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Research on Aspect: Reflections and New Frontiers

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Logic, Language, and Computation (TbiLLC 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8984))

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Abstract

The tutorial gave an overview of the way aspectual meaning has been analyzed in formal semantics. It focused on the way Klein (1994) influential analysis has been extended in recent years to account for the modal properties of aspectual operators. Based on the perfective aspect in Hindi and other languages, I showed that Kleinian extensions which do not view aspectual operators as being partitive with respect to events are inadequate. I explored some consequences of this conclusion and suggested that studying the interface between aspectual and adverbial meaning would allow us to address some of the most pressing issues.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See also the seminal work by Moens and Steedman (1988) which was discussed in the tutorial.

  2. 2.

    Klein’s work is an extension of Reichenbach 1947/1966, which is also widely cited (see Kamp 1999/2013 for discussion). Work by Hans Kamp and colleagues (e.g. Kamp and Rohrer 1983, Kamp and Reyle 1993, Kamp et al. 2011) on the anaphoric properties aspect, as well as work by Comrie (1976) and Smith (1991) on the cross-linguistic properties of aspect also remain staples in current research on aspect.

  3. 3.

    Here is a small sample of such work: Kratzer 1998, Demirdache and Uribe-Etxebarria 2000, Iatridou et al. 2001, Musan 2002, Paslawska, and von Stechow 2003, Gerö and von Stechow 2003, Grønn 2003, Matthewson 2006, Deo 2006, Hacquard 2006, Bittner 2008, Rothstein 2008, Bary 2009, Deal 2009, Thomas 2010, Altshuler 2012, 2014a, Rett and Murray 2013, Altshuler and Schwarzschild 2013.

  4. 4.

    ‘⊆’ stands for a subset relation; ‘<’ is a precedence relation; ‘τ’ is a function from an event to its run time.

  5. 5.

    The imperfective paradox is therefore a misnomer. See Altshuler (2014b) for more discussion.

  6. 6.

    This builds on Smith’s (1991) idea that there is an aspectual class, neutral aspect, whose meaning generalizes across the perfective/imperfective. See Csirmaz 2004 and Altshuler 2014b for more discussion.

  7. 7.

    In this way, I defended Bach’s (1986, p. 12) original idea, formalized by Krifka (1992, p. 47). See also Moens and Steedman (1988) for similar ideas about partitivity over events. Cf. Bennett and Partee (1972) which propose a partitive analysis with respect to intervals (rather than events).

  8. 8.

    Although I focus on the episodic interpretation of (15b, c), an iterative interpretation is also possible, in which Dudkin gave flowers and invited Maria to the theater on several occasions. On such an interpretation, the iterations are still understood to have occurred during the week prior to the kissing event.

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  1. Heinrich Heine Universität, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Daniel Altshuler

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  1. Daniel Altshuler
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  1. University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Martin Aher

  2. Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Daniel Hole

  3. Institute of Mathematics, AS CR, Prague, Czech Republic

    Emil Jeřábek

  4. University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom

    Clemens Kupke

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Altshuler, D. (2015). Research on Aspect: Reflections and New Frontiers. In: Aher, M., Hole, D., Jeřábek, E., Kupke, C. (eds) Logic, Language, and Computation. TbiLLC 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8984. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46906-4_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46906-4_1

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