La Ambigüedad Polisémica

La Ambigüedad Polisémica

1. Tense and time

   • Tense is the name of the class of grammatical markers used to signal the location of situations in time, such as English sing–sang–had sung–will sing.
   • Usually a much greater range of temporal distinctions can be expressed lexically than by the grammatical markers: languages have lexical expressions which mean the week before my mother’s birthday
   • Three basic temporal divisions are relevant to the representation of time in language: what is happening now, what will happen afterwards, and what has already happened.
   • Perfect tenses
     • The sentences use the present perfect; the preterite. Presumably B’s answer is just as relevant in both cases; the difference must be that inis specifically representing their answer as relevant, whereas in they are not.

2. Aspect and Aktionsart

   • (37) a. John laughed and b. John was laughing
     • John laughed is in the simple past or preterite tense: it tells us that at some point before the time of utterance, John was expressing his amusement.
     • So how do they differ? Think about the different ways each presents what John was doing. John was laughing seems to emphasise the progress or unfolding of the event over a period of time (several seconds, presumably): John laughed, on the other hand, seems to treat the event as a single moment in time, and not to focus any attention on the existence of different stages within the laughing event itself.
   • Perfective and imperfective
     • The principal aspectual distinction is between perfective and imperfective aspect. Perfective aspect is the one found in (37a); imperfective in (37b).
       • In English, perfective aspect is expressed by the ‘simple’ forms of the verb, and imperfective by the ‘progressive’ or ‘continuous’ ones – those that are formed by the BE + -ing construction.

3. A rich aspectual system: Mandarin

   • As an example of a fairly rich system of aspectual markers, let’s consider Mandarin Chinese (Smith 1997).
     • If a speaker chooses to introduce aspectual meaning, Mandarin offers two perfective and two imperfective markers, each with a differing meaning.
     • Differences between the English progressive and Mandarin
       • In English, verbs which denote instantaneous events can be compatible with progressive markers. It is possible to say he is winning the race or he is dying, even though winning a race and dying are strictly events which occur instantaneously.
       • Mandarin zai does not allow this interpretation: instantaneous events are incompatible with zai

4. States and occurrences

   • The term for an event’s inherent aspectual classification is Aktionsart (German: ‘action kind’).
     • The four basic Aktionsart classes do not reflect properties of individual verbs: as we will see in a moment, I am drawing is an activity, whereas I am drawing a picture is anaccomplishment. A single verb can thus have different Aktionsart properties in different contexts
       • States
         • States are, unsurprisingly, static; they involve an unchanging situation.
           • states can’t appear, or can only appear exceptionally, with the progressive (imperfective
             • states can take the simple present in reference to the present moment
               • whereas occurrences can’t
             • Occurrences can take the progressive.
       • Occurrences
         • Occurrences, by contrast, are dynamic, and involve something happening.
         • Vendler distinguished three different types of occurrence, achievements, activities and accomplishments.