Henk J. Verkuyl

On the Compositional Nature of the Aspects

I. Aspects as Semantic Primitives.- II. Aspects as Compound Categories.- III. The Upper Bound of the Aspects.

Aspectual Composition: Surveying the Ingredients

This paper discusses some of the ways in which the notion of compositionality is understood in the literature. It will argued that on a strict (Fregean) view a verb has a constant meaning to make in the aspectual composition independently from the information contributed by its arguments, that the VP (verb+internal argument/complement) forms a substantive aspectual unit that should be recognizable as such complex aspectual information; and finally, that aspectual composition forces Discourse Representation Theory into revising the way states and events are taken.

Time and space in conceptual and logical semantics: the notion of Path

Jackendoffs treatment of Time and Space in his conceptual semantics is investigated in some detail. It is argued that his localistic system, which seems to account quite satisfactorily for directional phrases, can be made suitable for incorporation into a standard model-theoretic framework. This requires that Jackendoffs formalism, in particular his feature system, be interpreted in terms of semantic objects that are characterized settheoretically. This provides for a general treatment of sentences like John walked to the store and Judith ate three sandwiches, which behave similarly with respect to aspectuality.

Temporal Prepositions as Quantifiers

In this article two logical expressions will be examined as for their relationship to the meaning of some Temporal Prepositions. These are the existential and the universal quantifier, which systematically occur in the structure of logical propositions. In analyzing Temporal Adverbials we encounter many facts allowing for generalizations in terms of these quantifiers. This poses the problem of whether or not the two logical operators are present in the structure of Temporal Adverbials. And if so, how we should account for them.

Comparing Tense Systems: the Primacy of the Pres/Past Opposition

A way of improving on the description of the English tense system in Reichenbach [1947] is achieved by changing its matrix 3x3 design into a 2x2x2 set up, formed by 3 basic oppositions: present vs. past synchronous vs. posterior incompleted vs. completed action The advantages of the binary system over the Reichenbachian ternary system are the following: the binary system is completely compositional; there is no tripartition between Past, Present and Future, but only the basic opposition between Past and Present remains. As we intend to show later, this is empirically supported by the Russian and Polish data; some concrete problems, for instance, the ambiguity of past perfect with temporal adverbials or more then one configuration for the same tense form [Future Perfect [will have written] or Past Future tense [would write]] do not arise. The binary system can be naturally extended to apply for the tense systems of different groups of languages. Along with Germanic, we will consider two more groups of languages: Romance [e.g., French and Spanish] and Slavic [e.g., Russian and Polish]. The binary system, we will show, has the potential to be extended in order to capture the Romance data or shrunk to account for the Slavic data. The connection between tense and aspect, especially in Slavic languages is also described in this paper. Both temporal and aspectual differences in Slavic can be essentially captured by the same mechanism provided by the binary system. Some empirical facts, like, for instance, the absence of the present tense interpretation with perfective verb forms, will fall out naturally.

Some Issues in the Analysis of Multiple Quantification with Plural NPs

On the assumption that (1) is syntactically of the form (2), three important issues involved in theory formation about multiple quantification and plurality announce themselves: (1) Four boys lifted three tables (2) NP1 [V NP2] (a) how many readings are to be assigned to (1); (b) may NP1 be scopally dependent on NP2; and (c) is NP2 always scopally dependent on NP1?

Temporaliteit en modaliteit

This article reviews Binary Tense theory as developed by Verkuyl (2008) on the basis of three oppositions proposed by Te Winkel (1866): present—past, synchronous—posterior and imperfect—perfect. Verkuyl followed Te Winkel in assuming that the verb zullen (‘will’) can be used as a temporal auxiliary expressing posteriority, but here it will be argued that zullen should be considered a purely modal verb and thus does not contribute to the temporal meaning of the clause. The notion of posteriority is, in fact, an integral part of the meaning of past and present, and can be brought to the fore by the use of temporal adverbs like morgen ‘tomorrow’ or by pragmatic considerations. The article discusses several proposals in the Dutch linguistic literature in which the modal nature of zullen is recognized, but they fail to be convincing in the absence of a crucial innovation: the rejection of the point of speech n as the present in favor of assuming a present tense domain in which n is a moving point that splits the actualized part of the present from its non-actualized (modal) part.

A binary approach to Spanish tense and aspect: on the tense battle about the past

The present paper aims at accounting for the Spanish Imperfecto, Perfecto, Pluscuamperfecto and the Indefinido by applying three binary tense oppositions: Present vs Past, Synchronous vs Posterior and Imperfect(ive) vs Perfect(ive). For the sixteen Spanish tense forms under analysis a binary approach leads to covering twelve of them. Their relation with the preterital forms outside the range of the three oppositions is accounted for by two surgical operations: (a) the notion of Imperfect(ive) is severed from the notion of ongoing progress by restricting it to underinformation about completion and by seeing continuous tense forms as involving a more complex semantics; (b) the notion of (non-)stative is strictly severed from interference of information coming from the arguments of a verb. These theoretical moves make the way free for a formal-semantic insight into the interaction of Spanish tense and aspect. It also paves the way for a principled distinction between completion and anteriority. Restricted to tense forms pertaining to the past, our analysis sheds light on the struggle for survival of tense forms outside the binary system.

Between relativism and universalism

The title of the book under review is multiply ambiguous. It may suggest: (i) a historical account of a twentieth-century development in theoretical linguistics beginning with Whorf and ending with Montague; (ii) a programmatic course through history on how modern theoretical linguistics took its first important step with digesting Whorf’s insights and howWhorfian semantics transformed step by step – each step on a higher level – into the current optimum: Montague semantics; (iii) explorations concerning the wide 180o scale between the opposites Whorf and Montague who nowadays represent diametrically opposed visions on how to develop a theory about natural language. Although there is a lot of historical information in it, in particular in the well-documented, convincing and interesting chapter about the Whorf Hypothesis and in chapter 6 about the Chomsky hierarchy in retrospect, the book takes history only into account in complementing the discussion of more systematic issues. And although Montague takes a quite higher position on the appreciation ladder than Whorf – whose famous hypothesis ends up on the rubbish heap of history – Seuren quite firmly rejects Montague grammar as a serious model for linguistic theorizing because of its not being able to deal with cognition. So the title of the book is best seen

Georgian as the Testing-Ground for Theories of Tense and Aspect

The aim of the present paper is to investigate the possibility for Western tense theories to be applied successfully to the description of the Georgian tense system. Georgian tense is extremely complex because the Georgian language is agglutinative which means that semantic information which is scattered over the sentence in Germanic and Romance languages is expressed by a morphologically very complex verbal form that has many other duties to fulfill apart from expressing temporal information. It will be argued that the binary tense system as developed in [8] and modernized in [9] is indeed applicable and, after an extension, may even explain in a sufficient degree of depth why Georgian tense is expressed as it is, especially as far as the aorist is concerned. The description of the Georgian tenses--both the analytic ones and the synthetic ones--in terms of binary oppositions seems more adequate than a description in terms of the standard ternary make up of the Reichenbachian framework.