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Aspectual Categories in Navajo

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Text, Time, and Context

Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy ((SLAP,volume 87))

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Abstract

Aspect is the semantic domain of temporal point of view in language. The linguistic expressions that a speaker chooses present situations in a particular temporal light. For example, in talking about a bird flying, I may say in English The bird flew The bird was flying, The bird was in flight. The first two sentences present a dynamic event from different viewpoints; the third presents a static situation. These are aspectual distinctions. The domain of aspect includes such categories as perfective and imperfective viewpoint, and situation types such as event and state.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The discussion assumes the framework of my two-component theory of aspect. This view recognizes two independent components in the aspectual system of a language: viewpoint (e.g., perfective, imperfective, etc.) and situation type (e.g., state, durative event, etc.). Situation types categorize a situation according to its temporal features; viewpoint presents all or part of the situation. Sentences give information of both components. The theory is developed and applied to five languages, including Navajo, in Smith (1991). This article is based on the analysis presented there, but it is substantially different in many respects.

  2. 2.

    The internal temporal structure of situations is discussed in Ryle (1949), Vendler (1957), and Kenney (1963). Recent classifications include Dowty (1979) and Smith (1991).

  3. 3.

    The classification recognizes two crosscutting distinctions, ±Telic and ±Durative. This differs slightly from Vendler and Dowty, both of whom make the distinction explicitly for durative events, but they posit two subtypes of Achievements which correspond to Achievement and Semelfactive here.

  4. 4.

    Thematic prefixes are associated with particular verb roots; they appear in the same set of positions as adverbial and other derivational prefixes.

    There are other treatments of the Athapaskan verb: Kari recognizes three levels—the Lexical, Derivational, and Inflectional and Postinflectional—which he presents in a detailed model (1990:39). The verb base is formed at the first two of these levels. McDonough (1996) suggests that there are two main constituents to the Navajo verb, a tense-subject constituent and a verb stem.

  5. 5.

    Certain verb bases, and classes of verb bases, require particular conjugational morphemes (Young, Morgan, and Midgette 1993:863–74). Recall that there are four morphemes for both the Imperfective and Perfective viewpoints. The facts are quite complex; I summarize some of them briefly.

    Bases of the Continuative, Conclusive, some Distributive, and some Reversative VLCs require the Ø0-Imperfective/si-Perfective conjugation pattern. Moreover, if the plural morpheme da appears, it overrides other dependencies and always appears with the si-Perfective. These facts suggest that the si-Perfective is related to plurality. But another VLC involving plurality, the Repetitive, takes either si- or yi-Perfective, depending on the particular verb base. Bases of the Durative VLC require a Ø0-Imperfective/yi-Perfective conjugation pattern; bases of the Transitional require a yi-Imperfective/yi-Perfective pattern. The other VLCs have varied conjugation patterns. Whether these dependencies reflect semantic temporal features is unclear (cf. n. 14).

  6. 6.

    The Progressive viewpoint in Navajo appears only with verb bases of the Cursive VLC. The Cursive is discussed in Sections 4 and 5 below (see also note 16).

  7. 7.

    In fact, stative sentences have the semantic temporal property of duration (Smith 1991). In Navajo, Statives are felicitous with direct duratives. They do not appear with the three other correlates of duration because of other factors: inceptives and terminatives by definition involve a change of state and are thus incompatible with statives. Adverbials of indirect duration are incompatible with statives because they imply successive stages; states consist of an undifferentiated period. Finally, as noted above, the imperfective viewpoint does not appear as such with stative bases.

  8. 8.

    There are certain exceptional group A verb bases which can appear with direct durative verbs. These bases indicate events with the semantic property of duration and, crucially, do not have a related group B form. The following example, which has the base [’ahidi…kaał], is cited by Midgette (1987:78):

    shizhé’é chizh ahidiłkaałgo i’íí’ǫ’

    My father firewood he chop + sun go down  (Impf A:Mom…Perf A:Mom)

    ‘My father chopped firewood all day long’

    Sentences like this do not represent a systematic possibility in the language. There are many other verb bases which also indicate durative events and have no group B related forms. But few of them seem to be acceptable to native speakers in this construction (Sally Midgette and Robert Young, personal communication).

  9. 9.

    These sentences exemplify some of the contexts in which imperfectives may appear with bases of group A. (11a) and (11b) are bases for which no group B form exists. (11c) and (11d) are adversatives, appearing in contexts which suggest, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that an event did not occur or continue. In this case we take it that the person probably did not kick the ball, and that I probably did not leave. The notion of adversative is a pragmatic one, because the relevant contexts cannot be identified on a syntactic basis.

    Imperfectives may also appear in backgrounded contexts:

    taah yish’aah ńt’éé’ bił néshj ̨ í ̨ í d

    ‘When I was putting it into the water, I slipped and fell’  (Impf A… Perf A)

    The first event, presented imperfectively, is backgrounded; there is no relevant group B form.

    These examples are noteworthy because they show that group A bases may occur with the imperfective viewpoint. The constraint against the imperfective viewpoint with group A bases depends partly on the availability of a group B form. Group A forms can be used in many contexts if no group B form exists; related verb bases are discussed in Section 4.3 below.

  10. 10.

    Although imperfective forms are available for group A bases, they tend to be used in marked contexts. In fact, there is a tendency to think of group A verb bases as taking only a perfective viewpoint. This tendency is very strong in the consciousness of speakers of the Navajo language. People are sometimes unable to give the imperfective forms of group A VLCs in isolation, although they produce the forms without difficulty in the appropriate contexts (Sally Midgette, personal communication).

  11. 11.

    The related broad-view forms of the sentences in (12) are these:

    1. (a)

      No broad-view verb base (cf. 22)

    2. (c)

      Broad-view base, different VLC: bilasáana yíyƀǪƀ Ǫ ‘I eat the apple’  (Perf B:Dur)

    3. (d)

      No broad-view base

    4. (e)

      Broad view base, different VLC: diyógí sétło’Ǭ ‘I wove the blanket’  (Perf B:Rep)

  12. 12.

    According to a native speaker, these forms cannot be used and in a sense they do not really exist: in other words, they are ungrammatical. With the ‘shoot’ verb, the form niiníłka’ conflicts with another verb entirely, niiníłkáá’ ‘he stopped tracking it’. I would like to thank Ken Hale and Paul Platero for judgments and comments on these and related examples.

  13. 13.

    The pattern of dependencies is intricate, with many exceptions, and its force is much debated. Krauss (1969:82) and Young and Morgan (1987:104) argue that the perfective morphemes have consistent semantic force. I was unable to find a consistent semantics at the level either of situation types or the feature of telicity (Smith 1991). Axelrod takes a position similar to mine in discussing the perfective morphemes of Koyukon, another Athapaskan language (1993:35–40).

  14. 14.

    In contrast, conjunctions like this with nonstative (event) verb bases and the Perfective viewpoint are semantically ill formed.

    * hosélbj’ dóó t’ahdii hashb̨i’

    ‘I built a hogan and I’m still building it’ (Perf …Impf)

    Since the Imperfective presents an event without endpoints, it is compatible with an assertion that the event continues.

  15. 15.

    Characteristic patterns of entailments for the different situation types have been recognized in the literature (see the references in n. 2).

  16. 16.

    In a sense, two different ways of presenting situations are neutralized here. Lexical and superlexical morphemes present broad or narrow views of a situation: the Cursive VLC is superlexical, presenting a narrow view of a situation, namely, an internal interval. The viewpoints of a language focus all or part of a situation. The Progressive viewpoint focuses on part of a situation, namely, an internal interval. Recall that the Cursive VLC and the Progressive viewpoint are mutually dependent.

  17. 17.

    The different bases of such arrays can be seen as multiple realizations of an event at a more abstract level. To develop such an analysis, it will be necessary to work out detailed lexical rules for Navajo. I hope to provide such rules in future work.

  18. 18.

    In an informal count of verb roots in Young, Morgan, and Midgette (1992), about 125 roots have only nonstative verb bases of group A, while about 275 roots have nonstative bases of both group A and group B. The count indicates a significant number of minimal arrays. It does not give a sense of how many minimal or arrayed bases there are, however, because roots and their bases vary widely. Some roots are extremely productive, with many related verb bases; others have relatively few bases. The verb bases related to a given root may include one or more arrays, or minimal arrays, or single bases of the Instantaneous situation type.

  19. 19.

    Another way of putting this is to say that the bounds of events are salient in Navajo; this point is made by Midgette (1989b) in a somewhat different connection.

  20. 20.

    To indicate the breadth of this phenomenon, I give another example of the striking differences in number and generality between group A and group B VLCs. There are close to fifty group A verb bases involving the notion ‘drive’ from the root [lo’], among them the following: [’a … łeeh] ‘drive unspecified object’, [’a’a … łeeh] ‘drive vehicle away out of sight’, [’e’e … łeeh] [’ada … łeeh] ‘drive vehicle into, e.g., a wash’, [’ada’a … łeeh] ‘drive down from a height’, [’ahéná … łeeh] ‘make a circuit driving’, [ná … łeeh] ‘drive or carry something around, detour around’, [yisdá … łeeh] ‘drive to safety’. There are five group B bases concerning driving generally, from the same root, e.g., [’a … łoh] ‘drive along in a vehicle’. Other bases from this root have meanings such as ‘throw loops’, ‘carry by a handle’, ‘put on brakes’, ‘trick, lure’. There are also many other bases referring to driving: for instance, the root [bƀǪ ƀǪ] has a large number of such bases, which tend to involve rolling and circular motion.

  21. 21.

    The motion and nonmotion verb bases of Navajo differ in many ways (see the references above for discussion).

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Acknowledgement

I wish to acknowledge much generous advice and help given to me in this work. I would like to thank Sally Midgette for sharing with me much of her knowledge, as well as for her patience and suggestions. I thank Robert Young for his encouragement, comments, and meticulous corrections of Navajo examples. I thank Ken Hale for stimulating discussions of much of this material. I would also like to thank the editor of this Journal for a penetrating reading of an earlier draft of this article. All errors of fact and interpretation are mine, of course.

Works on Navajo which I consulted include Young and Morgan (1987), Young et al. (1992), Kari (1976; 1979; 1990), Midgette (1987), Speas (1986); also Hardy (1979) and Sapir and Hoijer (1967). The examples presented here are for the most part drawn from Midgette (1987) and Young, Morgan, and Midgette (1992); some were constructed in consultation with speakers of Navajo.

[Editors’ note: All linguistic examples have been reproduced verbatim, with the exception of (13b) in which Smith used a different transcription system than elsewhere in this paper. In that single example, she used different transcription conventions for the voiceless lateral and for nasalized vowels. Our thanks to Ted Fernald, Paul Platero, and Tony Woodbury for discussion.]

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Formerly of Department of Linguistics, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA

    Carlota S. Smith

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  1. Carlota S. Smith
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas, Austin, University Station 1, Austin, 78712-1196, U.S.A.

    Richard P. Meier

  2. Inst. Language Information & Technology, EasternMichigan University, Huron River Dr., Ypsilanti, 48197, U.S.A.

    Helen Aristar-Dry

  3. College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas, Austin, University Station 1, Austin, 78712-1196, U.S.A.

    Emilie Destruel

Appendix: Discussion of ± Durative, ± Telic Grammatical Correlates

Appendix: Discussion of ± Durative, ± Telic Grammatical Correlates

  1. 1

    The Durative/Instantaneous Contrast

  2. 1.1

    Sentences that present durative situations are compatible with direct durative adverbials, such as for an hour, in an hour, as (1) illustrates:

    1. (1a)

      Mary walked in the park for an hour.

    2. (1b)

      Mary built the sandcastle in an hour.

    The adverbials give the duration of the events. Now consider the sentences of (2), which present instantaneous events and have the same adverbials. (2b) is semantically ill formed; the adverbials of (2a) and (2c) have different interpretations.

    1. (2a)

      He coughed for an hour.

    2. (2b)

      * The bomb exploded for an hour.

    3. (2c)

      The bomb exploded in an hour.

    In (2a), the interpretation is multiple: the event consists of a series of coughs. The adverbial triggers a shift to a durative interpretation (Smith 1993/1995). In (2c), the adverbial has an ingressive interpretation: it pertains to an interval before the event takes place. Thus in and for adverbials are interpreted differently for verb constellations of events that are semantically durative and instantaneous.

  3. 1.2

    Sentences of durative situations are compatible with inceptive and terminative morphemes; such morphemes imply that a situation has duration. (3) illustrates:

    1. (3a)

      Mary began to build the sandcastle.

    2. (3b)

      Mary stopped building the sandcastle.

    3. (3c)

      Mary finished building the sandcastle.

    But sentences of instantaneous situations behave differently, as in (4):

    1. (4a)

      ?The bomb started to explode.

    2. (4b)

      ??The balloon started to burst.

    3. (4c)

      * The bomb stopped exploding.

    4. (4d)

      * The bomb finished exploding.

    The inceptive sentences are more or less well formed according to whether the event can be seen as having preliminary stages: thus (4a) is slightly better than (4b) because of the possible interpretation that the fuse of the bomb was sputtering, presumably just prior to the expected explosion. The terminative sentences are simply ill formed (ignoring special slow-motion presentations in which no events are instantaneous).

  4. 1.3

    Sentences of durative situations are compatible with indirect durative adverbials, which imply duration (slowly, quickly). But these adverbials are not compatible with sentences that present instantaneous events. The contrast is illustrated in (5): (5a) presents a durative event, (5b) and (5c) present instantaneous events. Only the first is well formed.

    1. (5a)

      The door opened slowly.

    2. (5b)

      * The balloon burst slowly.

    3. (5c)

      ??The bomb exploded slowly.

    Some speakers allow sentences like (5c) on the ingressive interpretation, in which the sentence presents preliminary stages of an event rather than the event itself.

  5. 1.4

    Imperfective viewpoints focus internal intervals of durative situations, but preliminary stages of instantaneous situations. The examples illustrate: (6a) presents a durative event, (6b) an instantaneous event.

    1. (6a)

      The door was opening.

    2. (6b)

      Mary was reaching the top.

    Both sentences are well formed, but the interpretations are different as stated. Many languages allow the imperfective viewpoint to focus preliminary stages of instantaneous events; but not all: in Mandarin Chinese, sentences like (6b) are ungrammatical (Smith 1991).

  6. 2

    The Telic/Atelic contrast

    There are distributional correlates for telicity in English and many other languages. Telic verb constellations are compatible with adverbials of completion, such as in an hour; with forms of simple duration they are odd or require a special interpretation. In contrast, atelic verb constellations are compatible with verbs and adverbials of simple duration, such as stop and for an hour, and are odd with forms of completion. (7) illustrates:

    1. (7a)

      Mary walked to school in an hour. (telic)

    2. (7b)

      ??Mary walked in the park in an hour. (atelic)

    There is a reasonable interpretation of (7b): Mary has a certain amount of walking to do and completed it in an hour. This is an unusual telic interpretation of a verb constellation [Mary walk in the park] which is atelic at the basic level.

    With adverbials of simple duration the situation is reversed. In (8) the atelic verb constellation is fine but the telic is odd:

    1. (8a)

      ??Mary walked to school for an hour. (telic)

    2. (8b)

      Mary walked in the park for an hour. (atelic)

    There is an interpretation of (8a): that Mary engaged in an activity—walking to school—but without any natural endpoint. This is of course an atelic reinterpretation of a verb constellation [Mary walk to school] which is usually telic.

    The notion of completion is part of the meaning of some verbs but not of others: compare finish and stop. The verb finish implies completion, whereas stop does not. Both verbs are compatible with telic sentences as complements, as the examples illustrate:

    1. (9a)

      Mary finished building a sandcastle.

    2. (9b)

      Mary stopped building a sandcastle.

    These sentences are both well formed, but with different meanings. But only stop is good with an atelic sentence, as (10) shows:

    1. (10a)

      Mary stopped walking in the park.

    2. (10b)

      *?Mary finished walking in the park.

There is of course a telic interpretation of (10b), like the telic interpretation of (7b) noted above.

All these contrasts are semantically based: the notion of completion is intrinsic to a telic event, irrelevant to an atelic event.

These contrasts are found in French, Italian, Spanish, and Russian, among other languages, as well as in English. But not all languages have them. In Mandarin Chinese, for instance, there are no verbs or adverbials like those in the examples above. However, Mandarin marks the distinction between telic and atelic verb constellations with different classes of verb suffixes, known as Resultative Verb Complements (see Smith 1991).

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Smith, C.S. (2009). Aspectual Categories in Navajo. In: Meier, R., Aristar-Dry, H., Destruel, E. (eds) Text, Time, and Context. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 87. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2617-0_2

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