Serbian

Systemic-functional linguistics (SFL) describes the English TENSE system as a logical ideational resource for representing experience of time. There is a gap in research, however, exploring the applications of an SFL-based tense description in second language acquisition (SLA). Using the SFL framework, this paper investigates the difficulties arising for adult Serbian speakers when learning English tenses and offers practical pedagogical strategies. Data were collected through surveys and interviews with English teachers in Serbia. The findings indicate that learners struggle when tense forms reflect more than one temporal relation, arguably due to the Serbian tense system. The study also suggests learners’ tendencies to misinterpret English progressive tenses as equivalent to Serbian imperfective aspect. The concept of relative tenses can be used to observe all time references influencing tense selection. It can also be employed to mitigate the negative L1 transfer in terms of aspect. The key implication of this study pertains to the benefits of adopting a systemic-functional perspective on time realisation in SLA research.

ON THE QUESTION OF THE INTERACTION OF VERBAL ASPECT WITH OTHER CATEGORIES OF THE VERB

The article, based on the two-component model of the semantic invariant of verbal aspect, covers the interpretation of two grammatical phenomena: 1) type distribution of the passive expression methods and 2) variability of expression of the direct object that accompanies some transitive verbs. Further reference to the stated problem, that was long-term and widely discussed in terms of native and foreign aspectology of the Russian language, is justified in the particular research by the novelty of the angle approach to the position of the aspect in grammatical verb system. Observations of the aspect usage in the mentioned constructions convince that meaning relationship between the aspect and varied morphological and syntactical verb categories cannot be comprehensively revealed without taking into consideration the significance of the situational component of the aspect semantic structure. Thus, perfective verbs combined with another grammatical factors replace the meaning focus from action to situation or vice versa, define the character of the direct object etc. These particular accents clearly allocate the speech aspect through reflecting the passive reciprocal forms of imperfective verbs or passive perfective participle, e.g.: The report is being presented by the student (not is presented!) The report has been presented (not was presented!). The first example focuses on the process of reading, the second example presents the result, that can be observed after the situation (the perception of what was heard). Conversely, the imperfective aspect, representing the action separately from the situation, emphasizes its specific meanings existential nature of the action, its qualification etc. according to its grammatical conditions and its own lexical semantics. It is also stated that aspect juxtaposition in grammatical and semantic contexts implements in varied proportion another fundamental property dynamic and static of the reality fragment depicted that is accomplished by perfective and imperfective aspects respectively.The following semantic research of verbal aspect from the syntagmatic point of view takes into consideration the relation of the action, that was expressed through each aspect, and the situational background that would let observe new perspectives and depths of the Russian language structure.

Reflections on habituality across other grammatical categories

AbstractThe main aim of this introduction article is to give a general overview of how habituality has been investigated in the literature as a grammatical category. In doing so, we first elaborate on the question of how habituality can be characterized and what difficulties one encounters in determining its properties, which include non-contingent modal event recurrence. A brief discussion of these issues is given in Section 2. Section 3 outlines selected (conceptual and formal) connections between habituality and other grammatical categories. What our observations essentially indicate is that habituality, on the one hand, closely interacts with several TAM categories, most prominently imperfective aspect and its derivatives (progressive, continuative), and also interacts in special ways with modal categories, such as the evidential or the future, on the other hand, we also observe – as has been done previously – that habituality is often not encoded overtly and can be expressed by several forms within one and the same language, and if overtly marked by a dedicated form, diachronically, it is not always stable. Finally, Section 4 summarizes the most relevant findings of the articles collected in the present special issue and highlights their importance for the general discussion about habituality.

The role of educational setting in the development of verbal aspect and executive functions: evidence from Greek-German bilingual children

ABSTRACT The present study aims at exploring: (a) the role of the educational setting in the acquisition of aspect and executive functions (i.e. updating) skills, (b) the acquisition of the aspectual features in Greek-German bilingual children and (c) the impact of updating on the acquisition of aspect. Imperfective aspect has been found to be acquired later than perfective in previous studies. Moreover, a bilingual educational setting seems to enhance not only cognitive but also linguistic abilities. The participants of the present study are Greek-German bilingual children, who attend a bilingual or a Greek dominant educational setting. They were tested in two baseline tasks, two linguistic tasks and an executive function, updating, task. The findings reveal that bilinguals who attend a monolingual educational setting performed similarly to the monolingual control group on aspect, whereas bilinguals who attend a bilingual educational setting scored lower than the monolinguals. In the updating task, the students of the bilingual educational setting scored higher than the other groups. Overall, our findings suggest that the bilingual educational setting seems to boost executive function (updating) skills, while the acquisition of aspect is affected by vocabulary knowledge.

Aspect and Narrative Event Segmentation

Time is central to human cognition, both in terms of how we understand the world and the events that unfold around us as well as how we communicate about those events. As such, language has morphological systems, such as temporal adverbs, tense, and aspect to convey the passage of time. The current study explored the role of one such temporal marker, grammatical aspect, and its impact on how we understand the temporal boundaries between events conveyed in narratives. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants read stories that contained a target event that was either conveyed with a perfective (e.g., watched a movie) or imperfective aspect (e.g., was watching a movie) and engaged in an event segmentation task. Events described in the perfective aspect were more often perceived as event boundaries than events in the imperfective aspect, however, event duration (long vs. short) did not impact this relationship in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 demonstrated that readers were sensitive to grammatical aspect and event duration in the context of a story continuation task. Overall this study demonstrates that grammatical aspect interacts with world knowledge to convey event structure information that influences how people interpret the end and beginning of events.

Robust Visual Tracking via an Improved Background Aware Correlation Filter

Recently, there emerge many excellent algorithms in the field of visual object tracking. Especially, the background aware correlation filter (BACF) has received much attention, owing to its ability to cope with the boundary effect. However, in the related works, there exist two aspects of imperfections: 1) only histograms of oriented gradients (HOG) is extracted, through which the visual information of targets cannot be fully expressed; and 2) the scale estimation strategy is imperfect in terms of scale parameters, which makes it impossible to accurately track the targets with large-scale changes. To overcome the imperfections, an improved BACF method of robust visual object tracking is proposed to achieve the location of targets with higher accuracy in complex scenarios allowing scale variation, occlusion, rotation, illumination variation, and so on. Crucially, a feature fusion strategy based on HOG and color names is integrated to extract a powerful feature of targets, and a modified scale estimation strategy is designed to enhance the ability to track targets with large-scale changes. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method are demonstrated through evaluations on OTB2103 and OTB2015 benchmarks. Particularly, compared with other state-of-the-art correlation filter-based trackers and deep learning-based trackers, the proposed method is competitive in terms of accuracy and success rate.

Soft neural network-based block chain risk estimation

Financial risk refers to the uncertainty caused by the change of the economic and financial conditions. As a kind of economic phenomenon, the financial risk is objective and can not be eliminated. At present, there are still some imperfect aspects in the research of financial risk assessment. In order to achieve the purpose of comprehensive evaluation of financial risks, the paper analyses the methodology of soft computing and neural networks. The basic function of financial risk monitoring and evaluation system is to forecast the trend of financial activities and risk status, and this is also the fundamental function and objectives of the assessment system. We use BP neural network theory to establish the logistics finance risk evaluation model, using BP neural network structure and training principles to train sample data. The soft computing method is based on the factors of uncertainty and irrationality, which breaks through the limitation of traditional hard computing. There is a consistency between the fuzzy thinking principle of soft computing method and the attribute and structure of the objective world and therefore, soft computing can be used in field of financial risk assessment.

Acquisition of the Imperfective Aspect Marker -te i (ru) by L2 Learners of Japanese

Acquisition of the Imperfective Aspect Marker -<i>te i (ru)</i> by L2 Learners of Japanese

The current use of the past imperfect tense in Albanian and Serbian – a case study

The current use of the past imperfect tense in Albanian and Serbian – a case studyThe article deals with the indirect influence of Albanian grammar among the native speakers of Serbian who study Albanian as a foreign language as an awareness and transformation process when translating the past imperfect forms from Albanian as a foreign language into their mother tongue Serbian, more specifically the past imperfect of Albanian into Serbian as their mother tongue. The emphasize that while translating, the students are guided not by knowledge of formal grammar but by actual by real usage of this tense in Albanian and Serbian. Współczesne użycie imperfectum w języku serbskim i albańskim Artykuł dotyczy bezpośredniego wpływu gramatyki albańskiej na język serbski wśród Serbów uczących się języka albańskiego jako obcego. Przedmiotem opisu jest przekład albańskich form imperfektywnych w tłumaczeniu z albańskiego na serbski, w którym ta forma werbalna nie jest już używana. Autorki podkreślają, że studenci, tłumacząc, nie kierują się formalną wiedzą gramatyczną na temat funkcjonowania imperfectum w obu językach, ale realnymi zastosowaniami tej formy temporalnej.