Book of abstracts

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CHRONOS 12 – CAEN 15-17 juin 2016
RESUMES / ABSTRACTS
SOMMAIRE / CONTENTS
page
A ……………………………………………………………………………………………………........
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AHERN Aoife (Complutense), AMENÓS-PONS José (UNED), GUIJARRO-FUENTES Pedro (Islas Balea).
Learning past tenses from closely related languages: L2 Spanish by L1 French and Portuguese adult learners
ALEKSANDROVA Tatiana (Grenoble 3), WATOREK Marzena (Paris 8). Tense and aspect in narratives
Russian advanced learners of French: acquisition and use of L2 in the learner variety approach
of
ALEXANDROVA Anna (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa). Avertive constructions in Europe and North Asia: An areal
typology
AMIOT Dany (Lille 3), STOSIC Dejan (Toulouse Le Mirail). La nominalisation des verbes évaluatifs déverbaux, en serbe et
en français
APOTHELOZ Denis (Lorraine). La surcomposition verbale et ses emplois existentiels en français
ARKADIEV Peter (Russian Academy of Sciences), DAUGAVET Anna (St-Petersburg). The perfect in Lithuanian and
Latvian: a contrastive and comparative study
AYOUN Dalila (Arizona). A
longitudinal
study
in
the
L2 acquisition
by English native speakers, Spanish and French heritage learners
of
French
morphosyntax
AZZOPARDI Sophie (Paris 7). Seré rubia y modelo pero no soy ninguna tarada : futur, conditionnel et évidentialité dans
l’expression de la concession en espagnol moderne
B …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 17
BARANZINI Laura, RICCI Claudia (Neuchâtel). Imparfait, récit et évidentialité en italien
BESNARD Anne-Laure (Nantes). Distribution of BE X TO structures: A corpus-based study of quasi-modal expressions in
British newspaper discourse
BOREL Marine (Fribourg). Passé surcomposé « général » vs « régional » : une ou deux forme(s) verbale(s) ? essai de
réponse par l’étude de la morphologie
BOSQUE Ignacio (Complutense), BRAVO Ana (Murcia). À partir de, a partir de, a partire da. Source prepositions and
open intervals in Romance
BOTNE Robert (Indiana). Tense in the Jarawara dialect of Madi: Domains and regions in tripartite T/A systems
BRES Jacques (Montpellier), ASIC Tijana (Kragujevac), DODIG Milana (Kragujevac), TORTERAT Frédéric (Nice).
Conditionnel temporel objectif et tournures non téléonomiques en français et en serbe
2
BRES Jacques (Montpellier), LABEAU Emmanuelle (Aston). Venir de (+ infinitive) : A marker of immediate anteriority
C …………………………………………………………………………………………………………
29
CAUDAL Patrick (Paris 7). An aspectual survey of French 2nd group verbs as an inflectional & lexical class
CAUDAL Patrick (Paris 7), MAILHAMMER Robert (Western Sydney). Linear Lengthening in Iwaidja: a prosodic countour
with aspectuo-temporal meaning?
CHOI Jiyoung (Nantes). (Degree) Inchoative States in Korean
COMAJOAN
Llorenç
(U
Central
de
Cataluny).
The
Aspect Catalan L2 morphology: voices from the multilingual classroom
acquisition
of
Tense-
D ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 37
DALBERA Joseph (Corse). La grammaticalisation des formes itives et ventives en latin
DALBERA Joseph (Corse). Polyvalence de l'adverbe latin nunc
DE WIT Astrid (Bruxelles). The aspectual characteristics of full-verb inversion in English
DENDALE Patrick, VANDERHEYDEN Anne (Anvers). Visiblement, un marqueur évidentiel ? Arguments synchroniques et
diachroniques
DERY Jeruen E., BITTNER Dagmar (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft). Causality and the narrative now bias in
discourse comprehension
DIAUBALICK Tim (Bergische, Illes Balears), GUIJARRO-FUENTES Pedro (Illes Balears). The strength of L1-effects in the
acquisition of the Spanish TAM system – the case of German learners
DUBOIS Gaïdig (Helsinki). « Tu viens ou tu restes ? » – Dynamique des forces à l’œuvre dans l’analyse aspectuelle du
verbe rester
DUVALLON Outi (Inalco), PELTOLA Rea (Caen, Crisco). L’impératif et le zoom discursif : la particule focalisante 'vaan'
dans les injonctions positives et négatives en finnois
F ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 53
FABREGAS Antonio (Tromsø), MARIN Rafael (Lille 3). Estarse = estar + se?
FLAUX Nelly (Artois), MOSTROV Vassil (Valenciennes). Les noms d’humains au comportement moralement déviant :
ébauche de classification
FLØGSTAD Guro (Oslo), RODRIGUEZ Louro Celeste (Western Australia). Gauging expansion in synchrony: The perfect in
19th century Rioplatense Spanish
FRADIN Bernard (LLF). Sound denoting verbs and their nominalizations
FRETHEIM Thorstein (Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige). Constructional meaning as a constraint on the pragmatic
interpretation of two cognate verbs of thinking, Norwegian tenke and Swedish tänka, compared to English think
G …………………………………………………………………………………………………….......
GERARDIN Hélène (Inalco). L’antipassif géorgien et ses interactions avec le TAM
GOSSELIN Laurent (Rouen) : Modalités appréciatives et axiologiques
61
3
GUERON Jacqueline (Paris 3), VOGELEER Svetlana (Louvain). On the interaction of syntax and semantics in the construal
of modal sentences
GUIRAUD Florence (Montpellier). Le présent de l’indicatif comme marqueur dialogique d’un discours rapporté chez des
élèves allophones
H ……………………………………………………………………………………………………........ 67
HASPELMATH Martin (Max Planck Institute): Form-frequency correspondences in tense, aspect and modality
HATAV Galia (Florida). Perfectivity and Reference-Time Building
HAVU Jukka, ȘTIRBU Elenn (Tampere). Romanian and Romance; comparative study on some temporal and aspectual
categories
HELFER-FLEISCHHAUER Jens (Düsseldorf). Telicity does not depend on perfectivity – aspectual composition in Polish
HINGER Barbara (Innsbruck). The acquisition of Tense, Aspect and Mood in Spanish as a foreign language: a classroombased longitudinal study of a second and third year of learning Spanish in an upper secondary school context
HOWE Lewis (Chad) (Georgia). Auxiliary reduction and omission in secondary grammaticalization: Evidence from the
periphrastic past in Spanish
HUYGHE Richard (Paris 7), BARQUE Lucie (Paris 13), HAAS Pauline (Paris 13), TRIBOUT Delphine (Lille 3). The Aspectual
Properties of Underived Nouns in French
K ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 76
KIHLSTEDT Maria (Paris X). Acquisition of TMA
KRONNING Hans (Uppsala). L’imparfait contrefactuel et les constructions conditionnelles en si en français
L …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 78
LEBAS-FRACZAK Lidia (Clermont-Ferrand). Articulation entre le mode du verbe subordonné et le sens du verbe principal
dans l’indication de l’orientation attentionnelle de l’énoncé
LEONETTI Manuel (Alcalá). Temporal anaphora with imperfective past
LEVILLAIN Pauline (Nantes). Temps et aspect dans l’interro-négative à l’oral en anglais contemporain
LHAFI Sandra (Köln). llegar + a + VINF vs venir + a + VINF : ce que le verbe à l’infinitif nous révèle quant au
fonctionnement dialogique de chacune des deux périphrases
LISZKA Sarah (Greenwich). Exploring advanced L2 use of the English present simple and the present progressive from a
syntactic-pragmatic perspective.
M ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 86
MANGIALAVORI RASIA María Eugenia (CONICET), MUGICA Nora (Nacional de Rosario). Verb structure and SE syntax:
verb-conflated components and aspectual closure in Romance se constructions
MARÍN Rafael (STL), ARCHE Maria J. (Greenwich). The eventive denotation of some deadjectival nouns.
MOIA Telmo (Lisbon). On the semantics of the temporal auxiliary verbs ir and vir in Portuguese
4
N ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 92
NILSSON Alexander (Uppsala). Evidentiality and mirativity in Tajik – the case of ‘buda ast’
NOWAKOWSKA Malgorzata (Krakow). Les interprétations modale, médiative et aspectuelle de la construction polonaise
‘mieć (avoir) + INFINITIF’
O …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 96
OBRTELOVA Jaroslava (Uppsala). Discourse-pragmatic functions of tense/aspect verbal forms in Wakhi narratives
OLSSON Bruno (Nanyang Technological). On the actional characteristics of Marind verbs
P …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 99
PAPAFRAGOU Anna (Delaware). Experimental approaches of evidentiality
PATARD Adeline (Caen, Crisco). When past implicates epistemic meanings
PECORARI Filippo (Bâle), JEZEK Elisabetta (Pavia). From lexicon to text: a Generative Lexicon account of associative
anaphora between event-denoting expressions
PHAN Trang (Ghent), DUFFIELD Nigel (Konan). A Nano-Syntax account of the Negation Constraint on the Perfect in
Vietnamese
R ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 106
RITZ Marie-Eve, RICHARD Sophie (Western Australia). Past participle or simple past? Ellipsis of the auxiliary ‘have’ in
Australian English narratives
RODRIGUEZ Rosique Susana (Alicante). Distance, bridging, assessment: Future and mirativity in Spanish
S …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 110
SAUSSURE Louis de (Neuchâtel). Experiential evidentiality with sporadicity
SHLUINSKY Andrey, ARKADIEV Peter (Russian Academy of Sciences). Derivational viewpoint aspect systems: a crosslinguistic perspective
SILLETTI Alida Maria (Bari). ‘Aller + infinitif’ et ‘andare a + infinitif’ : l’effet de sens « illustratif »
SILVAGNI Federico (Autònoma de Barcelona). Some copular constructions are d-states
SIMINICIUC Elena (Fribourg, Oxford). Les sens modaux du présomptif roumain à la lumière d’une étude quantitative de
corpus.
SKALA Julia (Vienne). Notions of the Past: A Cognitive Construction Approach to Past Time Grammar
SLABAKOVA Roumyana (Southampton, Iowa). Acquiring temporal meanings without tense morphology: the case of L2
Mandarin.
SUN Hongyuan (Picardie) , CERCLL (EA 4283). A tensed analysis for Mandarin
T ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 125
TOVENA Lucia M. (Paris 7), DONAZZAN Marta (Köln). Verbal morphology, nominal aspect
5
V ……………………………………………………………………………………………………....... 127
VAN GELDEREN Elly (Arizona State): The Aspect Cycle
VANEK Norbert (York). How grammatical aspect modulates categorisation and expression of event time in Chinese and
English
W ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 130
WADA Naoaki, WATANABE Jun-Ya (Tsukuba). Be going to and aller: A temporal structure-based analysis of ‘go’-futures
in English and French
WERKMANN HORVAT Ana (Oxford). On Deontic Modality and Authority in Croatian: A Judge Parameter Analysis
Z ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 134
ZATO Zoltan (ILLA-CSIC). Dimensional Adjectives and their Nominalizations: A Revisited Degree-based Approach
6
A
AHERN Aoife (Complutense), AMENÓS-PONS José (UNED), GUIJARRO-FUENTES Pedro (Illes Balears).
Learning past tenses from closely related languages: L2 Spanish by L1 French and Portuguese adult learners
[email protected]
;
[email protected] ;
[email protected]
The present study will report original data from an empirical study on the acquisition, by adult L1 French and Portuguese
learners, of verbal aspect and tense morphology in L2 Spanish; specifically focusing on the semantic and pragmatic features of
the simple past, present perfect, imperfect and progressive forms. Debates over the causes of optionality and persistent
inaccessibility of certain forms in L2 acquisition have dealt with the question of whether such selective difficulties are due to
parametric differences between L1 and L2, whether they are permanent (Hawkins & Hattori 2006), or whether they are
symptomatic of a process of feature reassembly (Lardiere 2008). Many studies have addressed the role of tense, aspect and
discourse, although little has been said on the acquisition of L2 Spanish by L1 speakers of closely related languages. Therefore,
the study of how Spanish is acquired by speakers of French and Portuguese, whose tense/aspect systems diverge from that of
Spanish, despite the fact that they share basic aspectual distinctions, represents a promising research area. Are these learners
able to effectively transfer useful tense/aspect features from their L1? Or rather are they (mis)guided or influenced by the
eventuality type when choosing a past tense (Andersen & Shirai 1996)? How does their grasp of the L2 tense and aspect
distinctions and combinations develop? We will present original data comparing the choices of adult L1 French and L1
Portuguese speakers, learning Spanish in a non-immersion setting (Instituto Cervantes in France and Portugal) at CEFR A2 (n = 22
L1 French and 22 L1 Portuguese) and B1 (n = 24 L1 French and 24 L1 Portuguese). A control group of native European Spanish
speakers (n= 20) was also used. Preliminary data from more advanced learners (B2 and C1) will also be discussed, in order to
offer a broader perspective. 5 The participants were asked to fill 30 gaps from a narrative text in a multiple choice task (with four
options per item), focusing on potentially complex uses of the Spanish past tenses, such as: choice of a perfective tense(simple
past vs present perfect) in the absence of explicit time location; use of imperfect indicative with telic predicates; progressive
forms (estar + gerund) combined with perfective tenses; choice of perfective or imperfective tenses with expressions denoting a
time interval. Our results suggest that, at A2 level, learners from both L1 groups are clearly influenced by the options available in
their L1, but they are also influenced by discourse cues accessible in the immediate environment of a verb form; in some of the
items, complex aspectual combinations are also an issue. From B1 level onwards, L1 influence is progressively attenuated, while
aspectual and discourse factors tend to be more persistent. However, for L1 Portuguese speakers, L1 direct transfer is pervasive
at all levels: it has a positive effect on the choices of the A2 learners (comparing the answers L1 Portuguese and L1 French
speakers), but it often has a negative effect at more advanced levels. The study offers, thereby, data that can contribute to
enhancing knowledge of factors that help and hinder the acquisition process when the L2 is closely related to the L1.
References
ANDERSEN, ROGER W. and YASUHIRO SHIRAI. 1996. Primacy of aspect in first and second language acquisition: The
pidgin / creole connection. In W.C. Ritchie y T.K. Bhatia (eds.), Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. San Diego:
Academic Press. 527-570.
BARDOVI-HARLIG, KATHLEEN. 2000. Tense and aspect in second language acquisition: form, meaning and use. Oxford:
Blackwell.
SLABAKOVA, RUMYANA; and SILVINA MONTRUL. 2008. Aspectual shifts in L2 Spanish. In J. Liceras, H. Zobl, H. y H.
Goodluck, (eds.), Formal features in second language acquisition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 452-483.
LARDIERE, DONNA. 2008. Feature assembly in second language acquisition. In H. Zobl, H. y H. Goodluck (eds.), Formal
features in Second Language Acquisition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 106-140
ALEKSANDROVA Tatiana (Grenoble 3), WATOREK Marzena (Paris 8). Tense and aspect in
Russian advanced learners of French: acquisition and use of L2 in the learner variety approach
[email protected]
;
narratives
of
[email protected]
Tatiana Aleksandrova (Université Stendhal Grenoble 3, LIDILEM) Marzena Watorek (Université de Paris 8 / UMR 7023-SFL) The
study of language acquisition can be situated in different language theories. This contribution adopts the functionalist approach,
studying language acquisition through the usage of language in considering the relations between structures, functions and
contexts. The empirical studies conducted from the 80s based on longitudinal and crosslinguistic corpora (see for example
Perdue 1993) and coming from the functionalist approach, resulted in the establishment of the learner variety approach (Klein &
Perdue 1997, Klein 2001, Watorek & Perdue 2005). This approach considers learners’ productions as a manifestation of new
linguistic system which needs to be described as new language with its own rules and not as the deviation from the system of
the second language. This system is set up through the interaction between linguistic and cognitive predispositions of the learner
and formal characteristics of the L2 input which constitute the factors shaping learners’ productions. But communicative factors
are what push the learner to progress in L2. We illustrate how this approach helps our understanding of the acquisition and use
7
of linguistic means necessary to express time and aspect by a study of narratives produced by highly advanced Russian learners
of French. This type of learners usually produces grammatical discourses which, however, present certain “strangeness traits” in
the eyes of native speakers (Lambert 1997). To understand these particularities, we used the “quaestio” model of discourse
analysis proposed by Klein and Von Stutterheim (1991) which allows for the consideration of linguistic expressions according to
their discursive functions. The productions of 15 Russian advanced learners of French were contrasted with those of monolingual
French and Russian speakers. All participants were asked to retell the story of a short silent film. Even if the events do not take
place in real life, when producing narratives, speakers need to introduce and to maintain temporal reference. Previous studies
showed that speakers of different languages adopt different discursive strategies in according to available grammatical means.
Our study confirms these results for French and Russian monolinguals whose languages present numerous contrasts especially
between temporal-aspectual systems. The differences are mostly seen in the expression of the maintenance of temporal
reference. French speakers use explicit lexical means such temporal adverbials to express temporal shift of temporal intervals
occupied by atelic predicates. In contrast, in Russian productions lexical explicit means marked temporal maintenance are much
less frequent. They are only used for marking the right boundary of telic predicates. Furthermore, French monolinguals use a
narrative linking strategy focused on the protagonist and the explicit links between events, and Russian speakers adopt a deictic
strategy based on the narrator and present events as an ongoing process. As for learners, they have their own strategy. In using
the linguistic means of French, like temporal adverbials for marking temporal shift, the organizational principles remain
influenced by those of their first language. This result is connected to those of previous works on highly advanced learner
varieties. Thus, works based on this approach bring to light regularities of different learners’ varieties and contribute to
understanding the principles of their functioning.
References
KLEIN, WOLFGANG; and CLIVE PERDUE. 1997. The Basic Variety. Or: Couldn't Natural Languages be much Simpler?
Second Language Research 13, 301-347.
KLEIN, WOLFGANG. 2001. Elementary forms of linguistic organisation. In S. Ward & J. Trabant (eds.), The origins of
language. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. 81-102.
KLEIN, WOLFGANG; and CHARLOTTE VON STUTTERHEIM. 1991. Text structure and referential movement. Sprache und
Pragmatik 22. 1-32.
LAMBERT, MONIQUE. 1997. En route vers le bilinguisme. Acquisition et Interaction en Langue Etrangère.
PERDUE, CLIVE (ed.). 1993. Adult Language Acquisition: Cross-linguistic Perspectives. Two Volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
WATOREK, MARZENA; and CLIVE PERDUE. 2005. Psycholinguistic Studies on the Acquisition of French as a Second
Language: The ‘Learner Variety Approch’. In Dewaele, J.-M (ed.), Focus on French. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
ALEXANDROVA Anna (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa). Avertive constructions in Europe and North Asia: An areal
typology
[email protected]
In my talk, I will present results of a large-scale questionnaire-based typological survey of the avertive category. The language
sample includes 41 languages of Europe, North Asia and some other areas (see the map below). Moreover, second-hand data
was collected for an additional sample of languages using grammars, dictionaries, corpora and other sources. The present survey
is collocated within the framework of areal typology (Nichols 1992; Dahl 2001), dedicated to the “extended” Europe (i.e.
including Uralic and Turkic languages of the European part of Russia).
Figure 1. Languages included in the sample (first-hand data)
8
The avertive gram was first pointed out and studied in a typological perspective by Kuteva (1998; 2000; 2001). She defined it as a
complex gram with the meaning ‘X was on the point of V-ing but didn’t V’, combining the features of pastness, counterfactuality,
and imminence, which, respectively, pertain to the domains of temporality, modality and aspect, e.g.:
(1) Kayardild (Australian > Tangkic; Evans 1995: 261)
Bulkurdudu
ngijin-jina
baa-nangarra kurthurr-ina
crocodileNOM 1sgPOSS-MABL
bite-ALMOST shin-MABL
‘A crocodile almost bit me on the leg.’
However, the avertive still remains an under-researched and under-described category in grammars (Plungian 2001) in that,
before Kuteva’s seminal work, except for some rare cases, it remained unobserved or confounded with the proximative.
Moreover, its semantic nature still needs to be cleared up in as much as, first, it seems to partly overlap with the proximative
and, second, there is no clarity concerning the semantic structure of the verbs/verb phrases that co-occur with avertives, in
other words, there is no account of actional and viewpoint-aspectual restrictions on this category. Translational questionnaires
permit to create comparable sets of data for a wide range of languages. Hence, it becomes possible to approach a number of
questions concerning the typology of the avertive that cannot be solved exclusively on the basis of second-hand data:
(1) Is the avertive a rare gram? How many languages have a grammaticalized avertive marker?
(2) What are the most common paths of grammaticalization of the avertive? How are they distributed across linguistic
families and areas? Is pattern borrowing of avertive constructions diffused?
(3) What instances of semantic and morphosyntactic cross-linguistic variation can be found?
(4) What do lexical and grammaticalized avertives differ in?
(5) How do avertives interact with other TAM categories?
(6) What are the actional restrictions on the avertive and how do they vary cross-linguistically?
I argue that the definition of the gram, as it was originally devised, basically implies that a prototypical avertive context requires
a verb phrase pertaining to a non-durative eventuality type. The ±compatibility of the avertive with certain accomplishment verb
phrases is determined by pragmatics and, sometimes, by morphosyntactic restrictions in specific languages, and there is a
considerable degree of cross-linguistic variation is this respect. The following implicational hierarchy arises from the data:
In a given language, if the avertive can co-occur with accomplishment verb phrases, it can also co-occur with
achievement verb phrases.
Avertive marking: achievements < accomplishments
It should therefore be considered a prototypical construal for achievements (Vendler 1967; Dowty 1979).
As far as the interaction with (viewpoint-)aspect is concerned, two zones can be singled out in Europe, (a) that of perfectivebased avertives (in line with the world tendency) and (b) imperfective-based avertives, concentrated in the Volga-Kama area
(e.g., in Udmurt, Mari and Chuvash).
Finally, pattern borrowing between the languages of Europe in the domain of avertives will be assessed. As a matter of fact,
certain patterns exhibit an enormous geographical extension which can be explained by genealogical as well as by areal
9
skewings. For instance, a great amount of languages spoken in Russia possess an avertive construction modeled on the Russian
‘čut’ ‘a bit’ + NEG + V’ construction, which often coexists with a “native” avertive marker (e.g., a ‘converb+auxiliary’
construction). Sometimes it is not easy to decide whether an instance of convergence is determined by genetic or areal factors.
For instance, the majority of Turkic languages consistently mark the avertive with a “pan-Turkic” converbal construction
(converb in -A + auxiliary verb *jaːz- ‘to miss/fail/sin/err’), which is clearly a genetically inherited feature. At the same time, a
very similar pattern is found in another branch of Altaic, in Mongolic (Kalmyk and Khalkha Mongolian auxiliary aldx, Buryat
aldaxa ‘lose; miss’ plus converbs).
This survey contributes to the general view that cross-linguistically frequent patterns can often be explained from genealogical
and areal factors and thus any universality hypotheses and subsequent functional/cognitive motivations should be critically
evaluated bearing in mind such distortions.
Selected references
Dahl, Östen. 2001. Principles of areal typology. In Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible
(eds.), Language typology and language universals: An international handbook, vol. 2, 1456–1470. Berlin / New York: Walter de
Gruyter.
Evans, Nicholas D. 1995. A Grammar of Kayardild. With Historical-Comparative Notes on Tangkic. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Kuteva, Tania. 1998. On identifying an evasive gram: Action Narrowly Averted. Studies in Language 22(1). 113–160.
Kuteva, Tania. 2000. TAM-auxiliation, and the avertive category in Northeast Europe. Areal Grammaticalization and Cognitive
Semantics: the Finnic and Saami languages, 27–41. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus.
Kuteva, Tania. 2001. Auxiliation: An enquiry into the nature of grammaticalization. Oxford University Press.
Nichols, Johanna. 1992. Linguistic diversity in space and time. Chicago / London: The University of Chicago Press.
Plungian, Vladimir A. 2001. Antirezul’tativ: do i posle rezul'tata. In Vladimir Aleksandrovič Plungian (ed.), Issledovanija po
teorii grammatiki. Vyp. 1: Glagol’nye kategorii, 50–88. Moskva: Russkie slovari.
AMIOT Dany (Lille 3), STOSIC Dejan (Toulouse Le Mirail). La nominalisation des verbes évaluatifs déverbaux, en serbe et
en français
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
Les verbes déverbaux évaluatifs (VDÉ) sont des verbes qui sont construits par la morphologie et dont le sens exprime
toujours, d’une façon ou d’une autre, un écart par rapport à la norme : boitiller signifie par exemple « boiter légèrement »,
chroniquailler « écrire de mauvaises chroniques », travailloter « travailler mollement, sans mettre beaucoup d'énergie à la
tâche qu'on exécute » (cf. Stump 1993, Grandi 2002, 2009, Fradin & Montermini 2009, Amiot & Stosic 2011, Stosic & Amiot
2011). Si le français et le serbe font tous les deux appels à la suffixation et à la préfixation pour construire ce type de lexème, les
deux langues se distinguent par le fait que la morphologie évaluative verbale est beaucoup plus riche et diversifiée en serbe
qu’en français (cf. Stosic 2013, Amiot & Stosic à paraître).
Aspectuellement, en français, les VDÉ sont majoritairement imperfectifs et expriment des activités (cf. par exemple sautiller,
baisouiller, tapoter, voleter). Ils manifestent aussi fréquemment des sens liés à la pluriactionnalité, plus précisément à la
pluralité interne, qui combine souvent diminution et pluralité et consiste en une sorte de partition du procès dénoté par le verbe
de base en une pluralité de « petits sous;procès » (cf. Cusic 1981: 67, mais aussi van Geenhoven 2005, Greenberg 2010). En
serbe, les VDÉ sont majoritairement perfectifs et expriment, outre les sens liés à la pluriactionnalité, d’autres valeurs au
croisement de l’évaluation et de l’aspect.
Dans le prolongement de nos recherches antérieures, nous nous proposons d’étudier la nominalisation de VDÉ en français et en
serbe et tenter de répondre à trois questions principales :
(i) Tous les types aspectuels de VDÉ (perfectif / imperfectif, Aktionsart) peuvent; ils se nominaliser facilement, à l’aide
des mêmes affixes ?
(ii) Le nom hérite-t-il, ou non, de l’aspect du verbe de base ?
(iii) Le choix de l’affixe reflète-t-il une différence au niveau de l’aspect et de la structure argumentale ?
Pour mieux cerner les particularités de la nominalisation des VDÉ, celle-ci sera étudiée dans une perspective contrastive et
confrontée à la dérivation des déverbaux non évaluatifs parmi les dérivés possibles, nous nous limiterons aux procédés
construisant des noms de procès (des noms comme écrivailleur ne seront donc pas pris en compte).
En ce qui concerne le français, les trois questions posées ci-dessus reçoivent des débuts de réponse, qui bien sûr seront à
confirmer :
(i) l’aspect du VDÉ joue un rôle dans la possibilité, ou non, de donner lieu à une nominalisation : les VDÉ construits par
suffixation sont presque tous imperfectifs (ce sont principalement des V d’activité) mais ils se distinguent par le fait qu’ils
expriment ou non de la pluralité interne (tapoter (diminution et pluralité) vs neigeoter (diminution)). Or ce sont les
verbes qui expriment la pluralité interne qui se nominalisent le plus facilement (tapotement, cliquetis, etc.) ceux qui
expriment uniquement la diminution, ou d’autres sens liés à l’évaluation, se nominalisent moins facilement (neigeotement et
neigeotage par exemple sont des hapax sur le web)
10
(ii) Les noms issus des VDÉ semblent, comme cela est attendu, hériter des propriétés aspectuelles de leur Vb : ce sont
fondamentalement des N d’activité (cf. par exemple les tests donnés par Huyghe & Marin 2007 ou Barque & al. 2009), qui
expriment en outre la pluralité interne.
(iii) Les noms dérivés de verbes pluractionnels sont souvent conçus comme des massifs (Cusic 1981), des multiplicatifs (Dolinina
1987) ou des collectifs (Wood 2007). Si on suit les études de Martin (2008) pour qui le suffixe -age construit plutôt des N massifs
alors que le suffixe -ment construirait plutôt des noms comptables, on pourrait s’attendre à ce que de tels noms soient
majoritairement suffixés par -age, ce qui n’est pas le cas : si les trois suffixes sont effectivement employés, parfois même en
concurrence (chuchotage, chuchotement et chuchotis) ce sont les suffixes -ment (cliquètement, tâtonnement, sautillement,
clapotement) et -is (clapotis, cliquetis, frisottis) qui figurent dans les noms lexicalisés, alors que -age apparaît dans des noms
peu attestés, voire des hapax (cliquetage, tâtonnage, sautillage, etc.). Nous aurons donc à déterminer le rôle que joue la
pluralité interne dans le sens de ces noms, ce qui nous conduira à remettre en cause l’emploi des termes utilisés (i.e. massif,
multiplicatif et collectif) pour les qualifier. Pour cela nous étudierons les contextes d’emplois des noms déverbaux en -ment, -is
et -age, et ceci de plusieurs points de vue : leur fréquence d’emploi au singulier et au pluriel leur emploi, possible ou non, dans
des constructions typiques des emplois massifs l’héritage de la structure argumentale du verbe de base, etc.
En serbe, les VDÉ imperfectifs, formés par suffixation (čuka-ra-ti ‘tapoter’) ou par suffixation et préfixation à la fois (priželjki-va-ti ‘souhaiter en cachette, espérer quelque peu’), se prêtent sans difficulté à la nominalisation (čuka-ra-nje, priželj-ki-vanje). La dérivation se fait à l’aide du suffixe -nje, et les déverbaux ainsi obtenus semblent garder les propriétés aspectuelles de la
base : ce sont des noms d’activité. Les VDÉ perfectifs, formés par préfixation (pro-trljati ‘frotter légèrement’), par suffixation
(gric-nu-ti ‘mordre légèrement’) ou par les deux à la fois (na-lom-ka-ti ‘casser en petits morceaux’), bloquent en revanche la
nominalisation, quel que soit le sens évaluatif et/ou aspectuel qu’ils construisent. La nominalisation des verbes perfectifs est
cependant a priori possible dans le domaine de la morphologie standard: izaći ‘sortir’ > izlaz-ak, naleteti ‘tomber sur en volant’ >
nalet, dočekati ‘attendre’ > doček, etc.
De nombreux travaux sur des verbes évaluatifs avaient déjà relevé leur affinité avec l’imperfectivité et/ ou l’atélicité (Cusic 1981,
van Geenhoven 2004, 2005, Amiot & Stosic 2011). Les observations ci;dessus suggèrent que ce même paramètre joue aussi un
rôle déterminant dans la possibilité même de les nominaliser.
Références bibliographiques
AMIOT, DANY ; and DEJAN STOSIC. 2011. Sautiller, voleter, dansoter : évaluation, pluriactionnalité, aspect. Temps,
aspect et classes de mots : études théoriques et didactiques, ed. by E. Arjoca-Ieremia, C. Avezard-Roger, J. Goes, E. Moline & A.
Tihu, 277-297. Arras: APU.
AMIOT, DANY; and DEJAN STOSIC. To appear. Morphologie aspectuelle et évaluative en français et en serbe, Lexique
22.
BAAYEN, R. HARALD. 1993. On frequency, transparency, and productivity. In Yearbook of Morphology 1992, ed. by Geert E.
Booij and Jaap van Marle, 181-208. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
BARQUE, LUCIE; RICHARD HUYGHE; ANNE JUGNET; and RAFAEL MARÍN. 2009. Deux types de noms déverbaux
d’activité. Paper presented at Secondes Journées d’études sur les Nominalisations. STL, Université de Lille 3, 18;19 juin 2009.
CUSIC, DAVID D. 1981. Verbal Plurality and Aspect, PhD dissertation, Stanford University.
FRADIN, BERNARD; and FABIO MONTERMINI. 2009. La morphologie évaluative. In Aperçus de morphologie du français,
ed. by Fradin B., Kerleroux F. & Plénat M., 231-266. Saint-Denis, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes.
DOLININA, INGA B. 1997. Theoretical aspects of verbal plurality. In Typology of iterative constructions, ed. by V. S.
Xrakovskij, 483–495. München: LINCOM Europa.
GRANDI, NICOLA. 2002. Morfologie in contatto. Le constrizioni valiative nelle lingue del Mediterraneano. Milan,
FrancoAngeli.
GRANDI, NICOLA. 2009. Restrictions on Italian Verbal Evaluative suffixes : The Role Of Aspect And Actionality. York Papers
in Linguistics, Series 2, 46-66.
Greenberg, Y. 2010. Event internal pluractionality in Modern Hebrew: a semantic analysis of one verbal reduplication
pattern. Brill’s Annual of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics 2.1, 119-164.
HUYGHE, RICHARD; and RAFAEL MARIN. 2007. L’héritage aspectuel des noms déverbaux en français et en espagnol. Faits
de Langues, 30, 265-274.
MARTIN, FABIENNE. 2008. The Semantics of Eventive Suffixes in French, In 732 Incremental Specification in Context
ed. by Schäfer, Florian. Working Papers of the SFB 01, 145-17.
STOSIC, DEJAN. 2013. Manner of motion, evaluative and pluractional morphology. Oslo Studies in Language 5/ 1, 61-89.
STOSIC, DEJAN ; and DANY AMIOT. 2011. Quand la morphologie fait des manières: les verbes évaluatifs et l'expression de la
manière en français. In Ars Grammatica. Hommages à Nelly Flaux ed. By Amiot, D., De Mulder, W., Moline, E. & Stosic, D.
Bern: Peter Lang, 403-430.
STUMP, GREGORY. 1993. How peculiar is evaluative morphology? Journal of Linguistics 29, 11-36.
VAN GEENHOVEN, VEERLE. 2005. Atelicity, Pluractionality, and Adverbial Quantification. In Perspectives on Aspect ed. by
H. Verkuyl, H. de Swart and A. van Hout. Dordrecht: Springer.
WOOD, J. ESTHER. 2007. The semantic typology of pluractionality. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, UC, Berkeley.
11
APOTHELOZ Denis (Lorraine). La surcomposition verbale et ses emplois existentiels en français
Depuis une dizaine d’années, on assiste à une recrudescence des travaux consacrés aux formes surcomposées du français (cf. les
références ci-dessous). La majorité de ces travaux est consacrée au passé surcomposé. Ce fait n’a rien de surprenant, car tous les
spécialistes s’accordent à reconnaître que ce temps verbal est, en français, la forme surcomposée de loin la plus fréquente.
L’analyse sémantique du passé surcomposé –l’étude de ses différents emplois et contextes d’emploi– est en revanche loin de
faire l’unanimité. L’approche défendue dans la présente communication consiste à considérer que le passé surcomposé
s’articule autour de deux emplois : (i) Un emploi clairement marqué comme résultatif sur le plan aspectuo-temporel, et
fortement contraint contextuellement ; prototypiquement (mais de façon non exclusive), cet emploi est associé aux
subordonnées temporelles ; (ii) un emploi existentiel, dans lequel le passé surcomposé grammaticalise la valeur de parfait
d’expérience. Dans beaucoup de cas, on peut considérer que ce second emploi doublonne l’une des valeurs que peut par ailleurs
produire le passé composé.
Sémantiquement, l’emploi (ii) peut être décrit comme l’application d’un quantificateur existentiel à une situation. Il produit une
signification glosable comme ‘S est advenu une fois au moins dans un intervalle temporel donné’ (S désignant une situation).
Quand il porte sur des individus, le quantificateur existentiel présuppose que soit défini un ensemble. De la même manière, il
présuppose, quand il porte sur des situations,
que soit défini un intervalle temporel.
L’auteur de la présente communication se propose d’étendre cette analyse aux formes surcomposées de l’infinitif passé (avoir
eu mangé), du participe présent (ayant eu mangé), du plus-que-parfait (avait eu mangé), du futur antérieur (aura eu mangé), du
conditionnel passé (aurait eu mangé) et du subjonctif passé (ait eu mangé), en mettant l’accent sur l’emploi (ii).
L’approche adoptée sera purement synchronique, et essentiellement sémantique. Des considérations morphologiques
n’interviendront que sporadiquement, par exemple à propos de formulations susceptibles d’une double analyse (comme un nez
qu’il a eu cassé, où le participe qui suit eu peut être interprété comme attribut de l’objet du passé composé a eu, ou comme une
forme du passé surcomposé de casser). Les exemples étudiés proviendront de corpus oraux et écrits (notamment de la base de
données FRANTEXT) ainsi que de forums et de blogs internet. Les emplois de type (ii) sont généralement reconnus comme
régionaux, mais la présente communication ne comportera pas de considérations de géographie linguistique.
Références
Apothéloz, D. (2012). La concurrence du passé composé et du passé surcomposé dans l’expression de la valeur de parfait
d’expérience. In : L. de Saussure, A. Rihs (éds), Etudes de sémantique et pragmatique françaises. Berne : Peter Lang, 39-65.
Borel, M. (2015). L’évolution des formes verbales surcomposées en français. Communication présentée au colloque DIACHRO
VII, Paris, 5-7 févr. 2015.
Carruthers, J. (1999). A problem in sociolinguistic methodology: investigating a rare syntactic form. Journal of French Language
Studies, 9, 1-24.
Havu, J. (2013). Le passé surcomposé en français classique et moderne. In : F. Sullet-Nylander, H. Engel, G. Engwall (éds), La
linguistique dans tous les sens. Stockholm : Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, Konferenser 80, 37-58.
Holtus, G. (1995). Zur Verbreitung der formes surcomposées in den romanischen Sprachen. In : W. Dahmen, G. Holtus, J.
Kramer, M. Metzeltin, W. Schweickard, O. Winkelmann (eds), Konvergenz und Divergenz in den romanischen Sprachen.
Tübingen : Narr, 85-114.
Melchior, L. (2012). Tra esperienzialità e iteratività : il ‘passé surcomposé à valeur spéciale’ in francese (e in altri idiomi
romanzi). Revue de linguistique romane, 76, 65-98.
Schaden, G. (2009). Composés et surcomposés. Le “parfait” en français, allemand, anglais et espagnol. Paris : L’Harmattan.
Wilmet, M. (2009). Le passé surcomposé sous la loupe. Journal of French Language Studies, 19, 381
399.
ARKADIEV Peter (Russian Academy of Sciences), DAUGAVET Anna (St-Petersburg). The perfect in Lithuanian and Latvian:
a contrastive and comparative study
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
The Baltic languages Lithuanian and Latvian have not heretofore figured prominently in the theoretically and typologically
oriented discussions of tense and aspect in general and perfect grams in particular. Neither of these languages has been
discussed in any detail in the typological study by Dahl (1985) and in the EUROTYP project on tense and aspect Dahl (ed.) (2000),
and their data is not included into the survey of the European perfects by Lindstedt (2000) or Dahl & Hedin (2000). The only
theoretically informed works on the perfect grams in the Baltic languages are Geniušienė & Nedjalkov (1988) on Lithuanian and
Nau (2005) on Latvian, as well as Wiemer (2012) on the typologically rare ‘have’-resultative in Lithuanian. In this contribution we
aim to fill this gap by presenting a typologically oriented contrastive study of the uses of the perfect constructions in Lithuanian
and Latvian based both on “The Perfect Questionnaire” from Dahl (ed.) (2000: 800–809) and a sample of examples from the
parallel corpus (LiLa).
12
In both Baltic languages the perfect grams are expressed by periphrastic constructions involving the auxiliary ‘be’ and an active
past participle agreeing with the nominative subject, cf. see the parallel examples (1a) and (1b). The auxiliary can appear in any
tense.
(1)
PQ4: Question: You MEET my sister (at any time in your life up to now)?
a.
Lithuanian
Ar es-i
mat-ęs
mano
seser-į?
Q
AUX-PRS.2SG
see-PST.PA.NOM.SG.M
my
sister-ACC.SG
b.
Latvian
Vai es-i
satic-is
man-u
mās-u?
Q
AUX-PRS.2SG meet-PST.PA.NOM.SG.M my-ACC.SG sister-ACC.SG
Despite formal similarity, the perfect constructions in Lithuanian and Latvian show significant differences in their usage
suggesting different degrees and probably directions of grammaticalization. In general, it appears that in Latvian the perfect is
grammaticalized to a greater extent than in Lithuanian, which is evidenced by the greater frequency of usage of the construction
in Latvian (e.g. in LILA of the sampled 896 Latvian sentences with the present perfect only 152 (17%) were translated by means
of the perfect into Lithuanian, while 457 (51%) were translated by the simple past tense) and by the fact that in many contexts,
including ex. (1), Lithuanian speakers allow the perfect to occur in free variation with the simple past, cf. the following minimal
pair where both Latvian sources have the present perfect:
(2)
Lithuanian, LiLa
a.
Pavarg-au (get.tired-PST.1SG) nuo amžino stumdymo iš viršaus.
‘I am tired of the constant shoving from the above.’
b.
Es-u pavarg-us-i (AUX-PRS.1SG get.tired-PST.PA-NOM.SG.F) nuo užsikrautos nereikalingų darbų naštos.
‘I am tired of the burden of unnecessary work.’
The questionnaire-based study (7 Lithuanian and 4 Latvian speakers) has yielded the following results:
1) Both in Lithuanian and Latvian, the perfect is most robustly attested in the experiential function (Dahl 1985: 141–144) and, by
contrast, is never (in Lithuanian) and seldom (in Latvian, cf. Nau 2005: 147–148) used in the so-called inclusive or universal
function, cf. e.g. Dahl (1985: 136–137) and Iatridou et al. (2001) on the cross-linguistic variation in the latter domain.
2) The Latvian perfect is more advanced into the domain of “current relevance” or “perfect of result” (as opposed to resultative
proper as defined by Nedjalkov & Jaxontov 1988) than the Lithuanian perfect; with transitive verbs, the only type of resultative
contexts where Lithuanian systematically employs the perfect is the so-called possessive resultative (Geniušienė & Nedjalkov
1988) as in (3).
(3)
PQ43: I COLLECT some two hundred dolls by now.
Lithuanian
Es-u
surink-us-i
du
šimt-us
AUX-PRS.1SG collect-PST.PA-NOM.SG.F
two
hundred-ACC.PL
lėli-ų.
doll-GEN.PL
3) Both languages have a past perfect occurring not only in the contexts of anteriority, but also in the “antiresultative” (Plungian
& van der Auwera 2006) function, as in (3). Notably, of the 509 sampled Latvian sentences with the past perfect 236 (46%) were
translated by means of the perfect into Lithuanian, which is a significantly higher incidence than in the case of the present
perfect, and might point out to the functional asymmetry between the different tense forms of the perfect in Latvian and
Lithuanian (cf. e.g. Dahl 1985: 144–149; Squartini 1999; Plungian & van der Auwera 2006 on the pluperfect as a separate gram
type).
(4)
PQ37: You OPEN the window (and closed it again)?
a.
Latvian
Tu
bij-i
atvēr-is
log-u?
2SG.NOM AUX.PST-2SG open-PST.PA.NOM.SG.M
window-ACC.SG
b.
Lithuanian
Ar buv-ai
atidar-ęs
lang-ą?
Q
AUX-PST.2SG
open-PST.PA.NOM.SG.M
window-ACC.SG
4) In Latvian, but not in Lithuanian, the present perfect construction can be used in the “hot news” contexts (see e.g. Dahl &
Hedin 2000), though such usage does not seem to be very frequent, cf. (5). Lithuanian employs the simple past here.
(5)
PQ56: [A has just seen the king arrive. The event is totally unexpected.] A: The king ARRIVE!
a.
Latvian
Karal-is
ir
ierad-ies! /ierad-ā-s!
king-NOM.SG AUX.PRS.3 arrive-PST.PA.NOM.SG.M.RFL / arrive-PST.3-RFL
b.
Lithuanian
Karali-us
atvyk-o!
king-NOM.SG arrive-PST.3
13
5) In both languages the perfect is attested, alongside other forms, in inferential contexts such as (6); interestingly, in Lithuanian,
the auxiliary appears in the future tense suggesting that the future perfect has acquired an epistemic meaning (cf. Ambrazas ed.
2006: 249). However, in Latvian, as opposed to Lithuanian, the perfect can also be used in the contexts of reported evidentiality
like (7).
(6)
(7)
59: [A comes from the kitchen where he has just seen the sad remains of the cake. He tells B what he assumes to have
happened:] A: The dog EAT our cake!
a.
Lithuanian
Šuo
bu-s
suvalg-ęs
tort-ą.
dog.NOM.SG AUX-FUT.3 eat-PST.PA.NOM.SG.M cake-ACC.SG
b.
Latvian
Sun-s
ir
apēd-is
mūs-u
kūk-u!
dog-NOM.SG AUX.PRS.3 eat-PST.PA.NOM.SG.M our-ACC.SG cake-ACC.SG
67: [Said by a person who has just heard about the event but has not seen it.] The king ARRIVE!
Karal-is
es-ot
ierad-ies!
king-NOM.SG AUX.PRS-EVID arrive-PST.PA.NOM.SG.M.RFL
From the results reported above we draw the following preliminary conclusions:
1) In terms of the stages of grammaticalization of the perfect outlined in Squartini & Bertinetto (2000), the Lithuanian perfect is
at stage II (possessive resultative and experiential contexts) while the Latvian perfect is at stage III (“current relevance”, cf. Nau
2005).
2) Even in those contexts where both languages allow the use of the perfect, Latvian seems to employ it more consistently and
systematically, while in Lithuanian the perfect is in many contexts optional and can be substituted by other verbal forms, most
commonly by the simple past. The choice of the perfect vs. simple past is probably based on subtle discourse factors yet to be
investigated.
Abbreviations
st
nd
rd
1 — 1 person; 2 — 2 person; 3 — 3 person; ACC — accusative; AUX — auxiliary; EVID — evidential; F — feminine; FUT — future;
GEN — genitive; M — masculine; NOM — nominative; PA — active participle; PL — plural; PRS — present; PST — past; Q — question
particle; RFL — reflexive; SG — singular.
References
Ambrazas, Vytautas (ed.) (2006). Lithuanian Grammar. Vilnius: Baltos Lankos.
Dahl, Östen (1985). Tense and Aspect Systems. Oxford: Blackwell.
Dahl, Östen & Eva Hedin (2000). Current relevance and event relevance. In: Dahl (ed.) 2000: 385–402.
Dahl, Östen (ed.) (2000). Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Geniušienė, Emma & Vladimir P. Nedjalkov (1988). Resultative, passive, and perfect in Lithuanian. In: Vladimir P. Nedjalkov
(ed.), Typology of resultative constructions, 369–386. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Iatridou, Sabine, Elena Anagnostopoulou & Roumyana Izvorski (2001). Observations about the form and meaning of the perfect.
In: Michael Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken Hale: A Life in Language, 189–238. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.
LILA:
Lygiagretusis
lietuvių-latvių-lietuvių
tekstynas
[The
parallel
Lithuanian-Latvian-Lithuanian
corpus],
http://tekstynas.vdu.lt/page.xhtml?id=parallelLILA
Lindstedt, Jouko (2000). The perfect — aspectual, temporal and evidential. In: Dahl (ed.) 2000: 365–384.
Nau, Nicole (2005). Perfekts un saliktā tagadne latviešu valodā [Perfect and compound present in Latvian]. Baltu filoloģija 14(2),
137–154.
Nedjalkov, Vladimir P. & Sergej Je. Jaxontov (1988). The typology of resultative constructions. In: Vladimir P. Nedjalkov (ed.),
Typology of Resultative Constructions, 3–62. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Plungian, Vladimir & Johan van der Auwera (2006). Towards a typology of discontinuous past marking. Sprachtypologie und
Universalienforschung 59(4), 317–349.
Squartini, Mario (1999). On the semantics of the Pluperfect: Evidence from Germanic and Romance. Linguistic Typology 3(1),
51–89.
Squartini, Mario & Bertinetto, Pier Marco (2000). The simple and compound past in Romance languages. In: Dahl (ed.) 2000:
403–440.
Wiemer, Björn. (2012). The Lithuanian HAVE-resultative – a typological curiosum? Lingua Posnansiensis 54(2), 69–81.
AYOUN Dalila (Arizona). A
longitudinal
study
in
the
by English native speakers, Spanish and French heritage learners
L2 acquisition
of
French
morphosyntax
[email protected]
A longitudinal study in the L2 acquisition of French morphosyntax by English native speakers, Spanish and French heritage
learners Dalila Ayoun (University of Arizona) Tense, aspect, mood/modality (TAM) empirical studies are an informative window
into the overall competence of second language (L2) learners because they are relevant to morphosyntax, semantics,
discourse/pragmatics, and their interfaces (e.g.,Ayoun & Rothman 2013). Previous studies of L2 French yielded mixed results:
learners appear to display a contrasted TAM system in that they distinguish between different temporalities, tenses and aspects,
but with differential outcomes for the passé composé and imparfait (Ayoun 2001, 2004) and clear lexical class effects are usually
14
found (e.g., Ayoun 2013; Bartning 2012; Howard 2012; Izquierdo 2008). Moreover, most studies suffer from two caveats: a) they
are cross-sectional; b) the stimuli are not specifically targeted to the participants, in spite of the demonstrated crucial
importance of input (frequency, saliency) (Gass 1997; Paradis et al. 2011); learners are typically English native speakers, less
often heritage speakers of the L2 being investigated (with notable exceptions in Spanish). The present longitudinal study
addresses these issues with a pre-test, repeated exposure, delayed post-test design guided by three main research questions: a)
does the learners’ interlanguage display contrasts and systematicity?; b) does a controlled input lead to a better performance?;
c) is there a facilitative L1 effect for French and Spanish?. 16 L2 French learners – L1 English (n=10), L1 French (n=3) and L1
Spanish (n=3) heritage speakers – enrolled in a 4th year college Film and Fiction class read five novels which were extensively
discussed in class and used as essay topics providingrepeated exposure to oral and written input over the course of a semester.
Participants completed three cloze tests targeting past temporality (i.e. aspectual difference between the passé composéand
imparfait) and the indicative-subjunctive alternation. Stimuli were drawn from the novels. Findings reveal strong task, lexical
class, tense and L1 effects with statistically significant differences. The learners’ TAM system is contrasted, but lacks in
consistency. The NS variability of the control group suggests that the task may be too difficult. Pedagogical implications are
discussed.
References
AYOUN, DALILA. 2001. The role of negative and positive feedback in the second language acquisition of passé composé and
imparfait. The Modern Language Journal 85. 226-243.
AYOUN, DALILA. 2004. The effectiveness of written recasts in the second language acquisition of aspectual distinctions in
French: a follow-up study. Modern Language Journal 88. 31-55.
AYOUN, DALILA. 2013. The Second Language Acquisition of French Tense, Aspect, Mood and Modality. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
AYOUN, DALILA; and JASON ROTHMAN. 2013. Generative approaches to the L2 acquisition of temporal-aspectual-mood
(TAM) systems. In R. Salaberry and L. Comajoan (eds), Research Design and Methodology in Studies on Second Language Tense
and Aspect. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
BARTNING, INGE. 2012. Synthèses rétrospectives et nouvelles perspectives développementales. Les recherches
acquisitionnelles en français L2 à l’université de Stockholm. Language, Interaction and Acquisition 3. 7-28.
GASS, SUSAN. 1997. Input, Interaction and the Second Language Learner. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
HOWARD, MARTIN. 2005. The emergence and use of the plus-que-parfait in advanced French interlanguage. In Focus on
French as a Foreign Language, M. Dewaele (ed.), 63-85. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
HOWARD, MARTIN. From tense and aspect to modality: the acquisition of future, conditional and subjunctive morphology in L2
French. A preliminary study. Cahiers Chronos 24. 201-223.
IZQUIERDO, MANUEL JESÚS. 2008. Multimedia environments in the foreign language classroom: effects on the acquisition of
the French perfective and imperfective distinction. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, McGill University.
PARADIS, JOHANNE; ELENA NICOLADIS; MARTHA CRAGO; AND FRED GENESEE. 2011. Bilingual children’s
acquisition of the past tense: A usage-based approach. Journal of Child Language 37. 1–25.
AZZOPARDI Sophie (Paris 7). Seré rubia y modelo pero no soy ninguna tarada : futur, conditionnel et évidentialité dans
[email protected]
l’expression de la concession en espagnol moderne
Le futur et le conditionnel sont des temps verbaux qu’il est intéressant d’étudier de façon contrastive du fait de leur origine et de
leur morphologie commune et dont l’analyse soulève un nombre important de questions, particulièrement en linguistique
romane. En effet, bien que l’étude de ces temps ne soit pas nouvelle puisqu’elle parcours l’ensemble du XXe siècle (Cf.
Damourette & Pichon 1911-1936, Guillaume 1929/1970, Molho 1975, Martin 1981, Fleischman 1982 i.a.), elle n’en reste pas
moins d’actualité comme le prouve le nombre de publications (Cf. n°33 et 40 de la revue Faits de Langues portant
respectivement sur le futur et sur le conditionnel ainsi que les travaux de Squartini 2004, Escandell Vidal 2010, Azzopardi & Bres
2013 i.a.), de congrès et sessions thématiques (Cf. sessions « variation in futurity » et « the future » lors de l’édition 2011 de
Chronos à Pise i.a.) ou de projets d’équipes de recherche (Cf. projet transversal « Le futur dans les langues romanes » du
CLESTHIA à l’Université Paris 3, i.a.) qui lui sont consacrés encore aujourd’hui.
Il nous semble que la complexité de l’analyse de ces deux temps, notamment en espagnol, réside dans trois principaux éléments.
Premièrement parce qu’au niveau conceptuel, l’époque future et de ce fait le concept temporel d’ultérorité, sont étroitement
liés à la notion modale épistémique d’incertitude étant donné que les événements situés dans ce qui est « à venir » n’ont pas
encore eu lieu. Ensuite parce que le futur comme le conditionnel sont des temps verbaux qui ont une grande variété d’emplois
temporels et modaux en discours et que les événements dénotés dans les emplois modaux ne sont pas nécessairement situés
dans l’ultériorité par rapport à une énonciation, quelle qu’elle soit. Enfin parce qu’en espagnol moderne il existe une variation
diatopique importante de ces emplois qui met à l’épreuve les analyses monosémistes ou unifiées de ces temps.
De ce fait, le problème principal consiste à déterminer la valeur du signifié de langue du futur et de celui du conditionnel pour
ensuite mettre en évidence le fonctionnement de ce signifié dans la production des différents effets de sens que ces temps
peuvent avoir en discours. L’analyse de ce fonctionnement est relativement complexe dans le cas d’emplois dits « modaux »
comme par exemple l’emploi conjectural (1) et (3) ou encore l’emploi concessif (2) et (4) qui sera l’objet de ce travail :
15
(1) Rafael. - ¡Qué muchacha más bella, sola, en este lugar tan escondido, sin que la mire nadie! La llevaría a mi jardín.
¡Qué hermosa iba a lucir en esta primavera, bajo mis grandes álamos y cipreses oscuros y sobre las coronas de novia,
suspendida!... Pomona. - No ha dicho más. La noche ya va a llenar la copa de los árboles. Algo siento en los ojos...
Será el rocío... Pero no, son lágrimas. Es la primera vez que alaban mi hermosura… (ABC Literario, “El Sueño de
Pomona”, 31/03/1995)
(2) Jazmín De Grazia es una modelo que incursiona en el periodismo, como tantas otras lo hacen. Sin embargo, ella ya
protagonizó un conflicto con su salida de "Duro de domar" y habló sobre los prejuicios de la gente. / Si bien Jazmín De
Grazia tiene el título de periodista, muchos aún desconfían de sus opiniones por haberse iniciado en otra profesión.
"Seré rubia y modelo pero no soy ninguna tarada", aclaró ella en una entrevista. (Diarioveloz.com, 13/09/2010)
(3) Entonces el auto giró de nuevo y se estrelló contra el muro del otro lado. Paul y Fayed murieron instantáneamente;
Diana murió después en el hospital; Rees-Jones sobrevivió, aunque gravemente herido, y no ha podido hablar todavía.
Según dijo la policía, era el único que llevaba puesto el cinturón de seguridad. Rat dijo que llegó al lugar
aproximadamente un minuto después del accidente, y oyó algo que pensó sería una sirena, pero era que el cuerpo de
Paul, echado hacia delante sobre el timón, estaba haciendo sonar la bocina del auto. (El nuevo Herald, 7/09/1997)
(4) La sorpresa (o la irritación) empurpuraba el rostro del adviser. Ahora enrojeció por ambos motivos: creyó que Civedé
se mofaba de él. - No se vendió un solo ejemplar y después de un tiempo los libreros me los devolvieron, porque
además de autor soy el editor. - Pero en la Central Library. - ¿ No está registrado? Los ficheros de la Biblioteca
Nacional arrastran un atraso de varios años. Lo miró y en seguida, como avergonzado de que Sidney no desviase los
ojos, desvió los suyos. Sería pedante, pero parecía no conocer la vanidad. - Ya ve, tengo menos suerte que Enoch
Soames: no voy a sobrevivir ni como personaje de un cuento, apenas como el autor de un libro citado en un repertorio
de argentinismos que, salvo usted, nadie ha consultado jamás. (Marco Denevi, Manuel de Historia, 1985)
En (1) comme en (2), l’événement dénoté par le verbe « ser » au futur n’est pas situé dans l’époque future mais au moment de
l’énonciation principale. Dans les énoncés au conditionnel des exemples (3) et (4), l’événement exprimé par le verbe « ser » est
quant à lui simultané à une énonciation secondaire passée alors que dans son emploi temporel prototypique, le conditionnel
situe généralement l’événement dans l’ultériorité par rapport à cette énonciation secondaire passée.
Si l’emploi conjectural a donné lieu à plusieurs travaux portant sur une seule ou plusieurs langues romanes (Cf. Bolón Pedretti
1999, Squartini 2004, Aaron 2007, Soto 2008, Álvarez Castro 2010, Azzopardi 2011 et Azzopardi sous presse, i.a.), l’emploi
concessif en espagnol est beaucoup moins documenté. On recense entre autres l’article de Bolón Pedretti (1999) qui analyse les
emplois conjecturaux et concessifs du futur en espagnol et celui, plus récent, de Sarrazin (2012) centré sur l’emploi concessif au
futur et au conditionnel en espagnol. Dans ces deux articles, bien que de façon distincte, les auteures analysent l’emploi
concessif à la lumière de l’emploi conjectural du fait des liens que l’on peut établir entre ces deux effets de sens. Selon Bolón
Pedretti (1999), l’emploi concessif au futur est lié à l’interdiscursivité et celle-ci est rendue possible par le futur du fait de la
capacité du futur à agir comme modalisateur du dire. Sarrazin (2012), quant à elle, analyse les énoncés concessifs au futur et au
conditionnel sont des effets de sens dérivés de l’effet de sens conjectural qui, en plus de la modalité épistémique inhérente à la
conjecture, intègrent une altérité énonciative permise par la valeur en langue de ces temps.
Notre hypothèse est que l’emploi concessif du futur et du conditionnel, s’il présente des points communs avec l’emploi
conjectural, n’en dérive pas et que les énoncés exprimant une concession présentent des caractéristiques distinctes de celles des
énoncés conjecturaux. La principale différence réside selon nous dans le fait que le sens concessif ne peut émerger dans des
énoncés dans lesquels l’événement exprimé provient d’une inférence (comme c’est le cas dans les énoncés conjecturaux). De ce
fait, la modalité qui intervient dans les énoncés concessifs n’est pas une modalité épistémique (caractéristique des énoncés
conjecturaux), mais une modalité évidentielle qui n’est pas imputable au seul temps verbal mais doit être entendue comme le
résultat de l’interaction de la valeur du signifié de langue du futur ou du conditionnel avec celle des autres éléments présents
dans l’énoncé et avec le contexte.
L’analyse que nous entendons mener s’inscrit dans les cadres d’une linguistique de l’actualisation (Cf. Barberis, Bres & Siblot
1998) et d’une linguistique du signifiant (Cf. Chevalier, Launay & Molho 1984) qui fait intervenir la notion de dialogisme dans
l’étude des phénomènes énonciatifs (Cf. Bres & Nowakowska 2006).
À partir de l’étude d’un corpus d’énoncés du XXe et XXIe siècle issus de genres discursifs distincts (oral, fiction, presse) et
produits par des locuteurs de différentes aires hispanophones (Espagne, Amérique Latine, Caraïbes et États-Unis) principalement
extrait du Corpus del español actual (Davis 2002-), notre travail permettra de donner une définition du sémantisme des énoncés
concessifs au futur et au conditionnel et de déterminer leurs caractéristiques aux niveaux diachronique, diatopique, syntaxique
et sémantique afin de mettre en évidence le rôle joué non seulement par le futur, d’une part, et le conditionnel, d’autre part,
mais aussi par chacun des éléments du cotexte et par le contexte dans la production du sens concessif.
Références bibliographiques citées
Aaron, J E. (2007) : “El futuro epistémico y la variación: gramaticalización y expresión de la futuridad desde 1600”, in Moenia,
13. pp. 253-274.
16
Álvarez Castro, C. (2010) : “Syntaxe et sémantique dans la construction du sens : remarques sur l’effet épistémique du futur de
l’indicatif”, in Álvarez Castro, C., Bango de la Campa, F. & Donaire, M.L. (eds.): Etudes sur la combinatoire et la hiérarchie des
composants, Liens linguistiques. Peter Lang, Bern, pp. 335-350.
Azzopardi, S. (sous presse) : "Le futur est-il un marqueur modal ? Analyse du fonctionnement du futur à effet de sens
"conjectural" en français et en espagnol.", in Baranzini, L., Sanchez Mendez, J. & Saussure, L. de (eds): Le futur dans les langues
romanes. Peter Lang, Bruxelles, Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Wien.
Azzopardi, S. (2011) : “El futuro eventual en español: dialogismo y traslado de la distancia temporal”, in Sinner, C., Wotjak, G. &
Hernández Socas, E. (eds): El tiempo, espacio y relaciones espacio-temporales en la gramática española, Peter Lang, Bruxelles,
Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Wien, pp. 65-80.
Azzopardi, S. & Bres, J. (2013) : “Temps verbal et énonciation. Le futur et le conditionnel en français : l’un est dialogique, l’autre
pas (souvent)”, in Cahiers de praxématique, 56/2011. pp. 53-76.
Barberis, J-M., Bres, J. & Siblot, P. (eds), (1998) : De l’actualisation. CNRS-Editions, Paris.
Bolón Pedretti, A. (1999) : “Pasivos serán los de antes: apuntes discursivo-enunciativos sobre un valor del futuro”, in Hispania,
Vol. 82, No. 4. pp. 830-840.
Bres, J. & Nowakowska, A. (2006) : “Dialogisme : du principe à la matérialité discursive”, in Perrin, L. (ed): Le sens et ses voix,
Recherches linguistiques, 28. Université de Metz, Metz, pp. 21-48.
Chevalier, J-C., Launay, M. & Molho, M. (1984) : “La raison du signifiant”, in Modèles linguistiques, VI, 2. pp. 27-41.
Davies, M. (2002-): Corpus del Español: 100 million words, 1200s-1900s. Disponible en ligne http://www.corpusdelespanol.org.
Damourette, J. & Pichon, E. (1911-1936) : Des mots à la pensée : essai de grammaire de la langue française. D’Artrey, Paris.
Escandell Vidal, M.V. (2010) : “Futuro y evidencialidad”, in Anuario de Lingüística Hispánica, XXVI. pp. 9-34.
Fleischman, S. (1982) : The future in thought and language: diachronic evidence from Romance. CUP, Cambridge.
Guillaume, G. (1929/1970) : Temps et verbe. Champion, Paris.
Molho, M. (1975) : Sistemática del verbo español. Gredos, Madrid.
Sarrazin, S. (2012) : “Dialogisme de langue et dialogisme de discours. Des emplois dits concessifs du futur et du conditionnel en
espagnol”, in Bres, J., Nowakowska, A., Sarale, J-M. & Sarrazin, S. (eds) : Dialogisme : langue, discours. Peter Lang, Bruxelles,
Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Wien, pp 123-135.
Soto, G. (2008) : “Sobre el llamado futuro de probabilidad. Algunas condiciones del valor modal de - ré”, in Boletín de Filología
40, 3. pp. 193-206.
Squartini, M. (2004) : “La relazione semantica tra Futuro e Condizionale nelle lingue romanze”, in Revue Romane, vol. 1 / 39. pp.
68-96.
17
B
BARANZINI Laura, RICCI Claudia (Neuchâtel). Imparfait, récit et évidentialité en italien
[email protected]
; [email protected]
Parmi les nombreux emplois de l’imparfait dans les langues romanes, il est possible d’en identifier un certain nombre par la
caractéristique commune de pouvoir exprimer, dans un texte entièrement à l’imparfait, toutes les perspectives aspectuelles,
notamment l’imperfectivité et la perfectivité (p. ex. Vetters 2009). Cette opportunité textuelle est particulièrement riche en
italien, où l’on trouve plusieurs configurations de ces emplois. Nous aimerions ici concentrer notre réflexion sur les imparfaits
qu’on appellera « de récit » (pour une catégorisation plus détaillée cf. Baranzini & Ricci 2015), pour en mettre en lumière les
conditions d’emploi, la nature des contraintes qui règlent leur apparition et les effets interprétatifs.
Lorsque nous parlons d’imparfait « de récit » en italien nous pensons à des emplois textuels et non ponctuels ; plus précisément,
ces emplois caractérisent une portion textuelle étendue uniforme, et n’apparaissent normalement pas de manière occasionnelle
à côté d’autres formes perfectives (à la différence de l’imparfait narratif, par exemple).
Les contextes concernés sont hétérogènes et peuvent aller de la présentation d’événements réels – concernant un sujet
différent du locuteur – insérés dans un cadre narratif-récapitulatif (par exemple des rapports médicaux, des procès-verbaux de
police, des articles de faits divers, des narrations a posteriori de documentaires ou autre document vidéo ou écrit) à la
présentation d’événements de fiction insérés dans un cadre narratif-récapitulatif (par exemple des narrations de romans, de
films, de rêves, de jeux, etc.).
Par contre, les imparfaits « de récit » ne sont pas compatibles avec la narration d’événements réels vécus par le locuteur, la
narration d’événements réels dont le locuteur a été témoin ni avec la narration d’événements réels que le locuteur a connus lors
d’une conversation spontanée.
Le tableau suivant illustre ces différentes configurations ; chaque contexte est accompagné d’un exemple et des temps verbaux
avec lesquels il y a compatibilité (imparfait et/ou temps perfectifs) :
Faits réels vécus
Faits réels observés
Faits réels connus par
conversation spontanée
Rapport médical
Rapport
de
témoignage
Documentaire
Film
Rêve
police,
Anni fa, in seguito a un grave incidente, sono
diventata prima sorda poi cieca
Il y a plusieurs années, suite à un terrible accident, je
suis devenue d’abord sourde et ensuite aveugle.
Anni fa ho assistito a un terribile incidente. La
ragazza coinvolta è diventata prima sorda poi cieca.
Il y a plusieurs années, j’ai assisté à un terrible
accident. La pauvre fille est devenue d’abord sourde et
ensuite aveugle.
Ieri la mia vicina mi ha raccontato un fatto
spaventoso: tempo fa ha avuto un grave incidente ed è
diventata prima sorda poi cieca.
Hier ma voisine m’a raconté une histoire terrible: il y
plusieurs années elle a été victime d’un grave accident
et elle est devenue d’abord sourde et ensuite aveugle.
Si legge nel referto medico: “A seguito dell’incidente,
la paziente diventava prima sorda, poi cieca”.
On lit dand le rapport médical: Suite à l’accident, la
patiente devenait d’abord sourde, puis aveugle.
Il giorno 26 gennaio 2013, in Roma [..] abbatteva la
porta d’ingresso ed ispezionava tutti i locali,
rinvenendo una donna distesa su di un divano, priva
di sensi. Portatala all’esterno in salvo, tornava
nell’appartamento alla ricerca di altre persone.
Le jour 16 janvier 2013, à Rome, il abattait la porte
d’entrée et inspectionnait tous les locaux [...]
[…] sul secondo canale ho visto un documentario
dove una donna, in seguito a un grave incidente,
diventava prima sorda poi cieca.
Sur la deuxième chaîne j’ai vu un documentaire où
une femme, suite à un grave accident, devenait
d’abord sourde et ensuite aveugle.
[…] sul secondo canale ho visto questo film dove una
donna, in seguito a una specie di maleficio, diventava
prima sorda poi muta poi cieca e alla fine moriva.
[exemple original]
Sur la deuxième chaîne j’ai vu un film où une femme,
suite à une malédiction, devenait d’abord sourde, puis
muette et ensuite aveugle, et à la fin elle mourait.
Questa notte ho fatto uno strano sogno: in seguito a
una specie di maleficio, diventavo prima sorda poi
TEMPS
PERFECTIFS
TEMPS
PERFECTIFS
TEMPS
PERFECTIFS
TEMPS
PERFECTIFS
IMPARFAIT
TEMPS
PERFECTIFS
IMPARFAIT
(PERF??)
IMPARFAIT
(PERF??)
IMPARFAIT
(PERF)
IMPARFAIT
18
Film
partagé
partiellement
muta poi cieca e alla fine morivo.
La nuit dernière j’ai fait un rêve étrange : suite à une
malédiction, je devenais d’abord sourde, puis muette
et ensuite aveugle, et à la fin je mourais.
[Com’è finito il film di ieri sera? Io mi sono
addormentato quasi subito...] È finito che la donna, in
seguito a una specie di maleficio, è diventata prima
sorda poi muta poi cieca e alla fine è morta.
[Comment s’est terminé le film hier soir? Je me suis
endormi tout de suite…] Par la suite la femme, à cause
d’une malédiction, est devenue d’abord sourde, puis
muette et ensuite aveugle, et à la fin elle est morte.
TEMPS
PERFECTIFS
IMPARFAIT
L’analyse essaiera de montrer, sur la base d’exemples authentiques et de manipulations à partir de ces derniers, quels sont les
critères qui permettent la narration entièrement à l’imparfait et ceux qui permettent la narration avec alternance aspectuelle.
Pour ce qui concerne les contextes qui admettent les deux configurations, nous allons proposer, au moyen de comparaisons de
paires d’exemples et de manipulations de contextes, une description des effets de sens que les deux alternatives
communiquent.
Les paramètres pertinents qui seront pris en considération pour l’analyse des deux types de contextes et pour l’identification des
effets de sens associés aux deux configurations narratives sont au moins trois : i) la caractérisation « épistémique » des
événements, présentés comme réels ou comme fictifs, ii) leur connotation textuelle, à savoir leur insertion plus ou moins
explicite dans un cadre narratif globalisant, iii) leur prise en charge énonciative de la part du locuteur. Ce dernier point, en
particulier, sera le point de départ de notre hypothèse de description de l’imparfait en termes d’évidentialité. En effet, le choix
du locuteur de présenter les événements en tant que récit d’une narration attribuée à autrui joue un rôle important dans la
distribution des emplois mentionnés plus haut ; les modalités d’implicitation ou d’explicitation de ce philtre narratif viennent
enrichir l’articulation complexe du comportement de la forme verbale étudiée. Cette perspective évidentielle peut être mise en
relation avec les descriptions de l’imparfait en termes de focalisation (cf. par exemple Saussure & Sthioul 1999 et 2005),
permettant de tracer un lien entre ses emplois « descriptifs » et les emplois étudiés ici.
Les résultats de l’analyse vont permettre d’élargir la description, déjà très vaste mais loin d’être exhaustive, du fonctionnement
d’un temps morphologique des langues romanes particulièrement complexe et hétérogène dans ses interprétations
pragmatiques « modales » (pour l’italien déjà depuis Ronconi 1944-45, Bertinetto 1986, Berretta 1992, Bazzanella 1990, Lo Duca
1995, etc.) et, en même temps, apporteront une nouvelle contribution à la discussion autour des phénomènes évidentiels en
italien (cf. par exemple Squartini 2001), en mettant en lumière leurs rapports avec la dimension textuelle.
Références bibliographiques (sélection) :
- Baranzini, Laura (sous presse). "Imparfait et imperfectivité en italien”. Syntaxe et sémantique.
- Baranzini, Laura & Ricci, Claudia (2015). "Semantic and pragmatic values of the Italian imperfetto: towards a common
interpretive procedure". Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 14: 33-58.
- Bazzanella, Carla (1990). "Modal uses of the Italian Indicativo imperfetto in a pragmatic perspective". Journal of pragmatics
14,3: 237-255.
- Berretta, Monica (1992). "Sul sistema di tempo, aspetto e modo nell'italiano contemporaneo". In: Moretti, Bruno; Petrini, Dario;
Bianconi, Sandro (eds). Linee di tendenza dell’italiano contemporaneo. Roma: Bulzoni, pp. 135-153.
- Bertinetto, Pier Marco (1986). Tempo, aspetto e azione nel verbo italiano. Il sistema dell’indicativo. Firenze: Accademia della
Crusca.
- Labeau Emmanuelle and Larrivée Pierre (eds.) (2005). Nouveaux développements de l'imparfait, Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi.
- Lo Duca, Maria Giuseppina (1995). "Imperfetto ‘ludico’ e altri tempi: una prospettiva testuale". In: Giacalone Ramat, Anna and
Crocco Galèas, Grazia (eds.). From Pragmatics to Syntax: Modality in Second Language Acquisition. Tubingen: Narr, pp. 173194.
- Patard, Adeline (2014). "When tense and aspect convey modality. Reflections on the modal uses of past tenses in Romance and
Germanic languages". Journal of pragmatics 71: 69-97.
- Ronconi, Alessandro (1944-45). "L'imperfetto di modestia e l'imperfetto 'irreale". Lingua nostra 6: 64-66.
- Saussure, Louis de and Sthioul, Bertrand (1999). "L’imparfait narratif: point de vue (et images du monde)". Cahiers de
praxématique 32: 167-188.
- Saussure, Louis de and Sthioul, Bertrand (2005). "Imparfait et enrichissement pragmatique". In: Labeau, Emmanuelle and
Larrivée, Pierre (eds.) (2005)
- Squartini, Mario (2001). "The internal structure of evidentiality in Romance". Studies in Language 25,2: 297-334.
- Tasmowski-De Ryck, Liliane (1985). "L'imparfait avec et sans rupture". Langue française 67: 59-77.
Touratier, Christian (1998). "L’imparfait. Temps du passé non marqué". Cahiers Chronos 2: 21-28.
- Vetters, Carl (2009). "L’interaction entre sémantique et pragmatique dans l’interprétation des temps du passé en français". In:
Verbeken, Dominique (ed.). Entre sens et signification. Paris : L’Harmattan, pp. 11-25.
19
BESNARD Anne-Laure (Nantes). Distribution of BE X TO structures: A corpus-based study of quasi-modal expressions in
British newspaper discourse
[email protected]
In English, BE X TO structures can be defined as a set of adjectival or (pseudo)passive constructions taking a to-infinitive
complement clause. What they have in common from a semantic point of view is that they all express some kind of modal or
1
evidential meaning, as can be seen in the following examples :
(2) Microsoft may be able to claim victory even if it cannot turn size into dramatic search revenue growth.
(3) Thousands of jobs for young people are expected to be announced this week as part of the Government's drive to
tackle youth unemployment.
(4) Going green and being charitable are likely to become easier (mandatory, in fact), as both will be integrated by
governments and companies to be included in legislation or products.
(5) CMI research has shown that many managers take decisions against their better judgement; in this case there must
have been overwhelming pressure to meet inspection targets. If not, would they really have been forced to take such
drastic action?
(6) Last night, the man was being held in custody for questioning and he is due to appear before a magistrate today to be
indicted over the attack.
(7) Former Gurkhas who retired before 1997 and served for more than four years will be allowed to apply for settlement
in the UK, under a u-turn announced today by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
(8) He [Mr Cameron] could still pull a surprise in his new shadow team, which is likely to be his last reshuffle before the
next election. Only Mr Osborne and William Hague are said to be "rock solid" in their positions.
(9) We are switching from a world in which it was easy and cheap to borrow to one in which it is harder and more
expensive. This may be a wholly necessary adjustment, but few are prepared to accept its consequences.
Although the structures illustrated in (1) to (8) are quite frequent in newspaper discourse, they have been vastly understudied
compared to modal auxiliaries which, until recent years, have been the focus of most studies on modality in English (see for
example Palmer 1990). Reference grammars such as Quirk et al. (1985) do mention the existence of a similar set of expressions
which they call semi-auxiliaries but only a few of them, such as BE able to and BE likely to, are explicitly considered as part of the
category, while a few others are explicitly excluded for lack of idiomatic status. Yet, the authors also indicate that the boundaries
of this category are by no means clear-cut — a comment that is repeated by Collins (2009) in his study of English modals and
quasi-modals. As a result, most attempts at describing such structures have been aimed at categorizing a selection of
expressions on the basis of debatable criteria (see Westney 1995) and no systematic account of the phenomena has ever been
given. To achieve a more global understanding of those modal expressions, it thus seems reasonable to start from the structures
themselves as they appear in corpora in order to try and show how they are related to one another.
This corpus-based study is a first step in that direction. It draws from the British newspaper The Independent (2009), a 40million-word corpus whose size and relative homogeneity make it a valuable source of contextualized data, and it focuses on the
syntactic distribution of BE X TO structures since the availability of a full range of forms — both finite and non-finite — is often
taken as one of the main differences between those structures and the modal auxiliaries. For instance, BE able to has been
described as a suppletive form of CAN in non-finite contexts (Facchinetti 2000), which seems to be supported by corpus data
since non-finite forms of BE able to represent about 76% of all occurrences of the structure. Interestingly though, this pattern of
use is not shared by all BE X TO structures, as shown by the figure below.
1
All examples are taken from The Independent (2009).
20
Present
Past
10%
forced
44%
17%
allowed
8%
able
Non-finite
46%
21%
62%
16%
76%
44%
prepared
28%
28%
55%
due
63%
said
79%
expected
37%
8%
29%
8%
10%
88%
likely
0%
25%
50%
75%
11%
11% 1%
100%
What is striking in the distribution of those structures, which correspond to the BE X TO constructions most frequently found in
our corpus, is that every one of them seems to show preference for a particular pattern of use. What’s more, this pattern
appears to be connected to the type of modality expressed by the structure. Indeed, root BE forced to, BE allowed to and BE able
to often occur in non-finite forms, as opposed to BE likely to, BE expected to, BE said to and BE due to, which all predominantly
occur in the present tense, while belonging to the epistemic or evidential domains (although some of their uses may also be said
to pertain to root modality). On the other hand, the nature of X — whether adjectival or participial — does not seem to have any
impact on the distribution of the structure as a whole.
From these observations, we can deduce that not all BE X TO structures behave in the same way, and the aim of this study is to
account for this syntactic variation, which may also suggest a variety of functions in discourse. In order to assess the possible
factors responsible for the predominance of present, past or non-finite forms (namely complementarity with a modal auxiliary,
degree of ‘grammaticalisation’, modal value), we will provide a fine-grained contextual analysis of BE X TO structures, carried out
in the theoretical framework of Culioli’s Theory of Enunciative Operations. We will see for instance that as is the case in example
(4), BE forced to is often used to insist on the motives for the validation of the predicative relation, or to highlight causality in a
chain of events, rather than as an intersubjective deontic marker like modal auxiliary must — which is consistent with its being
more frequently used in the past or with the perfect aspect than in the present. BE likely to on the other hand does not serve the
(re)interpretation of an event after it has taken place, but allows the speaker to assess the probability of occurrence of the
predicative relation, the default locator being the time of speaking, which is why the structure is most often used in the present
tense — although sometimes with future time reference as is the case in (3) above. To this, we should also add that when
combined with other modal markers, those structures seem to occur in a relatively fixed order as shown by example (9) below:
(10) Because of the state support it has received RBS is likely to be forced to sell its insurance businesses, including Direct
Line, together with at least 300 branches, the Williams & Glyn's brand and RBS's card payments business.
In this case, the epistemic modal comes before the root modal and the reverse, i.e. *is forced to be likely to, would not be
conceivable. This sequence suggests that modal judgements themselves do not occur in a random order (see Westney 1995: 2226), which may also be a factor explaining why non-finite forms are less frequent with epistemic expressions overall, while
highlighting the interconnectedness of all modal operations at the same time.
Thus, via a quantitative and qualitative study of such data, we will show that each structure contributes in its own way to the
expression of speaker’s point of view, which largely explains its distribution in journalistic discourse.
References
Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins, and William Pagliuca. 1994. The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the
Languages of the World. Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press.
Bouscaren, Janine, Jean Chuquet, and Laurent Danon-Boileau. 1996. Introduction to a Linguistic Grammar of English. An
Utterer-Centered Approach. Gap: Ophrys.
Collins, Peter. 2009. Modals and Quasi-Modals in English. Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi.
Facchinetti, Roberta. 2000. “Be Able to in Present-Day British English.” In Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory. Papers
from the 20th International Conference on English Language Research on Computerised Corpora, edited by Christian Mair and
Marianne Hundt, 117–30. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English
Language. New York: Longman.
21
Palmer, F. R. 1990. Modality and the English Modals. London: Longman.
Perkins, Michael R. 1983. Modal Expressions in English. Open Linguistics Series. Norwood: Ablex.
Richardson, John E. 2007. Analysing Newspapers: An Approach from Critical Discourse Analysis. Basingstoke - New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Westney, Paul. 1995. Modals and Periphrastics in English: An Investigation into the Semantic Correspondence between Certain
English Modal Verbs and Their Periphrastic Equivalents. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
BOREL Marine (Fribourg). Passé surcomposé « général » vs « régional » : une ou deux forme(s) verbale(s) ? essai de
réponse par l’étude de la morphologie
[email protected]
La définition des formes verbales dites « surcomposées » est étroitement liée à l’analyse morphologique que l’on en donne :
certains, comme Foulet (1925), les définissent comme des formes composées, entre les morphèmes desquelles se trouve inséré
un auxiliaire « supplémentaire » ou « additionnel » (selon la structure j’ai [+ eu] chanté) ; d’autres, après Tesnière (1935), les
décrivent comme des formes verbales composées dont l’auxiliaire est lui-même composé (selon la structure j’ai eu + chanté) ;
d’autres enfin, à l’instar de Wilmet (2009), les considèrent comme des formes verbales composées dont l’auxilié est lui-même
composé (selon la structure j’ai + eu chanté) – l’argument principal étant que les formes pronominales se construisent en s’être +
eu battu et non en *s’avoir été + battu.
Le paradigme des formes verbales surcomposées contient, en français moderne, neuf formes distinctes, toutes attestées dans la
littérature francophone : un infinitif (avoir eu fait), un participe (ayant eu fait), deux formes au subjonctif (que j’aie eu fait et que
j’eusse eu fait) et cinq formes à l’indicatif (j’ai eu fait, j’avais eu fait, j’eus eu fait, j’aurai eu fait et j’aurais eu fait). Seul l’impératif
(*Aie eu fait !) n’est pas attesté. La fréquence des emplois et la manière dont ces différentes formes sont traitées par le discours
normatif varient considérablement, mais les auteurs s’accordent généralement à dire que la forme la plus usitée (et, pour
beaucoup, la plus utile, voire la seule nécessaire) est le passé surcomposé (j’ai eu fait), dont les emplois se répartissent, en
français moderne, en deux groupes distincts.
Le type A, traditionnellement qualifié de « général » ou de « standard », bien attesté sur toute l’aire francophone, s’emploie
dans les subordonnées temporelles, pour marquer l’antériorité par rapport au temps (généralement un passé composé) de la
principale (quand il a eu fini ses devoirs, il est allé se coucher), dans des structures en « à peine… que » (à peine ai-je eu fini de
parler qu’ils ont applaudi) ou dans des tournures négatives en « ne… pas… plutôt… que » (il n’a pas eu plutôt fini de manger qu’il
est parti), ainsi que dans des énoncés qui contiennent un élément marquant l’accomplissement rapide de l’action (il a eu vite
avalé son repas). Ce premier type est traditionnellement analysé comme un équivalent, en énonciation « de discours »
(Benveniste, 1959), du passé antérieur (propre quant à lui à l’énonciation « historique »), dont il partage d’ailleurs les restrictions
d’emplois.
Le type B, qui s’emploie le plus souvent en proposition indépendante, permet quant à lui, comme l’a montré Apothéloz
(notamment 2010 et 2012), à la fois de grammaticaliser la valeur de parfait existentiel (qui indique qu’un procès quelconque
s’est produit au moins une fois dans une période donnée) et d’inscrire le procès à l’intérieur d’un intervalle de validation
entièrement situé dans le passé. Un énoncé comme je l’ai eu rencontrée signifie ainsi « il m’est arrivé au moins une fois, dans
une période achevée dans le passé, de la rencontrer ». Contrairement au type A, ce second type, dit « régional », n’est attesté
que dans les domaines occitan et franco-provençal – où il est cependant fréquemment employé.
Même si le passé surcomposé (j’ai eu fait) représente sans aucun doute la forme la mieux connue et la plus étudiée par les
chercheurs, son analyse continue de diviser les linguistes. Certains (notamment De Saussure et Sthioul, 2012) considèrent en
effet que les divers emplois du passé surcomposé relèvent d’un même noyau sémantique fondamental, autrement dit, que type
A et type B sont deux variantes d’une seule et même forme verbale. D’autres avancent au contraire que type A et type B doivent
être considérés comme deux formes verbales distinctes.
L’étude de la morphologie tend à corroborer la deuxième hypothèse. On constate en effet qu’en plus de présenter des
différences sémantiques, aspectuelles et syntaxiques notables, les deux passés surcomposés (type A et type B) présentent
d’importantes différences de construction. Ce sont ces différences morphologiques que je me propose d’étudier dans ma
communication.
Lorsqu’on se penche sur le corpus, on constate tout d’abord (ce fait est notamment souligné par Carruthers, 1998) que les
formes de type A et les formes de type B varient quant à la manière dont elles se construisent avec l’auxiliaire « être » : le type A
construit en effet des formes du type il a été parti (ex. 1), alors que le type B construit toujours des formes sur le modèle de il est
eu parti (ex. 2) :
(11) Quand elle a été partie, je suis tombé dans d’infinies tristesses. (Barbey d’Aurevilly, Mémorandum premier, 1838)
22
(12) on est eu partis en Répub- République dominicaine (Oral, Suisse romande, 2012 < OFROM)
On peut cependant se demander (la question est d’ailleurs posée par Apothéloz, 2010) si les formes standard avec auxiliaire
« être » (du type il a été parti) doivent bien être analysées comme des formes surcomposées, ou s’il ne faudrait pas plutôt traiter
ces séquences comme des formes composées du verbe « être » suivies d’un participe adjectivisé, attribut du sujet. Cette
hypothèse semble confortée par le fait que parmi les verbes se construisant avec l’auxiliaire « être », seuls ceux exprimant l’idée
d’une transition vers un nouvel état (tels « partir » ou « sortir ») connaissent des formes telles que il a été parti ou il a été sorti.
Ces formes ne sont en revanche pas attestées pour les verbes non transitionnels, du type « aller » ou « rester » : on ne trouve en
effet pas d’attestations de *il a été allé ou *il a été resté. Il est ainsi possible qu’il n’existe pas véritablement de formes
surcomposées pour les verbes qui se conjuguent avec l’auxiliaire « être » dans le cas du type standard.
Le type B ne connaît quant à lui pas de telles restrictions d’emploi. Cela s’explique vraisemblablement par le fait que les formes
surcomposées régionales expriment non l’état résultant d’un procès, mais simplement le fait qu’un procès donné a eu lieu au
moins une fois dans le passé. Rien n’empêche ainsi des verbes comme « aller » ou « rester » d’être employés à la forme
surcomposée (régionale) – mais toujours, dans ce cas, sur le modèle de il est eu allé (ex. 3) ou il est eu resté (ex. 4) :
(13) J’y suis eu allé en famille mais il y a bien longtemps. (http://www.kikourou.net, 2014)
(14) Rester enfermer c’pas bon, j’suis eu restée des semaines sans sortir le bout du nez même pas sur mon balcon.
(http://forum.doctissimo.fr, 2008)
Une autre différence morphologique (déjà notée par Jolivet, 1986) entre les formes de type A et les formes de type B concerne
le lieu où se trouvent préférentiellement, dans les formes verbales, d’éventuelles insertions. Dans les formes de type A en effet,
les divers éléments insérés sont systématiquement introduits après le « eu » :
(15) Quand on a eu tous fini de rigoler, M. Bongrain nous a montré la photo d’un restaurant. (Goscinny, Le voyage en
Espagne, 1963)
Dans les formes de type B en revanche, les insertions se font presque toujours avant le « eu » :
(16) on a tous eu regardé ces émissions idiotes (Oral, Suisse romande, 2014)
On observe toutefois que, dans le cas du type B, des variations peuvent apparaître (notamment pour des raisons sémantiques) :
ainsi en va-t-il par exemple de l’adverbe « bien », placé avant le « eu » quand il permet de renforcer une affirmation, souvent
avant un marqueur concessif (ex. 7), mais après le « eu » quand il sert à porter un jugement axiologique sur l’action exprimée
par le verbe (ex. 8) :
(17) il nous l’a bien eu dit mais on a oublié (Oral, Saint-Etienne < Bleton, 1982, p. 35)
(18) tu as eu bien joué pourtant (Oral, Ain < Foulet, 1925, p. 231)
Cette communication me donnera enfin l’occasion de me pencher plus particulièrement sur le statut du morphème « eu »,
lequel varie considérablement suivant l’analyse morphologique que l’on retient : partie de l’auxiliaire dans la conception avoir eu
+ fait (qui me semble être celle du type A), partie de l’auxilié dans la conception avoir + eu fait (défendue par Wilmet) ou
auxiliaire additionnel dans la conception avoir [+ eu] fait (qui me semble être celle du type B). Et si historiquement, il est
indéniable que ce morphème « eu » est bien, dans le cas du type A comme dans le cas du type B, le participe passé du verbe
« avoir », il n’est pas impossible que ce « eu » revête aujourd’hui, dans les formes régionales du moins, un statut différent.
Certains linguistes émettent en effet l’hypothèse selon laquelle ce « eu » devrait être analysé, dans les formes régionales,
comme « un adverbe de temps servant à mieux expliquer le recul dans le passé » (Šesták, 1933, p. 293), « une espèce de
particule temporelle invariable » (Ahlborn, 1946, p. 79) ou « un adverbe équivalent à "autrefois", "jadis", "déjà" » (Jolivet, 1986,
p. 114). Pour défendre cette idée, certains (notamment Jolivet, 1986) soulignent d’ailleurs que ce morphème « eu », dans les
formes de type B, est non seulement susceptible d’être accentué, mais qu’il est surtout susceptible d’être redoublé, dans des
formes dites « hypercomposées », du type j’ai eu eu fait. Ces formes, certes rares mais néanmoins attestées (notamment dans
les patois franco-provençaux et dans le français régional de la zone franco-provençale), me semblent, là aussi, amener un nouvel
argument en faveur de l’hypothèse selon laquelle type A et type B constituent aujourd’hui deux formes verbales distinctes,
puisque seule la deuxième est susceptible d’être affectée par un redoublement du « eu ».
Je souhaite ainsi montrer en quoi l’analyse de la morphologie fournit des arguments pour considérer le type A et le type B que
connaît le français moderne comme deux tiroirs verbaux distincts. Mon analyse sera basée sur un corpus composé de plus de
4000 formes surcomposées et hypercomposées, toutes authentiques et référencées, à la fois orales et écrites, produites entre la
fin du XIIIe siècle et le début du XXIe siècle. Les formes écrites proviennent de tous les types de textes (œuvres littéraires, articles
de presse, traités scientifiques, journaux intimes, registres juridiques, forums de discussion en ligne, blogs, e-mails, SMS, etc.).
23
Les formes orales proviennent quant à elles de corpus oraux (notamment OFROM), d’émissions radiophoniques ou télévisuelles
ainsi que de situations d’oral spontané.
Références bibliographiques
AHLBORN Gunnar (1946), Le patois de Ruffieu-en-Valromey (Ain), Göteborg, Wettergren & Kerber.
APOTHÉLOZ Denis (2010), « Le passé surcomposé et la valeur de parfait existentiel », Journal of French Language
Studies n° 20/2, p. 105-126.
APOTHÉLOZ Denis (2012), « La concurrence du passé composé et du passé surcomposé dans l’expression de la valeur du parfait
d’expérience », in : Alain Rihs et Louis de Saussure (dir.), Etudes de sémantique et pragmatique françaises, Berne, Lang, p. 3965.
AVANZI Mathieu, BÉGUELIN Marie-José et DIÉMOZ Federica (2012-2015), Présentation du corpus OFROM – corpus oral de
français de Suisse romande, Université de Neuchâtel (http://www.unine.ch/ofrom).
BENVENISTE Emile (1966 [1959]), « Les relations de temps dans le verbe français », Problèmes de linguistique générale, vol. I,
Paris, Gallimard, p. 237-250.
BLETON Paul (1982), « La surcomposition dans le verbe français », Canadian Journal of Linguistics n° 27, p. 31-40.
CARRUTHERS Janice (1998), « Surcomposé "général" et surcomposé "régional" : deux formes distinctes ? », in : Giovanni
Ruffino (dir.), Atti del XXI Congresso Internazionale di Linguistica e Filologia Romanza, vol. II, Tübingen, Niemeyer, p. 143-154.
CORNU Maurice (1953), Les formes surcomposées en français, Berne, Francke.
FOULET Lucien (1925), « Le développement des formes surcomposées », Romania n° 51, p. 203-252.
JOLIVET Rémi (1986), « Le passé surcomposé : emploi "général" et emploi "régional" : examen des insertions dans le syntagme
verbal surcomposé », in : Mélanges d’onomastique, linguistique et philologie offerts à Monsieur Raymond Sindou […], vol. II,
Bâle, Centre du FEW, p. 109-116.
SAUSSURE Louis (de) et STHIOUL Bertrand (2012), « Formes et interprétations du passé surcomposé : unité sémantique d’une
variation diatopique », Langages n° 188, p. 75-94.
ŠESTÁK Antonin (1933), « Les temps surcomposés en français […] », Časopis pro moderní filologii n° 19, p. 186-193 et 292307.
TESNIÈRE Lucien (1935), « A propos des temps surcomposés », Bulletin de la faculté des Lettres de Strasbourg, décembre 1935,
p. 56-59.
WILMET Marc (2009), « Le passé surcomposé sous la loupe », French Language Studies n° 19, p. 381-399.
BOSQUE Ignacio (Complutense), BRAVO Ana (Murcia). À partir de, a partir de, a partire da. Source prepositions and open
intervals in Romance
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
1. The topic. There is a broad consensus on the fact that most temporal adjuncts are licensed by the aspectual properties of
the predicates they modify, often interacting in compositional structures. On the other hand, it is also well-known that
intensional, non-veridical contexts license free-choice items, polarity subjunctives and other modal-like dependent and
polarity-sensitive expressions. In this paper we show how these two large paradigms of contexts —an aspectual and a modal
one— interact in the licensing of the Romance temporal preposition (and two-place predicate) à partir de (French) / a partir de
(Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan) / a partire da (Italian), henceforth APD. Only temporal APD will be addressed here. We will
concentrate on French, Spanish and Italian in this paper, but we will argue that our conclusions on APD hold generally for
Romance. Aspectual or Aktionsarten contexts (henceforth, A-CONTEXTS) lexically restrict the external argument of APD.
Intensional, modal environments (henceforth, I-CONTEXTS) constitute downward-entailing operators which license APD as
well. We will argue for a UNIFIED ANALYSIS of these two sets of contexts for APD, in spite of the (apparently rather strong)
differences between them.
2. Licensing contexts. Here is a non-exhaustive list of I-CONTEXTS licensing temporal APD:
A. FUTURE: Fr. Je {t’appellerai / *t’ai appelé} à partir de 10 heures ‘I {will call / called} you from 10 on’.
B. IMPERATIVES: Sp. Pásate por mi oficina a partir del martes ‘Stop by my office from Tuesday on’ vs. Sp.
*Me pasé por tu oficina a partir del martes ‘I stopped by your office from last Tuesday on’).
C. INTENSIONAL PREDICATES: Fr. À partir de ce moment, j’ai {eu besoin d’une voiture / *acheté une voiture} ‘From this very
moment, I {needed / bought} a car’.
D. NEGATION. It. Non vinse nessun torneo a partire dal 2000 ‘S/he did not won any tournament after 2000’
vs. *Vinse un torneo a partire dal 2000 ‘S/he won a tournament after 2000’.
E. CONDITIONALS. Fr. Si tu as acheté cet appartement à partir du premier octobre, c'est sûr qu'il t'a coûté moins cher. ‘If you
bought this apartment from October 1st on, it sure was much cheaper’
F. MODAL VERBS. Sp. Te {pudiste matricular/*matriculaste} en el curso a partir del pasado 1 de septiembre
24
‘You {might have registered / registered} for the course starting September 1st’ And these are the main ACONTEXTS for this preposition:
G. PUNCTUAL PREDICATES OF CHANGE OF STATE: It. La conquista del paese fu iniziata a partire dall’anno 1500 ‘The conquest
of the country was started as of 1500’.
H. ATELIC PREDICATES COERCED INTO THEIR INITIAL PHASE: Fr. Marie a travaillé [=‘started to work’] a partir de 16 ans ‘M.
started to work at 16’; Sp. Picasso pintó [=‘started to paint’] bodegones a partir de 1893 ‘Picasso painted still lifes
from 1893 onwards’.
I. DEGREE VERBS: Fr. Paul {a grossi / ?*s’est marié} à partir de 40 ans. ‘P. {gained weight / married} starting at 40’.
J. PLURALS PROVIDING CUMULATIVE READINGS OUT OF TELIC PREDICATES: Fr. De nombreux alpinistes sont arrivés au
sommet de l’Everest à partir de 1953 ‘Numerous mountaineers have climbed the Everest ever since 1953’; Sp. A
partir de ese día cometió {muchos errores / *un error} ‘From that day on, s/he made {a lot of mistakes / a mistake}’.
K. FREQUENCY ADVERBIALS PROVIDING EVENT QUANTIFICATION FOR TELIC PREDICATES: Fr. Il a remporté le Tour de France
*(à plusieurs reprises) à partir de cette date ‘He won the Tour de France (many times) from that date onwards’.
L. HABITUAL SENTENCES. Fr. En été, le soleil se lève à partir de 6 heures du matin ‘In the summer, the sun rises after 6 A.M.’.
3. Analysis. The main grammatical properties of temporal APD are stated in (1):
(1)
a. APD is a two place preposition heading an adjunct that modifies a punctual predicate.
b. APD’s internal argument provides the left boundary starting point (LBSP) of an open interval (OI).
c. The predicate to which APD modifies provides APD’s external argument.
d. The eventuality is located as some unspecific point inside OI.
According to (1), the French sentence Je t’appellerai a partir de 10 heures means ‘I will call you at t (t = an unspecific point
included in a future interval starting at 10 hours)’ (see Rohrer 1981 and Lagae 2012 for similar paraphrases). Notice that (1a)
strongly contrasts with most prepositions of temporal source. In fact, these require both atelic predicates and closed intervals,
even if their right boundary is unknown or recovered from context (Iatridou & von Fintel 2005, Rohrer 1981), as in It. Maria
abitava nello stesso appartamento dal 1970 ‘M. had lived in the same apartment ever since 1970’. In any case, other temporal
source prepositions (Fr. dès, depuis; It. da, dopo; Sp. desde, después, etc.) fall beyond the scope of this paper.
The grammatical licensing of the information in (1) is a crucial part of the grammar of APD, especially so since the OI needed
after the LBSP may be achieved by both A- and I-contexts.
Take A-contexts first. Context G provides the simplest possibility for obtaining both LBSP and OI, since change of state verbs are
punctual, as required by (1a), and they introduce transitions into durative eventualities of the opposite polarity (ter Meulen
1995). Interestingly, one of the possible English translation of APD is starting, which lexicalizes LBSP; another one is from X on,
where from corresponds to LBSP, and on provides OI. If context G is not available, the coercion process in H is able to create LBSP
for most activities and states, then preserving OI. The process of focusing initial phases of accomplishments is known to be
triggered by referential temporal adverbials (as in I saw the movie at 10 o’clock), and parallels other well-known coercion
processes with other aspectual verbs (de Swart 1998, a.o.).
The relevance of context I comes from the properties of degree verbs (DVs): They fit the requirements in (1b) for two reasons:
(i) they qualify for context H, triggered by perfective aspect and source prepositions, as in Fr. Il a {grossi / commencé à grossir}
dès son mariage ‘He has {gained weight / started gaining weight} after son marriage’; and (ii) they denote sets of degrees in
homogeneous scalar processes, which correspond to successive points in the intervals provided by temporal adjuncts, as in The
temperature raised along the summer. The scalar changes expressed by grading adjectives and verbs derived from them
(Kennedy 2001; Kennedy & McNally 2005; Civardi & Bertinetto 2015) constitute just one option here, since the relevant
incremental predicate may be obtained on compositional bases. For ex., the French expressions perdre la memoire ‘lose one’s
memory’ and abandonner la litterature ‘leave literature’ are not in the lexicon, but, since they are degree predicates, they are
able to contribute the OI required in (1b):
(2)
a. Fr. Jean a perdu {la mémoire / *ses clefs} a partir de cette date.
‘Jean lost his {memory / keys} from that date’
b. Fr. A partir de ce jour, Jean a abandonné {la litterature / *son chien}.
‘From that day on, Jean lost his {memory / keys}’
Contexts in J and K are almost standard in the compositional licensing of temporal adjuncts on aspectual bases (see Krifka
1988, Lasersohn, 1995, Landman 2000 and much related work; see also Laca 2007 for an overview), including adjuncts of
25
temporal origin (Móia 2001). This is independent of the obvious fact that quantized event readings can be related to telicity —
as well as homogenous lectures to atelicity— in various ways. Since we want to obtain intervals out of event quantification in J
and K contexts, we align ourselves with hypotheses that derive atelicity from unbounded pluriactionality by summing up the
relevant subevents (van Geenhoven 2005, Laca 2006). As for context L, it might be reduced to K if implicit generic operators are
accepted. At the same time, it provides a bridge between A- and I-contexts, since these operators are (weak) licensors of freechoice indefinites.
We will argue that the role of I-contexts in the licensing of APD hinges on two basic features in the meaning of this particle:
(i)
(ii)
The unspecificity of the temporal point in (1d).
The licensing of the interval in (1b), which APD forces to be open.
There is much controversy on the grammatical treatment of I-contexts. We will support analyses which take free-choice items
to be indefinites displaying the semantic properties of their intensional triggers, mainly negative and modal (see Giannakidou
2001, Aloni 2007, Giannakidou & Quer 2013 and many others). In fact, we will argue that (i) is an extension of the unspecificity
of indefinites licensed in these environments. Crucially, APD is compatible with overt adjuncts locating the event, provided they
are unspecific, as in Sp. El frío llegará en cualquier momento a partir del sábado ‘Cold will arrive at any time from next Saturday’.
As for (ii), some I-contexts (namely, C, D and F) are known to provide duration in the external arguments required by UNTIL,
SINCE, DURING and other temporal prepositions, a process that allows the creation of intervals out of achievements. Extension
of these processes to other modal environments requires interpreting I-contexts as operators involving exhaustive variation of
sets of alternatives (Giannakidou 1998, 2001). These are absent in episodic, veridical contexts, whether or not these
alternatives are taken to be outcomes of Kadmon and Landman (1993)’s domain widening operation.
Finally, we will argue that conspiracies of A-contexts and I-contexts for the licensing of a syntactically dependent item are not as
strange as they might look like. In fact, Quer (1988, 2009) analysis of the Romance subjunctive hinges on a conjunction of factors
rather similar to the one discussed in this paper: so-called selected subjunctive is provided by predicates lexically triggering this
mood in one of their arguments, which strongly resembles our A-contexts. At the same time, so-called polarity subjunctive is
triggered by modal operators, a paradigm almost identical to that of our I-contexts.
References
Aloni, M. 2007. “Free choice, modals and imperatives”. Natural Language Semantics 15, 65-94;
Civardi, E & P.M. Bertinetto. 2015. “The semantics of degree verbs and the telicity issue”. Borealis 4, 57-77;
Giannakidou, A. 1998. Polarity sensitivity as (non) veridical dependency. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins;
Giannakidou, A. 2001 & J. Quer 2013. “Exhaustive and non-exhaustive variation with free choice and referential vagueness:
evidence from Greek, Catalan, and Spanish”. Lingua 126, 120-149;
Giannakidou, A. 2001. “The meaning of free choice”. Linguistics and Philosophy 24, 659-735; Iatridou, S. & K. von Fintel. 2005.
“Since
Since”.
Department
of
Linguistics,
The
MIT.
Ms.
Available
at
http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/iatridou/since.pdf;
Kadmon, N. & F. Landman 1993. “Any”. Linguistics and Philosophy 16, 353-422;
Kennedy, C. 2001. “Polar opposition and the ontology of ‘degrees’”. Linguistics and Philosophy 24, 33-70;
Kennedy, C. & L. McNally. 2005. “Scale structure, degree modification, and the semantic typology of gradable predicates”,
Language 81, 345-381;
Krifka, M. 1998. “The origins of telicity”. In S Rothstein (ed.), Events and grammar, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
197-235;
Laca, B. 2006. “Indefinites, quantifiers and pluractionals: What scope effects tell us about event pluralities”. In L. Tasmowski &
S. Vogeleer (eds.), Non-definiteness and plurality, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 191-217;
Laca, B. 2007. “Pluriactionnalité”, in Sémanticlopédie. Diccionaire de semantique. Avalilable on line;
Lagae, V. 2012. “Marqueurs du point de départ spatial et temporel antéposés: une comparaison de depuis, dès et à partir de”.
Corela 12 [on line];
Landman, F. 2000. Events and plurality. Dordrecht: Kluwer;
Lasersohn, P. 1995. Plurality, conjunction and events. Dordrecht: Kluwer;
Móia, T. 2001. “Temporal location of events and the distribution of the Romance coun- terparts of since-adverbials”. In J. Camps
& C. Wiltshire (eds.), Romance Syntax, Semantics and L2 Acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 137-152;
Quer, J. 1998. Mood at the Interface. The Hague: HAG;
Quer, J. 2009. “Twists of mood: The distribution and interpretation of indicative and subjunctive”. Lingua 119, 1779-1787;
Rohrer, C., 1981. “Quelques remarques sur les différences entre à partir de, depuis¸ dans une heure, une heure plus tard”. In C.
Schwarze (ed), Analyse des prépositions. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 158-170;
Swart, H. de. 1998. “Aspect Shift and Co- ercion, NL&LT 16, 347-385; Ter Meulen, A. B. 1995. Representing time in natural
language. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press;
Van Geenhoven, V. 2005. “Atelicity, pluractionality, and adverbial quantification”. In H. Verkuyl et al. (eds.), Perspectives on
aspect, Amsterdam: Springer, 107-124.
26
BOTNE Robert (Indiana). Tense in the Jarawara dialect of Madi: Domains and regions in tripartite T/A systems
[email protected]
pdf Crisco
BRES Jacques (Montpellier), ASIC Tijana (Kragujevac), DODIG Milana (Kragujevac), TORTERAT Frédéric (Nice).
Conditionnel temporel objectif et tournures non téléonomiques en français et en serbe
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
Comment se signifie, dans l’époque passée, l’ultériorité d’un événement e2 par rapport à un événement e1 ? Parmi les
différentes possibilités, nous nous intéresserons à l’usage de trois d’entre elles, les deux premières en français, la troisième en
serbe :
(1) Margarèthe entra à Ravensbrück le 2 août 1940 (e1). Elle n’en sortirait pas avant avril 1945 (e2).
(Marie-Claire n°435, novembre 1988)
(2) Margarèthe entra à Ravensbrück le 2 août 1940 (e1), pour n’en sortir qu’en avril 1945 (e2).
(3) Margareta je zatvorena u Ravensbrik 2. avgusta 1940, da bi iz njega izašla tek aprila 1945.
Pour actualiser le second procès (sortir),
- le français use en (1) du conditionnel (sortirait), ce que ne peut faire le serbe qui, s’il dispose d’un mode potentiel par lequel
bien des emplois du conditionnel français peuvent trouver un équivalent, ne peut, dans le cas de (1), traduire le conditionnel
par un potentiel ;
- le français peut user, comme en (2), d’une subordonnée finale non téléonomique à l’infinitif (pour en sortir) ;
- le serbe use également d’une subordonnée finale non téléonomique, mais au mode potentiel.
Le but de notre communication sera triple.
1. Il s’agira de décrire chacun de ces trois tours et d’expliquer :
- en quoi le conditionnel, dans certains contextes que nous expliciterons, alors même que sa valeur temporelle de base est
de signifier l’ultériorité par rapport à une subjectivité (Marie m’avait dit qu’elle viendrait), ce qui ne préjuge en rien de la
factualité du procès venir (il n’est pas dit si Marie ensuite est venue / n’est pas venue), est à même de signifier l’ultériorité
objective, à savoir que le procès a bien eu lieu, ce que teste le remplacement possible du conditionnel par un passé simple :
« elle n’en sortit pas avant avril 1945 » ;
- en quoi la subordination en pour P en français ou da P en serbe, normalement associée à la valeur finale (ou téléonomique)
(Marie n’a rien dit, pour que Pierre ne soit pas fâché / pour ne pas fâcher Pierre ; Mari ništa nije rekla da se Pjer ne bi naljutio
/ da ne bi naljutila Pjera), est à même de signifier l’ultériorité objective. On s’attachera tout particulièrement à rendre
compte des deux faits suivants : en français, la subordonnée non téléonomique ne peut qu’être postposée et son procès ne
peut être actualisé qu’à l’infinitif (à la différence des subordonnées téléonomiques qui, suivant le sujet, acceptent le
subjonctif ou l’infinitif) ; en serbe, le procès est actualisé au mode potentiel (comme dans les subordonnées téléonomiques).
2. On comparera, dans un second temps, ces trois structures, qui, si elles sont globalement équivalentes, comme l’attestent les
occurrences (1)-(3), s’avèrent dans le détail porteuses de différences que l’analyse explicitera. Pour cela, nous partirons des
possibilités et des impossibilités de réécriture et de traduction qu’un premier travail sur le corpus (cf. infra) fait apparaître :
- certaines occurrences au conditionnel objectif ne peuvent pas être réécrites par pour P non téléonomique en français et en
serbe ;
- certaines occurrences au conditionnel objectif, qui ne peuvent pas être réécrites par pour P non téléonomique en français,
peuvent être traduites par pour P non téléonomique au potentiel en serbe ;
- inversement, certaines occurrences de pour P non téléonomique en français et en serbe ne peuvent pas être réécrites ou
traduites par un conditionnel objectif en français.
3. Enfin on analysera la façon dont la simple relation d’ultériorité de e2 par rapport à e1 présente en (1-3), peut se doubler
comme en (4-6) d’une relation d’opposition :
(4) Après la reddition, le Japon a été occupé par les forces américaines (e1) ; il deviendrait ensuite l’un des plus importants
alliés américains (e2).
(5) Après la reddition, le Japon a été occupé par les forces américaines (e1), pour devenir ensuite l’un des plus importants
alliés américains (e2).
(6) Nakon predaje, Japan je bio okupiran od strane američkih snaga (e1), da
bi potom postao
jedan
od
najvažnijih američkih saveznika (e2).
Le deuxième événement (e2), perçu comme la suite typique du premier (e1) en (1-3), apparaît comme contraire de ce qui était
attendu en (4-6).
27
Corpus
La recherche sera conduite un corpus de 400 occurrences authentiques relevées pour moitié dans le texte littéraire (à partir de
la base de données FRANTEXT) et pour moitié dans le texte journalistique (à partir de la base de données EUROPRESS).
Références bibliographiques
ASIC T. ET DODIG M. 2015, Le conditionnel temporel objectif en français et en serbe. In: Les Études françaises aujourd’hui
(2014). Pourquoi étudier la grammaire ? théories et pratiques. La Nature, mère ou marâtre : représentation, concepts et leur
puissance contestataire dans les littératures de langue française. Belgrade : Faculté de Philologie de l'Université de Belgrade,167180.
BRES J. 2012. « Conditionnel et ultériorité dans le passé: de la subjectivité à l’objectivité », CMLF, Lyon, 56 – 83.
CADIOT P., 1990, « À propos du complément circonstanciel de but », Langue française 86, 51-64.
COLINET, M. ; DANLOS, L. ; DARGNAT, M. ; WINTERSTEIN, G. 2014. Emplois de la préposition pour suivie d'une infinitive :
description, critères formels et annotation en corpus. In F. Neveu et al. (eds), Actes du Congrès Mondial de Linguistique
française : 3041-3058.
MELIS, L. 2003. La préposition en français. Paris : Ophrys.
WHELPTON, M. 2001. Elucidation of a telic infinitive. Journal of linguistics 37: 313-337.
BRES Jacques (Montpellier), LABEAU Emmanuelle (Aston). Venir de (+ infinitive) : A marker of immediate anteriority
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
In many languages, itive and ventive verb forms (Eng.: go/come, Fr.: aller/venir, Sp.: ir/venir) grammaticalise into temporal,
aspectual and modal auxiliaries (e.g. Lamiroy 1983, Hagège 1993, Bybee et al. 1994, Dahl 2000, Bourdin 2008, Heine & Kuteva
2002; and for French: e.g. Gougenheim 1929/1971, Bres & Labeau 2013). Come-periphrases are used for instance to express
anteriority in various languages; and most specifically, immediate anteriority in French.
This paper will focus on venir de + inf. in French. That periphrasis has been the subject of much attention (e.g. Gougenheim
1929/1971; Flydal 1943; Damourette & Pichon 1911-1936 / 1970; Dominicy 1983; Vetters 1989, 2010; Bourdin 1999, 2005; Havu
2005; De Mulder 2010). The present paper complements those works and offers a different analysis of the venir de +
inf. structure: on the path of grammaticalization into an auxiliary, venir de has become an aspectual auxiliary of immediate
anteriority and not a perfective.
1. Flydal 1943, Damourette & Pichon 1911-1936 / 1970, Dominicy 1983, Vetters 2010, Bourdin 1999, 2005, Havu 2005, De
Mulder 2010, in different ways, support the traditional approach (Gougenheim 1929/1971) according to which venir de + inf,
would express recent past and so would be a temporal auxiliary. As for us, we analyze it as an aspectual auxiliary of immediate
anteriority: the fact that it can be used not only in the present, but in the imperfect, the future, the conditional and in atemporal
moods pleads in favour of venir de + inf. expressing immediate anteriority rather than recent past.
On the basis of a revised Reichenbachian model, with the three constructs: E (= event point), S (= speech point) and R (= reference point) (1947/1966), we show that venir de + inf. bears upon the relationship between R and E (that is to say aspect) and
not on the relationship between R and S (that is to say time). As venir de + inf. cannot be distinguished from the passé composé
in the Reichenbachian system, we suggest to alter it by (i) adding a marker of proximal anteriority (<) so that Il vient de pleuvoir is
represented as E<R,S) against il a plu (E-R,S); (ii) representing each three constructs E,R and S by an interval to allow for
aspectual representations and (iii) introducing an interval ε1-ε2 for venir, the initial border of which coincides with the final
border E2 of the infinitive; (iv) adding, to Reichenbach’s relations of simultaneity (,) and anteriority (-),a relation of inclusion (⊂)
that allows the distinction between the passé simple (perfective representation) and the imparfait (imperfective representation).
That analysis allows us to offer a solid explanation of a fact that – even though it had been mentioned by all those scholars – had
remained unexplained: why venir, in this periphrasis- while it may be conjugated in the present, the imperfect, the simple future
and the conditional -cannot be conjugated in the passé simple or in any compound tense:
Il vient/venait/viendra/viendrait de pleuvoir
Il *vint/*est venu / *était venu de pleuvoir
Il vient de pleuvoir presupposes a small temporal gap between the reference interval and the time when the rain fell (event
interval). We hypothesize that some tenses, thanks to their aspect or in other words the relation between the reference interval
and the event interval, allow the expression of this small anterior gap, while other tenses forbid it. This hypothesis allows to
explain why venir can be used in the imparfait but not in the passé simple nor any compound tense.
- Il venait de pleuvoir: thanks to its imperfective aspect, the imparfait includes the reference interval R1-R2 within the process
interval ɛ1-ɛ2 in such a way that ɛ1 is closely anterior to R1 (ɛ1 < R1), which, given the proximity between the intervals of pleuvoir
and venir, leaves a gap between E2 and R1 (E2 < R1) that complies with the requirements of a representation of immediate
anteriority:
28
Il venait de pleuvoir: R1-R2⊂ɛ1-ɛ2 ; E2< R1 ; R2-S1 (the reference interval R1-R2 is included within the process interval
venir ɛ1-ɛ2 ; the final border E2 of pleuvoir is immediately anterior to the initial border of the reference interval R1 ; the
final border of the reference interval R2 is anterior to the initial border S1 of the speech interval)
- *il vint de pleuvoir: the perfective aspect of the passé simple results from the coincidence of the reference interval with the
event interval. Conjugating venir in the passé simple would make the reference interval R1-R2 and the event interval ɛ1-ɛ2,
coincide which, given the proximity of the event intervals for pleuvoir and venir (de), would amount to making the initial border
R1 of the reference interval coincide with the final border E2 of pleuvoir, and would leave no space between E2 and R1, as
required for representing proximal anteriority:
*Il vint de pleuvoir: R1-R2,ɛ1-ɛ2 ; R1,E2 ; R2-S1 (the reference interval R1-R2 would be simultaneous to the event interval
venir ɛ1-ɛ2 ; the initial border R1 would be simultaneous to the final border E2 of pleuvoir, and the final border R2 would
be anterior to the initial S1 of the speech interval)
The restrictions on compound forms (*il est venu / *il était venu de pleuvoir) can be explained in a similar aspectual way.
2. We then consider whether venir de + inf. has turned into a perfective by testing whether it can be combined with an
adverbial, tolerate a when-question or be used in narrative progression. The first test shows only sporadic appearance of
temporal adverbial, hardly acceptable in anteposition and very rarely expressing an anteriority that spans over years. The second
test shows no occurrence of when-questions, which invalidates that perfectivity test. Finally, venir de + inf. is not used in
narrative sequence because it lacks autonomy: it can only indicate the anteriority of an event in relation to another one.
We will conclude by comparing the French periphrasis with the options adopted by other Romance languages (Catalan, Spanish,
Italian, Occitan, Romanian) in order to express immediate anteriority.
For this study, we rely on a corpus of 4,600 attested tokens from various sources and genres: Frantext (a database of literary
th
th
texts from the 16 to the 20 century): 2,250 tokens; Google (contemporary and mostly non-literary written sources): 2,000
tokens; Europress (written press): 250 tokens ; sociolinguistic interviews (corpus CFPP 2000), daily conversation and television
programmes: 100 oc.
References
Bourdin, Philippe. 1999. Venir de et la récence: un marqueur typologiquement surdéterminé. Cahiers Chronos 4. 203-231.
Bourdin, Philippe. 2005. Venir en français contemporain: de deux fonctionnements périphrastiques. In Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot. Hava
and Le Querler, Nicole. (eds) Les périphrases verbales, 261-278. Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Bourdin, Philippe. 2008. On the grammaticalization of ‘come’ and ‘go’ into markers of textual connectivity, In Lopez-Couso,
Maria-Jose & Seoane. Elena. (eds) Rethinking grammaticalization: New Perspectives, 37-59. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bres Jacques & Labeau, Emmanuelle. 2013. Aller et venir: des verbes de déplacement aux auxiliaires aspectuels-temporelsmodaux, Langue française 179. 13-28.
Bybee, Joan., Perkins, Revere & Pagliuca, William. 1994. The Evolution of Grammar. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Dahl, Östen. 2000. The tense-aspect systems of European languages in a typological perspective. In Dahl, Östen (ed.) Tense and
Aspect in the Languages of Europe, 3-25. Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Damourette, Jacques & Pichon, Edouard. 1911-1936. Des mots à la pensée: Essai de grammaire de la langue française (Tome 5).
Paris: D’Artrey.
De Mulder, Walter. 2010. La métaphore espace/temps à l’épreuve: l’évolution de venir de. Cahiers Chronos 21. 65-83.
Dominicy, Marc. 1983. Time, tense and restriction (on the French periphrasis venir de + infinitive). Communication & Cognition
16, 1/2.133-154.
Flydal, Leiv. 1943. 'Aller' et 'venir de' comme expressions de rapports temporels. Oslo: Dybwad.
Gougenheim, Georges. 1929 / 1971. Etudes sur les périphrases verbales de la langue française. Paris: Nizet.
Hagège, Claude. 1993. The Language Builder. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Havu, Jukka. 2005. L’expression du passé récent en français: observations sur l’emploi de la périphrase venir + INFINITIF. In
Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot Hava. and Le Querler, Nicole. (eds) Les périphrases verbales, 279-292. Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Heine Bernd & Kuteva Tania. 2002. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lamiroy, Béatrice. 1983. Les verbes de mouvement en français et en espagnol, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Reichenbach, Hans. 1947/1966. Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York: Free Press.
Vetters, Carl. 1989. Grammaticalité au passé récent. Lingvisticae Investigationes 13/2. 369-386.
Vetters, Carl. 2010. Développement et évolution des temps du passé en français: passé simple, passé composé et venir de +
infinitif. In Moline, Estelle and Vetters, Carl (eds) Temps, aspect et modalité en français. Cahiers Chronos 21. 277-298.
29
C
CAUDAL Patrick (Paris 7). An aspectual survey of French 2nd group verbs as an inflectional & lexical class
[email protected]
nd
The present investigation aims at showing that so-called 2 group verbs in French (an inflectionally well-defined class of some
350 verb roots, depending on dialectal/sub-language factors) are a semantically coherent lexical class, on top of being a
morphologically coherent inflectional class of verbs. Capitalizing on existing resources such as the Flexique (Bonami, Caron &
Plancq to appear) and Devoir Conjugal (Beaudoin 2001) verbal morphological databases, an extensive (though not
comprehensive from a dialectal/sociolectal point of view) database of some 350 second group verbs was constructed. And from
this database, a detailed lexical survey was conducted, yielding some 434 semantically distinct lexical entries, associating
each separate, arbitrarily conventionalized meaning (i.e. not produced by means of regular polysemy, metaphor or metonymy),
with a (i) a fine-grained aspectual characterization and (ii) a certain amount of morpho-syntactic annotation (morphological
class of the root, theta-grid, and other relevant information).
nd
1. On the historical development of 2 group verbs
nd
2 group verbs are the second biggest morphologically coherent verb class of French (with 350-400 roots), not far behind the
rd
1st group (with 1100+ roots) – while the 3 group is essentially a morphological ‘garbage’ class, with no particular coherence
(i.e. it is in fact an aggregate of several much small inflectional classes of verbs).
nd
The 2 group is a morphologically closed class, without any innovation since alunir ‘land on moon’ at the beginning of the 20th
century. Prima facie, this seems to indicate at least some degree of entrenchment of the morphology underpinning the
st
class – contra 1 group morphology, which is very productive.
The inflectional thematic augment –i(ss)– (with variants –i- and –iss-) characterizing the class is derived from the Latin verbal
affix –esc–, whose function was essentially to form de-adjectival, gradual (i.e. non-punctual) change-of-state verbs, similar to
so-called ‘deadjectival’ verbs, cf. e.g. (Kennedy & McNally 2005) It probably was a verbal affix at some early stage in Old French,
with an aspectual role not unrelated to its Latin ancestor).
nd
It was suggested in e.g. (Anscombre 2008) that 2 group morphology might have retained a similar meaning in modern
French. Such a view, however, is a bit too strong to be seriously entertained – indeed, given the actual morphologization (and
therefore, loss of semantic autonomy) of the former Latin affix an as an inflectional class augment, it is unlikely that a
nd
compositional semantic analysis is still possible for 2 group verbs nowadays (i.e. one under which –iss- would be endowed
with some proper semantic content). This, however, does not prove that Anscombre’s intuition are utterly unfounded, and
that some kind of ‘semantic’ persistence of –esc- might still characterize in some weaker way the whole class albeit as a lexical
class (and not –iss- as a morpheme founding a derivational class).
2. A quantitative analysis
nd
In order to assess the persistence or non-persistence of the type of meaning associated with –esc-, a list of 434 2 group verbs
nd
(i.e. covering most of the non-dialectal 2 group verbs) was constructed from available electronic resources as an empirical
benchmark. It was then structured in semantic lexical entries, manually compiled from data from the CNRTL lexica; translations
were guided by the French-English Larousse online dictionary, but in most cases had to be revised/complemented by hand.
Historical morphological data was garnered through the CNRTL lexical webportal (http://www.cnrtl.fr/) and added to the
database thus constituted. Finally, an aspectual encoding was done manually for each lexical or sub-lexical entry (i.e. with
sufficiently individualized meanings); when possible, online examples were collected (through e.g. the Frantext corpus,
http://www.frantext.fr/ctlf/). 11 distinct aspectual classes were used for that purpose/ The following table summarizes the
most significant results of the quantitative analysis effected:
30
Aspectually polymorphic (non-CoS/CoS)
Semelfactive
Non-quantified, /non-defective states
Quantified / defective states
Unergative activities
(CoS) activities
unbounded (boundable) CoS verbs
bounded (unboundable) CoS verbs
Optionally telic incremental
Telic incremental
Gradual telic
Telic atomic
TOTAL
All cats
19
14
2
9
2
6
38
96
34
37
38
139
434
Adj root V
1
0
1
0
0
0
30
85
7
0
11
2
137
N root V
2
0
0
2
0
0
2
3
7
5
9
12
42
Unidentified root
16
14
1
7
2
6
6
8
20
32
18
125
255
Figure 1 : aspectual analysis of 2nd group verbs
Most striking of all is (i) the unexpected predominance of telic atomic (‘punctual’) verbs and strongly telic verbs (i.e. not exactly
in line with the original meaning of –esc-) and (ii) viceversa, the virtual absence of bona fide stative and activity verbs (under
closer scrutiny, most of those are in fact semantically very peculiar items, and can be disqualified as standard
nd
stative/activity verbs). This strongly suggests that 2 group verbs have achieved what (Baayen & Martín 2005) call
‘semantic densification’ as a lexical (inflectional) class of verbs, having a distinct and unique aspectual profile in comparison
with other inflectional verb classes.
3. At the morphology/lexicon interface: the –iss- augment as an element signaling a morphologically and semantically
coherent class of verbs
On the basis of the quantitative results garnered through this survey, it will be argued that the inflectional thematic augment –
i(ss)– (with variants –i- and –iss-) characterizing the class, and which is derived from the Latin verbal affix –esc–, acted
(and might still act) as a morpho-lexical ‘flag’ within a lexical semantic convergence process bearing on an inflectional
class of verbs (and probably was a verbal affix at some early OF stage, with an spectual role not unrelated to its Latin ancestor).
The hypothesis I will defend here is that the morphological & semantic ‘blue print’ of a former Latin affix (-esc-) has
persisted and yet changed, in the sense that it has been exaptated – it was at some stage a (meaningful) inflectional augment,
and though morphologized, it has become the morphological unifying and driving force behind what I will call the “semantic
nd
densification” of second group verbs in the sense of (Baayen & Martín 2005). Indeed, as will be shown below, the 2 group class
presents an astonishingly coherent semantic profile -This puts –iss- in some ‘gray zone’ of the semantics/morphology interface: while it almost certainly is ‘morphologized’
(Joseph & Janda 1988)) and does not appear to contribute a meaning of its own, cf. e.g. (Allen 1995; Detges 2004;
Klausenburger 2000; Ramat & Hopper 1998), merely calling it ‘bleached’ misses its global form/meaning function, namely that
nd
the ‘stem extender’ –i(ss)– serves as a formal marking helping reinforcing the semantic convergence exhibited by 2 group
nd
verbs. The survey reveals that 2 group verbs, while pointing to a remarkably complex and subtle set of aspectual meanings,
overwhelmingly tend to cluster around two aspectual meanings, namely telic atomic meanings (i.e., achievementlike verbs), and
gradual change-of-state telic verbs (i.e. accomplishment-like verbs, with and without incremental theme arguments). As an
aside, some interesting consequences for formal accounts of aspect qua scalarity-based theories will be discussed.
It will be argued that such a ‘gray zone’ situation is in fact, rather common in Romance. (Rainer 2005) thus shows how
certain Latin affixes have regrammaticalized (‘exaptated’) as semantically novel derivational affixes. And while they did
not always achieve a straightforward compositional semantic function, they nevertheless act like formal pointers towards some
nd
converging meanings. This combined flectional and lexical semantic basis of 2 group verbs will also be shown to be reminiscent
of phenomena found outside the Romance area (Caudal, Dench & Roussarie 2012).
Finally, by showing how a former morphological grammatical phenomenon can survive as an almost (but not quite) covert
driving force in lexicalization processes, I intend to present the lexicon-morphology interface and lexical classes with a morphosemantic basis as a major, grammatically organized locus for language change – against impoverished views of the lexicon in the
Distributed Morphology style.
References
Allen, Cynthia L. 1995. Regrammaticalization and Regrammaticalization of the inchoative suffix. In Henning Andersen (ed.),
Historical Linguistics, 1993: Selected Papers from the 11th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Los Angeles, 1620 August 1993, 1–8. John Benjamins Publishing.
31
Anscombre, Jean-Claude. 2008. Grammaire et linguistique : des frères ennemis ? Le cas des verbes du deuxième groupe. In
Lépinette, Brigitte & Brisa Gómes, Ángel (eds.), Actas del VII Congreso Internacional de Lingüistica Francesa : Linguistique
Plurielle, 23–46. Valencia: Editorial de la Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. http://halshs.archivesouvertes.fr/halshs-00611695.
Baayen, R. Harald & Fermín Moscoso del Prado Martín. 2005. Semantic Density and past-Tense Formation in Three
Germanic Languages. Language 81(3). 666–698.
Beaudoin, Martin. 2001. “Le Devoir conjugal” : de la conceptualisation à la diffusion. ALSIC (Apprentissage des Langues et
Systèmes d’Information et de Communication) 4. 91–102.
Bonami, Olivier, Gauthier Caron & Clément Plancq. to appear. Construction d’un lexique flexionnel phonétisé libre du
français. Actes du 4ème Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française (CMLF 2013). Frei Universität, Berlin.
Caudal, Patrick, Alan Dench & Laurent Roussarie. 2012. A semantic type-driven account of verb-formation patterns in
Panyjima. Australian Journal of Linguistics 32(1). 115–155. doi:10.1080/07268602.2012.658740.
Detges, Ulrich. 2004. How cognitive is grammaticalization? The history of the Catalan perfet perifràstic. In Olga Fischer, Muriel
Norde & Harry Perridon (eds.), Up and Down the Cline--the Nature of Grammaticalization, 211–227.
Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.
Joseph, Brian D. & Richard D. Janda. 1988. The how and why of diachronic morphologization and demorphologization. In
Michael Hammond & Michael Noonan (eds.), Theoretical morphology: Approaches in modern linguistics, 193–210. Academic
Press. New York. http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~bjoseph/publications/1988morphlgztn.pdf (21 May, 2013).
Kennedy, Christopher & Louise McNally. 2005. Scale structure and the semantic typology of gradable predicates. Language
81(2). 345–381.
Klausenburger, Jürgen. 2000. Grammaticalization: Studies in Latin and Romance Morphosyntax. John Benjamins
Publishing.
Rainer, Franz. 2005. Semantic Change in Word Formation. Linguistics 43(2). doi:10.1515/ling.2005.43.2.415.
http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ling.2005.43.issue2/ling.2005.43.2.415/ling.2005.43.2.415.xml?format=INT (18 March, 2014).
Ramat, Anna Giacalone & Paul J. Hopper (eds.). 1998. The Limits of Grammaticalization. John Benjamins Publishing.
CAUDAL Patrick (Paris 7), MAILHAMMER Robert (Western Sydney). Linear Lengthening in Iwaidja: a prosodic countour
with aspectuo-temporal meaning?
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
Many descriptions of Australian Indigenous languages mention a specific intonation contour as part of the tune inventory,
characterised by a plateau in F0 finishing on a mid to high tone, plus additional lengthening of the last syllable nucleus in the
Intonation, see e.g. (Bishop & Fletcher 2005: 338). We will therefore call it Linear Lengthening Intonation (LLI for short). Variants
of this contour appear to be attested in both non-Pama-Nyungan and Pama-Nyungan languages – cf. e.g. (Birch 1999) (Bishop
2002; Simard 2010; Simard 2013) for non-Pama-Nyungan languages, and (Fletcher 2014) for Pama-Nyungan languages, even
though it does not appear to be equally frequent across all Australian languages (Fletcher 2014).
However, while the formal properties appear reasonably clear, pinning down the exact meaning of these intonation contours
has so far proved elusive (Sharpe 1972: 37, see Simard 2013: 70 for more recent references). (Bishop 2002) offers the first (and
still most extensive) survey of the semantics of LLI in Australian languages. Bishop (2002:82) specifically claims that when used
with a verb, LLI conveys “durative aspect (ongoing or continuous action)”, and “iconically ‘dramatises’ [via lowel lengthening] the
ongoing nature of the action”. Such a semantic characterization is, we will argue, both vague and empirically inaccurate.
The purpose of the present talk is to elucidate the exact distribution and semantic contribution of LLI in Iwaidja, an indigenous
Australian language spoken in North-Western Arnhem Land, through the analysis of data garnered by means experimental
procedures in the field in November-December 2014. While the present study cannot be regarded as a definitive theory of LLI, it
is certainly a first firm step towards providing Australianists with an answer to this widespread puzzle, as well as a contribution
to (1) the typology of tense-aspect markers, and (2) the delineation of tense-aspct as a theoretical category.
1. Formal characteristics Linear Lengthening Intonation in Iwaidja
Linear Lengthening Intonation in Iwaidja is a tune is characterised by a linear progression of F0 – either in a plateau or as a rise –
2
3
concluded by a high boundary tone, with lengthening of the final syllable nucleus. This is illustrated in Figure 1.
2
In our view the phenomenon captures the formal core properties for Iwaidja (linear progress, lengthening), while incorporating similar
phenomena found in other languages. What seems robust at this stage is that LLI always marks an intonationally relevant unit, on the top level of
the Intonantional Phrase or the next.
3
We cannot provide a detailed explanation of the phonetic annotation system we use to describe Iwaidja intonation, but it is basically similar a
ToBi-style system (see e.g. Bishop & Fletcher 2005, Fletcher 2014).
32
Figure 1 Linear Lengthening Intonation in Iwaidja
Linear lengthening occurs in Fig. 1 on the last syllable of jamin, which is a contrastive pronoun used in reciprocal constructions.
The lengthening is indicated by the symbol H(:):(lengthened high tone) and the final high tone at the end of the intonation
phrase, which are the two core criteria for identifying this phenomenon in Iwaidja by H% (high boundary tone).
2. Experimental protocol for eliciting LLI
Following an idea notably pioneered by (Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990) or (Gussenhoven 1984), we will here embrace (by
and large) the view that intonational phonology can have meaning, either compositional or non-compositional. In order to
investigate the distribution and interpretation of LLI in Iwaidja, we adopted two distinct elicitation procedures, an essentially
experimental method, based on visual stimuli and a more classical questionnaire-based elicitation method.
Procedure (i) involved 7 subjects (full Iwaidja speakers; 3 male, 4 female ranging between 40 and 75 years old), who were shown
a series of 34 video clips, specifically targeting different types of event structures, and comprising various types of multi-event,
complex stimuli. Simplex event types comprised: (a) simple stative, positional stimuli (such as those expressed in English by the
positional, stative meanings of ‘sit’ (as in ‘be sitting’), ‘stand’ (as in ‘be standing’)); (b) simple activities; (c) iterated events; (d)
simple telic events (both achievements and accomplishments), with various more fine-grained aspectual differences. Complex
stimuli included iterated simplex events, sequences of one or several simplex event(s), temporal embedding of a simplex, telic
event into a complex or simplex event, and even sequences of distinct iterated simplex (= complex) events.
In addition to these Aktionsart parameters, the clips also imposed viewpoint parameters, notably when temporal ordering vs.
overlapping events where shown; indeed, strict temporal ordering is known to favour so-called perfective viewpoint
interpretations, whereas temporal overlap favours imperfective viewpoint interpretation.
As Iwaidja possesses two tense affixes marking aspectual differences, it was highly desirable to control for viewpoint as a key
condition of our experiments: the first of these two affixes can be described as a general imperfective, with both single event
background readings, and habitual/iterative readings, very much like e.g. Romance imperfectives; the second tense affix can be
best described as an aspectually underspecified tense, capable of both perfective and imperfective interpretations – very much
like the English simple past, in fact. After being shown each individual film clip, subjects were asked to produce descriptions with
three contextual patterns (simple, non-iterated descriptions of the events perceived (‘X did Y (once)’); iterated past descriptions
of the events perceived (‘X did Y for a long time’) ; past habits (‘X used to do Y’).
Additionally, and this was our second experimental procedure, an elicitation questionnaire was produced in order to target
specific distributional phenomena, with grammaticality judgement being tested across various possible syntactic loci for LLI, as
well as in combination with various semantic classes of items for each type of position or part of speech investigated (e.g scalar
vs. non-scalar verbs / adjectives / NPs…).
3 Meaning of Linear Lengthening Intonation: distribution and semantics
Our results confirm that LLI plays a sentence-internal semantic role (Bishop 2002; Simard 2010; Simard 2013; Fletcher 2014b),
and should therefore be seen as contributing to the atissue, propositional content of a clause, and specifically suggest that the
following empirical generalizations hold:
—Generalization (1): when stimuli involved perceptually durative states or activities (cf. e.g. ri-majbungku-ng:: ‘he held it high’
in (3)), or multiple occurrences of an event description, (with morphologically marked iteration – cf. rimajbungkukung ‘he lifted it
repeatedly’ in (2), or k-artbirru-ku-ny:: ‘he threw it repeatedly’ in (3) – as well as without it, cf. e.g. k-artbirru-ny:: ‘he threw it’ in
(4)), and within iterated elicitation contexts (‘for a long time’ context), LLI was almost systematically triggered, often (though not
always). In addition to, or instead of LLI, repetition of the verb/verb phrase, dedicated morphological marking on the verb (see
above) or other pluractional/continuative markers (cf. English ‘to keep on’) were also used (cf. ITR in (3), for instance)).
33
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
Ri-majbungku-ng::
kartbirruny
3SG.M.A>3SGO-lift-UPST
3SG.M.A>3SGO-throw-UPST
‘He held it high [the stone] for a while… then he threw it.’
Nanguj
aringan
ri-majbungku-ku-ng::
Yesterday 3SG-stand-UPST
3SG.M.A>3SGO-lift-ITR-UPST
‘He kept lifting it [the crate]’.
A-ri-ngan [wardyad]
k-artbirru-ku-ny:: [until the sun went down]
3SG-stand-UPST 3SG.M.A>3sgO-throw-ITR-UPST
‘He threw [the stone] repeatedly.’
Nanguj
a-ri-ngan::
k-artbirru-ny::
Yesterday 3SG-stand-UPST 3sg.M.A>3SGO-throw-UPST
‘Yesterday he threw it [the stone] [context: until the sun went down]
—Generalization (2): by contrast, when stimuli had driven informants to produce telic predicates, LLI was rarely elicited in the
‘once’ context, regardless of whether or not the stimuli had perceptual duration. That is, no reliable, substantial difference was
found to exist between so-called ‘punctual’ vs. ‘non-punctual’ telic predicates with respect to LLI.
—Generalization (3): Generalization (3): the use of LLI with imperfective aspect marking was biased towards telic event
descriptions (it seemed to improve the acceptability of LLI with telic verbs), and vice versa, the use of LLI with underspecified
(but potentially perfective) aspect marking was biased towards atelic, stative event descriptions.
4 The broader theoretical perspective
These empirical generalizations are strongly suggestive of the fact that in the verbal domain, LLI is highly sensitive to aspectual
parameters and not temporal parameters, nor ‘dramatization’. It appears to require some kind of event mereological complexity
(the event predicate conveyed by the utterance should either be inherently cumulative in the sense of (Krifka 1992), i.e. atelic, or
be associated with a gradual though telic change-of-state – for instance with a verb possessing a so-called incremental theme
argument in the sense of (Dowty 1991), or with a predicate inherently associated with a gradual yet bounded development/
‘change-of-state’ scale, cf. cool down in English). In turn, this suggests that the semantics of LLI is not equivalent to that of a for
adverbial phrase, but is rather some kind of scalar measurement function, involving a non-absolute standard of comparison. This
suggests that indeed, intonation markers form a semantically subtle (and underestimated!) class of event-description structuring
items, particularly salient in a language area (namely Australian indigenous languages) where ‘aspectuo-temporal’ adverbials are
scarce.
References
Bishop, J.. 2002. Aspects of intonation and prosody in Bininj gun-wok: autosegmental-metrical analysis. Melbourne: The
University of Melbourne.
Dowty, D. 1991. Thematic Proto-Roles and Argument Selection. Language 67(3). 547-619.
Fletcher, J.. 2014. Intonation in Australian languages. Talk given at the Institute of Phonetics and Speech Processing, LudwigMaximilians-Universität München.
Gussenhoven, C. 1984. On the Grammar and Semantics of Sentence Accents. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
Krifka, M.. 1992. Thematic Relations as Links Between Nominal Reference and Temporal Constitution. In I. Sag & A. Szabolski
(eds.), Lexical Matters, 30–52. U. of Chicago Press.
Pierrehumbert, J. & J. Hirschberg. 1990. The Meaning of Intonational contours in the Interpretation of Discourse. In P. R. Cohen,
J. Morgan & M. E. Pollack (eds.), Intentions in Communication, 271–311. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Simard, C. 2010. The Prosodic Contours of Jaminjung, a Language of Northern Australia. The University of Manchester PhD
Thesis.
Simard, C. 2013. Prosody and Function of “Iconic Lengthening” in Jaminjung. In C. Youngberg & L. Kipp (eds.), SOAS Working
Papers in Linguistics volume 16, 65–77.
CHOI Jiyoung (Nantes). (Degree) Inchoative States in Korean
[email protected]
A survey of the recent literature shows that so-called “inchoative states (henceforth INS)” which do not fit into the standard
classification (cf. Vendler 1967) have been reported in languages such as Skwxwú7mesh Salish (Bar-el 2005), Sǝnčáθǝn Salish,
Japanese (Kiyota 2008), Korean (Chung 2005, Lee 2006, Choi 2015), Niuean, St’á’imcets (Davis 2012, Matthewson 2013, 2014),
Spanish (Marín & McNally 2011 for discussion of reflexive psychological verbs) and Chinese (Chang 2003). At first glance, just like
a typical stative predicate, an INS, as exemplified in (1a-b) below, seems to describe a property. Crucially, however, it has been
argued that an INS makes reference to an onset (i.e. an initial boundary) of the described property, unlike a typical stative
predicate. Hence, it can yield, in the absence of an inchoative morpheme corresponding to ‘become’, an “inchoative
interpretation”, according to which the property associated with the predicate starts to hold at the reference time.
(1) a. INS in Skwxwú7mesh Salish (Bar-el 2005) b. INS in Korean (Chung 2005)
Chen t’ayak’.
Mina-ka
nulk-ess-ta.
1.SG
ANGRY
Mina-NOM
old-PFCT-DEC
‘I got tired.’
‘Mina got old.’
34
The inceptive reading induced by the addition of punctual adverbials in (2) illustrates that an INS has an inception of the
described property in its inherent meaning (cf. Bar-el 2005).
(2) Juno-nun [ku
sosik-ul
tul-ess-ul ttay] hwana-ss-ta.
that
news-ACC
hear-PFCT-when angry-PFCT-DEC
Juno-TOP
‘Juno felt angry when he heard that news.’
a.
‘Juno was not angry before, but he became angry because of the news.’
b.
‘Juno was already angry when he heard the news.’
The major theoretical contribution of this paper is to argue for the existence of two classes of INSs in Korean: degree INSs (e.g.
nulk ‘old’, saljji ‘fat’) which are associated with gradability vs. (regular) INSs (e.g. al ‘know’, ihayha ‘understand’) which do not
exhibit this property. As is well-known, the use of for- vs. in-adverbials is a standard test for telicity: while for-adverbials modify
atelic predicates, in-adverbials modify telic predicates (cf. Dowty 1979). On this diagnostic, both (regular) INSs and degree INSs in
Korean show variable telicity in that they allow modification by both for- and in-adverbials.
(regular) INSs modified by in/for x time adverbials yield two readings: (i) a change of state reading where at the end of x time,
the change of state eventuality described by an INS occurs, as in (3a), and (ii) a resultant state reading where throughout a
period of x time, the durative eventuality described by an INS holds, as in (3b).
(3) a. Juno-ka
ku
sasil-ul
il-nyen-maney
that
fact-ACC
one-year-in
Juno-NOM
‘Juno got aware of the fact in a year.’
b. Juno-ka
ku
sasil-ul
il-nyen-tongan
Juno-NOM
that
fact-ACC
one-year-for
‘Juno got aware of the fact and was aware of it for a year.’
al-ass-ta.
know-PFCT-DEC
al-assess-ta.
know-PAST-DEC
The compatibility with in-adverbials in (3a) suggests that an INS describes a change of state eventuality (BECOME). On the other
hand, the compatibility with for-adverbials in (3b) implies that an INS describes an eventuality that has temporal duration. To
account for this contradictory pattern with respect to telicity, building on Bar-el (2005), I argue that an INS in Korean is a
semantically complex predicate describing eventualities that are made up of two sub-events: a BECOME event (e1) which is a
change of state ‒an eventuality of the kind an achievement would describe‒, immediately followed by a simple P-event (e2; cf.
Rothstein 2004) ‒an eventuality of the kind a typical state would describe. Crucially, the BECOME event itself constitutes the prior
change that brings the state about. The basic semantics of INSs in Korean is given in (4).
(4) INSs in Korean: λe.∃e1∃e2. e=e1⊕e2 and e2 immediately follows e1 and
[BECOME P]](e1) = 1 and [[P]](e2) = 1.
(see also Bar-el 2005)
I argue that each part contained in the representation of INSs can be modified by temporal adverbials. Specifically, in-adverbials
modify the part of an INS in Korean that contributes the BECOME event and for-adverbials modify the part of an INS that
contributes the simple P-event.
Interestingly, degree INSs modified by in/for x time adverbials yield three different readings: (i) a change of state reading, as in
(5a); (ii) a resultant state reading as in (5b), and (iii) a process of iterated changes reading (unlike (regular) INSs) where
throughout a period of x time, iterated changes of the property described by the INS take place, as in (5c).
(5) a. Juno-ka
il-nyen-maney sallji-ess-ta.
Juno-NOM
one-year-in
fat-PFCT-DEC
‘Juno got fat in a year.’
b. Juno-ka
il-nyen-tongan saljji-essess-ta.
Juno-NOM
one-year-for
fat-PAST-DEC
‘Juno had got fat and was fat for a year.’
c. Juno-ka
il-nyen-tongan saljji-ess-ta.
Juno-NOM
one-year-for
fat-PFCT-DEC
‘Juno got fatter and fatter for a year.’
To account for the readings shown in (5a-c), I argue that a degree INS in Korean can alternate between two senses: ‘become S’ or
‘become S-er’, thus making a parallel with degree achievements (henceforth DA; e.g. cool, lengthen; cf. Dowty 1979, Hay et al.
1999, Kennedy & Levin 2008 among many others) which show a similar pattern, on Abusch (1986) and Kearns (2007)’s analysis.
Crucially, however, I argue that degree INSs in Korean differ from DAs: On their telic reading, degree INSs in Korean are
associated with a scale that has a lower-bound ‒that is, a minimal value of the relevant property‒, unlike DAs which are
associated with an upper-bound scale corresponding to a maximal value. The idea is that the change of state described by a
degree INS in Korean is the change that leads to the attainment of a minimal value of the relevant property which can be seen as
the onset of the described state (cf. Choi & Demirdache 2014). Accordingly, a telic degree INS in Korean is interpreted as
‘become (minimally) S’ (i.e. standard telos; Kearns 2007), unlike a telic DA which is interpreted as ‘become maximally S’ (i.e.
35
maximal telos; Hay et al. 1999). This proposal correctly predicts that on the telic reading, the property described by a degree INS
could progress further on the relevant scale after reaching the telos, as shown in (6).
(6) Sue-ka
twu-tal-maney (manhi)
malu-ess-ta.
much
thin-PFCT-DEC
Sue-NOM two-month-in
Kulena
taiethu-lul
kyeysokha-myen
te
malu-l-swuto-iss-ta.
But diet-ACC
continue-if
more
thin-FUT-could-be-DEC
‘Sue got (very) thin in two months, but if she keeps the diet up, she could be thinner.’k
The continuation in (6) expresses that it is possible to proceed to a higher value on the relevant scale; this is coherent because
the telos of degree INS is not provided by a maximal scale degree.
Assuming that sentences containing degree INSs should be evaluated with respect to a degree parameter that constitutes a
minimal value of the relevant gradable property, I account for the readings shown in (5a-c) of degree INSs induced by in/for x
time adverbials, as follows. The degree INS in (5a) is interpreted as ‘become S’ and allows modification by the in a year adverbial
measuring the time it takes to attain (at least) a minimal degree of Juno’s fatness. The degree INS in (5b) interpreted as ‘become
S’ also allows modification by the for a year adverbial measuring the duration of the eventuality of Juno’s being fat. Finally, I
derive the ‘become S-er’ reading of the degree INS in (5c) from the semantics of a basic INS given in (4), just assuming two
additional semantic operations: (i) a TO SOME DEGREE operator that can be applied to a basic INS, giving us a predicate describing
changes of state that result in possession of the relevant property to some degree or other; (ii) a REPEATEDLY operator that can
apply to a predicate of eventualities, giving us a predicate describing iterated eventualities. The analysis will be provided in
detail.
References
Abusch, D. (1986) Verbs of change, causation and time, Technical report CSLI-86-50, Center for the Study of Languages and
Information, Stanford University.
Bar-el, L. (2005) Aspectual Distinctions in Skwxwú7mesh, PhD dissertation, University of British Columbia.
Chang, J-H. (2003) ‘State Eventualities and Aspect marker le in Chinese’. Taiwan Journal of Linguistic Vol. 1.1:97-110.
Choi, J. & H. Demirdache (2014) ‘Reassessing the Typology of States. Evidence from Korean (Degree) Inchoative States’, paper
presented at the Journée d’Etudes Ontologie et Typologie des Etats.
Choi, J. (2015) (Degree) Inchoative States in Korean: Evidence from Child Language, PhD dissertation, University of Nantes.
Chung, K-S. (2005) Space in Tense: The Interpretation of Tense, Aspect, Evidentiality and Speech Act in Korea, PhD dissertation,
Simon Fraser University.
Davis, H. (2012) A Teaching Grammar of Upper St’á’imcets, Ms., University of British Columbia. Dowty, D. (1979) Word
meaning and Montague Grammar, Dordrecht: Reidel.
Hay, J., C. Kennedy & B. Levin (1999) ‘Scalar structure underlies telicity in “degree achievements”’, The Proceedings of SALT
IX, p.127-144, Cornell University.
Kearns, K. (2007) ‘Telic senses of deadjectival verbs’. Lingua 117:26-66.
Kennedy C. & B. Levin (2008) ‘Measure of Change: The adjectival core of degree achievements’, In: L. McNally & C. Kennedy
(eds.), Adjectives and Adverbs: Syntax, Semantics and Discourse, p.156-182, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kiyota, M. (2008) Situation aspect and viewpoint aspect from Salish to Japanese, PhD dissertation, University of British
Columbia.
Lee, E.H. (2006) ‘Stative progressives in Korean and English’, Journal of Pragmatics 38:695-717.
Marín R. & L. McNally (2011) ‘Inchoativity, change of state, and telicity: Evidence from Spanish reflexive psychological verbs’.
Natural Language and Linguistics Theory 29:467-502. Matthewson, L. (2013) ‘The building blocks of gramma4cal aspect:
Evidence from Austronesian and Salish perfects’, Paper presented at the Workshop on Semantic Variation, University of Chicago.
Matthewson, L. (2014) ‘Inchoativity meets the perfect time span: The Niuean perfect’, Paper presented at the Leiden-Nantes
Workshop on Tense, Aspect and Modality, Leiden Unviersity. Rothstein , S. (2004) Structuring Events: A study in the semantics
of aspect, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Vendler, Z. (1967) Linguistics in philosophy, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
COMAJOAN Llorenç (Universitat de Vic-Universitat Central de Catalunya). The acquisition of Tense-Aspect Catalan L2
[email protected]
morphology: voices from the multilingual classroom
This paper investigates the acquisition of L2 Catalan tense-aspect morphology in two multilingual classrooms by focusing on how
learners and teachers interact in the process of learning-teaching past morphology. Current accounts on the acquisition of L2
tense-aspect focus on the role of different linguistic and nonlinguistic variables in order to account for the acquisition of tenseaspect morphology (e.g., Spanish preterite and imperfect, French passé compose and imparfait; see Comajoan, 2011 for a review
on L2 Spanish; Salaberry & Comajoan 2013). However, what is missing from current studies is a close examination of how
learners and teachers put into use different strategies to learn tense-aspect distinctions. More specifically, even though previous
research has showed that tense-aspect L2 acquisition cannot be explained by a single variable (Salaberry & Comajoan 2013),
research continues to examine variables isolated or in pairs of variables (e.g., lexical aspect and discourse grounding). In
addition, previous research has tended to focus on homogeneous groups regarding learners’ L1s. This study takes the previous
36
observations into account and investigates two classrooms with adult learners of L2 Catalan with a variety of L1s learning
Catalan in Catalonia. Interview and questionnaire data will be used to investigate the acquisition of L2 Catalan tense-aspect
taking a holistic approach that links SLA and language teaching and attempts to answer the following questions: a) What
strategies do learners use to process tense-aspect distinctions in L2 Catalan? b) What strategies do teachers use in multilingual
L2 classrooms (cf. Blyth 2005) and c) To what extent is a theory of tenseaspect acquisition relevant to teachers (Ortega 2012) in
the teaching of tense-aspect?
37
D
DALBERA Joseph (Corse). La grammaticalisation des formes itives et ventives en latin
[email protected]
Parler de verbes itifs et ventifs, c’est clairement référer aux verbes latins ire et uenire, dont les supins sont respectivement itum
et uentum. Or, comme d’autres langues, le latin fait usage de ces formes au-delà de leur valeur de mouvement, depuis la simple
métaphore jusqu’ à l’auxiliation. Ces verbes entrent dans le cadre de trois, voire de quatre cas de grammaticalisation, accomplie
à des degrés divers : cette étude se propose d’en présenter la valeur et le fonctionnement. Il s’agira ainsi de préciser le sens de
ces verbes de mouvement et de montrer leur répartition en latin : la situation y est en effet plus complexe qu’elle ne l’est en
français, où les paradigmes aller et venir sont stables et l’économie de leur couple bien attestée. En latin, certaines formes de ire
sont en effet marquées par une faiblesse morpho-phonétique et ainsi moins employées, voire « remplacées » par d’autres
(uadere… ambulare, qui permettront d’aboutir au paradigme du verbe aller du français). A tel point qu’au parfait existe une
concurrence entre ire/uenire dans des emplois identiques, qui neutralisent ainsi leur valeur déictique. A cela s’ajoute la question
de la préverbation (ire/exire), dont la valeur est si marquée par rapport à la forme simple, qu’elle a parfois été interprétée
comme véritablement systémique. Ces considérations seront à prendre en compte pour chaque cas de grammaticalisation des
formes itives et ventives qu’abordera cette étude.
1
EO /VENIO + SUPIN EN –VM
On présentera rapidement le sens et la valeur d’emploi cette formation. Issu d’un ancien nom d’action en -tus, le supin constitue
une forme nominale du verbe dont deux formes casuelles ont été conservées, réduisant la flexion à l’opposition dictum /dictu.
Le supin en -um, qui nous intéresse, est issu d’un accusatif. Son intégration au système verbal est très faible (le supin ne connaît
aucune des oppositions morphologiques attachées au verbe : personne, temps, mode, voix), mais la forme est apte à régir un
COD et semble liée sur le plan diathétique à un sens actif.
Le supin entre ainsi dans la formation de nombreuses expressions lexicalisées, notamment avec des verbes de mouvement, où
l’expression véhicule un sens prospectif final, conformément sans doute à la valeur lative de cet ancien accusatif, associée au
signifié des dérivés abstraits en –tu (évoquant une action potentielle). Il s’agit de décrire l’action à faire, vers et pour laquelle on
effectue un déplacement :
(1) a. … cum ad me […] deprecatum uenisset (Cic. Lael., 37) « … comme il était venu me supplier ».
b. Eam ueni quaesitum (Plaute, Mil., 442) « Je suis venue la chercher ».
c. Sed ne ignoscundo malis, bonos perditum eatis… (Sall., Jug., 31, 27) « Mais n’allez pas, épargnant les criminels,
perdre les honnêtes gens… »
Notre corpus sera constitué par les textes encodés par le Laboratoire d’Analyse Statistique des Langues Anciennes et traités par
le logiciel Hyperbase : il s’agit d’un vaste ensemble issu de genres littéraires variés (récits historiques, poétiques, romanesques,
discours, relations épistolaires, théâtre…) et relevant d’époques diverses (entre le 3ème siècle AC jusqu’au 2ème siècle PC). On y
a dénombré 203 formes de supin, dont 103 sont employés avec les verbes ire (55) et uenire (48) ou leurs composés, attestant
ainsi d’un fort degré de lexicalisation. Les autres verbes introduisant le supin concernent une quinzaine de lexèmes, dont la
plupart dénotent un mouvement (mittere « envoyer » ; ducere « conduire »…), tandis que les lexèmes au supin relèvent de
champs sémantiques récurrents (expression d’une plainte, d’une demande…), avec des tendances marquées selon les auteurs. Et
l’on note que sur le plan diachronique (depuis l’époque pré-classique jusqu’au début de l’Empire) une nette diminution de la
fréquence de cette périphrase accompagne cette tendance au figement, qui se réalise pleinement pour certaines formes.
On cherchera ici à préciser la valeur d’emploi de cette périphrase avec les verbes ire (entendues par certains comme un
ultérieur, plus récemment, par d’autres, comme une valeur « expressive » du lexème) et uenire, leur place dans l’économie
générale des verbes de mouvement ainsi que leur degré de grammaticalisation.
2
L’INFINITIF FUTUR PASSIF EN IRI
Pour les non-latinistes, le paradigme même d’un infinitif futur passif relève sans doute d’une curiosité de la langue. Et, de fait, il
faut bien reconnaître qu’une telle construction est peu employée en latin et amenée à disparaître rapidement. Il s’agit pourtant
en synchronie d’un paradigme ancré dans la morphologie verbale latine, puisque tout verbe du lexique doté d’un supin intègre la
périphrase dans son paradigme.
L’infinitif futur passif latin partage avec la forme précédente l’emploi du supin en –um et du lexème ire (au passif) : amatum iri.
Mais il s’agit cette fois d’une forme accomplie de grammaticalisation où le verbe à l’infinitif passif (iri) joue pleinement le rôle
38
d’un auxiliaire. Quelques rares occurrences laissent encore percevoir le sens originel de la périphrase dans son paradigme,
syntagmes dans lequel iri était un verbe de mouvement :
(2) Negat ponere alio modo ullo profecto/Nisi se sciat uilico non datum iri. (Plt Cas. 698-9) « Elle jure qu’elle ne
déposera les armes / que si elle est assurée qu’on ne la donnera pas au fermier ».
Mais de fait, dès le latin archaïque le sémantisme propre du verbe ire a disparu dans la quasi-totalité des occurrences.
On rappellera ici le mécanisme de formation d’une telle périphrase, où la valeur originelle de l’auxiliant a permis la construction
de la structure d’auxiliarité, avant d’étudier ses valeurs et son fonctionnement en synchronie. Et l’on montrera que le verbe iri
répond clairement aux critères sémantiques et morphologiques de l’auxiliation.
3 IRE ET VENIRE ET LES VERBES CONSÉQUENTIELS
Avec d’autres lexèmes, Ire et uenire entrent dans la construction d’une autre expression en voie de grammaticalisation : les
verbes conséquentiels. Ceux-ci présentent un couple de prédicats dont le premier est un verbe de mouvement. Ils réalisent en
continuité et simultanéité deux actions parallèles et concomitantes visant un but unitaire. Modes et temps sont alors identiques
dans les deux verbes, qu’il s’agisse de l’impératif : 3a, ou du futur : 3b etc…
(3) a. Abi, nuntia (Liv. I, 16, 7) « Va annoncer »,
b. Ibo igitur, parabo (Plaut. Aul., 263) « je vais donc aller faire des préparatifs »
Il s’agira d’apprécier la valeur spécifique de ire et uenire dans ces constructions ainsi que leur degré de grammaticalisation. Cette
étude passera notamment par une analyse du lien syntaxique entre les deux verbes : l’asyndète (fréquente notamment à
l’impératif) et/ou le type de coordination.
4 EMPLOIS MÉTALINGUISTIQUES DE IRE ET VENIRE
Enfin, on évoquera rapidement quelques emplois métaphoriques de ire et uenire (ou leurs composés), dont la valeur
sémantique spatio-temporelle glisse parfois vers des fonctions métalinguistiques. Il s’agit alors de servir l’organisation textuelle
en ouvrant un nouveau sujet :
(4) a. Venio nunc ad M. Catonem (Cic. Mur., 58) « J’en viens maintenant à Marcus Caton ».
ou en signalant une clôture du dialogue :
b. Abi, ludis me, Palaestrio. (Plaut. Mil. 324). « Va, tu te joues de moi, Palestrion ».
où l’impératif de abire a complètement perdu sa valeur de mouvement réel et s’est coloré d’une nuance modale d’incrédulité.
Références
BRES, JACQUES et LABEAU, EMMANUELLE. 2013a. Aller et venir : des verbes de déplacement aux auxiliaires aspectuels-temporelsmodaux. Langue française 179. 13-28.
BRES, JACQUES et LABEAU, EMMANUELLE. 2013b. Allez donc sortir des sentiers battus! La production de l’effet de sens
extraordinaire par aller et venir. Journal of french language studies 23, 02, 151-177.
BRES, JACQUES et LABEAU, EMMANUELLE. 2013c. (Des)amour(s) de venir avec l’extraordinaire. Le français moderne 1. 84-107.
BRES, JACQUES et LABEAU, EMMANUELLE. 2013d. The narrative construction va + infinitive in Contemporary French: A linguistic
phoenix rising from its medieval ashes? Diachronica 30, 3. 295-322.
COLEMAN, ROBERT. 1985. The Latin Futur Passive Infinitive. Glotta 63. 208-213.
GARANCHANA CAMARERO, MAR. 2010. Gramàtica y pragmàtica en la evolución de las perífrasis verbales. El caso de
veni+a+infinitivo. Español Actual, 92. 69-101.
JULIA, MARIE-ANGE. Génèse du supplétisme verbal : du latin aux langues romanes. Thèse de Doctorat soutenue en 2005 à Paris
IV-Sorbonne, Online : http://marieange.julia.free.fr/documents/Publication_these-2012.pdf
LETOUBLON, FRANÇOISE. 1983. Les verbes de mouvement et l'auxiliarité en latin. Glotta LXI, 3-4. 218-228.
LETOUBLON, FRANÇOISE. 1984a. Il vient de pleuvoir, il va faire beau. Verbes de mouvement et auxiliarité, ZFSI 94. 25-41.
LETOUBLON, FRANÇOISE. 1984b. Polyphonie et auxiliarité, Cahiers de grammaire (Université de Toulouse-le-Mirail) 8. 117-156.
MELLET, SYLVIE ; JOFFRE MARIE-DOMINIQUE, et SERBAT GUY. 1994. Grammaire fondamentale du latin. Le signifié du verbe,
Louvain-Paris : Peeters.
MEILLET, ANTOINE et VENDRYES, JOSEPH. 1924. Traité de grammaire comparée des langues classiques, Paris : Champion.
ORLANDINI, ANNA, et FRUYT, MICHELE. 2008. Some Case of Grammaticalisation in the Verb in Late Latin. In Latin vulgaire latin
tardif VIII Actes du Colloque International «Latin tardif, Latin vulgaire» Oxford, 6-9 septembre 2006, Olms-Weidmann. 230237.
39
ORLANDINI, ANNA, et POCETTI, PAOLO. 2010a. La référence spatio-temporelle et métalinguistique des verbes de mouvement en
latin, Espace et temps en latin, Paris : PUPS. 25-44.
ORLANDINI, ANNA, et POCETTI, PAOLO. 2014b. Gli aspetti semantico-pragmatici del futur II latino e la loro evoluzione romanza. In
Latin vulgaire, latin tardif, actes du Xème colloque international sur le latin tardif, Bergamo University Press, sestante edizioni.
1011-1030.
SILLETTI, ALIDA MARIA. 2013. Aller + infinitif et ses traduisants en italien : remarques pour une nouvelle catégorisation de la
périphrase, Studii de gramatică contrastivă. 111-127.
VAN LAER, SOPHIE. 2003. La préverbation en latin : étude des préverbes ad-, in-, ob- et per- dans la poésie républicaine et
augustéenne, Thèse de Doctorat soutenue à Paris IV-Sorbonne, sous la direction de Michèle Fruyt.
VETTERS, CARL, et LIERE, AUDREY. 2009. Quand une périphrase devient temps verbal : le cas d’aller + infinitif, Faits de langue,
numéro thématique Le futur. 27-36.
DALBERA Joseph (Corse). Polyvalence de l'adverbe latin nunc
[email protected]
L’adverbe latin nunc (« maintenant ») est l’un des mots-clefs de la linguistique de l’énonciation, en tant qu’il instaure le moment
de la prise de parole comme repère temporel de l’énoncé. Pourtant, la valeur déictique du terme mérite examen tant ses
emplois sont nombreux et sa polyvalence remarquable. Cet exposé s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une étude plus large, visant à
comprendre s’il existe une véritable continuité entre les différentes valeurs en discours de nunc, et, le cas échéant, à ramener
ses emplois à un signifié unique, capable de subsumer l’ensemble des usages. À apprécier enfin dans quelle mesure la valeur
déictique de nunc lui est attachée. Le format de cette communication ne permettant pas de présenter un panorama exhaustif
des valeurs d’emplois de nunc, on s’intéressera particulièrement aux occurrences dans lesquelles l’adverbe paraît s’écarter de la
valeur déictique pour référer à un point du temps qui ne coïncide pas avec celui de son emploi effectif. Les occurrences sont en
effet nombreuses, depuis les cas où le repère temporel désigné par nunc semble déborder du moment où l’on prononce le mot,
avec l’emploi du présent de l’indicatif, et plus largement, lorsque l’adverbe est afférent à d’autres tiroirs verbaux, qu’il s’agisse
de temps du futur, ou du passé, notamment envisagé en contexte narratif. On s’intéressera ainsi à quelques emplois qui
semblent être autant d’« accrocs » à la dimension déictique de l’adverbe, en s’appuyant notamment sur l’étude de sa
compatibilité avec la valeur des tiroirs verbaux auxquels il est afférent.
Le cadre théorique est globalement celui de la linguistique de l’énonciation, et l’on aura recours à des études récentes portant
er
ème
sur l’adverbe français « maintenant ». Le corpus s’inscrit dans une synchronie qui s’étend du 1 siècle AC au 2 siècle PC. et
regroupe des genres littéraires variés (récits historiques, romanesques et poétiques, mais aussi discours, dialogues, et échanges
épistolaires).
La lecture des textes latins montre clairement que poser un clivage nunc + temps passé vs nunc + présent ne peut pas s’avérer
pertinent. Il est en effet fréquent que l’adverbe renvoie au moment de la prise de parole, cependant que le repère temporel qu’il
dénote déborde du moment où l’on prononce le mot. Nunc désigne alors un intervalle de temps ouvert bien avant la prise de
parole, et qui perdure au moment de l’énonciation. Les fables par exemple, qui expliquent une situation contemporaine à partir
d’anecdotes passées, en fournissent des occurrences :
(1) Ita nunc libido prauo fruitur gaudio. (Phaedr., III, 21)
« C'est pourquoi maintenant les débauchés aiment le plaisir contre-nature. »
Nunc désigne ainsi le moment où l’on parle, qui coïncide avec l’état de faits pointé par la conclusion de la fable : un état qui a
débuté bien en amont et dure depuis longtemps déjà. De sorte que nunc reste un déictique, sans impliquer toutefois de coextensivité entre le moment qu’il désigne et la période évoquée. Or on retrouve la même valeur d’emploi avec un tiroir du
passé, notamment le parfait de l’indicatif, pourvu qu’il soit employé dans le cadre d’une construction énonciative spécifique :
(2) Et nunc iste securus incumbens praesepio uoracitati suae deseruit et insatiabilem profundumque uentrem semper
esitando distendit… (Apul., Mét., VII, 27, 3)
« Le voilà maintenant, qui sans souci s’est abandonné, penché sur sa mangeoire, à sa gloutonnerie, et, n’arrêtant pas
de dévorer, distend les profondeurs insatiables de son ventre… »
Pour comprendre comment l’embrayeur qui incarne et désigne le moment de l’énonciation peut porter sur le parfait de
l’indicatif, un tiroir du passé, il faut considérer la malléabilité énonciative du tiroir verbal et prendre en compte son signifié en
langue en même temps que sa construction en discours : le tiroir verbal ancre effectivement le procès p dans le passé, pointe le
franchissement de sa borne terminale et son dépassement vers p’, tandis que la construction énonciative à l’œuvre dans
l’exemple permet de focaliser sur les prolongements (on parle alors de « parfait de bilan »). Or, l’adverbe ne date pas
l’avènement du procès mais les prolongements de celui-ci, qui coïncident en partie avec le moment d’énonciation. Le caractère
déictique de nunc n’en est donc pas remis en cause, car dire que son référent est identifié par le truchement du moment de
l’énonciation n’implique pas qu’il se réduise à ce moment.
L’emploi de nunc afférent à un verbe au parfait est en en revanche bien plus délicat dès lors que la construction énonciative est
différente : en l’occurrence, lorsque le verbe est construit en rupture avec la sphère énonciative. Le contexte narratif en offre
quelques attestations :
40
(3) Ad hunc modum pronuntiante Mercurio tanti praemii cupido certatim omnium mortalium studium adrexerat. Quae res
nunc uel maxime sustulit Psyches omnem cunctationem. (Apul., Mét., VI, 8, 4)
« L’annonce de Mercure et le désir d’une telle récompense avaient suscité parmi tous les mortels une émulation de
zèle. Et maintenant, cette circonstance plus qu’aucune mit fin à toutes les hésitations de Psychè. »
L’adverbe temporel porte sur le parfait sustulit, cette fois inscrit dans le contexte narratif, dans l’histoire, au sens benvenistien.
L’énoncé semble ainsi construit dans une chaîne verbale aux temps du passé (plus-que-parfait adrexerat), en rupture avec la
sphère énonciative, et la forme de parfait, clairement investie d’une valeur aoristique, permet la mise en ascendance narrative
du passage. La tentation est alors grande de considérer qu’il y aurait, parallèlement à un nunc embrayeur (qui montre le moment
où l’on parle), un nunc anaphorique (qui montre le moment dont on parle) et dont la valeur serait équivalente à celle d’un tunc.
Ce sont là d’ailleurs les conclusions que certains latinistes ont tirées.
On préfèrera ici se référer à des études menées sur le français maintenant, envisagé en contexte narratif, qui devraient
permettre d’éclairer le cas du latin et par là, la valeur de l’adverbe. La théorie des « deux niveaux de la narration » (Vuillaume) a
en effet permis de montrer que l’existence du couple narrateur-lecteur implique une deuxième temporalité qui se superpose à
celle du récit premier : la présence simultanée de ces deux dimensions « permet d’une part au couple narrateur - lecteur de se
promener dans l’histoire qui se déroule devant leurs yeux, de suivre ou de retrouver des personnages, de franchir des intervalles
de dix ans […] et d’autre part, de présenter simultanément les deux perspectives dans le même énoncé » (Vetters, De Mulder).
Ainsi, par le processus même de lecture qui ressuscite le passé, le narrateur et le lecteur sont présentés comme contemporains
du récit : les faits représentés sont certes conçus comme appartenant au passé, mais en même temps, « le processus de lecture
ème
les recrée et les fait revivre dans le présent ». Après avoir démontré l’existence dans le récit latin de ce 2
niveau de la
narration, on posera que c’est donc ce présent, celui du deuxième niveau de la narration, que le nunc désigne dans l’exemple :
nul besoin de renvoyer à un emploi anaphorique de ce nunc, qui ne date pas l’événement auquel réfère la proposition au passé,
mais le reflet présent de cet événement. Et l’on montrera que l’analyse reste valide pour d’autres emplois de ce type, où nunc
porte sur des imparfaits et des présents narratifs. Ces éléments explicatifs s’avèrent d’autant plus intéressants qu’ils permettent
en outre de déceler dans ces emplois narratifs certaines nuances de nunc bien connues de ses emplois « traditionnels », et de
souligner ainsi l’homogénéité sémantique du terme dans des contextes apparemment fort éloignés.
La valeur contrastive du terme est en effet bien connue: en impliquant le recentrage sur un foyer déictique, l’adverbe instaure
une rupture avec ce qui précède. Or, ces emplois narratifs de nunc actualisent la clôture d’une séquence narrative pour désigner
ainsi le moment que le récit se donne comme nouveau point de départ, à l’opposé donc d’un tunc/tum « alors », anaphorique,
qui se construit sur le contexte précédent et assure une continuité cadrative du repère temporel. Ajoutons que dans un tel
contexte, cette rupture est d’autant plus nette que l’adverbe fait surgir le couple narrateur-narrataire, invités à porter leur
attention sur cet événement nouveau, de sorte que nunc met ainsi en lumière le contenu narratif, cependant qu’il exhibe, en
retour, l’acte même de narrer. L’adverbe temporel, qui prend ainsi une dimension métalinguistique, retrouve par là l’une des
valeurs essentielles attachée à certains de ses emplois.
La lecture de textes épistolaires comme de discours révèle en effet la grande fréquence d’un nunc dont le rôle consiste
essentiellement en une sorte de balise organisatrice, visant à structurer et à ponctuer la progression discursive. Nunc désigne le
moment où parle le locuteur (le scripteur), et, par contiguïté, le discours lui-même, la partie de discours qu’il est en train
d’élaborer. Nunc y revêt ainsi une valeur métadiscursive en ce qu’il exhibe l’acte même de discourir, et c’est là une dimension
constitutive de nos exemples narratifs, où, en fait de discours, on a du récit : en quittant « les coulisses du récit », le narrateur
pointe l’événement narré, qui se voit souligné précisément parce qu’il est en train d’être raconté, renvoyant de ce fait, à l’acte
même de narration. On mesure ainsi que quelle que soit la hiérarchie des valeurs de nunc propre chacun des emplois
(identification du moment au moment de parole, valeur contrastive, valeur métadiscursive), des occurrences apparemment
éloignées les unes des autres relèvent pourtant de valeurs similaires, révélant de ce fait une véritable cohérence sémantique et
énonciative de l’adverbe.
Références
CULIOLI, ANTOINE. 1999. Pour une linguistique de l’énonciation, Formalisation et opérations de repérage, tome 2, Paris :
Ophrys.
DALBERA, JOSEPH. 2013. Le parfait de l’indicatif latin. De la langue au discours : une alchimie délicate, L’information
grammaticale 138.48-53.
DE MULDER, WALTER, et VETTERS, CARL. 2008. Le sens fondamental de maintenant : un token-reflexive, Ici et maintenant, M.
Vuillaume (ed.), Rodopi, Cahier Chronos 20. 15-33.
DOMINICY, MARC. 1974. Les premières attestations de modo au sens de nunc, L'antiquité classique 43, 1. 267-303.
M. FRUYT, MICHELE, et VAN LAER, SOPHIE (éds.). 2008. Adverbes latins, grammaticalisation et lexicalisation, dans Adverbes et
évolution linguistique : le domaine latin, Paris : L’Harmattan.
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JOLLIN-BERTOCCHI, SOPHIE. 2003. La polyvalence de l’adverbe maintenant, L’information grammaticale 97. 26-30.
JOUVE, DOMINIQUE. 1990. Maintenant et la deixis temporelle, in La Deixis, Paris : PUF. 355-363.
KROON, CAROLINE. 1995. Discours particles in Latin. A study of nam, enim, autem, uero and at. Amsterdam : Gieben.
MELLET, SYLVIE et al., 1994. Grammaire fondamentale du latin, le signifié du verbe, Peeters, Louvain – Paris : Rodopi.
NEF, FREDERIC. 1980. Maintenant 1 et maintenant 2 : sémantique et pragmatique de maintenant temporel et non-temporel,
Recherches linguistiques, tome 5, La Notion d'aspect, université de Metz, 141-166.
RISSELADA, RODIE. 1998. Nunc’s use as a discourse marker of cohesive shifts, in Actes du colloque Oratio soluta-oratio
numerosa, C. M. Ternes (éd.), Études luxembourgeoises d’histoire et de littérature romaine, vol. 1. 142-159.
SERBAT, GUY. 1975-1976. Les temps du verbe en latin, R.E.L. 53. 367-405 et R.E.L. 54. 308-352.
VETTERS, CARL, et VUILLAUME, MARCEL. 1998. Comment peut-on ressusciter le passé ?. Variations sur la référence verbale, A.
Borillo, C. Vetters et M. Vuillaume (éds), Rodopi, Cahiers Chronos 3. 109-124.
VION, ROBERT. 2001. Effacement énonciatif et stratégies discursives, De la syntaxe à la narratologie énonciative, Ophrys, 331354.
VUILLAUME, MARCEL. 1990. Grammaire temporelle des récits, Paris : Minuit.
VUILLAUME, MARCEL. 2008. Maintenant en cotexte narratif non-fictionnel. Ici et maintenant, Cahiers Chronos 20. 35-51.
De WIT Astrid (Bruxelles). The aspectual characteristics of full-verb inversion in English
[email protected]
It is well known that the English simple tenses cannot normally be used for concurrent event reporting, while the use of the
progressive is obligatory in those types of context:
(1) Be quiet, I *work / am working.
(2) I couldn’t come to the phone, cause I ? had / was having a bath.
In certain contexts, however, this restriction does not seem to hold. The existing literature typically notes the exceptional use of
the simple present in, e.g., performative expressions and sports commentaries, but full-verb inversion often escapes the
attention (though see Huddleston & Pullum (2002: 128), Vanden Wyngaerd (2005) and De Wit (forthcoming a) for exceptions).
With full-verb inversion—which is characterized by the sentence-initial placement of a locative/directional adverbial or of
presentational (t)here and the postposition of non-pronominal subjects (analyzed by Chen (2003) as a preposed ground /
postposed figure relationship)—the use of the progressive is decidedly odd, if not ungrammatical:
(3) Here comes / *is coming the rain again.
(4) On the shelf lies / lay / ? is lying / ? was lying a book.
It seems, however, that this restriction is not entirely categorical—consider for instance the following example retrieved from
Google:
(5) So I used large-grained bulgur from Turkey, and I rinsed it in a sieve and dumped it into a frying pan in which was
sizzling a diced red onion.
These observations raise two major questions that I wish to tackle in this presentation: (i) why does full-verb inversion favor the
use of the simple tense in English (in spite of the general restriction on the use of these tenses with ongoing events), and (ii) why
do some inverted contexts, such as (5), still allow the use of the progressive, while others, such as (3), do not? I will put forward
a cognitive-functional explanation for the general preference for the simple tenses, as well as for the exceptional acceptability of
the progressive, in terms of canonicity and inevitability.
In order to verify to what extent and in which contexts full-verb inversion indeed disallows the use of the progressive, I have
conducted both a large-scale corpus investigation and native speaker surveys. The corpus data have been collected from various
sources: 190 examples of full-verb inversion were drawn from the Collins corpora of modern, written and spoken text, 314
examples come from the Brown Corpus of Standard American English, and 678 examples from the OntoNotes Corpus, release
5.0. In addition, I also consulted corpus data gathered by Betty Birner and Carlos Prado-Alonso for their own research on
inversion. In total, this yields 3,609 examples of full-verb inversion, only four of which turned out to feature progressive aspect.
The major conclusion that can be drawn from this corpus study is that full-verb inversion strongly prefers the simple present, as
expected, yet in order to account for the exceptional attestation of the progressive, I have consulted native speakers of
American English via Amazon’s online platform Mechanical Turk. These informants were asked to rate the acceptability of the
simple present and the present progressive with various types of full-verb inversion (featuring there, here, a locative sentenceinitial adverbial, or a directional sentence-initial adverbial specifying an endpoint, a source or an unbounded trajectory). The
corpus data and native speaker elicitations demonstrate that the progressive is only allowed with locative inversion and some
cases of directional inversion.
In order to account for the use of the English simple tenses with full-verb inversion (as well as for many other phenomena—see
De Wit (forthcoming b)), I believe we need to conceive of these tenses as perfective constructions in the epistemic sense: they
construe situations as fully identifiable at the reference time. With most concurrent events, such a perfective viewpoint is
infelicitous: due to their heterogeneous nature we typically do not have enough information (e.g. in the form of general
42
background knowledge) to conceive of these events in their entirety at reference time. Full-verb inversion is one of those
exceptional contexts in which a conceptualizer does have a full view on the designated event. This is because there exists a
canonical relation between the preposed ground and the (typically postposed) figure (Birner 1995). In (4), for instance, the
relationship between the shelf and the book is inferable on the basis of general knowledge about shelves and books. Therefore,
full-verb inversion generally selects a simple rather than a progressive tense, unless the situation designated by the verb
deserves some special attention, because it is in a way atypical. This accounts for those four progressive corpus attestations, as
well as for the relatively high acceptance rate of the progressive in some sentences. Crucially, however, such progressive
construals are only available for those instances of full-verb inversion that do not involve a ‘deictic effect’ (Drubig 1988). The
deictic effect arises with many cases of directional inversion and with presentational (t)here, when the use of inversion involves
the anchoring of the conceptualizer within the preposed ground, which is the position from which she conceives of the
designated event. She can note the presence, absence or (dis)appearance of a figure in this ground, but since her viewpoint is
anchored with respect to the same ground, she cannot step out of it, so to speak, and zoom in on the process that leads to this
presence, absence or (dis)appearance. Thus, whenever the deictic effect arises, she can only adopt a global—i.e. perfective—
perspective, and progressive construals are excluded. Typically, the combination of full-verb inversion and the obligatory use of
the simple present in these cases leads to interpretations of inevitability, as illustrated in (3), (6) and (7):
(6) Then boom! Along comes the Internet. (Collins)
(7) Off we go!
To conclude, this presentation brings together insights from the domains of information structure and aspect in English, and
merges these into a comprehensive cognitive account that allows us to account for the bar on progressive aspect in inverted
contexts, as well as for the exceptions to this general restriction.
References
Chen, Rong. 2003. English inversion. A ground-before-figure construction. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
De Wit, Astrid. fortchoming a. The relation between aspect and inversion. English Language and Linguistics.
De Wit, Astrid. forthcoming b. The present perfective paradox across languages (Oxford series on time in language and thought).
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Drubig, Hans-Bernard. 1988. On the discourse function of subject-verb inversion. In Josef Klegraf & Dietrich Nehls (eds.), Essays
on the English language and applied linguistics on the occasion of Gerhard Nickel's 60th birthday, 83–95. Heidelberg: Julius
Groos Verlag.
Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Vanden Wyngaerd, Guido. 2005. Simple tense. In Marcel Den Dikken & Christina Tortora (eds.), The function of function words
and functional categories, 187–215. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
DENDALE Patrick, VANDERHEYDEN Anne (Anvers). Visiblement, un marqueur évidentiel ? Arguments synchroniques et
diachroniques
[email protected]
; [email protected]
La question qui sous-tend la recherche dont nous voudrions présenter quelques résultats est de savoir si des adverbes comme
visiblement (et parallèlement audiblement, perceptiblement, sensiblement, etc.) peuvent être considérés comme des
marqueurs évidentiels, et si oui, sous quelles conditions et sur la base de quels critères et arguments. Dans notre
communication, nous nous focaliserons sur l’adverbe visiblement et ferons quelques comparaisons succinctes avec les autres
adverbes.
Diverses études linguistiques portant sur visiblement considèrent cet adverbe, ou son équivalent dans telle ou telle autre langue,
comme un marqueur évidentiel, soit de perception directe, soit d’inférence sur la base d’indices. Elles se fondent pour cela sur
des exemples comme :
(1) La femme du procureur a visiblement trop bu. (cité par Haßler 2014: 164)
(2) Épuisé, visiblement énervé, Alexander Haig a trébuché sur la marche du 10 Downing Street. (Nouvel Observateur)
(Dendale 1991: 53)
(3) He was visibly angry with me at that time. (Melac 2014: 185)
(4) Llegará visiblemente alterado. (Haßler 2012: 86)
(5) Byl viditelně vyčerpaný. (‘He was visibly exhausted’) (Hirschová (2013: 134)
Dans ces exemples, visiblement (ou son équivalent dans une des autres langues représentées), de par son sémantisme lexical,
attire l’attention sur la visibilité d’un état de choses, sur la vue donc, et pourrait par conséquent être analysé comme un
marqueur évidentiel, c’est-à-dire comme une expression qui indique de quelle source – en l’occurrence une source visuelle –
provient l’information. Dans notre communication, nous examinerons le bien-fondé de cette analyse.
L’étude d’un échantillon de 200 phrases avec visiblement en français contemporain, semblables aux phrases sous (1) à (5) et
43
provenant des corpus Frantext et FrTenTen, nous a permis de constater, tout d’abord, que visiblement se combine, dans un
pourcentage important de cas, avec des prédicats qui indiquent des émotions/sentiments, et, par exten-sion, des prédicats qui
indiquent des états et processus internes à quelqu’un (généralement un tiers), p.ex. être malade, être enceinte, avoir l’intention,
réfléchir … Ceci mène à la conclusion paradoxale que visiblement semble se combiner préférentiellement avec des prédicats qui
désignent des états de choses qui justement ne sont pas visibles, ou qui le sont difficilement ou seulement partiellement ; dans
d’autres cas, visiblement semble orienter vers une interprétation où l’adverbe signale une visibilité seulement indirecte :
(6) Il est visiblement déjà cinq heures passées. (Plus difficile à dire si on regarde sa montre que si on regarde le trafic)
(7) Paul est visiblement absent. (Plus facile à interpréter comme « mentalement absent » que comme « physiquement
absent »)
Or, la conclusion que visiblement marquerait une visibilité ou perception indirecte se heurte à des exemples, moins fréquents,
mais tout de même existants, comme (8) à (10), où l’on dirait qu’il y a quand même visibilité ou perception directe :
(8) Il pâlit/rougit visiblement.
(9) Il est visiblement blessé/sale.
(10) L’eau monte visiblement.
Au regard de ces deux séries d’exemples, faut-il conclure que visiblement signale l’inférence dans certains exemples et la
perception dans d’autres ? Une autre hypothèse qui vient à l’esprit consisterait à dire que visiblement dans les trois derniers
exemples est un simple adverbe de manière (et/ou d’intensité), un adverbe de constituant donc, et non pas un adverbe de
phrase. Seulement, le problème est que cela pourrait sans doute aussi se dire de certains exemples de la première série. La
question est alors de savoir si un adverbe de constituant peut être considéré comme un évidentiel, si on sait que celui-ci a en
principe une portée phrastique (Boye & Harder 2009:16).
L’objectif principal de cette communication sera donc d’examiner (1°) dans quels cas et sur la base de quels critères,
caractéristiques et arguments visiblement peut être considéré comme un évidentiel ; (2°) si visiblement est alors un marqueur
évidentiel de perception directe (d’un état de choses) ou un marqueur évidentiel indirect d’inférence (d’inférence basée sur la
perception d’éléments de la réalité qui ne sont pas l’état de choses même).
Pour réaliser cet objectif, nous examinerons les problèmes suivants :
(A) Quel est le statut de visiblement : adverbe de constituant ou adverbe de phrase ?
(11) L’eau montait visiblement >< L’eau, visiblement, montait >< L’eau montait, visiblement
(B) Comment peut-on passer de la visibilité / perceptibilité (-ible) (virtuelle) à la perception (effective) ?
(C) Est-ce que visiblement exprime la perception directe ou l’inférence à partir d’une perception ? Et d’où provient le sens «
inférence », compte tenu du sens lexical de l’adverbe ?
Pour chacun de ces problèmes, nous partirons de données empiriques, avancerons des tests et tirerons des arguments des
résultats obtenus :
(A) Pour la question sur la portée de l’adverbe et celle de savoir si un adverbe de ma-nière peut être un évidentiel :
(1°) nous montrerons d’abord, sur la base d’une étude distributionnelle de l’adjectif triste et sur la base d’une comparaison
d’une série de mots qui se combinent aussi bien avec visiblement qu’avec sa paraphrase de façon/manière visible, que
visiblement peut bel et bien être considéré dans certains contextes comme un adverbe de manière, au même titre que d’autres
adverbes qui se combinent p. ex. avec l’adjectif triste (insupportablement, pitoyablement, vulgairement, lumineusement,
imperceptiblement, etc.) ;
(2°) à partir des principaux critères donnés dans la littérature pour opposer les adverbes de constituant aux adverbes de phrase
(position de l’adverbe, type de mot qu’il détermine, détermination par un autre adverbe), nous examinerons sous quelles
conditions visiblement peut avoir les deux portées différentes et nous décrirons les traits lexicaux et pragmatiques de
visiblement dans chacun de ces deux cas;
(3°) nous comparerons, de ce point de vue, visiblement avec une série d’autres adverbes, de différents types, liés
sémantiquement d’une façon ou d’une autre à visiblement, parmi lesquels on compte : apparemment, clairement,
perceptiblement, ostensiblement, ouvertement, clairement, invisiblement, sensiblement, audiblement, certainement,
probablement ;
(4°) nous étudierons aussi la distribution et la position syntaxique de visiblement en diachronie, pour voir (a) s’il y a une
évolution à dégager et si l’histoire de visiblement peut nous fournir des arguments dans le débat sur le statut évidentiel de
l’adverbe et (b) si on retrouve avec visiblement les mêmes évolutions que les théories de la grammaticalisation ont relevées pour
des mots modaux;
44
(5°) Après ces examens, nous nous focaliserons sur l’emploi de visiblement en position détachée (initiale, médiane, finale) – cf.
p.ex. (12), (13) –, pour voir si c’est dans cette position-là que le sens évidentiel apparaît le plus clairement (ou uniquement ?) :
(12)Visiblement, l’infirmière, aussi, avait besoin d’aller voir ailleurs
(13) Pour s’en épargner d’autres, elle a voulu mettre un terme à une conversation qui, visiblement, lui était désagréable.
(B) Nous proposerons et examinerons ensuite la plausibilité de deux hypothèses pour expliquer comment on peut passer de la
valeur de « perceptibilité » à celle de « perception », partant de la description sémantique des adjectifs en –ble (Anscombre &
Leeman 1994), et en comparant sur ce point visiblement à d’autres adverbes en –ible comme audiblement, sensiblement,
perceptiblement ou ostensiblement.
(C) Nous examinerons pour finir :
(1°) les arguments qu’on peut apporter en faveur de l’hypothèse d’un visiblement marqueur de perception et d’un visiblement
marqueur d’inférence ;
(2°) les mécanismes au moyen desquels on peut expliquer le surgissement et le statut linguistique (lexical, pragmatique…) de la
valeur évidentielle-inférentielle de visiblement ;
(3°) à partir de quand dans l’histoire cette valeur est attestée.
Tout cela nous servira d’arguments permettant de dresser un portrait assez complet et suffisamment fondé du statut évidentiel,
modal et /ou aléthique de visiblement et de définir en quoi cet adverbe se distingue, du point de vue de son sémantisme et de
son statut évidentio-modalo-aléthique, d’adverbes sémantiquement apparentés comme audiblement, clairement, comme
apparemment, manifestement, de toute évidence, comme sûrement, certainement, comme évidemment et d’autres marqueurs
évidentiels non adverbiaux comme devoir épistémique ou le futur épistémique.
Références
AIKHENVALD, A. (2004): Evidentiality, Oxford, OUP.
ANDERSON, L.B. (1986): “Evidentials, paths of change, and mental maps: typologically regular asymmetries”, in W. Chafe et J.
Nichols (éds.), Evidentiality. The linguistic coding of epistemology, Norwood, Ablex, 273-312.
ANSCOMBRE Jean-Claude et LEEMAN Danielle (1994): « La dérivation des adjectifs en « -ble » : morphologie ou sémantique ?
», Langue française, 103, 32-44.
BOYE, K. & HARDER, P. (2009). “Evidentiality: Linguistic categories and grammaticalization”, Functions of Language 16/1, 943.
DENDALE Patrick (1991): Le marquage épistémique de l’énoncé : esquisse d’une théorie avec applications au français, Thèse de
doctorat non publié, Université d’Anvers.
DENDALE Patrick et IZQUIERDO Dámaso (2014): « Les marqueurs évidentiels ou médiatifs en français : un état des lieux
bibliographique », Cahiers de Lexicologie, 105/2, 79-97.
DENDALE Patrick et TASMOWSKI Liliane (éds) (2001): « On Evidentiality », Journal of Pragmatics 33/3, Amsterdam, Elsevier.
HASSLER Gerda (2010): “Epistemic modality and evidentiality and their determination on a deictic basis: the case of Romance
languages”. in G. Diewald et E. Smirnova (éds.), Linguistic Realization of Evidentiality in European Languages, Berlin/New
York, Mouton de Gruyter, 223-248.
HASSLER Gerda (2011): “Adverbios españoles, marcadores discursivos alemanes: ¿un problema terminológico o un desafío para
la lingüística contrastiva?”, in H. Aschenberg et Ó. Loureda (éds.), Marcadores del discurso: de la descripción a la definición,
Madrid/Frankfurt am Main, Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 247-262.
HASSLER Gerda (2014): « Adverbes épistémiques dans le français parlé et écrit : apparemment, évidemment, visiblement,
éventuellement, probablement », in W. Weidenbusch (éd.), Diskursmarker, Konnektoren, Modalwörter, Tübingen, Narr.
HIRSCHOVÁ Milada (2013): “Sentence adverbials and evidentiality”, Research in Language, 11/2, 131-140.
DERY Jeruen E., BITTNER Dagmar (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft). Causality and the narrative now bias in
discourse comprehension
[email protected] ; [email protected]
Research on the processing of temporal information in discourse provides ample evidence for the narrative now bias in discourse
processing. It has been demonstrated that eventualities obtaining at the narrative now (Almeida, 1995; cf. Reichenbach’s (1947)
reference time) are processed more easily than eventualities obtaining in the described world prior to that time. For example,
participants recall discourse information faster when a) the situation holds at the narrative present than at the narrative past
(Carreiras, Carriedo, Alonso, & Fernandez, 1997); or when b) the situation is more recent than remote (Claus & Kelter, 2006).
Additionally, reading times for complex sentences are faster when the subordinate clause a) describes a state that overlaps with
the present-obtaining main clause eventuality, than when it doesn’t overlap; or b) describes an event that is temporally close to
the main clause eventuality, than when it is temporally distant (Gennari, 2004). Taken together, these results showing a
processing advantage for the narrative now suggest that temporal information is used to provide structure in the discourse’s
45
mental representation: the activation and accessibility of situations decrease as the situation is temporally located further away
from the present or narrative now.
Recently, it has also been shown that temporal information interacts with other discourse dimensions such as causality, and in
these studies, the narrative now bias has been reported as well. Using German narratives, Dery & Bittner (2015) demonstrated
that increasing the temporal distance between descriptions of causes and effects altered causal attribution patterns, and
increased production costs. Using implicit causality (IC) verbs (verbs which have associated biases regarding the causal agent:
subject-biased e.g. amaze, or object-biased e.g. congratulate; Garvey & Caramazza, 1974), they showed using a discourse
production paradigm that IC-biases weakened, and production time increased, when participants were forced to provide
discourse continuations that obtained in the past as opposed to the present.
In this paper, we present evidence suggesting that the narrative now bias does not always hold, and that proximity to the
narrative now does not always have a processing advantage. More specifically, we show that temporally distant eventualities are
easier to process than temporally close eventualities when conflicting constraints render distant eventualities to be more
preferred. We report four experiments showing that if the discourse leads comprehenders to expect the upcoming clause to be
causally-related to the previous clause (as signaled by the causal connective because), then comprehenders would prefer the
upcoming clause to have temporal properties that would satisfy the temporal requirement of causally-related eventualities, i.e.,
that causes precede effects. Our experiments show that this constraint is strong enough to override the narrative now bias.
Experiment 1 was a 2x2 sentence-completion task which used IC verbs, measuring the proportion of re-mention of the
subject/object in English. Using temporal connectives and present-tense-marked IC verbs, we manipulated temporal proximity
between causes and effects (see Example 1), in order to probe the interaction between the discourse’s temporal and causal
dimensions. We elicited discourse continuations describing situations that caused the situation described in the prompt
sentences. The continuations were annotated for whether they re-mentioned the subject/object of the prompt sentence. We
replicated Dery & Bittner’s (2015) German production results: re-mention preferences were modulated not only by implicit
causality (subject-biased verbs elicit more re-mentions of the subject, while object-biased verbs elicit more re-mentions of the
object; p < 0.001), but also by the temporal proximity of the subordinate because-clause to the main clause (continuations were
more likely to re-mention the subject when the temporal adverb is today than yesterday; p = 0.004). These results demonstrate
a narrative now bias on implicit causality, such that subject-oriented IC biases (as indicated by re-mention preferences)
weakened when participants were forced to provide temporally distant continuations.
Experiments 2 (with subject/object-biasing verbs and only bias-congruent pronouns) & 3 (with subject-biasing verbs only, but
with subject/object-referring pronouns) investigated whether implicit causality biases also exhibit the narrative now bias in
comprehension. Based on Dery & Bittner (2015) as well as the results of Experiment 1, we predicted a narrative now bias on the
pronoun region (see Example 2): we predicted a) increased processing costs on the IC-congruent pronoun in temporally distant
conditions for Experiment 2; and b) a reduction of the processing disadvantage brought upon by an IC-incongruent pronoun in
temporally distant conditions for Experiment 3. We analyzed reading times for the a) temporal connective, b) pronoun, and c)
spillover regions in the explanation clause. There were no significant differences in the pronoun and spillover regions (all ps >
0.05), suggesting that the temporally-modulated causal attribution biases observed in production in Experiment 1 are more due
to strategy, and are not automatic processes observable in comprehension.
Unexpectedly however, in both experiments, we observed a significant reading time difference at the temporal connective
region, where reading times for the proximal temporal connective were significantly longer than for the distal temporal
connective (p = 0.001 for Experiment 2; p < 0.001 for Experiment 3). These results are surprising, given the relative robustness of
the narrative now bias as reported in previous studies. We suspect that the failure to replicate the narrative now bias in
Experiments 2 and 3 is due to the fact that our materials led comprehenders to pay more attention on the discourse’s causal
dimension than the temporal dimension, since a) we used implicit causality verbs (which are known to bias comprehenders to
expect a causally-related upcoming clause; Kehler et al., 2008); and b) we explicitly signaled an upcoming explanation using the
connective because. The elevated reading times for the proximal temporal connective may be due to the fact that the causeeffect temporal ordering (i.e. that causes should occur before effects) is more ambiguous in this condition than in the distal
temporal connective condition.
We thus hypothesized that the narrative now bias can be overridden if stronger conflicting discourse constraints are present,
such as the constraint to have unambiguous cause-effect temporal ordering. Experiment 4 directly tested this hypothesis, which
compared the reading times of complex sentences with causal and non-causal relations (see Example 3). As predicted, reading
times for the proximal temporal connective were significantly longer for the causal condition (p = 0.0007) but not for the noncausal condition (p = 0.06).
The results of our experiments illustrate the various ways in which the discourse’s causal and temporal dimensions interact in
production and comprehension, demonstrating how some discourse constraints (such as causality) can be more salient and
stronger than others, resulting in the inhibition of other effects, such as the narrative now bias. Our results suggest that implicit
causality verbs and causal connectives such as because bias comprehenders to disprefer temporal proximity in discourse that
describes causes and effects, even before encountering the explanation clause. In our materials, the temporal order of causes
46
and effects is less ambiguous if the cause is temporally located yesterday than today. We surmise that the constraint for
unambiguous cause-effect ordering overrides the preference for temporally proximal eventualities. Our results provide evidence
for the interactive dimensions in constructing discourse representations (Zwaan, Langston, & Graesser, 1995; Rapp & Taylor,
2004). Comprehenders pay attention to both the causal and temporal properties of the unfolding discourse, since these
dimensions interact and determine the processing cost of integrating upcoming discourse information.
(1)
(2)
(3)
Anna amazes/congratulates Frank because today/yesterday_____________________.
Anna amazes Frank because today/yesterday…
a.
… she has/had been baking delicious cookies in the kitchen.
b.
… he has/had been tasting the delicious cookies she baked. (Expt. 3 only)
a.
CAUSAL CONDITION: Anna amazes Frank because today/yesterday she …
b.
NON-CAUSAL CONDITION: Rob tells Sandra that today/yesterday he …
References
ALMEIDA, MICHAEL J. 1995. Time in narratives. Deixis in narrative: A cognitive science perspective, ed. by Judith F. Duchan,
Gail A. Bruder, and Lynne E. Hewitt, 159-189. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
CARREIRAS, MANUEL; NURIA CARRIEDO; MARIA ANGELES ALFONSO; AND ANGEL FERNANDEZ. 1997. THE ROLE OF verb tense and
verb aspect in the foregrounding of information during reading. Memory and Cognition, 25(4). 438-446.
CLAUS, BERRY, and STEPHANIE KELTER. 2006. Comprehending narratives containing flashbacks: Evidence for temporally
organized representations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32(5). 1031-1044.
DERY, JERUEN E., and DAGMAR BITTNER. 2015. Time and causation in discourse: Temporal proximity, implicit causality, and remention biases. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, to appear.
GARVEY, CATHERINE, and ALFONSO CARAMAZZA. 1974. Implicit causality in verbs. Linguistic Inquiry, 5(3). 459-464.
GENNARI, SILVIA P. 2004. Temporal references and temporal relations in sentence comprehension. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30(4). 877-890.
KEHLER, ANDREW; LAURA KERTZ; HANNAH ROHDE; and JEFFREY L. ELMAN. 2008. Coherence and coreference revisited. Journal
of Semantics, 25. 1-44.
RAPP, DAVID N, and HOLLY A. TAYLOR. 2004. Interactive dimensions in the construction of mental representations for text.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 30(5). 988-1001.
REICHENBACH, HANS. 1947. Elements of symbolic logic. New York, NY: The Macmillan Company.
ZWAAN, ROLF A; MARK C. LANGSTON; and ARTHUR C. GRAESSER. 1995. The construction of situation models in narrative
comprehension. Psychological Science, 6(5). 292-297.
DIAUBALICK Tim (Bergische, Illes Balears), GUIJARRO-FUENTES Pedro (Universitat de les Illes Balears). The strength of
L1-effects in the acquisition of the Spanish TAM system – the case of German learners
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
In this paper, the acquisition of the Spanish verb is highlighted. Thus, the talk would fit not only into the general
conference, but also into workshop number 2.
In Spanish, aspect is an essential factor when it comes to speaking about the past (Leonetti 2004; Zagona 2007), since
perfectivity has to be marked explicitly on the verb. Through conjugation it is made clear if a situation is completed
and seen from outside as a whole (perfective reading), or if it is regarded from within as being in process
(imperfective reading). Examples (1) and (2) illustrate this contrast, respectively, (see Comrie 1976 for theoretical
definitions).
(1) Juan escribió el capítulo. Juan wrote the chapter (perfective).
(2) Juan escribía el capítulo. Juan was writing the chapter (imperfective).
This contrast is not the same as in other languages (e.g. English or German) and acquisition can therefore turn out to be difficult.
Studies on the L2 acquisition of tense and aspect have attracted the attention of researchers in different fields (see Comajoan
2013 for a review), and likewise, various hypothesis and acquisition models from diverse perspectives have been put forward.
Although English plays a role in the majority of the research conducted and often enters into the focus or appears as the
participants’ native language in empirical studies (e.g. Salaberry 1999), the bibliography also offers data from other languages.
One of the major effects discussed (not only in studies on the verb system) is the role of the learners’ L1. For example,
generativist accounts such as the Interpretability Hypothesis (Hawkins & Hattori 2006) or the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis
(Lardiere 2009), attribute a significant role to the formal features present in the L1 system. While the former account claims an
inaccessibility of uninterpretable features unknown in the learners’ mother tongue and declares only interpretable features to
be acquirable, the latter one regards the L1 configuration as a starting point for the acquisition process.
47
Also usage-based studies within the TAM context that often deal with questioning the validity of the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis
(Andersen & Shirai 1994), which highlights the role of the inherent lexical aspect claimed to influence the learners’ choice of one
form when speaking about the past, have considered the L1-effect. One prime example in this context is the Default Past Tense
Hypothesis (Salaberry 1999) that takes into account the comparison between the English L1 and Spanish L2 aspectual system,
establishing the prediction that such learners will initially select the Spanish Preterit as a Default Tense.
The present paper aims to examine a language combination until now studied to a lesser extent: German as L1 and Spanish as
L2. What is particularly interesting in this respect is the fact that German, although belonging to the same language family as
English, does not possess any kind of grammaticalized marking of aspect (cf. Heinold 2015). Its several past tenses do not provide
a difference in meaning when being interchanged, and rather belong to questions of style. Within the spoken language, only the
Present Perfect is used nowadays (Vater 2010), and there is no common compulsory expression for the progressive. Thus,
German does not even have the basic aspectual contrast known in the English grammar (cf. Salaberry & Ayoun 2005). Instead,
particles, adverbials or periphrases are used when a specific aspectual contrast has to be made explicit. This contributes to the
general tendency
of German to favor markings via means of vocabulary rather than through morphological conjugation (cf. Sánchez Prieto 2002).
A data collection with 70 adult native German speakers at different proficiency levels in Spanish as L2 through offlinequestionnaires consisting of several parts aimed to test their knowledge of the Spanish past tenses via a combination of
grammatical judgments and production tasks. The participants who were all students enrolled in an Undergraduate program in a
German university were tested in several conditions which included effects of the lexical aspect, as well as specific phenomena in
the Spanish grammar (impersonal subject constructions with se, and coercion contexts induced onto stative verbs as saber and
conocer). The production parts contained not only free production, but also completion tasks and descriptions of images.
Additionally, native speakers in Spain completed the same survey. The results of the empirical study obtained by statistical
analyses showed some significant differences between the non-native and the control group, as well as progressive
developments within the learner groups on which the talk will give more details.
As expected, findings indicated indeed a different acquisition process than the one known from previous studies (Comajoan
2013, Salaberry 1999) that concentrated on English speakers. Neither was there a strong persisting effect of the inherent aspect
nor could we attest a clear default form. Instead, the participants seemed to rely heavily on temporal adverbials as signal words
for a specific tense. Those are often taught as guidelines in a Spanish class, and can be found in almost all standard text books
(ayer ‘yesterday’, la semana pasada ‘last week’, en 1998 ‘in 1998’ as signals for the Preterit; siempre ‘always’, antes ‘before as
signals for the Imperfect). This non-unknown effect of such words (see e.g. Baker & Quesada 2011) held even in circumstances
where the signals were misleading. Example (3) shows such an exception in which the signal word ayer does not predict the
imperfect:
(3) Ayer aún lo sabía (ahora ya no me acuerdo). ‘Yesterday I still knew it (now I do not remember anymore).’
One common characteristic of the examined learners, however, is the fact that all of them were enrolled at the same university
and took Spanish classes on a regular basis. Given this situation, we cannot be sure if the observed effect is really due to their L1
or maybe to a specific form of instruction (see Ellis et al. 2006, Toth & Guijarro-Fuentes 2013 for a recent discussion on the
instruction effect). González (2008) shows that a specific instruction about the past tenses has a significant effect on the
learners’ production, and Rothman (2008) postulates in his Competetive Systems Hypothesis that explicit knowledge deduced
from pedagogical rules can override language intuition. An instruction effect might be negative.
Since the instruction effect, however, shall not be the object of investigation in this paper, the aim is to isolate the role of the L1
by integrating more learners into the study that differ in other variables (such as language environment, native language,
learning context etc.). Rothman (2008) suggests that the inclusion of non-tutored, natural language learners can be very fruitful.
Since, however, finding learners with such a profile and the combination L1 German/L2 Spanish was rather difficult, we decided
to extend the study towards exchange students and immigrants in Spain who had at least already spent several months there.
The second data collection was realized in Spain between 61 German students at different proficiency levels, who were from
different German speaking areas, enrolled in several exchange programs in Spain. Based on the results (which will be presented
in detail in the talk) which resembled in many parts the results of the first study, and showed again a significant difference from
the native control group, consisting of Spanish students enrolled at the same universities, the findings confirmed the fact that
neither the predictions of the
Lexical Aspect Hypothesis nor of the Default Past Tense Hypothesis coincided with the observed learning patterns in all their
details. The effect of temporal adverbials, on the contrary, was again very high, especially in misleading contexts where a high
and significant contrast to the control group of native Spanish speakers became evident.
In summary, the L1-effect does indeed play a crucial role regarding the acquisition of the Spanish tense system. In contrast to
English, German does not have grammatical aspect at all, and thus not even rudimentary features can be instantiated. We could
show that this condition provokes an acquisition process that is different from the one produced by English speakers in previous
48
studies: inherent aspect features are not considered as much as words on the surface level. Given the fact that German prefers
the expression through vocabulary instead of morphological inflection and that an interchange between different verb forms
does not produce aspectual differences in meaning, it seems quite plausible that the observed learning strategy adapted by the
German learners is based on some properties of their mother tongue. In line with the generativist hypotheses, thus, the feature
configuration and instantiation does play a crucial role in the post-puberty acquisition of an L2.
This observation shall not only shed more light onto the knowledge of acquisition processes, but can also contribute to
pedagogical methodology for language classes: the fact that the learners are under the influence of their mother tongue must be
considered when text books are published for a specific group of students. For example, a book for German speakers maybe
should not highlight the mentioned signal words too much and instead focus on a presentation of what aspect really is.
Furthermore, studies on the instruction effect can follow the results from this study.
In the next step of our research program, the data collection will be extended to learners of other native languages in order to
find out if the observed patterns are specific for German learners or followed by a larger population.
Cited work
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Language Acquisition 16. 135–156.
BAKER, J.L. & M. L. QUESADA (2011). The Effect of Temporal Adverbials in the Selection of Preterit and Imperfect by
Learners of Spanish L2. In Selected Proceedings of the 2009 Second Language Research forum, 1-15.
COMAJOAN, L. (2013). Tense and aspect in second language Spanish. In Geeslin, Kimberly L. (ed.) Handbook of Spanish
Second Language Acquisition. Boston: Wiley-Blackwell, 235-252.
COMRIE, B. (1976). Aspect. An Introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
ELLIS, R., LOEWEN, S., & R. ERLAM (2006). Implicit and explicit corrective feedback and the acquisition of L2 grammar.
Studies in second language acquisition, 28(02), 339-368.
GONZÁLEZ GONZÁLEZ, P. (2008). Towards effective instruction on aspect in L2 Spanish.IRAL-International Review of
Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 46(2), 91-112.
HAWKINS, R. & H. HATTORI (2006). Interpretation of English multiple wh-questions by Japanese speakers: a missing
uninterpretable feature account. Second Language Research, 22(3), 269-301.
HEINOLD, S. (2015). Tempus, Modus und Aspekt im Deutschen. Tübingen:narr.
LARDIERE, D. (2009). Some thoughts on the contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition. Second Language
Research, 25(2), 173-227.
LEONETTI, M. (2004). Por qué el imperfecto es anafórico. In: García Fernández, L. & B. Camus Bergarache. (ed.). El pretérito
imperfecto. Madrid: Gredos, 481-508.
ROTHMAN, J. (2008). Aspect selection in adult L2 Spanish and the Competing Systems Hypothesis. When pedagogical and
linguistic rules conflict. Languages in Contrast, 8(1), 74-106.
SALABERRY, M. R. & D. AYOUN (2005). The development of L2 tense-aspect in the Romance languages. In: Salaberry, M. R.
& D. Ayoun (eds.), Tense and Aspect in Romance Languages: Theoretical and applied perspectives. Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
John Benjamins, 1-33.
SALABERRY, M. R. (1999). The Development of Past Tense Verbal Morphology in classroom L2 Spanish. Applied Linguistics
20 (2), 151-178.
SÁNCHEZ PRIETO, R. (2002): Transferencias e interferencias lingüísticas en el uso de los tiempos verbales de indicativo en
español y alemán. In: González Martín, V. (ed.), Hacia la unidad en la diversidad. Difusión de las lenguas europeas. Salamanca:
Diputación de Salamanca, 467-480.
TOTH, P. D., & GUIJARRO-FUENTES, P. (2013). The impact of instruction on second-language implicit knowledge: Evidence
against encapsulation. Applied Psycholinguistics, 34(06), 1163-1193.
VATER, Heinz (2010). Präteritum und Perfekt im Deutschen. In: Katny, A. (ed.), Heinz Vater. Linguistik und deutsche
Grammatik im Fokus. Ausgewählte Schriften (= Studia Germanica Gedanesia 20, 4). Gdansk: Wydawnictwo Uniwertsytetu
Gdańskiego.
ZAGONA, K. (2007). Some effects of aspect on tense construal. Lingua, 117(2), 464-502.
DUBOIS Gaïdig (Helsinki). « Tu viens ou tu restes ? » – La dynamique des forces à l’œuvre dans l’analyse aspectuelle du
verbe rester
[email protected]
Parfois décrit comme un verbe « statif » (Kalmbach 2009) ou « adynamique » (Helland 2006) et plus généralement comme verbe
d’état (p. ex. Hamma et al. 2012), le verbe rester pose des problèmes de classification aspectuelle aux linguistes. Rester, en plus
d’exprimer la continuation d'être de façon plus ou moins prolongée ou durable, dans un lieu ou dans un état, semble impliquer
une idée de prise de décision liée à la volonté de rester quelque part – ou tout au moins de ne pas partir –, ce qui donne au
verbe une certaine ponctualité inchoative et une dynamicité. Ainsi, lorsque je dis : « Cette coupe du monde restera dans la
mémoire de tous », je sous-entends un point de départ qui correspond à l’instant de la coupe ou à celui qui la suit
immédiatement et à partir duquel elle sera dans la mémoire de tous. Gross (1975 : 166) pressent déjà une certaine contradiction
lorsqu’il écrit que le verbe rester, bien que sémantiquement différent des verbes de mouvement, leur est proche par ses
propriétés syntaxiques. Pourquoi, en effet, peut-on dire Jean reste manger ici, au même titre que Jean vient manger ici ? Cette
49
structure de complémentation infinitive directe caractéristique des verbes de mouvement, applicable à rester, est un indice
parmi plusieurs du statut particulier du verbe parmi les verbes statiques.
Rester aurait donc la capacité d’exprimer non seulement la continuité d’un état mais aussi une transition, une inchoation. Il est
intéressant de noter que cette idée a également été soulevée par Francesca Strik Lievers en ce qui concerne le verbe italien
rimanere lors de la onzième rencontre de cette conférence en 2014 à Pise. En ce qui nous concerne, la dimension dynamique du
verbe rester nous a été inspirée par la langue finnoise, dont le verbe jäädä (‘rester’) est structurellement clairement
dynamique puisqu’il régit, selon les cas, l’illatif ou l’allatif, autrement dit un des deux cas directifs du finnois. Le verbe a fait
l’objet en 2005 et 2007 de deux articles de Tuomas Huumo sur la motivation du directionnel dans l’emploi de ses formes. Selon
Huumo (2005 : 507), jäädä porterait en lui une idée de changement pas tout à fait ordinaire, celle d’un mouvement mental
effectué par le sujet au moment où il prend la décision de ne pas partir. Nous pensons que ce raisonnement peut également
s’appliquer dans une certaine mesure à rester, qui dans certains de ses emplois semble remettre en cause l’essence même de sa
définition, axée autour de la permanence et du non-changement. Lorsque nous restons et que, de ce même fait, nous prenons la
décision de ne pas partir, nous sommes en quelque sorte dans la négation du départ, dont le dynamisme reste largement
présent en puissance dans le sémantisme du verbe. C’est précisément le cas lorsque rester reçoit une lecture inchoative, comme
dans l’exemple suivant où il exprime l’arrêt, le figement, le début de l’immobilité :
Ils étaient tous deux si silencieux et avaient une attitude si incompréhensible pour moi, qui avais
entendu les transports de tout à l'heure et qui m'attendais à trouver le fils dans les bras de sa mère, que
je restai en face d'eux sans dire un mot, sans faire un geste. (Gaston Leroux, Le parfum de la dame en
noir, mis en ligne par le corpus FRANTEXT)
Ainsi, nous émettons l’hypothèse que sous des airs de verbe statique, rester se place en fait dans son acception de base – un
sujet agent prend la décision de ne pas partir – à la frontière entre les deux catégories, statique et dynamique. À la fois
expression d’une prise de décision et de la présence commencée ou continuée à laquelle cette décision mène, il combinerait en
lui deux phases, une première à valeur ponctuelle et une seconde durative, à l’origine de son instabilité aspectuelle. Selon les
sens du verbe (inchoation ou continuation), la phase ponctuelle de prise de décision coïnciderait avec le début de l’état de
présence ou le moment de la continuation. Dans tous les cas, il existerait au sein du verbe une dynamique du contraste, un
contraste qui opposerait la trajectoire réelle prise par les événements à la trajectoire potentielle à laquelle on aurait pu
s’attendre.
C’est cette dynamique des forces, selon nous intrinsèque à l’acte de rester (raison pour laquelle on observerait un
fonctionnement similaire dans d’autres langues, cf. Strik Lievers 2014), que nous nous proposons d’examiner dans cette
communication sur la base d’un corpus authentique du français. Nos exemples sont tirés de deux ensembles de texte : d’un côté,
le roman policier de Gaston Leroux (1908) Le Parfum de la Dame en noir, mis à disposition par le corpus Frantext ; d’un autre
côté, les archives de 2003 du quotidien régional L’Est Républicain, disponibles sur le site du CNRTL.
Nous utilisons un paradigme de recherche intégrant deux principes qui ont reçu l’attention de Léonard Talmy : d’un côté, la
dynamicité fictive (‘fictive dynamicity’, cf. Talmy 2000) et de l’autre, la dynamique des forces (‘force dynamics’, cf. Talmy 1988,
2000). L’un concerne la tendance de la langue à utiliser des éléments sémantiquement dynamiques pour faire référence à des
situations statiques (Talmy 2000: 171–172, Huumo 2007 : 73), comme dans la phrase plus on approchait le Nord, plus les arbres
raccourcissaient ; l’autre s’applique à révéler les forces à l’œuvre dans les relations entre éléments de la langue : ainsi, dans la
phrase la porte était ouverte, aucunes forces apparentes s’opposent, tandis que dans la porte ne voulait pas s’ouvrir, deux
forces, une volonté d’ouverture et une volonté de fermeture, s’opposent dans une lutte où la fermeture gagne. Quant à rester,
ces forces se révèlent dans la dynamique du contraste mentionnée ci-dessus, un contraste entre absence présupposée et
présence réalisée.
Références
CNRTL = Centre National des Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales. En ligne : http://cnrtl.fr/definition/
GROSS, MAURICE. 1975. Méthodes en syntaxe. Paris : Hermann.
HAMMA, BADREDDINE ; HOUDA OUNIS ; DANIELLE LEEMAN ; BELINDA LAVIEU ; CELINE VAGUER ; et ICHRAF KHAMMARI. 2012.
Pourquoi « rester POUR quelque temps » est-il susceptible de poser un problème d’acceptabilité ?. Revue de Sémantique et
Pragmatique 31. 89–111.
HELLAND, HANS PETTER. 2006. L’impersonnel et la linguistique contrastive. Actes du XVIe Congrès des Romanistes Scandinaves,
dir. par M. Olsen et E. Swiatek. Roskilde : Université de Roskilde. En ligne : http://rudar.ruc.dk/handle/1800/8121.
HUUMO, TUOMAS. 2005. « Onko jäädä-verbin paikallissijamääritteen tulosijalla semanttista motivaatiota ? ». Virittäjä 4. 506–24.
HUUMO, TUOMAS. 2007. Force dynamics, fictive dynamicity and the Finnish verbs of ‘remaining’. Folia Linguistica 41 (1–2). 73–
98.
KALMBACH, JEAN-MICHEL. 2009. Grammaire française de l’étudiant finnophone. Jyväskylä : Université de Jyväskylä.
LEROUX, GASTON. 1908. Le Parfum de la Dame en noir. Paris : L'Illustration. (Texte mis à disposition sur la base de corpus
Frantext.)
STRIK LIEVERS, FRANCESCA. 2014. Communication sur le sujet : « ‘Remain’ verbs in Romance. A case of state / transition
polysemy », lors de Chronos 11. Résumé en ligne : http://linguistica.sns.it/Chronos11/Abstract/174_Strik%20Lievers.pdf
50
TALMY, LEONARD. 1988. Force dynamics in language and thought. Cognitive Science 12. 49–100.
TALMY, LEONARD. 2000. Toward a cognitive semantics. Volume I: Concept structuring systems. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.
DUVALLON Outi (Inalco), PELTOLA Rea (Caen). L’impératif et le zoom discursif : la particule focalisante 'vaan' dans les
injonctions positives et négatives en finnois
[email protected] ; [email protected]
4
Cette communication se propose d’examiner l’interaction entre la forme impérative et la particule focalisante vaan ( ~ vain )
dans les injonctions en finnois. Nous analyserons la position séquentielle de l’énoncé injonctif et la manière dont vaan oriente
l’interprétation des attentes implicitement ou explicitement présentes dans le contexte. Les données analysées proviennent du
corpus de conversations en finnois (Université de Helsinki) et de sources littéraires.
L’énoncé impératif positif avec vaan apparaît typiquement dans la seconde partie d’une paire adjacente où il est porteur d’une
valeur de permission (ex. 1). En revanche, une injonction négative en vaan est plus susceptible de se trouver en position
séquentielle initiale, avec un effet d’insistance sur la prohibition (ex. 2) :
(1) A : Tahdo-t-ko, että
tule-mme
vouloir-2-Q que venir-1.PL autre-GEN-ADD
« Souhaites-tu que nous revenions te voir ? »
B : Tul-kaa
vaan.
venir-IMP.2.PL VAAN
« Oui, vous pouvez revenir. »
toise-n-kin
kerra-n sinu-a
fois-GEN te-PAR saluer-NMLS-ILL
(2) A : El-kää
alka-ko
vaan
riita-a,
hyvä-t
PROH-2.PL
commencer-PROH VAAN dispute-PAR bon-PL homme-PL
« Ne commencez surtout pas à vous disputer, chers amis. »
B : Ei suinkaan, ei
mi-llä-än tava-lla.
NÉG.3 pas.du.tout NÉG.3 Q-ADE-NEG façon-ADE
« Mais pas du tout, en aucune façon. »
tervehti-mä-än?
ihmise-t.
Sur une échelle typologique, les énoncés injonctifs sont définis comme sous-entendant une situation où le locuteur souhaite ou
ne souhaite pas que le procès p, qui est ou n’est pas en cours au moment de l’énonciation, se produise. En utilisant l’énoncé
injonctif, le locuteur vise à faire agir ou à empêcher d’agir le participant correspondant à l’agent du procès p (Birjulin &
Xrakovskij 2001).
En tant que forme linguistique, le verbe à l’impératif positif de « deuxième personne du singulier » se caractérise comme étant
minimalement marqué morphologiquement. Il exprime « l’idée verbale dans sa quintessence » (Floricic 2000), c’est-à-dire un
procès virtuel, non ancré dans le système temporel et dépourvu de détermination de personne. Cette forme qui ne prédique pas
fonctionne à la manière d’un vocatif en ce sens qu’elle instaure une relation directe et immédiate du locuteur à l’interlocuteur :
ce dernier est sélectionné situationnellement comme le valideur potentiel de la relation prédicative exprimée par l’impératif.
Ainsi, l’énoncé injonctif positif met en jeu, dans l’espace intersubjectif de la scène énonciative (Paillard 2009), deux points de vue
qui correspondent chacun à un statut particulier du procès. A la position du locuteur s’associe la construction d’une relation
prédicative avec la valeur positive : le procès est visé. La position de l’interlocuteur, en revanche, est le support de deux valeurs
non sélectionnées, positive et négative : le procès est en attente de validation (cf. Culioli et Paillard 1987 ; Paillard 1987 ; Paillard
2009).
Ce type de relation asymétrique entre le locuteur et l’agent du procès p est commun à différentes expressions déontiques,
qu’elles portent, à des degrés divers, une valeur d’obligation (ordre, conseil, invitation, souhait, etc.), de permission
(autorisation, encouragement, non-opposition) ou de prohibition (interdiction, mise en garde). Sa nature varie selon la manière
dont la volonté du locuteur et celle de l’agent du procès p entrent en contact et les interprétations que les participants se font
de leurs capacités d’agir dans la situation (Stevanovic 2013). Les modulations de la relation intersujets se font par le choix de la
forme linguistique de l’énoncé, notamment en ce qui concerne les marques de modalité portées par le verbe et la façon de
désigner (ou non) l’agent du procès p (cf. Couper-Kuhlen & Etelämäki 2015).
Notre objectif est d’étudier comment le schéma de base du fonctionnement de la forme impérative est modifié par le marqueur
discursif vaan. On se posera aussi la question de savoir en quoi la fonction de vaan est différente dans les énoncés impératifs
positifs et négatifs.
Un énoncé injonctif portant la valeur d’obligation déontique occupe typiquement une position séquentielle initiale et projette
une réaction, linguistique ou non linguistique, de la part de l’interlocuteur (ISK § 1645, 1657). Lorsqu’il s’agit d’une possibilité
déontique, l’énoncé impératif positif peut également être utilisé dans la deuxième partie d’une paire adjacente qui constitue une
4
La forme de cet élément, qui est polycatégoriel (particule, conjonction), connaît une variation selon les registres. En finnois écrit antérieur au
XXe siècle ainsi qu’en finnois courant moderne, la forme la plus fréquente, indépendamment de la catégorie grammaticale, est vaa(n). Le finnois
standard, en revanche, se sert de la forme vain lorsqu’il s’agit d’une particule, la forme vaan étant réservée à l’emploi conjonctif.
51
réponse à une demande d’autorisation (voir l’ex. 1 ci-dessus). On constate cependant qu’en position réactive, la forme
impérative a tendance à ne pas s’employer seule. Elle peut être par exemple suivie d’une séquence à valeur justificative (par ex.
tulkaa, jos haluatte « (oui,) revenez, si vous voulez bien ») ou être accompagnée d’un marqueur discursif, tel que vaan, qui
apporte une détermination sur le statut de l’énoncé dans la scène énonciative.
En (1), le premier tour de parole est formé d’un énoncé interrogatif comportant le verbe intentionnel tahtoa (« vouloir,
souhaiter ») et mettant en avant deux possibilités, ‘nous revenons’ et ‘nous ne revenons pas’. L’énoncé réponse consiste en la
reprise du verbe tulla « (re)venir » à la forme impérative, suivie de vaan. Le marqueur discursif joue un rôle essentiel dans la
cohérence discursive de la séquence : il contribue à donner le sens de permission à la forme impérative (ISK § 1674). Plus
précisément, vaan fonde la sélection de la valeur positive du procès exprimé par l’impératif sur les deux possibilités construites
par la question. Il s’agit d’indiquer que le procès peut être validé sans hésitation, sans tenir compte des causes qui pourraient
conduire à sa non-validation.
Notre analyse de la fonction du marqueur discursif vaan est basée sur une hypothèse étymologique. Il convient de préciser que
la base lexicale de vaan n’apparaît pas à première vue comme transparente. La littérature propose plusieurs pistes pour
expliquer l’origine de cet élément (voir par ex. Genetz 1890, Hakulinen [1951]1999 ; SSA 2000 ; Häkkinen 2004). Nous en
retenons celle qui, confrontée aux données de notre corpus, s’est montrée la plus fructueuse. Comme Ahlqvist (1882) et
Paasonen (1890), nous supposons que vaan est issu d’un adverbe de manière *vaγan qui a pour base l’adjectif vaka « ferme, qui
ne se laisse pas ébranler ». La parenté sémantique entre un adverbe de type « fermement », tel vakaasti en finnois moderne, et
le marqueur discursif vaan peut s’observer dans des énoncés assertifs qui expriment un procès impliquant un agent dont l’action
contraste avec les attentes :
(3) Kuningas (---) tuomitsi ensi kiivaudessaan pojan kuolemaan, siitä että hän oli [kultalinnun] varastaa koetellut;
« Emporté par une ardeur, le roi (---) condamna le garçon à mort pour la tentative de vol [de l’oiseau doré] ; »
(a) mutta poika vastasi vakaasti ja pelkäämättä: ”jos minut tapetaan, niin on kultalintukin kuoletettava, (---).”
« mais le garçon [lui] répondit fermement et sans avoir peur : « Si on me tue, il faudra donner la mort aussi à l’oiseau doré,
(---). » »
(b) mutta poika vastasi vaan pelkäämättä: (---)
« mais le garçon [lui] répondit VAAN [« tout simplement »] sans avoir peur : (---) »
L’adverbe vakaasti (ex. 3a) ajoute au contenu propositionnel de l’énoncé l’idée de fermeté avec laquelle le sujet agit dans une
situation où une cause (ci-dessus la peur de l’autorité du roi) est susceptible de le perturber. Le marqueur discursif vaan (ex. 3b),
quant à lui, opère un zoom discursif sur la séquence qui constitue sa portée (p) avec un effet double : d’une part, il donne à la
séquence p une visibilité que celle-ci n’a pas a priori dans le contexte (une autre séquence est attendue) et d’autre part, la
séquence p s’interprète comme disant l’essentiel sur la situation en question.
Nous montrerons que la particularité des énoncés impératifs positifs en vaan est que 1) la relation prédicative exprimée par
l’impératif est préconstruite dans le contexte précédent et que 2) sa validation y fait l’objet d’interrogation ou d’hésitations de la
part de l’interlocuteur, ou l’objet de discorde entre les participants. Le zoom opéré par vaan est centré sur la valeur positive du
procès en attente de validation.
Les énoncés impératifs négatifs s’appuient en règle générale sur un sens préconstruit. Ils sont utilisés dans un contexte où
l’interlocuteur est en train d’effectuer l’action soumise à l’interdiction ou dans le contexte où le locuteur a des raisons de penser
que l’interlocuteur peut s’engager dans l’action (Miestamo & van der Auwera 2007). Les énoncés impératifs négatifs en vaan
forment un cas particulier des injonctions négatives. La pré-construction d’un scénario virtuel p est fondée non pas sur une
intention que l’interlocuteur aurait rendue manifeste, mais sur ce que le locuteur considère comme pouvant advenir à
l’interlocuteur. C’est alors l’énoncé en vaan qui introduit dans le discours l’idée d’un procès p sur lequel le marqueur de
prohibition (elkää dans l’ex. 2 ci-dessus) porte la valeur de mise en garde : ‘faites en sorte que p ne devienne pas le cas’ (cf. van
der Auwera 2010). Le zoom opéré par vaan est centré sur le procès théorique p : du point de vue du locuteur, ce qui compte pardessus tout dans l’évolution de la situation en cours est que le procès p ne se produise pas (ex. 2 : elkää alkako vaan riitaa « ne
commencez surtout pas à vous disputer »).
Les énoncés impératifs positifs et négatifs avec vaan se distinguent donc par l’origine du sens préconstruit sur lequel la valeur
déontique s’appuie. Dans les injonctions positives, la valeur déontique s’oriente vers un agent qui a pris sur son compte, d’une
manière ou d’une autre, l’idée de s’engager ou ne pas s’engager dans le procès p. L’injonction vise à résorber une différence de
points de vue entre le locuteur et l’interlocuteur sur la validabilité du procès p. C’est l’intention de l’agent du procès p qui gagne
en saillance, ce qui contribue à la lecture permissive de l’impératif. En revanche, lorsqu’il utilise une injonction négative avec
vaan, le locuteur ne prête pas l’intention du procès p à l’interlocuteur (cf. Culioli & Paillard 1987 ; Culioli 1990). L’injonction ne
vise pas à résorber une différence de points de vue sur la validabilité du procès p, mais à préserver la non-actualisation de p.
Dans ce cas, c’est la volonté du locuteur qui prime, l’interlocuteur (qui correspond à l’agent du procès p à éviter) étant invité à
ne pas se séparer du point de vue du locuteur.
52
Bibliographie
Ahlqvist, A. 1882, Muutamista pikkusanoista suomen kielessä. In Suomen ylioppilaskunnan albumi Elias Lönnrotin kunniaksi
hänen täyttäessään kahdeksankymmentä vuotta 9.4.1882. Helsinki: Suomen ylioppilaskunta.
Birjulin, L. A. & Xrakovskij, V. S. 2001, Imperative sentences: Theoretical problems. In Xrakovskij, V. S. (éd.), Typology of
imperative constructions, Muenchen, Lincom Europa, p. 3-50.
Couper-Kuhlen, E. & Etelämäki, M. 2015, Nominated actions and their targeted agents in Finnish conversational directives.
Journal of Pragmatics 78, p. 7-24.
Culioli, A. 1990, Pour une linguistique de l'énonciation. Opérations et représentations, Tome I. Paris : Ophrys
Culioli, A. & Paillard D. 1987, À propos de l'alternance imperfectif/perfectif dans les énoncés impératifs. Revue des études slaves
59:3, p. 527-534.
Floricic, F. 2000, De l’impératif italien sii (sois!) et de l'impératif en général. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 95, p.
227–266.
Genetz, A.1890, Suomen partikkelimuodot. Helsinki: SKS.
Hakulinen, L. [1951] 1999, Luennot suomen kielen partikkeleista, Helsinki, Helsingin yliopiston suomen kielen laitos.
Häkkinen, K. 2004, Nykysuomen etymologinen sanakirja. Helsinki, WSOY.
ISK = Hakulinen, A., Vilkuna, M., Korhonen, R., Koivisto, V., Heinonen, T. R. & Alho, I. 2004, Iso suomen kielioppi (« Grande
grammaire du finnois »), Helsinki, SKS. Http://scripta. kotus.fi/visk/etusivu.php.
Miestamo M. & van der Auwera, J. 2007, Negative declaratives and negative imperatives: similarities and differences. In
Ammann, A. (éd.), Linguistics festival. May 2006, Bremen, Bremen, Brockmeyer, p. 59-77.
Paasonen, H. 1890, Lauseopillisia havaintoja verbin ja konjunktionein alalta. Helsinki, SKS.
Paillard, D. 2009, Prise en charge, commitment ou scène énonciative. Langue française 162, p. 109-128.
SSA = Suomen sanojen alkuperä. Etymologinen sanakirja. 2000. Helsinki, SKS.
Stevanovic, M. 2013, Deontic Rights in Interaction: A Conversation Analytic Study on Authority and Cooperation. Doctoral
dissertation. Department of Social Research University of Helsinki. Http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-10-7685-5.
van der Auwera, J. 2010, Prohibition: constructions and markers. In Shu D. & Turner K. (éds.), Contrasting meaning in languages
of the East and West, Tübingen, Narr, p. 443-475.
53
F
FABREGAS Antonio (Tromsø), MARIN Rafael (Lille 3). Estarse = estar + se?
[email protected] ; [email protected]
Data. The Spanish copula estar ‘to be’ has a pronominal counterpart, estarse ‘to be-SE’, which shows a peculiar behavior in
several respects, particularly in those related to agentivity. The following contrasts between estar and estarse show that estarse
produces agentive forms:
(1) a.
b.
(2) a.
b.
(3) a.
b.
¡Estate
Be.IMP-SE
*¡Está
Juan se estuvo
Juan SE was
??Juan estuvo
Pedro
Pedro
??Pedro
callado/ quieto
silent/ still
callado/quieto
obligó a
made A
obligó a
callado/ quieto!
silent/ still!
callado/ quieto!
deliberadamente.
on-purpose
deliberadamente.
Juan
a
estarse callado/ quieto.
Juan
to
be-SE silent/ still
Juan
a
estar
callado/quieto.
As has been pointed out by several authors (Maldonado, 1999; Sánchez López, 2002; Morimoto, 2008, 2011; Jiménez Fernández
& Tubino, 2014; García & Gómez, 2015, a.o.), the subject of estarse constructions has an intentional (or controller) meaning,
which is absent in the case of estar. Thus, only adjectives and PPs denoting properties involving control or intentionality combine
with estarse (4), vs. (5).
(4) El niño
the child
(5) *El niño
the child
se
SE
se
SE
estuvo {atento/ callado/ despierto/quieto}.
was
attentive/silent/awake/still
estuvo {atónito/
dormido/
enfermo/
was
puzzled/
asleep/
sick/
en coma}.
in coma
Aspect. In addition to control, other differences between estar and estarse, as the one illustrated in (6), have been explained in
aspectual terms.
(6) a.
b.
Cuando Juan entraba,
los
niños
se
when Juan came-in,
the
children SE
were
‘Whenever Juan came in, the children would get silent’
Cuando Juan
entraba, los
niños
estaban
when Juan
came-in, the
children
were
‘Whenever Juan came in, the children were silent’
estaban callados.
silent
callados.
silent
In (6b), the children were already quiet when Juan entered, while in (6a) the children became quiet when Juan entered.
Previous analyses. According to García & Gómez (2015), the previous facts are evidence of the non-stative status of estarse.
They state that estarse constructions denote complex situations consisting of an achievement and a subsequent result state. This
proposal is quite similar to Morimoto’s (2008), who postulates that the achievement subevent is not properly denoted, but just
presupposed. However, both analysis have problems. Following Morimoto (2008), we will be in serious trouble to distinguish
estarse from estar, whose denotation also presupposes a previous change of state (Marín, 2015). Following García & Gómez
(2015), we will not be able to distinguish between estarse and verbs like desaparecer ‘disappear’, that denote both an
achievement and a subsequent (target) state (Kratzer, 2000).
Proposal. In order to solve these problems we propose an alternative analysis which is compatible with the philosophy of
Jiménez-Fernández & Tubino’s (2014) analysis of an inchoative-agentive type of se in Spanish: estarse constructions denote
inchoative states, i.e. those including the onset on the state (Marín & McNally, 2011). This can be formalized, following Piñón
(1997), by means of the distinction between two types of boundaries: left and right boundaries. On the one hand, right
boundaries correspond to the final points of situations (happenings in Piñón’s terminology), as the culmination part of
accomplishments (Moens & Steedman, 1988) or (telic) achievements (to arrive, to win). On the other hand, left boundaries
correspond to the inception of a situation, in our case the inception of a state. In this respect, it is important to note that
inchoative states do not include a change of state in the typical terms (related to telicity) that are usually understood, and
therefore, the state denoted it’s not a result state.
Following Piñón (1997), we adopt, then, a decompositional approach to event semantics, in which an event (e) can be
decomposed into subevents, such as boundaries (b) and states (s). Thus, inchoative states, as those denoted by estarse, can be
represented as in (7), and distinguished from stage-level states presupposing a previous achievement, as those denote by estar
(8):
54
(7)
λxλ〈b,s〉 . Pred(x,〈b,s〉)
(8)
λxλs . Ǝb(Pred(x,〈b,s〉))
This way we can explain the differences observed in (6), as well as to solve the main problem identified in Morimoto’s (2008)
analysis, given that estarse and estar denotation are clearly distinguished. Moreover, inchoative states are also to be
distinguished from proper achievements followed by target states (desaparecer ‘disappear’), which can be represented as right
boundaries of presupposed processes (p) (Piñón, 1997), followed by states:
λxλ〈p,b〉λs . Ǝp(Pred(x,〈p,b〉,s))
An additional advantage of our analyisis is that, contrary to García & Gómez (2015), we are not obliged to treat estarse
constructions as involving telicity, which is quite undesirable, given that estarse constructions do not pass any test on telicity.
As a conclusion, it could be argued that the only relevant aspectual difference between estarse and estar is that the former
includes an inchoative boundary. Given that the only difference between these two forms is the clitic se, it is plausible to identify
it as the element triggering this inchoative meaning, as Jiménez-Fernández & Tubino (2014) argue. This accounts for control /
agentivity (1)-(3): given that states lack any internal progression, having the control of a state entails having the control of the
inception of that state.
(9)
Selected references
García Fernández, L. & D. Gómez Vázquez (2015). In S. Pérez Jiménez, M. Leonetti & S. Gumiel (eds.), Ser and estar at the
interfaces. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Jiménez-Fernández, Á. & M. Tubino (2014). Variación sintáctica en la causativización léxica. REL
Morimoto, Y. (2008). Me estuve quieto: El concepto de estado y el llamado se aspectual. In I. Olza Moreno, M. Casado Velarde &
R. González Ruiz (eds.), Actas del XXXVII Simposio Internacional de la SEL. Pamplona: Servicio de Publicaciones de la
Universidad de Navarra.
Piñón, C. (1997). Achievements in Event Semantics. Proceedings of SALT VII.
FLAUX Nelly (Artois), MOSTROV Vassil (Valenciennes). Les noms d’humains au comportement moralement déviant :
ébauche de classification
[email protected]
[email protected]
Par « noms d’humains au comportement moralement déviant » nous entendons les NH susceptibles de dénoter des êtres
humains qui sont à l’origine d’actes blâmables, de mauvaises actions qui nuisent soit directement à quelqu’un (la « victime »),
soit qui sont dommageables au bon fonctionnement de la société. Dans cette catégorie se retrouvent des NH comme salaud,
canaille, voleur, menteur, casseur, escroc, violeur, assassin, agresseur, tortionnaire, harceleur, ravisseur, etc., qui, quoique
présentant des différences au niveau de leurs propriétés linguistiques, ont pour caractéristique commune d’être porteurs de la
modalité axiologique négative (Gosselin 2015).
Dans le présent travail, nous proposerons un classement de ces NH en les répartissant en deux grandes catégories : (i) les
qualifiants ou généraux (salaud, canaille) et (ii) les classifiants ou spécifiques (voleur, agresseur) qui, à leur tour, se subdivisent
en deux sous-classes en fonction de leur capacité/incapacité à se comporter comme des termes d’insulte (espèce de voleur ! vs.
*espèce d’agresseur!).
5
Dans la littérature (Milner 1978, Ruwet 1982, Gross 1994, 2012) , ce type de NH n’ont été abordés que partiellement, car ce qui
est isolé est une classe de NH sur la base de leur comportement en tant qu’insultes, essentiellement à partir des structures
suivantes :
Structure A : elle regroupe le vocatif (NH !) et l’emploi prénominal de espèce (Espèce de NH !) : Salaud ! Imbécile !
Voleur ! Espèce de salaud/d’imbécile/de voleur ! ;
Structure B : il s’agit de l’emploi du verbe traiter (qqn de NH) comme dans Marie a traité Luc de (salaud/d’imbécile/de
voleur) ;
Structure C : c’est la construction bi-nominale Det + NH1 de NH2, où le NH1, prédicatif, qualifie de façon subjective le NH2 :
Son imbécile de mari, ce salaud/voleur/traître de Luc…
Ces structures, qui sont autant des tests syntactico-sémantiques, conduisent à rassembler dans une même classe ce que Milner
(1978) appelle les « noms de qualité » (vaurien, canaille, salaud, mais aussi idiot, crétin, imbécile) fondamentalement intensifs et
dont le contenu, pour certains (vaurien, canaille, salaud), reste flou, d’une part ; et de l’autre des NH classifiants et a priori non
intensifs (voleur, menteur), dotés de ce que Milner appelle une « référence virtuelle » (ou d’un « concept »). Enfin, un
élargissement de la classe des « insultes » a été suggéré par Ruwet (1982) sur la base de la possibilité qu’ont certains NH, dont le
sens premier n’est pas rattachable à un « défaut », de figurer dans la position NH1 de la structure C ci-dessus (comme bébé,
communiste…).
5
Pour une approche pluridisciplinaire de la notion d’insulte (ethnologie, pragmatique, sémantique, morphosyntaxe), Cf. les contributions réunies
dans Langue Française (2004) 144.
55
Les inconvénients que présentent ces tests, selon nous, sont les suivants :
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
ils ne permettent pas de distinguer les NH qualifiants en rapport avec un défaut d’ordre moral (salaud, vaurien, canaille)
des NH qualifiants renvoyant à un défaut d’ordre intellectuel (imbécile, crétin, idiot),
ni mettre au jour les différences entre les NH purement qualifiants (salaud, etc. et idiot etc.) et les NH, axiologiquement
négatifs eux aussi, mais classifiants comme voleur, menteur, escroc ;
centrés sur la caractérisation des NH comme noms d’insulte, ils laissent de côté un grand nombre de NH dénotant des
êtres humains agissant de manière blâmable et donc axiologiquement négatifs eux aussi (ravisseur, violeur, agresseur,
tortionnaire).
Nous essaierons de montrer que la subdivision de la classe des NH qualifiants, selon qu’est en cause un défaut moral (salaud) ou
intellectuel (imbécile), est linguistiquement fondée et que la différence entre les NH qualifiants (salaud, imbécile) et les NH
classifiants (voleur, assassin) a lieu d’être approfondie. Ensuite, nous distinguerons, parmi les NH classifiants, ceux qui sont
susceptibles d’emplois insultants (voleur) de ceux qui ne le sont pas (agresseur, violeur), pour enfin insister sur ce qui différencie
ces derniers des NH classifiants axiologiquement neutres comme professeur.
S’agissant de la distinction entre les NH généraux de défaut moral (salaud) et les NH de défaut intellectuel (imbécile), Ruwet
(1982) a déjà proposé le test de l’infinitive dont le contenu « donne les raisons de la prédication » : il oppose ainsi Pierre est un
imbécile d’avoir raté son train (action stupide) à Pierre est un salaud d’avoir plagié ce livre (action moralement répréhensible).
De plus, d’autres tests montrent clairement que des NH comme salaud, à la différence d’imbécile, impliquent directement un
6
comportement responsable (Il est ?imbécile/salaud de la part de Pierre de Vinf ) envers autrui (Pierre est un salaud/*un imbécile
avec ses confrères), et que ce comportement est intentionnel (Pierre est un *salaud/imbécile, mais ce n’est pas de sa faute
(Gosselin 2015). Enfin, les noms dérivés correspondant à chacune des deux sous-classes se distinguent relativement aux
conditions d’emploi des verbes avoir et faire (Pierre a eu l’imbécillité/*la saloperie de Vinf vs. Pierre a fait *l’imbécillité/la
saloperie de Vinf), ce qui indique clairement que les contenus prédicatifs communs à imbécile/imbécillité vs. salaud/saloperie ne
relèvent pas du même ordre (Cf. Paykin et al, à paraître).
À propos de la distinction entre les NH qualifiants (imbécile, salaud) et les NH classifiants à comportement moralement déviant
(voleur, violeur), rappelons, comme l’a noté Milner (1978), que les premiers n’acceptent pas la position N2 dans la structure C cidessus (*Pierre est un imbécile de salaud/un salaud d’imbécile), ce qui n’est pas le cas des seconds (Pierre est un imbécile de
voleur/un salaud de violeur). En effet, la qualification figurant dans cette structure relève de la subjectivité du locuteur et ne
peut s’appliquer qu’à une caractéristique présentée comme objectivement fondée. Notons également que salaud mais non
voleur peut admettre un complément nominal (Paul est un salaud/*un voleur avec Pierre), ce qui est dû au fait que les NH
qualifiants, à la différence de la plupart des NH classifiants, ne sont pas reliés à des verbes d’où l’absence de structure
7
argumentale dans leur cas . En revanche, un NH comme voleur garde (du moins partiellement) les arguments du verbe dont il est
dérivé (Paul vole des bijoux – Paul est un voleur de bijoux, à comparer avec l’impossible *Paul est un salaud de N). Une autre
différence encore mérite d’être soulignée, qui concerne l’(im)possibilité pour les NH de nos deux sous-classes de se construire
avec de Vinf. On opposera ainsi Pierre est un salaud d’avoir dénoncé ses copains à *Pierre est un violeur d’avoir abusé de Marie.
Cette différence justifie les étiquettes « NH généraux » et « NH spécifiques » que nous proposons respectivement pour les NH
qualifiants et les NH classifiants, car dans le second cas, mais pas dans le premier, le sens du NH-agent est rattaché à un verbe
dont l’argument interne (correspondant à la victime) est déjà comme présent « en puissance » dans le verbe lui-même. Enfin, les
NH classifiants présentent pour la plupart une caractéristique relevée par Gosselin (cp), qui apparaît dans le discours
lexicographique, à savoir la présence du verbe commettre, qui exhibe leur contenu actionnel objectif (un voleur commet un vol,
un assassin commet un assassinat…). Ce verbe ne semble pas spécialement approprié aux NH qualifiants à modalité axiologique
négative ( ?commettre une saloperie, une canaillerie), quoique eux aussi, on l’a vu, soient en étroite relation avec l’idée d’action.
S’agissant de la distinction entre les NH classifiants comme voleur, menteur et les autres, eux aussi classifiants, comme
agresseur, ravisseur, violeur, soulignons que seuls les premiers peuvent occuper les deux positions dans la structure C (ce voleur
de Luc / ces salopards de voleurs), alors que les seconds ne sont normalement compatibles qu’avec la position du N2 ( ??ce
violeur de Luc / ce salaud de violeur), qui est celle du nom objectif et neutre objet de la qualification « insultante ». De façon
générale, les NH de la deuxième sous-classe ne sont pas compatibles avec l’insulte (??Espèce de ravisseur !; ??Paul a traité Jean
d’agresseur vs. Paul a traité Jean de voleur/menteur), quoiqu’ils comportent eux aussi la modalité axiologique négative. Ces faits
montrent que certains des NH classifiants (voleur) peuvent avoir deux emplois. L’un correspond à leur sens objectif et l’autre à la
8
connotation négative qui leur est associée (connotation qui leur permet de fonctionner sans « calembour syntaxique »
comme noms d’insulte), à la différence d’autres (ravisseur), dont le sens négatif n’est pas compatible avec l’expression de la
subjectivité du locuteur. Puisque ces derniers NH ne sont pas susceptibles de se comporter comme des termes d’insulte, ils
6
Cette tournure impersonnelle exige l’emploi adjectival du NH (Cf. Paykin et al, 2013).
Les NH classifiants sont massivement dérivés de verbes (assassin, traître) et, pour la plupart, suffixés en –eur (voleur, agresseur, menteur) (Cf.
Roy et Soare 2010), ce qui n’est pas le cas des NH qualifiants (salaud – sale, canaille appartient à la famille étymologique de chien).
8
Selon l’expression de Milner.
7
56
doivent logiquement être rangés dans la même classe que les « noms B » de Milner 1978 (les « noms A » étant les NH de qualités
comme idiot, salaud), qui est celle des NH objectifs et neutres comme professeur, mari, gendarme.
On peut, pourtant, trouver des arguments en faveur de la distinction entre des NH comme ravisseur et les NH axiologiquement
neutres comme professeur, maçon. Le premier nous est donné par l’(im)possibilité de la paraphrase en commettre (Un ravisseur
ok
commet des rapts vs. *Un maçon commet/ exécute des travaux de menuiserie) qui est liée, de façon générale, à la
présence/absence de sous-prédicats (Gosselin, 2014) qui véhiculent la modalité axiologique négative (le NH violeur par exemple
implique l’idée de violence et le fait que l’acte commis l’est contre la volonté de la victime ; rien de tel avec les NH neutres). Il est
à noter également que le complément, qui correspond à la victime, du nom d’action dérivé en lien avec un NH classifiant négatif,
peut être introduit par les prépositions sur et contre, ce qui n’est pas le cas des noms correspondant aux NH neutres : commettre
un viol sur une jeune fille ; l’agression hitlérienne contre la Pologne vs. un enseignement pour adultes, une vente au bénéfice de
qqn. Ensuite, la structure il peut y avoir des NH s’interprète spontanément comme il risque d’y avoir des NH quand NH est
classifiant « négatif » : Il peut y avoir des ravisseurs/des menuisiers = Il risque d’y avoir des ravisseurs/ ??des menuisiers (Gosselin,
2014). Une autre différence se fait jour quand on examine la compatibilité sémantique des deux classes de NH avec les adjectifs
d’évaluation positive/négative. Une recherche sur Frantext nous a montré que les adjectifs qui co-occurrent avec un NH comme
ravisseur sont tous négatifs : cruel, affreux, infâme, odieux, avide, brutal, et de ce point de vue un parallélisme peut être établi
avec les NH qualifiants qui, comme l’a montré Milner (1978), ne se construisent qu’avec un petit nombre d’adjectifs qui en
9
amplifient l’appréciation négative (cet affreux salaud) . Rien de tel avec les NH neutres : un professeur peut être agréable, juste,
mais aussi affreux, car son sens ne peut pas prévoir l’orientation positive ou négative de l’appréciation (Milner 1978). Enfin, le
contraste entre La direction poursuit l’enseignante de Marie pour l’avoir agressée et ??La direction poursuit le ravisseur de Marie
pour l’avoir enlevée montre la nécessité de distinguer les deux sous-classes de NH. En effet, le prédicat juridique poursuivre (en
justice), quand il reçoit comme COD un NH neutre, semble prévoir un argument de cause qui, s’il n’est pas explicité, est à
restituer du contexte situationnel, alors que si le COD est un NH classifiant négatif, il « incorpore » la cause de la poursuite et
rend, du coup, la mention de l’argument de cause superflue.
Nous sommes donc portés à croire qu’il existe une classe de NH au comportement moralement déviant se subdivisant en des
sous-classes ayant chacune des propriétés linguistiques particulières, mais qui partagent néanmoins le fait d’être en étroite
relation avec l’idée d’action, de comportement nuisible, lequel affecte nécessairement un tiers (ou plusieurs individus). En outre,
notre recherche montre que la modalité axiologique négative associée à un NH ne donne pas toujours lieu à un terme d’insulte,
ce qui pose naturellement la question intrigante des conditions auxquelles un NH doit satisfaire pour prétendre au statut
d’insulte.
Bibliographie sélective
Gosselin, L. (2014). De l’opposition modus/dictum à la distinction entre modalités extrinsèques et modalités intrinsèques. Bulletin
de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, 35.
Gosselin, L. (2015). Les modalités intrinsèques aux NH. Document interne du projet NHUMA.
Gross, G. (1994). Classes d’objets et description des verbes. Langages, 115, 15-31.
Gross, G. (2012). Manuel d’analyse linguistique. Lille : Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.
Milner, J.-Cl. (1978). De la syntaxe à l’interprétation : quantités, insultes, exclamations. Paris : Seuil.
Paykin K., Tayalati F., Van de Velde, D. (2013). Les adjectifs d’évaluation du comportement. Lingvisticae Invenstigationes, 36 :1,
20-55.
Paykin K., Tayalati F., Van de Velde D. (à par.). Les noms d’évaluation de comportement.
Roy I., Soare E. (2012). L’enquêteur, le surveillant et le détenu : les noms déverbaux de participants aux événements, lectures
événementielles et structure argumentale. Lexique, 20, 207-231.
Ruwet, N. (1982). Grammaire des insultes et autres études, Paris : Seuil.
Langue française (2004) 144, Les insultes : approches sémantiques et pragmatiques, D. Lagorgette & P. Larrivée (eds).
FLØGSTAD Guro (Oslo), RODRIGUEZ Louro Celeste (Western Australia). Gauging expansion in synchrony: The perfect in
19th century Rioplatense Spanish
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
Cross-linguistic grammaticalization studies of tense and aspect have identified a unidirectional diachronic semantic development
from resultative (Latin), to perfect (English), to perfective (standard spoken French), to past (Southern German). This
development involves a gradual change from a resultative periphrasis to an perfect (Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca, 1994: 52). In the
final stages of perfect-to-perfective grammaticalization the current relevance nuance is lost and the focus remains with the past
action itself.
Contemporary Spanish varieties are located at different points in the perfect-to-perfective cline (Howe, 2013), with Peninsular
Spanish making further inroads into the grammaticalization process (Schwenter, 1994) and Latin American varieties such as
Rioplatense showing a preference for various non-perfect periphrases (e.g. acabar de) and the Pretérito Perfecto Simple (‘Simple
9
Faute de place, nous n’examinons pas ici la position syntaxique exacte de ces adjectifs et l’interprétation qui en découle.
57
th
Past’; henceforth PPS). Rodríguez Louro (2009, chapter 6) documents a systematic decrease in PPC usage from 46% in the 19
th
st
century to 24% in the 20 century, to a mere 10% in the 21 century.
th
In this paper, we offer a synchronic analysis of the Pretérito Perfecto Compuesto (‘Present Perfect’; henceforth PPC) in 19
century Rioplatense Spanish. Qualitative analyses of an original 37,007-word corpus consisting of postcolonial newspapers,
magazines, official documents (Rodríguez Louro, 2009, chapter 4) and plays (Sánchez, 1880 [1996]), indicate that the PPC was
th
expanding in 19 century Rioplatense. This functional expansion is most acutely exemplified in the use of the PPC in contexts
where present-day Rioplatense Spanish would prefer the PPS (examples 1 and 2). Our analysis focuses on the expression of
hodiernality and hesternality in the historical sources. The distinction between hodiernal and hesternal meaning is frequently
grammaticalized in the languages of the world. Hodiernal past reference locates the event “not more than one day away”;
hesternal reference encodes situations that occurred “more than one day away” (Dahl, 1985: 125).
HODIERNAL
(1) ..como también armaron a la Gobernadora, que ya hoy ha quedado en Guayaquil. (Rodríguez Louro, 2009: 164)
‘…as they also assembled the Gobernadora which has today remained in Guayaquil.’
(2) ¿Es que se ha levantao hoy mi vieja con el naranjo torcido? (Sánchez, 1880 [1996]: 40)
‘Has my old lady got up in a bad mood this morning?’
HESTERNAL
(3) Ayer les ha sido pasada por el secretario del Jury de enjuiciamiento [...] la siguiente invitacion a los miembros del
mismo. (Rodríguez Louro, 2009: 170)
‘The following invitation has been passed to the members of the Judiciary yesterday.’
(4) ¿Lo han visto anoche? (Sánchez, 1880 [1996]: 45)
‘Did you see him last night?’
Schwenter (1994) has argued that temporal distance determines the use of the PPC in Peninsular Spanish as a hodiernal past
perfective to refer to same day past situations and situations which are still currently ongoing (e.g. Hoy me he despertado pronto
‘Today I have woken up early’). Because recent situations are consistently reported in the PPC in Peninsular Spanish, this
somehow leads to the inference that the PPC encodes recent past, which in turn triggers the erosion of the current relevance
interpretation attached to this form. Importantly, because most of the reported recent past events occur on the same day, a
second inference arises, namely that the PPC must be used to refer to same day situations. Schwenter also argues that the PPC
extends to encode hodiernal situations further removed from the recent past and that, once this form is established as a
hodiernal past it will extend beyond hodiernal contexts to encode perfective situations, thus replacing the PPS. Serrano (1994)
shows that the PPC is used in Madrid Spanish to encode past perfectivity: the PPC collocates with specific temporal adverbials
such as ayer ‘yesterday’, as in Ayer hemos celebrado una reunión con todos los alumnos del colegio ‘Yesterday we (have) met up
with all of the students in the school’ (Serrano, 1994: 49).
Hodiernal contexts are key to the expansion of the PPC (Schwenter, 1994) but they are irrelevant to an understanding of the
present-day Rioplatense PPC: hodiernality is wholly encoded via the PPS in this variety (Rodríguez Louro, 2009). This change has
th
taken place within the last 120 years; current relevance was encoded through the PPC at the turn of the 20 century (Fløgstad,
th
2014: 117). If a category’s use in hodiernal contexts is germane to accounting for perfect expansion, then it follows that the 19
century Rioplatense PPC – amply documented in hodiernal and hesternal contexts, and exemplified in (1) and (2), should
continue on its path towards further expansion. However, longitudinal data (e.g. Rodríguez Louro, 2009) indicate that the usage
th
frequency of the Rioplatense PPC steadily decreases from the 19 century onwards, and that it is currently reserved to encode
indefinite past. We discuss the implications of this halted grammaticalization process and its role in understanding language
change.
References
Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins & William Pagliuca (1994). The evolution of grammar: The grammaticalization of tense, aspect, and
modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dahl, Östen (1985). Tense and aspect systems. New York: Basil Blackwell.
Fløgstad, Guro Nore (2014). The expansion of the Preterit in Rioplatense Spanish: Contact induced? In Åfarlí, T. A. & Maehlum,
B. (Eds.), The sociolinguistics of grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 117–135.
Howe, Chad (2013). The Spanish Perfects: Pathways of emergent meaning. Eastbourne, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rodríguez Louro, Celeste (2009). Perfect evolution and change: A sociolinguistic study of Preterit and Present Perfect usage in
contemporary and earlier Argentina. University of Melbourne: PhD thesis.
Sánchez, Florencio (1880 [1996]). M’hijo el dotor. Buenos Aires: Editorial Huemul.
Schwenter, Scott (1994). The grammaticalization of an anterior in progress: Evidence from a peninsular Spanish dialect. Studies in
Language 18: 71–111.
Serrano, María José (1994). Del pretérito indefinido al pretérito perfecto: Un caso de cambio y gramaticalización en el español de
Canarias y Madrid. Lingüística española actual XVI: 37–57.
58
FRADIN Bernard (LLF ; CNRS). Sound denoting verbs and their nominalizations
[email protected]
1. Introduction Levin (Levin 1993) and subsequent works (Goldberg 1995; Roșca 2012; Levin 2000; Lupsa 2001) have shown that
sound emission verbs can exhibit the following constructions in satellite-framed languages (Talmy 2000):
(1) causative-inchoative alternation I buzzed the bell / The bell buzzed,
(2) resultative construction She snapped her briefcase open,
(3) intransitive directional construction The frog plopped into the pond,
(4) locative alternation Birds sang in the trees / The trees sang with birds.
Fewer constructions are observed in verb-framed languages however. French for instance, in addition to (5) only allows
constructions (6) and (7).
(5) plain intransitive: These dogs bark continuously / Ces chiens aboient sans arrêt.
(6) mode of saying construction: NP0 V NP1[content] e.g. fra Le public glapissait des insultes ‘The public was yelping
insults’
(7) cause PP construction: NP0 V PP1, where PP1 gives the cause of the event e.g. fra Elle hurle de rage ‘She screams
from anger’, He growled in fury and frustration.
Beavers, Levin and Tham (2010) recently argued that the three-way distinction between satellite-framed, verb-framed and
equipollent framed constructions (Slobin 2000) is problematic both descriptively and theoretically. They demonstrate that the
way of encoding manner and path depends on the set of lexical, morphological, and syntactic devices available in the language in
question.
In keeping with this view, the proposed communication tries to disentangle the verb lexical meaning from what has to be
imputed to constructions qua grammatical patterns of the language in question. It aims first at properly characterizing the lexical
content of these verbs, and second at seeing how this content allows us to account for the meaning of their nominalization
(NZN).
2. Sound emission verbs Taking advantage of insights in (Lupsa 2001) and (Ma & Mc Kevitt 2005), I propose a finer-grained
classification than (Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1995) for these verbs. Two main issues are addressed: the semantic description of
sounds and the classification of sound emission Vs. As for the first, it is shown that sound decomposition can be modeled on the
model of Path decomposition (Weisgerber 2007). Three types of information have to be differentiated, depending on whether it
bears upon (A) the anchoring of the sound in the world e.g. its source, (B) its physical qualities, or (C) the qualities the perceiver
attributes to it. As for the second issue, two parameters prove to be relevant for their classification: (I) the origin of the sound
and (II) the directness of emission. Entity-based sound denoting Vs (Ia) are those for which the sound is emitted by a typical and
well identified source (animal, object) e.g. fra glapir 'to yelp' subject = fox; event-based sound denoting Vs (Ib) denote a sound
produced in the course of an event involving specific participants and sub-events e.g. fra grésiller 'to sizzle', eng to clatter;
onomatopeic sound denoting Vs (Ic), where the sound produced is identical to a conventional prosodic melody e.g. fra
glouglouter 'to gurgle' = 'produce the sound [gluglu]', eng hiss.
My classifiying of sound emission verbs is based on two tests. T1 discriminates between Vs that may denote a sound emission
and those that may not. T2 tells apart Vs which are direct sound emission Vs from others. These tests yield a threefold
classification: Vs of direct sound emission, which denote a sound emission event e.g. fra glapir, glouglouter, grésiller, eng gurgle,
sizzle, bark, clatter; Vs of indirect sound emission, which denote an event causing a sound emission event to occur; these include
many types: impact or contact Vs e.g. to hammer, to rattle, Vs involving a bodily event e.g. to yawn, to gasp, or a liquid or
gaseous medium e.g. to splash, to flutter; and finally Vs extraneous to sound emission (to shine, to shiver).
3. Sound denoting NZNs The fact that Ns can denote events whereas Vs cannot denote objects entails that no verbs directly
denotes a sound (sounds fail tests of eventhood). Hence verbs like fra glapir, glouglouter, eng tweet, clank, etc. always denote
an event ei of emitting sound z. On the model of ordinary nominalizations, NZNs derived from directly sound denoting Vs are
expected to denote the event of emitting sound z. But this is not the case e.g. (8) Le glapissement des renards 'the yelp of foxes'
= the sound foxes produce, not the event of producing. This is so because the sound realizes the event. On the other hand, when
the NZN derives from an indirect sound denoting V, it can denote either an event e.g. (9) Le frottement a usé la corde 'the
rubbing wore the rope away' or a sound e.g. (10) Le frottement de la chaîne l'a réveillé 'the rubbing of the chain made him
awaken'. The point is that this interpretation always arises through coercion (Asher 2011; Pustejovsky 1995) triggered here by
the V 'X réveiller Y' as (10) illustrates. The issue of coercion for sound denoting Vs is discussed in detail and a list of coercive cotexts is provided. It should be noted that coercion goes both ways: NZNs based on direct sound denoting V can be coerced to
denote an event e.g. (11) Le glapissement se produit toutes les 5 mn 'yelping occurs every 5 m'. As for complementation, the
59
impossility of (12) *?Un glapissement d’insultes ‘an insults yelping’ facing (13) Un hurlement de rage ‘a scream from anger’ is
argued to follow from the metaphorical nature of the complement in (6).
References:
Asher Nicholas. 2011. Lexical Meaning in Context. A web of words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Beavers John, Beth Levin & Shiao Wei Tham. 2010. "The typology of motion expressions revisited". Journal of Linguistics 46
(2):331-377.
Goldberg Adele E. 1995. Constructions. A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.
Levin Beth. 1993. English Verb Classes and Alternations. Chicago / London: The University of Chicago Press.
Levin Beth. 2000. "Aspect, Lexical Semantics Representation, and Argument Expression". In BLS, Vol. 26, Conathan L. J., J.
Good, D. Kavitskaya, A. B. Wulf & A. C. L. Yu (eds). 413-429. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistic Society.
Levin Beth & Malka Rappaport Hovav. 1995. Unaccusativity. At the Syntax-lexical Semantic Interface. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Lupsa Daniela. 2001. The Unergativity of Verbs of Motion. Sendai: Tohoku University.
Ma Minhua & Paul Mc Kevitt. 2005. "Lexical Semantics and Auditory Presentation in Visual Storytelling". In ICAD 05 Eleventh
Meeting of the International Conference on Auxiliary Display. 358-363. Limerick, Ireland, July 6-9, 2005.
Pustejovsky James. 1995. The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.
Roșca Andreea. 2012. "Why *Sarah cannot glow the light bulb? accounting for the constructional behavior of light and sound
emission verbs". Revue roumaine de linguistique LVII (1):67-82.
Slobin Dan I. 2000. "Verbalized events: A dynamic approach to linguistic relativity". In Evidence for linguistic relativity,
Niemeier S. & R. Dirven (eds). 107-138. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Talmy Leonard. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics. 2 vols. Vol. 2. Typology and Process in Concept Structuring. Cambridge /
London: The MIT Press.
Weisgerber Matthias. 2007. Decomposing Path Shapes: About an Interplay of Manner of Motion and 'the Path'. University of
Konstanz.
FRETHEIM Thorstein (Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige). Constructional meaning as a constraint on the pragmatic
interpretation of two cognate verbs of thinking, Norwegian tenke and Swedish tänka, compared to English think
[email protected]
English (1b) invites the implicature that the speaker is determined to get to the train station on time and has a plan for how to
achieve this. (1a) expresses the speaker’s hope, nothing more.
(1)
a. I hope that I’ll catch the train at eight o’clock.
b. I hope to catch the train at eight o’clock.
The English verb think is an activity verb and so are its Norwegian and Swedish cognates tenke and tänka. Unlike think, the
Scandinavian verbs also license an infinitival DO complement. This alternative prompts inference leading to a mental
representation of the matrix verb as telic, as shown in the English glossings of Norwegian (2) and Swedish (3). The subject
referent intends to bring about the eventuality that the embedded complement designates.
(2)
(3)
a. Jeg har tenkt at jeg blir kvitt denne forkjølelsen.
‘I have thought that I’ll get rid of this cold.’
b. Jeg har tenkt å bli kvitt denne forkjølelsen.
I have thought to get rid this
cold-DEF
‘I intend to get rid of this cold.’ / ‘I’m going to get rid of this cold.’
a. Jag tänker att jag hinner med tåget klockan åtta.
‘I suppose that I’ll catch the train at eight o’clock.’
b. Jag tänker hinna med tåget
klockan åtta.
I think get.time with train-DEF clock-DEF eight
‘I’m planning to catch the train at eight o’clock.’
The Norwegian non-finite complement construction in (2b) requires the present perfect or pluperfect form of the matrix verb,
but there is no similar tense condition in Swedish.
The semantic constraint that the infinitival complement structures in (2)-(3) are responsible for is not generalizable to other
lexical verbs that license either type of DO complement in Norwegian or Swedish, so the mechanism that triggers the intended
pragmatic inference must be specified at the lexical level. While (1b) just implicates that the speaker is taking measures to catch
the train, the infinitival complement constructions in (2b) and (3b) have the inherent ability to cause the hearer to modify the
explicitly communicated truth-conditional content of those utterances. The syntactic form triggers pragmatic inference of the
pre-semantic sort (François Recanati, 2010: Truth-conditional pragmatics, OUP). My approach to the analysis of the data
presented is based on the hypothesis that truth conditions supplied to mentally represented explicit content are often inferred,
not encoded. In pragmatic theory, conceptual modification of a lexical item may be due to ‘free pragmatic enrichment’ in the
60
sense of Relevance Theory, or may be an instance of ‘saturation’ (of an indexical) by virtue of pragmatic transfer of a concept
from a discourse antecedent. However, the strengthening of the concept THINK to the concept INTEND exemplified in (2b)-(3b)
is not free from the effect of local linguistic input, it depends on it; nor is it due to truth-conditional saturation, because a truthevaluable proposition would be expressed even if the hearer failed to observe the construction-based strengthening rule.
Drawing on Relevance Theory, I distinguish between ‘conceptual semantics’ and ‘procedural semantics’. The infinitival
complement constructions described in my paper instruct the hearer to strengthen the conceptual semantics of the matrix verbs
tenke and tänka in accordance with an encoded recipe for how to manipulate their lexical semantics in the inferential processing
phase. The encoded instruction guides the hearer to the formation of a mental representation of the utterance’s explicitly
communicated content.
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G
GERARDIN Hélène (Inalco). L’antipassif géorgien et ses interactions avec le TAM
[email protected]
L’objet de cette communication est de présenter les emplois de la construction antipassive en géorgien et d’illustrer leurs
interactions avec le temps, l’aspect et le mode (TAM). L’étude s’appuie sur des données de première main recueillies sur le
terrain.
L’antipassif est défini comme une construction dans laquelle la mise en retrait syntaxique (marquage oblique ou suppression) du
terme patientif d’une construction transitive s’accompagne d’une marque dans le verbe (Polinsky 2011 ; Dixon 1994 : 146). Cette
transformation est illustrée par l’exemple (1), où le patient kimitʔ-ən est destitué et marqué à l’instrumental, tandis que la forme
verbale devient uniactancielle et prend le préfixe ine- d’antipassif :
(1)
[Tchouktche : Kozinsky & al. (1988: 652), in WALS]
a. ʔaaček-a
kimitʔ-ən
ne-nlʔetet-ən.
jeune-ERG
charge-ABS
3PL.SUJ-porter-AOR.3SG.OBJ
« Les jeunes hommes emportèrent un/le chargement. » (TRANSITIF)
b. ʔaaček-ət
ine-nlʔetet-gʔe-t
kimitʔ-e.
jeune-ABS
ANTI-porter-AOR.3SG.SUJ- charge-INSTR
« Les jeunes hommes emportèrent un/le chargement. » (ANTIPASSIF)
Une des fonctions de l’antipassif semble être de faire accéder le participant agentif de la construction transitive à certaines
propriétés syntaxiques qui sont réservées à l’unique actant de la construction intransitive (Dixon 1994 : 148 ; Creissels 2006 : 86).
Dans cette communication, nous montrerons que ce facteur n’existe pas en géorgien, où prévaut la motivation aspectuelle.
Le système aspecto-temporel du géorgien est à première vue construit mutatis mutandis sur le même modèle que le système
russe, temps perfectifs et imperfectifs se distinguant respectivement par la présence ou l’absence de préverbe :
(2)
v-c’er « j’écris » [présent] >
v-c’er-d-i « j’écrivais » [imparfait] >
da-v-c’er « j’écrirai » [futur]
da-v-c’er-d-i « j’écrirais » [conditionnel]
Le géorgien ne permet pas de distinguer dans une macro-catégorie qu’on pourrait appeler « présent » des nuances aspectomodales de type itératif, habituel, conatif. Or, c’est le présent et les deux temps qui en sont dérivés morpho-syntaxiquement,
l’imparfait et le subjonctif imperfectif, qui permettent la dérivation antipassive.
Nous commencerons par présenter la construction antipassive en géorgien, illustrée par l’exemple (3). Dans cet exemple, le
patientif mic’a-s, second actant de la construction transitive (3)a. et élément obligatoire de la valence du verbe čičkn-i-s, est
destitué, pouvant être soit marqué comme circonstant au cas locatif, soit être totalement supprimé de la construction. La forme
verbale prend le préfixe i- et le suffixe -eb. La simple suppression du patient sans marquage antipassif de la forme verbale est
agrammaticale. Sémantiquement, la construction antipassive en (3)b. apporte à l’énoncé une nuance conative :
(3)
a.
b.
glex-i
mic’a-s
čičkn-i-s.
paysan-NOM terre-ACC creuser-TRANS-3SG
« Le paysan creuse la terre. »
glex-i
(mic’a-ši)
i-čičkn-eb-a.
paysan-NOM
(terreANTI-creuser-ANTI-3SG
LOC)
« Le paysan creuse dans la terre. »
*glex-i čičkn-i-s.
Nous étudierons ensuite les emplois de l’antipassif. Ceux-ci sont liés en premier lieu à une diminution de l’altération ou à une
déréférentialisation du patient, ce qui a des conséquences aspectuelles. Seront ainsi passées en revue les différentes
interprétations aspecto-modales de l’antipassif : conatif (3), duratif (4), habituel (5), et enfin, un type d’emploi qui combine de
l’aspect et de la modalité et qu’on pourrait nommer générique ou virtuel, illustré en (6) :
Duratif :
(4)
k’oridor-ši
i-dg-a
da
couloir-LOC
AO-être_debout-3SG et
« Il était dans le couloir et proférait des insultes. »
i-lanʒγ-eb-od-a.
ANTI-insulter-ANTI-IMPF-3SG
mama-šen-i-c
sač’e-s-tan?
Habituel :
(5)
i-gin-eb-a
62
père-POSS2SG-NOMANTI-injurier-ANTIaussi
3SG
« Ton père aussi jure au volant ? »
volant-DAT-APUD
Générique/virtuel :
č’inč’ar-i
i-susx-eb-a.
ortie-NOM
ANTI-brûler-ANTI-3SG
« Les orties piquent. »
(6)
L’antipassif ne se rencontre pas à tous les temps. La plupart des verbes qui peuvent s’employer à l’antipassif n’attestent que des
formes de présent, d’imparfait et de subjonctif imperfectif. Il existe toutefois des verbes qui ont des formes antipassives
perfectives. Ce sont des verbes dénominaux, dérivés de la racine du patientif de la construction transitive correspondante. C’est
un type particulier d’incorporation, illustré dans l’exemple (7). La forme verbale a-i-barg-a (< barg-i « bagage ») a
sémantiquement deux participants mais le second est contenu dans la racine verbale :
(7)
levan-i
Lévane-NOM
a-i-barg-a
PV-ANTIfaire_ses_bagages-3SG
« Lévane ramassa ses affaires et s’en alla. »
da
et
c’a-vid-a.
PV-aller.AO-3SG
Les formes antipassives perfectives se rencontrent en premier lieu à l’impératif et à l’optatif. Elles sont cependant
exceptionnelles, l’antipassif étant avant tout réservé à l’imperfectif.
Bibliographie indicative
AUTHIER Gilles & HAUDE Katharina eds., Ergativity, Valency and Voice, Empirical approaches to language typology 48,
Mouton DeGruyter, Berlin, 2012
CREISSELS Denis, Syntaxe générale, une introduction typologique (tomes I et II), Hermes Science Publications, Paris, 2006
DIXON R.M.W. & AIKHENVALD Alexandra éds., Changing Valency, Case studies in transitivity, (en particulier l’introduction),
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000
DIXON R.M.W, Ergativity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994
HOPPER Paul & THOMPSON Sandra, « Transitivity in grammar and discourse », in Language 56(2): pp. 251-299, 1980
LAZARD Gilbert, « Formes et fonctions du passif et de l’antipassif », in Actances 2, pp. 7-58, 1986
POLINSKY Maria, « Antipassive constructions », in The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, Dryer Matthew S. &
Haspelmath Martin éds., Max Planck Digital Library. (http://wals.info/), Munich, 2011
TUITE Kevin, « Liminal morphosyntax: Georgian deponents and their kin », in Chicago Linguistics Society, n° 39 #1, Chicago,
2007, pp. 774-788
ǮORBENAƷE Besarion, zmnis gvaris pormata c’armoebisa da punckiis sak’itxebi kartulši (Problèmes de formation et fonction
des formes de la voix en géorgien), Presses Universitaires de Tbilissi, Tbilissi, 1975
ƔVINAƷE Tinatin, kartuli zmnis vnebiti gvaris pormata st’ilist’ik’a (Stylistique des formes à la voix passive en géorgien), Institut
de Linguistique et Académie des Sciences de la RSS de Géorgie, Mecniereba, Tbilissi, 1989.
GOSSELIN Laurent (Rouen) : Modalités appréciatives et axiologiques
GUERON Jacqueline (Paris 3), VOGELEER Svetlana (Louvain). On the interaction of syntax and semantics in the construal
of modal sentences
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
1. The issue
Sentences containing modal verbs manifest various “flavors” of modality - epistemic, deontic, metaphysical, etc. The question of
the syntactic structure(s) underlying modal construals is still open, however. Are different construals associated with different
overt or covert (Logical Form: LF) structures or not? Some studies propose that modal verbs construed epistemically are situated
above syntactic Tense or Aspect nodes while root modals are merged below these nodes (cf. especially Hacquard 2006). Others
pose a single structure in which a covert LF raising operation changes modal flavor. For Condoravdi (2002), the Counterfactual
(CF) in (1b) is derived by covert raising of Perfect Aspect, positioned below the Modal in syntax, to a position above it in LF.
(1)
a.
b.
John might have won (I don't know)
John might have won (but he didn't)
[MOD > T / ASP]
[ASP (PERF) > MOD]
(epistemic)
(CF)
Hacquard (2006) identifies Modals and Aspect as quantifiers over worlds. The Actuality Entailment (AE) associated with (2b),
according to which the prejacent (the core situation) is situated in the actual world, is derived by raising Perfective Aspect to a
position above a circumstantial modal merged below Aspect in syntax. In (2a) Imperfective Aspect blocks raising by situating the
prejacent in a non-actualized world.
63
(2)
a.
b.
Hier, Marie pouvait prendre le train (mais elle ne l'a pas fait).
(Hier,) Marie a pu prendre le train (??mais elle ne l'a pas fait).
Such studies tweak the syntax to accommodate the semantics by proposing covert movement for which there is no evidence
other than the interpretation itself. Moreover, the supporting data is weak. Condoravdi's analysis of (1b) does not work in
French or in Spanish (Laca 2012). Nor is (2b) necessarily associated with an AE in French (eliminating hier in (2b) favors a non-AE
construal). Finally, Perfect is a complex structure in English and French which cannot undergo Head Movement (Homer 2010).
We argue for a simpler model of grammar in which modal verbs have a single lexical entry and a single syntactic position in both
syntax and LF. Variations in construal are due to the interaction of independently motivated grammatical mechanisms such as
syntactic raising, “reconstruction” of nominals under construal, tense, aspect and mood morphemes, “theta-role” assignment,
and modes of discourse.
2. Basic assumptions
(i) Modal verbs are lexically stative verbs, not only quantifiers over worlds.
(ii) A simple sentence has the hierarchical structure in (3). The Complementiser Phrase (CP), contains the Speech or
Reference Time morpheme while Tense Phrase (TP) contains the Event Time morpheme. « Little » vP is the locus of a subject
selected by the VP which denotes the core situation. The Modal projection is located directly under Tense (or under NEG Phrase
if present).
(3)
[CP [TP ([NEGP) [MP [vP [VP]] ] (]) ] ]
(iii) Modal verbs are unaccusative verbs which select a complement denoting a situation but no subject (cf. Wurmbrand
1999).
(iv) Aspect (in Romance) is not a syntactic projection but a formal feature/ morpheme lexically merged with a finite V and
which raises with V to T in syntax.
(v) Theta-role assignment is not limited to the vP domain.
The canonical construals of modality belong to «discours» rather than «histoire» (Benveniste 1966) and thus imply a speaker.
3. Claim
The tense and aspect morphemes merged with a modal verb are interpreted, as with any verb, in situ (cf. Mari & Martin 2007,
Homer 2010). In French, where the modal is inflected for tense, the possibility or necessity modality denoted by the verb is
indissociable from the modalized situation. A modal state of possibility or necessity not yet situated in the discourse world may
be termed alethic (cf. Mari 2012).
At the first stage of the interpretation, the modal is simply a stative verb. Like any other finite semi-auxiliary situated between vP
and TP, such as aspectual commencer, causative faire, or perceptual voir, it selects a non-finite complement denoting a situation.
After V raises to T in syntax, (4a) is associated with the syntactic structure (4b) (e an empty place marker) and the core semantic
structure (4c). (4c) says that there exists a state s in the actual world w* such that s is a state of possibility of the situation
"Paul-manger-un-sandwich" and the temporal trace τ(s) of s includes the Speech Time t*.
(4) a.
b.
c.
Paul peut manger un sandwich.
[TP e T+pouvoirv [MP tv [vP Paul [VP manger un sandwich]]] ]
∃s in w* [pouvoir(P.-manger-un-sandwich), s] & τ(s) ⊇ t*
Then, the situation vP denotes is placed at a point in time calculated with respect to the modal time as a function of its lexical
aspect; this point is posterior for events, simultaneous for states, and anterior with a « perfect » complement.
The subject is raised from Spec vP to Spec TP. Then the epistemic or deontic « flavor » of the modality depends on whether or
not the raised subject receives a form of Benefactive theta-role implying obligation or permission. This « extra » non-selected
theta-role, already proposed in Zubizarreta (1982) and Vikner (1988), is neither an implicature nor a deus ex machina. Rather,
the Benefactive stalks the grammar like the ghost of Hamlet's father. It is a locative element with a [+human] feature which
functions as a «Ground» for unaccusative sentences which define a possessive, psych or mental «Figure» in VP: cf. Russian «Mne
grustno» ('to_me.DAT (is) sad'), German « Mir ist kalt » ('to_me.DAT is cold'), French « Cela m'ennuie » or « il me semble que...».
It acquires a dynamic function in causative «Jean fait [lire un livre] à Marie». It is the obligatory binder of an anaphoric body-part
NP in «Je lui prends la main»/ «La tête me tourne». The coexistence in Shakespearean English of «it likes (i.e.pleases) me not»
and «I like it not» shows that a Benefactive may show up in syntax as a Nominative subject as well as a dative or oblique
nominal.
When we interpret (4a) as deontic, we add to (4b) and (4c) a specification which says that Paul is Beneficiary of the modal state
«pouvoir-manger-un-sandwich» as well as Agent of the VP event «manger un sandwich» (cf. (4b') and (4c') below). At the TP/CP
level of construal, the modal quantifies over worlds. (4c') says that there exists at least one possible world w' which belongs to a
set of worlds accessible from the actual world w*, in which there exists a situation e where Paul is Agent, and there exists a
64
series of adjacent temporal points t',t",… included in the temporal trace of the situation e (t',t",… ⊆ τ(e)) whose initial point t' is
posterior to the reference point t* of the modal state (cf. Bhatt 1999).
[VP manger un sandwich]]]]
(4) b'. [TP Pauli T+pouvoirv [MP tv [vP ti
BENEF.
AGENT
c'. ∃s in w* [pouvoir(P.-manger-un-sandwich), s] & τ(s) ⊇ t* & Benef (s, Paul) &
∃w' ∈ Acc (w',w*) [∃e in w' (P-manger-un-sandwich, e) & Agent (e, Paul) &
∃t',t",… (t',t",… ⊆ τ(e)) {t' > t*}]
In (4b') a single argument receives the BENEFACTIVE theta-role in TP without losing the AGENT role assigned in vP, suggesting
that information is added but never lost during a syntactic derivation.
If the subject in Spec TP does not receive a theta-role (that is, whenever modal time and event time are simultaneous or involve
a «futurate» event construal) modality is epistemic (= Paul peut être en train de manger un sandwich en ce moment). The
accessibility of the event in the discourse world then depends on the implied discovery of concrete traces of a situation which
provide indirect evidence for its existence (cf. von Fintel & Gillies 2010). In the epistemic construal (5), in which the core modal
meaning is the same as in (4c), the modal quantifies over worlds. The second line of (5) says that there exists at least one
possible world w' which belongs to a set of worlds accessible from the actual world w*, in which there exists a (progressive)
state s' such that s' is « Paul-(être-en-train-de)-manger-un-sandwich », and whose temporal trace (s') includes t*. The raised
subject is construed only in the lower vP where its theta-role as Agent or Theme of the core event is not relevant for the modal
interpretation. It is because modality belongs to a “discours” anchored in the discourse time and world and implying a speaker
that “possibility” in natural language goes beyond logical POSS P or NOT P and implies accessibility at t*.
(5)
a. ∃s in w* [pouvoir(P.-manger-un-sandwich), s] & τ(s) ⊇ t* &
∃w' ∈ Acc (w',w*) [∃s' in w' (Paul-(être-en-train-de)-manger-un-sandwich, s') & τ(s') ⊇ t*]
4. Aspect
We next examine the canonical construal of the French Passé Composé, whose imperfective auxiliary places it in «discours», and
the perfective PC and Passé Simple which belong to «histoire». Both the Actuality Entailment and the Counterfactual construal
depend on a perfective construal (but not necessarily on perfective morpho-syntax). Nor does the AE require an agentive subject
(contra Mari 2012): there exist agentless AE sentences (“Le mur a pu resister au choc”) which, like agentless deontic sentences,
simply imply a Benefactive argument in context (“Le mur doit résister aux chocs”).
The fact that the Romance simple past can have an epistemic construal, not only in Italian (Mari 2012), Catalan (Picallo 1990),
and Spanish (Laca 2012), but also in French illustrates a paradoxical albeit frequent intrusion of «discours» inside «histoire».
Selected References:
Bhatt, R. (1999), Covert Modality in Non-finite Contexts, PhD Thesis, University of Pennsylvania.
Condoravdi, C. (2002), Temporal interpretation of modals: Modals for the present and for the past, in Beaver, D. et al., eds, The
Construction of Meaning, Stanford, CSLI, 59-88.
von Fintel, K. & Gillies, A. (2010), Must...stay...strong, NLS 18(4): 351-383.
Hacquard, V. (2006), Aspects of Modality, PhD Thesis, MIT.
Homer, V. (2010), Epistemic modals: High ma non troppo, NELS 40.
Laca, B. (2012), On modal tenses and tensed modals, Cahiers Chronos 25,163-198.
Mari, A. (2012), Pouvoir au passé compose: effet épistémique et lecture habilitative, in Saussure (de) & L .& Rhis, A. Etudes de la
sémantique et pragmatique françaises, Peter Lang, 67-100.
Mari, A. & Martin, F. (2007), Tense, abilities and actuality entailment, Actes du 16ème Amsterdam Colloquium, 151-156. Picallo,
C. (1990), Modal verbs in Catalan, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8: 285-312.
Vikner, S. (1988), Modals in Danish and event expressions, Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax.
Wurmbrand, S. (1999), Modal verbs must be raising verbs, WCCFL 18: 599-612. Zubizaretta, M.-L. (1982), On the Relationship
of the Lexicon to Syntax, PhD Thesis, MIT.
GUIRAUD Florence (Montpellier). Le présent de l’indicatif comme marqueur dialogique d’un discours rapporté chez des
élèves allophones
[email protected]
Nous proposons d’étudier l’usage du Présent de l’indicatif dans le discours de jeunes apprenants du français en contexte
scolaire, au cours de leurs premiers mois à l’école française. Leur production langagière de niveau A1/A2 (Coste et alii, 2001,
CECR) se situe encore à l’intérieur d’un espace interlinguistique (Sauvage &Guiraud 2014) ou interlangue (Selinker,1972) dans
lequel ils évoluent en acquisition du français langue seconde Dans la situation d’apprentissage que nous rapportons ici,
l’observation au long cours puis l’analyse de différents segments discursifs laissent apparaitre un emploi récurent de formes
verbales s’apparentant morphologiquement au Présent. En effet, même lorsqu’il s’agit de rapporter des faits passés le jeune
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apprenant allophone a recours à des tournures syntaxiques d’apparence polyphoniques et dans lesquelles le Présent est porteur
d’une instruction temporelle neutre.
Pour inscrire le procès dans le temps, le locuteur-apprenant utilise des circonstants temporels explicites déictiques ou
anaphoriques, qu’il prend soin de placer dans le cotexte. Ce type d’énoncé implique de façon indirecte l’interlocuteur qui au
moment même de l’interaction langagière doit reconstituer par négociation de sens, la valeur temporelle de l’énoncé.
Ainsi, dans la sphère d’échange que constitue l’oral communicationnel en contexte scolaire, on observe l’usage fréquent du
Présent de l’indicatif. L’observation de la matérialité discursive de leurs énoncés au niveau microsyntaxique révèle l’emploi
récurrent de formes verbales qui pourraient s’apparenter en première analyse à des emplois fautifs.
(i) - Ta maman est partie au Maroc ?
- Oui je pars au Maroc mardi et je viens vendredi
(ii) Mon père, je pars demain (Présent+locuteur et énonciateur ne coréfèrent pas).
(iii) Une fois en Italie je travaille bien (usage du présent +marqueur temporel passé)
Or l’option explicative de la non-maitrise de l’usage morphosyntaxique de la forme verbale adéquate, n’est pas totalement
satisfaisante. En effet, cette seule analyse ne couvre pas tous les faits discursifs et ne semble pas rendre compte de façon
satisfaisante des différents emplois énonciatifs du Présent que l’on peut rencontrer dans ces interactions langagières.
Nous tenterons dans cette étude de développer les options explicatives suivantes :
Présent et espace interlinguistique
Dans cet espace interlinguistique dans lequel se situe l’apprenant à ce moment de son acquisition, le Présent étant non marqué
morphologiquement, son radical porterait une valeur signifiante suffisante. Sa forme simple éveille dans l'esprit l'image même
du verbe dans son déroulement (Guillaume, 1929 : 21).Cette forme non marquée offre une grande plasticité d’usage. Il se
compose seulement du radical, accompagné des marques de la personne (Bres, 2006). Or si cette forme est « choisie » par
l’apprenant, c’est sans doute parce qu’elle offre une plus grande lisibilité sémantique. Le radical porteur du sens apparait dans
toute sa clarté, non modifié par une désinence qui l’éloigne de sa forme infinitive originelle.
Présent et Discours Rapporté
L’usage des déictiques « fautifs » + PR semble renvoyer à la présence dialogique d’un énoncé antérieur restitué ici sans
introducteur et avec toutes ses marques déictiques et modales (i), (ii) :
(i) - Ta maman est partie au Maroc ?
- Oui je pars au Maroc mardi et je viens vendredi
→ Enoncé supposé : Maman m’a dit : je pars mardi et je (re)viens vendredi.
(ii) Mon père, je pars demain.
→ Enoncé supposé : Mon père m’a dit : « je pars demain »
A ce moment-là de son apprentissage et avant les étapes de complexification marquées notamment par l’usage des
subordonnées, il semblerait que l’apprenant ait recours au Discours Direct. (Sauvage &Guiraud ,2014). Le présent + Discours
Direct marqueraient le fondement interdiscursif et polyphonique de la production langagière de l’apprenant (BakhtineVolochinov, 1929-77)
L’énonciation d’autrui est ainsi replacée dans le contexte de commentaire réel dont il en conserve toutes les marques déictiques
et modales.
Présent dialogique ?
Au travers de l’utilisation récurrente du discours rapporté et du discours direct notamment, dans les différents tours de paroles,
nous avons ainsi pu remarquer un fonctionnement spécifique de l’emploi des temps verbaux qui pourrait donc s’apparenter, si
on en fait une analyse un peu hâtive, à un « emploi fautif ». En effet les constructions encore maladroites du discours rapporté
laissent apparaitre que les différents syntagmes verbaux ne sont plus porteurs de l’instruction temporelle adéquate en lien avec
la situation de communication du locuteur-énonciateur dans le cadre de discours enchâssés. Une observation plus précise du
contexte social de l’interaction verbale met en évidence le fait qu’en situation de discours rapporté, le temps verbal
fonctionnerait plutôt en écho dialogique avec un autre discours tenu en amont et portant sur le même objet. Ce discours
antérieur portant sa propre instruction temporelle en lien avec sa propre situation de communication, réapparait ainsi dans ce
nouvel énoncé et semble fonctionner comme un recours qui participe pour l’apprenant à la construction de son nouvel énoncé
en langue cible, parfois au détriment de la localisation temporelle (iii) :
(iv) Je dis ma mère… il me dit de faire tant choses à la maison alors je viens pas à l’école aujourd’hui »
Nous postulons que cet énoncé en amont, validé par une autre instance énonciative et chargé de toutes ses marques déictiques
et modales constitue un levier d’acquisition de la langue cible (le Français Langue Seconde).
Si l’on reconnaît au temps verbal deux grandes fonctions : la localisation temporelle, et la saisie aspectuelle, il semblerait que
dans les processus d’acquisition, la deuxième fonction apparaisse parfois en amont de la première.
66
Méthodologie
D’un point de vue méthodologique le corpus est constitué d’enregistrements audio de classe de FLS en situation
d’apprentissage. 2H /enregistrements semaine / 2 années scolaire, ainsi que d’un corpus vidéo d’Elèves allophones
nouvellement arrivés en France en milieu scolaire : 15h d’enregistrement vidéo. Les segments discursifs analysés, sont donc tous
issus de l’oral communicationnel, en classe avec l’adulte enseignant ou entre pairs dans le cadre d’une communication
exolingue.
Résultats attendus :
Nous poserons, dans cette communication, la problématique de l’emploi du Présent non seulement comme porteur d’une
instruction temporelle mais comme marqueur dialogique. Pour l’interlocuteur-récepteur, l’énoncé de l’apprenant laisse parfois
entendre une autre voix perceptible au travers de ce qui pourrait s’apparenter à des erreurs de construction syntaxique. Le
présent porterait la trace d'un autre discours, d'un autre acte de parole. Sa présence matérialiserait le lien, le fil linguistique
avec lequel l'apprenant est relié à d'autres instances énonciatives antérieures et avec lesquelles il a construit le sens. Le présent
serait ici l’expression d’un écho, d’une résonance dialogique d’autres interactions verbales tenues en amont. (Bakhtine 1929/77).
Comme une pierre à l’édifice de la construction syntaxique, cet « élément hétérogène au discours » (Perrin : 2006), semble
constituer un levier sur lequel l’apprenant s’appuie dans son activité d’acquisition de la langue cible. Ainsi dans une perspective
d’exploitation didactique, cet usage du Présent de l’indicatif pourrait constituer une trace linguistique d’un des processus
d’appropriation de la temporalité chez l’apprenant en Français Langue Seconde.
Eléments de bibliographie :
Bakhtine, M., (1929/1977), Le marxisme et la philosophie du langage, Paris, Minuit
Bronckart, JP., (1997), Activité langagière, textes et discours. Pour un interactionnisme socio-discursif, Paris, Delachaux et
Niestlé.
Bres, J., (2009), « Dialogisme et temps verbaux de l’indicatif », Langue Française 163,21-40.
Bres, J. et Nowakowska, A., (2006), « Dialogisme : du principe à la matérialité discursive » in Perrin L. (éd), Le sens et ses voix,
Recherches linguistiques 28, Metz, Université de Metz, 21-48.
Gosselin, L. (2006), « De distinction entre la dimension temporelle de la modalité et la dimension modale de la temporalité »,
Cahiers de Praxématique 47, 21-52
Guillaume G. (1929-70), Temps et verbes. Paris, Champion.
Perrin L. (2006), Le sens et ses voix, Recherches linguistiques 28, Metz, Université de Metz, 21-48.
Porquier R. (1994), « Communication exolingue et contextes d’appropriation : le continuum acquisition/apprentissage ». In
Bulletin VALS/ASLA 59, 159-170.
Sauvage J. (2012), L’enfant et le langage : Une approche dynamique et développementale. Paris, L’harmattan
67
H
HASPELMATH Martin (Max Planck Institute): Form-frequency correspondences in tense, aspect and modality
HATAV Galia (Florida). Perfectivity and Reference-Time Building
[email protected]
Comrie (1976)’s definition of perfectivity as having to do with completeness is agreed upon by most linguists. In this paper, I will
show that completeness is only part of the picture. Connecting the dots between several studies of the Russian aspects (Forsyth
1970, Groenn 2003, Borik 2006, Altshuler 2012, among many others) and the Biblical Hebrew (BH) verb forms (Driver 2004/1892,
Washburn 1994 and mainly Hatav 2004, 2013), I came to the conclusion that perfective clauses are, furthermore, reference-time
(RT) builders.
10
Observing that not only the Russian Perfective but also the Imperfective can denote complete situations (in addition to
incomplete ones), the main challenge of linguists has been to determine the division of labor between the two aspects.
Altshuler (2012) argues that the Russian Imperfective is compatible with the coherence relations of explanation, elaboration,
parallel or background in narratives, but only the Perfective is compatible with the occasion relation, “which establishes a
particular kind of contingency relationship between events” (Altshuler 2012: 39). This explains Forsyth (1970: 9)’s observation
that Perfective verbs in Russian are in general used to express sequence of events, and Groenn (2003)’s claim that in case of
event anaphora/presupposition the Imperfective is the preferred form.
Interestingly, Hatav (2013) shows that the BH verb forms she considers perfective, namely Wayyiqtol and its modal counterpart
Weqatal, are used in similar environments as the Russian Perfective. Furthermore, it is shown that the form Qatal and its modal
counterpart Yiqtol behave like the Russian Imperfective in being used to depict both complete and incomplete situations, which
is why she calls them non-perfective aspects (cf. Groenn 2003 and Borik 2006 for considering the Russian Imperfective to be a
non-perfective aspect). In addition, she observes that there is a form, namely Qotel, which is used only to depict incomplete
ongoing situations, parallel to the English Progressive, which she calls counter-perfective.
In a previous work, Hatav (2004) characterizes the forms she considers perfective in Hatav (2013) to be RT-builders, as opposed
to the other forms, which must rely on the context to provide them with an RT.
Connecting the dots between the studies of Forsyth, Groenn, and Altshuler on the Russian aspect and Hatav’s studies on the BH
verb forms, I suggest that what characterizes perfectivity in language is RT-building. In particular, I argue that perfective clauses
introduce new RTs into the discourse, which means that clauses using some RT introduced previously cannot come in the
perfective. This explains the uses of the Perfective vs. the Imperfective in Russian and the forms in BH.
Since they introduce new RTs into the discourse, perfective clauses move the time forward, so that a series of perfective clauses
would form a sequence together. For the same reason, perfective verbs cannot appear in clauses that do not move the RT
forward, so to depict presupposed, anterior or simultaneous situations, a non-perfective or counter-perfective form must be
used. The Russian examples in (1)–(2) below and the BH examples in (3)–(4) may illustrate. (‘P’ stands for ‘Perfective’ and ‘I’ for
‘Imperfective.)
1.
A:
B:
Krasivo ukrasiliP elku
They decoratedP tree
‘They decorated the [Christmas] tree beautifully.’
Kto ukrašalI/#ukrasilP?
Who decoratedI/P
‘Who decorated it?’ (Groenn 2003: example 278)
Speaker A asserts that the Christmas tree was decorated sometime in the past, establishing an unspecified RT. In other words,
A’s clause introduces a new RT into the conversation, which is why, I argue, its verb is in the Perfective. Once uttered, A’s
statement becomes part of the common ground of the two interlocutors, so when B’s utterance is made it takes A’s statement
to be presupposed. This is why, Groenn argues, the Perfective is infelicitous and B must resort to the Imperfective, even though
the situation referred to has been completed. Explaining Groenn’s generalization, I suggest that the reason B’s presupposed
clause cannot come in the Perfective is due to the fact that it does not introduce a new RT into the conversation but uses the
same RT introduced by A’s statement.
2.
a. V ètoj porternoj ja napisalP pervoe ljubovnoe pis’mo k Vere
In this tavern I writeP first love
letter to Vera
‘In this tavern, I wrote my first love letter to Vera.’
b. PisalI karandašom
writeI pencil-INST
10
I adopt Comrie (1976)’s notation: lower-case for representing the semantic notions (e.g., complete, perfective) vs. title case for the
morphological forms (e.g., Perfective, Imperfective).
68
‘I wrote it in pencil.’ (Forsyth 1970: 86)
Analyzing this example, Altshuler (2012: 65) proposes that (2a) introduced the letter writing but (2b) describes the same event,
elaborating on it. In other words (though Altshuler does not put it this way), (2a) introduces a new RT into the discourse (in
which the new event is included), requiring its verb to come in the Perfective. But since it reports the same event as (2a), (2b)
does not introduce a new RT into the discourse but uses the RT introduced by (2a), which is why it cannot come in the
Perfective; the only available aspect in Russian is the Imperfective. The following BH examples from Hatav (2004) demonstrate
my thesis further.
3.
wayyaaboo malʔak yhwh wayyeešeb taḥat haaʔeelaa ʔašer beʕopraa
comewayyiqtol angel:of God sitwayyiqtol under the-oak that in-Ophrah
ʔašer leyooʔaaš ʔabii
haaʕezrii wegidʕoon bǝnoo ḥoobeeṭ
that to-Joash father(of) the-Ezrite and-Gideon son-his threshqotel
ḥiṭṭiim baggat
wheat in-the-winepress
‘The angel of the LORD came (Wayyiqtol) and sat (Wayyiqtol) under the oak tree at Ophrah which belonged to
Joash the Abiesrite, where his son Gideon was threshing (Qotel) wheat in the winepress.’ (Judges 6:11)
The first two clauses (‘the angel of the LORD came’ and ‘[he] sat’), which are understood to depict complete situations, introduce
a new RT each into the narrative, forming together a temporal sequence. Therefore their verbs are in the perfective form
Wayyiqtol. The third (boldfaced) clause, however, depicts a situation that is understood to be in progress when the other
reported events took place, using their RTs for its temporal interpretation. Hence its verb is in the counter-perfective form Qotel
(and the English translation is in the Progressive).
4.
wayyiqra ʔeloohiim laaʔoor
yoom wǝlaḥoošek
qaaraa laaylaa
callwayyiqtol God
to-the-light day and-to-the-darkness callqatal night
‘God called (Wayyiqtol) the light Day, while/and the darkness He called (Qatal) Night.’ (Genesis 1:5)
As we can see, both clauses in this verse report complete situations, but only the first one comes in the perfective form
Wayyiqtol. According to Hatav (2004), this is due to the fact that only the first clause (‘God called the light Day’) introduces a
new RT into the narrative. The second clause (‘the darkness He called Night’) depicts a situation which is co-temporal with the
situation depicted by the previous clause, so Hatav concludes that it does not introduce a new RT into the discourse but uses the
RT of the first clause for its temporal interpretation. For not building a new RT, the verb form of the second clause cannot come
in the perfective and the biblical narrator resorts to the non-perfective Qatal form.
Hatav (2004) considers /w/ in the forms she considers perfective in Hatav (2013), namely Wayyiqtol and Weqatal, to be a prefix
whose function is to build an RT. If I am right and RT-building is what characterizes perfectivity, we can conclude that /w/ is a
perfective morpheme in BH, and what has been characterized in the literature as perfective prefixes in Russian are actually RTbuilding morphemes.
References
Altshuler, D. 2012. Aspectual Meaning Meets Discourse Coherence: A Look at the Russian Imperfective. Journal of Semantics
29, 39-108.
Borik, O. 2006. Aspect and Reference Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Comrie, B. 1976. Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Driver, S. R. 2004 [1892]. A Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in Hebrew and some other Syntactical Questions, 3rd ed., Eugen,
Oregon.
Forsyth, J. 1970. A Grammar of Aspect: Usage and Meaning in the Russian Verb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Groenn, A. 2003. The Semantics and Pragmatics of the Russian Factual Imperfective. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Department
of Linguistics, University of Oslo, Oslo. Google Scholar.
Hatav, G. 2004. ‘Anchoring World and Time in Biblical Hebrew’, Journal of Linguistics 40: 491-526.
Hatav, G. 2013. ‘Perfectivity: A Three-Way Distinction’, In: S. Paliga (ed.), Romano-Bohemica II; Journal for Central European
Studies, 89-108.
Washburn, D. 1994. ‘Chomsky’s Separation of Syntax and Semantics’, Hebrew Studies XXXV, 27-46.
HAVU Jukka, ȘTIRBU Elenn (Tampere). Romanian and Romance; comparative study on some temporal and aspectual
categories
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
In this paper, which deals with certain properties of the Romanian verbal system compared with those of some other Romance
languages, we consider aspect as an exclusively semantic property, based on cognitive categories whose linguistic manifestations
vary from one language to another (Bertinetto 1986, Croft 2012, Bohnemeyer 2014, and many others).
Most Romance languages call for a bidimensional analysis of aspect and its ontological status. In these languages, lexical and
grammatical aspects are separate but interdependent categories (Bertinetto 1986). The grammatical aspect permits to visualize
69
all past situations, independent from their actional properties, from an external or internal viewpoint (the examples are from
Ibero-Romance lanugages, Spanish and Catalan):
1. El ayuntamiento estuvo en esa esquina. (Sp. The Town Hall was (=perf) in that corner.)
2. Cuando me mudé a esta ciudad, el Ayuntamiento estaba en esa esquina. (Sp. When I moved (=perf) to this city, the
Town Hall was (=imp) in that corner.)
3. Ahir vaig escriure un article. (Cat. Yesterday, I wrote (=perf) an article.)
4. Ahir estava escrivint un article quan em vas trucar. (Cat. Yesterday, I was writing (=progr. imp) an article when you
phoned me.)
5. Ahir vaig estar escrivint un article durant tres hores (però no el vaig acabar / i el vaig acabar amb prou feines). (Cat.
Yesterday, I was writing a letter (=progr. perf) during three hours but did not finish it / and only with a huge effort
succeeded in finishing it.)
The most salient features of the Romanian verbal system are the following:
i) The auxiliaries within the basic paradigm of verbs are unable to carry tense features (Dobrovie-Sorin, 2011:5), am făcut “I have
done/I did” and voi face “I will do” but not *aveam făcut or *voiam face. They have merged with the nominal forms of the main
verb and become proclitic elements, and only some adverbs, e.g. cam, mai, prea, și, tot can be inserted between the auxiliary
and the nominal form of the verb.
ii) In Romanian, the only tense formed by the auxiliary HABĒRE + perfect participle is the Perfect am făcut “I have done/I did”. The
Pluperfect is synthetic, făcusem ”I had done”. This phenomenon is interesting in what comes to the genesis of compound forms
in Romance languages in general.
iii) The auxiliaries of the Perfect, the Future (am făcut, voi face) and the Conditional (aș face) are clitic elements in modern
Romanian instead of being elements of periphrastic forms (in spite of their periphrastic origin in diachrony). The fossilized
enclitic forms (făcut-am) are remnants from an earlier stage of the language (Zafiu 2014).
iv) In spoken language, the Simple Perfect (făcui) is maintained only in Southwestern dialects, where is denotes very recent past.
In written language, the Compound Perfect (am făcut) and the Simple Perfect both are being used in narration ever since the
th
first documents (15 century). In modern Romanian, it is not easy to explain the criteria for the use of the two Perfect forms;
they can occur even in the same sentence.
v) Periphrastic aspectuality is limited essentially to phasal expressions (a începe “to start”, a înceta “to stop” a termina “to
finish”, etc.), to some Future and Future in the Past forms (am să fac; o să fac “I will do”; aveam să fac; urma să fac ”I was to do/I
would do”) and to imminential forms (stă să plece and its more colloquial variant dă să plece “she/he is about to leave”). In
modern Romanian, contrary to earlier stages of the language (forms like eram citind “I was reading”, Frâncu 2009: 105), there is
no grammaticalised progressive form.
vi) Romanian has developed two invariable temporal particles, fi (derived from the infinitive a fi “to be”) and o (derived from a
rd
avea “to have”; in 3 person plural there is also a parallel form or). Fi is used mostly to express temporal anteriority and o is used
as a marker of Future (as in Când o să vii, voi fi plecat “When you come, I will have left”).
vii) In some contexts, the Perfect for persistent situations can in certain contexts be used instead of the Imperfect without any
real change of meaning:
6. Azi dimineață, când am ieșit, ploua. (This morning, when I left, it was raining (=imp))
7. Azi dimineață, când am ieșit, a plouat. (This morning, when I left, it was raining (=perf))
8. Când m-am stabilit în acest oraș, Primăria era în colț. (When I moved (=perf) to this city, the Town Hall was (=imp) in
the corner.)
9. Când m-am stabilit în acest oraș, Primăria a fost în colț. (When I moved (=perf) to this city, the Town Hall was (=perf)
in the corner.)
This is a very striking difference in respect to other Romance languages (compare e.g. with French quand je suis sorti, il a plu
where the main clause would rather be interpreted as an ingressive expression, il s’est mis à pleuvoir “it started to rain”).
The impoverishment of the periphrastic element and the creation of clitic or affixal auxiliaries is typical to modern Romanian.
The development of the temporal particles fi and o is a categorical innovation within the Romance languages (fi may, however,
be compared with the eu element of the French double-compound forms). An overall simplification of the system has been a
constant tendency and led even to a partial weakening of the perfective vs. imperfective opposition. Even though some of the
properties of the Romanian verbal system have been attributed to the influence of surrounding languages (the so-called Balkan
Sprachbund), most of the described features are more probably results of an internal development. The Romanian system has
evolved typologically quite far from the other Romance tense and aspect systems and become closer to those of some Germanic
languages (like German and the Nordic languages) in the sense that the temporal element is becoming dominant to the
detriment of the aspectual component.
70
References
Bertinetto, P. M.. 1986, Tempo, aspetto, azione nel verbo italiano. Il sistema dell’indicativo. Accademia della Crusca. Firenze.
Bohnemeyer, J., 2014, ”Aspect vs. relative tense: the case reopened”, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 32, pp. 917–954
Croft, W., 2012, Verbs: Aspect and Causal Structure. Oxford University Press. Oxford
Dobrovie-Sorin, C, 1993, The syntax of Romanian. Comparative Studies in Romance. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Dragomirescu, A., 2013, ”O schimbare parametrică de la româna veche la româna modernă în sintaxa formelor verbale compuse cu
auxiliar”, Limba română, 2, pp. 225-239.
Frâncu, C., 2009, Gramatica limbii române vechi (1521-1780). Iași. Casa editorială Demiurg.
Zafiu, R., 2014, “Auxiliary Encliticization in 16th Century Romanian: Restrictions and Regularities”, Linguistica Atlantica, 33, 71–
86.
HELFER-FLEISCHHAUER Jens (Düsseldorf). Telicity does not depend on perfectivity – aspectual composition in Polish
[email protected]
In the talk I argue that telicity of Polish incremental theme predicates (e.g. eat, drink) does not depend on grammatical aspect
but solely on the lexical meaning of the verbal prefixes.
Incremental theme verbs such as eat, drink, build or read denote a process in which the referent of the undergoer argument
either is created or consumed. The verbs are well known for the fact that the referential properties of the undergoer argument –
which is called ‘incremental theme argument’ (ITA) after Dowty (1991) – affect telicity of the predication. If the referent of the
ITA denotes a specific quantity of stuff, the incremental theme predication is telic (1a); otherwise, as (b) shows, it is atelic
(Verkuyl 1972).
(1)
a.
b.
John ate three/the apples in ten minutes.
John ate apples #in ten minutes.
Following Krifka (1986, 1998), the notions of ‘specific quantity’ and ‘unspecific quantity’ can be related to quantized and
cumulative reference respectively. A predicate is quantized iff it applies to two distinct individuals x and y, of which one cannot
be a part of the other (2a). Cumulative reference, on the other hand, means that if a predicate is true of two distinct individuals,
it is also true of the sum of both (2b).
(2)
a.
b.
Quantization: A predicate P is quantized iff ∀x,y [P(x) ∧ P(y) → (¬ y<x)]
Cumulativity: A predicate P is cumulative iff ∀x,y [P(x) ∧ P(y) → P(x⊕y)]
Singular count nouns like apple are inherently quantized; mass nouns such as water or bare plurals like apples refer
cumulatively. The combination of an incremental theme verb with a quantized ITA results in a telic predication (1a), whereas the
combination with a cumulatively referring ITA results in atelicity (1b) (e.g. Krifka 1998, Filip 1999).
In the Germanic languages, quantization is primarily achieved by nominal determination. In (1) the presence vs. absence of the
numeral three, respectively the definite article is responsible for the quantized vs. cumulative interpretation of the plural count
noun. Most Slavic languages lack a definite article; hence, the use of bare nouns is more frequent than in the Germanic
languages. As is often argued (e.g. Leiss 2000, Piñón 2001), the Slavic languages compensate the lack of the definite article by its
grammaticalized distinction between perfective and imperfective aspect. The Polish examples in (3) show that an imperfective
incremental theme verb results in an atelic predication (a), whereas a perfective verb leads to a telic interpretation (b).
(3)
a.
b.
Jan piłIMPF
wod-ę
(*w
Jan drank
water-ACC in
‘Jan drank/was drinking water.’
Jan wy-piłPF
wod-ę
w
Jan WY-drank water-ACC in
‘Jan drank (all) the water in an hour.’
godzinę).
hour
godzinę.
hour
By using perfective aspect, an event is described as complete and according to Filip’s (1999, 2008) analysis, perfective verbs
denote total events. This enforces a total interpretation on ITAs. If the ITA is not inherently quantized – if it is not a singular
count noun – this leads to a definite reading of the argument. Definiteness does not arise in the case of singular count nouns,
which shows that perfective aspect does not fully compensate for the lack of the definite article.
Different authors propose that in the Slavic languages, telicity of incremental theme predications depends on perfectivity. In the
talk, I will show that it is only an apparent dependency between telicity and perfectivity, which results from the fact that
perfective incremental theme verbs always require verbal prefixes. Instead of saying that telicity depends on grammatical
aspect, I say that it depends on the semantic content of the prefix.
71
The prefix wy- in (3b) derives a perfective verb and adds the semantic component of total affection of the undergoer argument.
Other prefixes also derive perfective verbs but specify different meaning components, which do not lead to a telic interpretation.
An example is the prefix po-, which adds the meaning component ‘doing V for a certain while’. It specifies the temporal duration
of the drinking event in (4) but does not further specify the affectedness of the referent of the ITA. The ITA in (4) has nonquantized reference and denotes an unspecified quantity of tea.
Po-piłemPF herbat-y (*w minutę).
PO-drank tea-GEN
in minute
‘I drank tea for a certain while.’
(4)
I follow Filip (2000) and analyze non-directional verbal prefixes as expressing vague measure functions. A measure function maps
its argument onto a measure or scale (e.g. VOLUME, QUANTITY or LITER) and returns the value or degree of the argument on that
measure/scale (see Krifka 1990, Kennedy 1999). The measure function contributed by the prefix indicates the property with
regard to which the event is described as complete. A general semantic template for verbal prefixes encoding measure functions
is given in (5). ‘mc’ is used as a variable over linguistically or contextually defined measure functions ( Filip 2000: 61).
(5)
λPλx [P(x) ∧ mc(x)]
The prefix wy- induces a measure on the ITA and indicates its total affectedness. po-, on the other hand, induces a measure on
the event.; it applies to the temporal trace function τ which measures the running time of events and is a function from events
to times (Krifka 1998). The denotation for po- is given in (6).
(6)
〚po-〛= λPλe[P(e) ∧ τ(e) ≤ sc]
The measuring of the eventuality via its running time suffices to individuate a complete event; hence, individuation of the event
with respect to the incremental theme argument is not necessary, and therefore quantization of the incremental theme
argument is not required. This allows saying that a telic incremental theme predication (in Polish) only results if the prefix
imposes a measure on the quantity of the ITA – as is done by wy- but not by po-. However, a measure on the quantity of the ITA
does not guarantee telicity, as (7) shows.
(7)
Nad-piłemPF wino (*w minutę).
NAD-drank wine
in minute
‘I drank a bit from the wine.’
The prefix nad- adds a measure on the incremental theme argument but the predication is atelic. This can be explained by
relying on Hay et al.’s (1999) degree-based analysis of telicity. Hay et al. state that only monotone increasing degree expressions
(like significantly in (8a)) give rise to a telic reading of degree achievements, whereas monotone decreasing ones (as slightly in
(8b)) do not (the examples are taken form Hay et al. 1999: 133).
(8)
a.
The independent counsel is broadening the investigation
significantly. ⇏ The independent counsel broadened the
investigation significantly.
b. The independent counsel is broadening the investigation
slightly. ⇒ The independent counsel broadened the
investigation slightly.
I assume that nad- induces a monotone decreasing measure on the quantity of the ITA and therefore does not lead to a telic
interpretation. Finally, I postulate (9) as the rule of aspectual composition in Polish:
(9)
A telic incremental theme predication arises, if a
verbal prefix imposes a monotone increasing measure
on the quantity of the incremental theme argument.
The example in (10) demonstrates that telicity really depends on the semantic content of the prefix, as it is expressed by the rule
in (9), and not on perfectivity. Vypivaet is a secondary imperfective, which is imperfective verb formed from a perfective base
(which itself is derived from an imperfective verb). The secondary imperfective verb has a habitual interpretation and it is
expressed that Jan has the habit of eating up his soup in an hour. Each of the micro-events – single events of eating up the soup is described as telic.
(10)
Jan
z-jada-ł
zupę
Jan
Z-eat.IMPF-PST
soup.ACC
‘Jan used to eat the soup in an hour.’
w
in
godzinę.
hour
72
This demonstrates that telicity of incremental theme verbs in Polish is not dependent on perfective aspect but only on the
semantic content of the verbal prefix. Furthermore, it shows that degree operators and verbal prefixes lead under the same
semantic conditions to a telic predication, namely if they induce a monotone increasing measure.
References
Dowty, D. 1991. Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language 67 (3), 547-619.
Filip, H. 1999. Aspect, Eventuality Types, and Nominal Reference. New York: Garland.
Filip, H. 2000. The Quantization Puzzle. In C. Tenny & J. Pustejovsky (eds.), Events as Grammatical Objects, 39–96.
Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Filip, H. 2008. Events and Maximalization. In S. Rothstein (Hrsg.) Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the
Semantics of Aspect, 217-256. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hay, J., Kennedy, C. & B. Levin. 1999. Scalar Structure Underlies Telicity in ‘Degree Achievements’. In T. Mathews &
D. Strolovitch (eds.). Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 9. Ithaca/NY: Cornell Linguistics Circle
Publications, 199–223.
Kennedy, C. 1999. Projecting the adjective. Garland: New York.
Krifka, M. 1990. Four Thousand Ships Passed Through the Lock – Object-Induced Measure Functions on Events. Linguistics and
Philosophy 13: 487-520.
Krifka, M. 1998. The origins of telicity. In S. Rothstein (ed.), Events and Grammar, 197–235. Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic Publishers.
Leiss, E. 2000. Artikel und Aspekt. Die grammatischen Muster von Definitheit. Brlin/New York: de Gruyter.
Piñón, C. 2001. A problem of aspectual composition in Polish. In G. Zybatow, U. Junghanns, G. Mehlhorn & L. Szucsich
(eds.), Current Issues in Formal Slavic Linguistics 397-414. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Verkuyl, H. 1972. On the compositional nature of the aspects. Dordrecht: Reidel.
HINGER Barbara (Innsbruck). The acquisition of Tense, Aspect and Mood in Spanish as a foreign language: a classroombased longitudinal study of a second and third year of learning Spanish in an upper secondary school context
[email protected]
The study explores the acquisition of Spanish TAM by German L1-learners and compares findings of spontaneous speech
production data to the instructional input learners were provided with in an upper secondary school context in Austria. The main
research interest focuses on the question whether there is a relationship between the instruction received on TAM and the
interlanguage development of the learners. To answer this question the research follows a descriptive-exploratory approach
(Dörnyei 2007) and is designed as a case study.
To analyse the relationship between teaching input and learner language development two data sets were collected. On the one
hand, naturalistic settings in two Spanish classrooms were observed over the period of one semester. On the other, learners’
spontaneous oral production was elicited at three points in time – at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the
semester. To cover a comprehensive data set, the study was conducted in a second and a third year of learning Spanish. Thus,
the study combines longitudinal and cross-sectional data. The classroom observation was carried out without specifying its goal
to the participants in order to avoid any kind of bias. Hence, neither the teacher nor the learners were aware of the aim of the
study as it was not made explicit to them. Furthermore, teacher based variables were controlled as well since the teacher was
the same for the second and the third year.
The learners’ background was surveyed by a paper-pencil questionnaire. Results show that the learners are aged between 17
and 19 years. They all have German as their L1, Spanish as their L4, being English their L2 and French or Italian their L3. All the
learners and the teacher are female. The teacher, aged 39 years, is experienced in teaching Spanish as a foreign language in the
above mentioned school setting. In each of the two groups observed, a second and a third year of learning Spanish as
mentioned, the learner language of twelve learners was analysed. The classroom time allotted to the participants at the
beginning of the study was totalling approximately 260 hours of instruction in the third year and 160 hours of instruction in the
second year.
The instruction in the two language groups was observed and digitally audio-recorded with an Olympus WS-300M device and a
directional microphone Olympus ME-31. The recordings were transcribed by using the software programme f4. Whereas the
quantitative and qualitative analyses of the transcripts were carried out both with Excel 2007 the quantitative analysis also was
run by SPSS 15.0. In order to elicit the spontaneous oral production data, the learners were asked to fulfil two tasks outside of
their classroom environment. The first task was a classical communicative information gap taken in pairs, the second a
monologic task. Students picked their pair themselves with no linguistic criteria applied in reference to pairing. The topics chosen
referred to contents of the ongoing Spanish classroom teaching, though neither the task types nor the task goals and
requirements had in any way been made transparent to the learners beforehand implying that they did not have any chance to
rehearse the tasks. The task sessions also were digitally audio-recorded by using the same devices as for the classroom
observation. The data were transcribed, again by using the software programme f4. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of
the spontaneous speech production data was carried out by using KWIC (Key Word in Context), 4.7, and supported by Excel 2007.
73
The results of the classroom observation show that 56.90 % of the overall instruction time on grammar in the second year of
Spanish is allotted to tense, aspect and mood. In the third year of Spanish this amount comprises 69.90 % of the grammar
instruction. Overall, the instruction time dedicated to TAM covers the highest amount of the total input time in both years.
The results of the spontaneous speech data show that the learner language follows the order tense-aspect-mood, thus
confirming a large number of studies conducted for Spanish, English or French L2 acquisition (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig 2000, Cadierno
2000, Collentine 2004, Comajoan 2005, Camps 2002, Fernández 2008, Gudmestad 2006, Isabelli/Nishida 2005, Llopis García
2010, Montrul 2004, Montrul 2008, Montrul/Slabakova 2002, Salaberry 1999, 2002). As to the acquisition of TAM the study
points out that the learners in the second year show robustness in the use of tense whereas the use of aspect is only seen in the
learners of the third year. In contrast, the subjunctive seems to emerge merely in some learners of the third year without
reaching a stable amount of utterances. Hence, though TAM is given a considerable amount of instruction time in the two years
observed not all TAM features are shown to be acquired by the learners. Thus, the triangulation of the classroom observation
data and the spontaneous speech production data seem to confirm the widely noticed gap between grammar instruction and
the acquisition of grammar features. Accordingly, the paper will discuss the findings in the light of the „inert knowledge
problem“, as formulated by Larsen-Freeman (2009), as well as by pointing to the (non)-interface debate, spelled out by
researchers such as Norris/Ortega (2000), Pienemann (1998), Spada/Tomita (2010), etc.
Furthermore, the paper will zoom in to adjust the path of TAM-acquisition on theoretical groundings based on a LexicalFunctional Grammar approach as recently presented in Bettoni’s and Di Biase’s (2015) Prominence and Lexical Mapping
Hypothesis. By doing so, the paper aims at contributing a barely applied theoretical approach to rather well-established
perspectives (Salaberry and Comajoan 2012).
References
BARDOVI-HARLIG, KATHLEEN. 2000. Tense and aspect in second language acquisition: Form, meaning, and use. Malden:
Blackwell.
BETTONI, CAMILLA; and DI BIASE, BRUNO. 2015. Grammatical development in second languages: Exploring the boundaries of
Processability Theory. Eurosla Monograph Series, 3. Online: http://www.eurosla.org/eurosla-monograph-series-2/euroslamonographs-03/.
DÖRNYEI, ZOLTÁN. 2007. Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. Quantitative, Qualitative and Mixed Methodologies. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
CADIERNO, TERESA. 2000. The Acquisition of Spanish Grammatical Aspect by Danish Advanced Language Learners. Spanish
Applied Linguistics, 4.1–53.
CAMPS, JOAQUIM. 2002. Aspectual distinctions in Spanish as a foreign language: The early stages of oral production. International
Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching – IRAL 40.179–210.
COLLENTINE, JOSEPH. 2004. The Effects of Learning Contexts on Morphosyntactic and Lexical Development. Studies in Second
Language Acquisition 26.227–248.
COMAJOAN, LLORENÇ. 2005. The Early L2 Acquisition of Past Morphology: Perfective Morphology as an Aspectual Marker or
Default Tense Marker? Selected Proceedings of the 6th Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as First and
Second Languages, ed. by David Eddington, 31–43. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
FERNÁNDEZ, CLAUDIA. 2008. Reexamining the role of explicit information in Processing Instruction. Studies in Second Language
Acquisition 30.277–305.
GUDMESTAD, AARNES. 2006. L2 Variation and the Spanish Subjunctive: Linguistic Features Predicting Mood Selection. Selected
Proceedings of the 7th Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as First and Second Language, ed. by Carol A.
Klee and Timothy L. Face, 170–184. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
ISABELLI, CASILDE A., and NISHIDA, CHIYO. 2005. Development of the Spanish Subjunctive in a Nine-month Study-abroad
Setting. Selected Proceedings of the 6th Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as First and Second Languages,
ed. by David Eddington, 78–91. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
LARSEN-FREEMAN, DIANE. 2009. Teaching and Testing Grammar. The Handbook of Language Teaching, ed. by Michael Long
and Catherine J. Doughty, 518–542. Malden, Mass: Wiley-Blackwell.
LLOPIS GARCÍA, REYES. 2010. Why cognitive grammar Works in the L2 classroom. A case study of mood selection in Spanish.
AILA Review 23.72–94.
MONTRUL, SILVINA. 2004. The Acquisition of Spanish. Morphosyntactic development in monolingual and bilingual L1 acquisition
and adult L2 acquisition. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
MONTRUL, SILVINA. 2008. Incomplete Acquisition in Spanish Heritage Speakers: Chronological Age or Interfaces Vulnerability?
Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, ed. by Jacob Chan, Heather Harvey
and Enkeleida Kapia, 299–310. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
MONTRUL, SILVINA; and SLABAKOVA, ROUMYANA. 2002. The L2 acquisition of morphosyntactic and semantic properties of the
aspectual tenses Preterite and Imperfect. The Acquisition of Spanish Morphosyntax L1/L2 Connection, ed. by Ana T. Pérez-Leroux
and Juana Muñoz Liceras, 113–149. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
NORRIS, JOHN; and ORTEGA, LOURDES. 2000. Effectiveness of L2 instruction: A research synthesis and quantitative meta-analysis.
Language Learning 50.417–528.
PIENEMANN, MANFRED. 1998. Language processing and second language development. Processability Theory. Amsterdam,
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
SALABERRY, RAFAEL. 1999. The Development of Past Tense Verbal Morphology in Classroom L2 Spanish. Applied Linguistics
20.151–178.
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SALABERRY, RAFAEL. 2002. Tense and aspect in the selection of Spanish past tense verbal morphology. The L2-Acquisition of
Tense-Aspect Morphology, ed. by Rafael Salaberry and Yasuhiro Shirai, 396–415. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
SALABERRY, RAFAEL. 2008. Marking Past Tense in Second Language Acquisition. A Theoretical Model. London, New York:
Continuum.
SALABERRY, RAFAEL; and COMAJOAN, LLORENÇ. 2012. Research Design and Methodology in Studies on L2 Tense and Aspect.
Boston, Berlin: De Gruyter.
SPADA, NINA; and TOMITA, YASUYO. 2010. Interactions between Type of Instruction and Language Feature: A Meta-Analysis.
Language Learning 60.263–308.
HOWE Lewis (Chad) (Georgia). Auxiliary reduction and omission in secondary grammaticalization: Evidence from the
periphrastic past in Spanish
[email protected]
The correspondence between meaning and phonetic form has long been discussed in the literature on grammaticalization,
which maintains that elements with more abstract (grammatical) meaning tend to be shorter and more reduced (Givón 1979,
Bybee et al. 1994, Lehmann 1995). In their analysis of tonal erosion in Sinitic languages, Ansaldo and Lim observe that
grammaticalized items “show phonetic erosion [reduction] when compared to their lexical counterparts” and that this erosion is
in fact “[o]ne of the salient aspects of the grammaticalization process” (2002:345,360). Nevertheless, recent studies have
questioned this claim, observing that phonetic reduction is not necessarily linked to more abstract (i.e. grammaticalized)
meaning (see Amaral et al. 2013, Gradoville 2013). Following Traugott (2002), the current study assumes a distinction between
'primary' and 'secondary' grammaticalization, the latter referring to changes that do not involve a shift in grammatical category
but rather extension of semantic/pragmatic meaning. By analyzing patterns of phonetic reduction of a form undergoing
secondary grammaticalization, in this case the perfectivization of the periphrastic past (or perfect) in Peninsular Spanish (see
Schwenter & Torres Cacoullos 2008), I argue that reduction is not a "salient" feature of secondary grammaticalization.
Various studies, such as Bybee (2002), have shown that the rate of deletion (or reduction/lenition) of intervocalic /d/ in Spanish
is greater with participles than with other lexical, non-grammaticalized classes (see also Blas Arroyo 2006). The current analysis
observes patterns of erosion and omission of auxiliaries in the Spanish periphrastic past and demonstrates that sound change in
morphosyntax is more gradient than observed by Bybee (2002, and others). The data were extracted from a corpus of spoken
Spanish consisting of sociolinguistic interviews with speakers from Alcalá de Henares, Spain, a dialect in which the periphrastic
past displays the perfect to perfective development characteristic of other Peninsular varieties (see Howe 2013). The results of
the current study call into question Ansaldo and Lim's claim regarding the general role of phonetic reduction in linguistic change,
suggesting instead that erosion in secondary change can be the result of factors that are not correlated per se with the process
of grammaticalization.
References:
Amaral, Patrícia, Meghan Armstrong, & Luciana Lucente. 2013. Phonetic cues in the production of aspectual periphrases. Paper
presented at LSRL 44. New York University.
Ansaldo, Umberto and Lisa Lim. 2002. Phonetic absence as syntactic prominence: Grammaticalization in isolating total
languages. Up and down the Cline-The Nature of Grammaticalization, ed. by O. Fischer, M. Norde and H. Perridon, 345-362.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Blas Arroyo, José Luis. 2006. Hasta aquí hemos llega(d)o: ¿Un caso de variación morfológica? Factores estructurales y estilísticos
en el español de una comunidad bilingüe. Southwest Journal of Linguistics 25.39-73.
Bybee, Joan L. 2002.Word frequency and context of use in the lexical diffusion of phonetically conditioned sound change.
Language Variation and Change 14.261–290.
Givón, Talmy. 1979. On Understanding Grammar. New York: Academic Press.
Gradoville, Michael. 2013. Grammaticization and phonetic reduction: The case of Caraqueño Spanish para. Paper presented at
NWAV 42. University of Pittsburgh.
Howe, Chad. 2013. The Spanish Perfects. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lehmann, Christian. 1995 [1982]. Thoughts on grammaticalization. München / Newcastle: Lincom Europa.
Schwenter, Scott A. & Rena Torres Cacoullos. 2008. Defaults and indeterminacy in temporal grammaticalization: The ‘perfect’
road to perfective. Language Variation and Change, 20.1–39.
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 2002. From etymology to historical pragmatics. Studies in the History of the English Language, ed. by D.
Minkova and R. Stockwell, 19-39. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
HUYGHE Richard (Paris Diderot & CLILLAC-ARP), BARQUE Lucie (Paris 13 & Alpage, INRIA), HAAS Pauline (Paris 13 &
Lattice, ENS-CNRS-Paris 3), TRIBOUT Delphine (Lille 3 & STL, CNRS). The Aspectual Properties of Underived Nouns in
French
[email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected]
It is well-known that some underived nouns denote events (e.g. event, war, crime). Still these nouns have received little
attention when compared to deverbal nominalizations. In this talk, we investigate the semantics of underived event nouns
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(UENs) in French, especially regarding lexical aspect. We bring out that UENs share many semantic properties with deverbal
event nouns.
We built a lexicon of underived nouns, based upon a large lexical resource for French (Lexique3), and annotated them
semantically. Event-denoting nouns are detected by the combination of two properties: (i) they have temporal denotation and
can be used with temporal prepositions (pendant ‘during’, avant ‘before’, après ‘after’, depuis ‘since’, etc.), (ii) they denote
dynamic eventualities and combine with dynamic light verbs (effectuer ‘carry out’, accomplir ‘perform’, commettre ‘commit’,
procéder à ‘proceed to’) or with eventive verbs (avoir lieu ‘take place’, se produire ‘happen’) (Giry-Schneider 1987, Godard &
Jayez 1996, Anscombre 2000, Gaatone 2004).
We discuss the Aktionsart properties of UENs. Just like deverbal event nouns, UENs may or may not denote durative situations
(un raid de deux heures ‘a two-hour raid’ vs. *un crime de deux heures ‘a two-hour crime’), and telic or atelic events (une manche
{en / ?pendant} deux heures ‘a round {in / ?for} two hours’ vs. un séisme {pendant / ?en} trente secondes ‘an earthquake {for /
?in} thirty seconds’). Events in the nominal domain can also be described as foreseen or unforeseen, may they be denoted by
nominalizations (mariage ‘wedding’ vs. découverte ‘discovery’) or UENs (cataclysme ‘cataclysm’ vs. stage ‘internship’). Only
nouns denoting unforeseen events combine with se produire ‘happen’ (Gross & Kiefer 1995).
It appears that the denotation of events does not imply having a semantic counterpart or origin in the verbal domain. All UENs
have Aktionsart properties and compare to deverbal nominalizations in that respect. We argue that lexical aspect is not primarily
a property of verbs. It is a matter of semantic rather than grammatical categories: a lexical item may have aspectual features as
long as it denotes eventualities.
References
ANSCOMBRE, JEAN-CLAUDE. 2000. Éléments de classification des noms processifs. BULAG Hors-Série, 345-364.
GAATONE, DAVID. 2004. Ces insupportables verbes supports : le cas des verbes événementiels. Lingvisticae Investigationes 27/2,
239-251.
GIRY-SCHNEIDER, JACQUELINE. 1987. Les prédicats nominaux en français. Les phrases simples à verbe support. Genève : Droz.
GODARD, DANIELE ; & JACQUES JAYEZ. 1996. Types nominaux et anaphores : le cas des objets et des événements. Cahiers
Chronos 1, 41-58.
GROSS, GASTON ; and FERENC KIEFER. 1995. La structure événementielle des substantifs. Folia Linguistica 29, 43-65.
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K
KIHLSTEDT Maria (Paris X). Acquisition of TMA
KRONNING Hans (Uppsala). L’imparfait contrefactuel et les constructions conditionnelles en si en français
[email protected]
Parmi les nombreuses constructions conditionnelles prédictives (avec ou sans si) du français où l’imparfait reçoit ou peut
recevoir une interprétation contrefactuelle (Impf Cf), linguistes et grammairiens focalisent leur attention, depuis Guillaume
(1929), sur une construction particulière et somme toute marginale (1), qui, cette dernière décennie, a fait l’objet d’études
approfondies (Berthonneau & Kleiber 2006, Bres 2006, Corminboeuf 2009), alors que l’emploi de l’Impf Cf dans les constructions
conditionnelles prototypiques du type Si P, Q (2-7) sont peu ou pas du tout étudiées, si ce n’est dans les états révolus de la
langue (Wagner 1939, Patard & De Mulder 2014) où la construction (1) n’est pas attestée :
(1) SN, /et/ Impf Ind : Un instant de plus, et je te tuais (≈ t’aurais tué).
(2) Si Impf Ind, Cond Simple : S’il était riche, il l’épouserait.
(3) Si Impf Ind, Cond Composé : a. S’il était (≠ avait été) riche, il l’aurait épousé ; b. Si son adversaire ne lâchait (≈
n’avait lâché) prise, il l’aurait frappé.
(4) ? Si Impf Ind, Impf Ind : Si tu avançais, je frappais.
(5) Si Plqpf Ind, Impf Ind : Si j’avais craqué une allumette, la maison sautait.
(6) Si Cond Composé, Impf Ind : Si ça aurait été le contraire, il emboutissait pareil.
(7) Si Plqpf Subj, Impf Ind : Si nous n’eussions pas été là pour le secourir, toute la récolte périssait.
C’est pourquoi nous nous proposons d’étudier l’interprétation contrefactuelle de l’imparfait dans les constructions (2-7) dans
cette communication.
On considère généralement que l’Impf Cf a une valeur « expressive » dans (1). C’est aussi le cas de l’Impf Cf dans (3b-7), mais
non dans (2-3a). Nous essaierons d’élucider cette différence entre valeur expressive et non expressive, ce qui ne semble pas
avoir été fait auparavant.
Contrairement à ce qui est le cas pour l’italien (Mazzoleni 2015), où l’Impf Ind Cf expressif fait l’objet de discours normatifs
négatifs, l’emploi français correspondant est généralement considéré comme une ressource stylistique précieuse. Aussi cet
emploi de l’Impf Cf n’est-il pas marqué en français du point vue diaphasique, comme il ressort de sa compatibilité tant avec des
constructions conditionnelles par ailleurs d’un niveau de langue « formel » (7) ou « informel » (6) que d’un niveau « neutre » (5),
aussi bien à l’écrit qu’à l’oral.
Bien qu’elle soit fréquemment citée dans la littérature (Martinon 1927, Barcelò & Bres 2006, Dargnat & Jayez 2010), mais
n’étant illustrée que par des exemples construits, la construction (4) est en effet très difficile à attester en français, à la
différence de ce qui est le cas pour l’italien et l’espagnol. Il semble que la construction (5) soit l’équivalent français de la
construction italienne Se Impf Ind, Impf Ind (Gougenheim 1938, 1954), si ce n’est la structure parataxique (8) :
(8) Impf Ind /et/ Impf Ind : – M. Moreau a manqué M. Arnoux de quelques minutes à peine. Il lui donnait les douze mille
francs et Arnoux s’en sortait encore une fois.
Nous proposerons une nouvelle analyse sémantique de l’Impf Cf dans le cadre de la Théorie Modale de la Polyphonie (TMP)
(Kronning 2009ab, 2013ab, 2014ab) destinée à expliquer l’emploi expressif et non expressif de cette forme verbale dans toutes
les constructions conditionnelles prédictives du français (avec ou sans si).
L’idée fondamentale de la TMP est que la relation prédictive qui s’instaure entre les procès (p et q), exprimés par la protase (P)
et l’apodose (Q), constitue un point de vue autonome, attribué au locuteur de l’énoncé (le « locuteur en tant que tel ») (l0), alors
que les attitudes épistémiques (« potentiel », « potentiel faible », « contrefactuel ») vis-à-vis de p et de q sont inscrites sous
forme d’opérateurs modaux dans des points de vue « attitudinaux », assignés à d’autres êtres de discours que l0.
Traditionnellement, les opérateurs aspectuo-temporels sont censés porter sur les procès p et q dans les constructions
conditionnelles « toncales » (morphèmes flexionnels en -/r/ait), dénommées subjunctive conditionals dans la littérature
philosophique et sémantique anglo-saxonne. Ainsi, le verbe à l’Impf Cf expressif dénoterait « un procès avorté […] imaginé dans
son déroulement effectif » (Wilmet 2007, §502).
Or, aujourd’hui un certain nombre de linguistes (Gosselin 1999, Caudal 2011, Ippolito 2013) pensent que les temps verbaux des
constructions toncales ne portent pas sur les procès p et/ou q, mais sur un « métaprédicat » (de possibilité, dans P) ou un
opérateur modal (de nécessité, dans Q), car, s’ils portaient sur p ou q, les temps seraient trompeurs (angl. fake tense, fake
aspect) : l’Impf Cf ne dénote pas nécessairement un procès passé sous une perspective aspectuelle imperfective.
Selon notre hypothèse, les temps verbaux gardent, dans les constructions toncales, leurs significations temporelles et
aspectuelles « standard », mais portent sur deux opérateurs modaux de possibilité qui s’inscrivent dans les points de vue
attitudinaux relatifs à la protase et à l’apodose respectivement. Ainsi, l’Impf Cf non expressif (2) est un passé imperfectif : ‘il était
77
possible que p’. Cette possibilité a cours, ou n’a pas cours, au moment de l’évaluation (TE), concomitant à un moment de
référence (TR) qui coïncide typiquement avec le moment de l’énonciation (E0). À TE, le locuteur constructeur du sens (LOC)
détermine si le procès appartient au domaine du connu (ce qui donne lieu au sens contrefactuel) ou au domaine de l’inconnu (ce
qui donne lieu au sens potentiel) de son état épistémique. Cet emploi de l’imparfait, où la possibilité de p est inhibée à TR, est en
parfaite concordance avec la valeur aspectuo-temporelle de ce temps. Les formes composées, qu’il s’agisse du Plqpf Ind (5) ou
Subj (7) ou du Cond Composé (3, 6), indiquent que la possibilité (‘il avait / aurait / eût été possible que p et/ou q’) a été annulée
avant TR. L’expressivité de l’Impf Cf a pour origine, c’est là le noyau de notre hypothèse, l’emploi de ce temps dans un contexte
d’où il ressort que la possibilité de q (ou de p) a été annulée avant TR, emploi qui est en discordance avec la signification de
l’imparfait.
Les valeurs expressives (« immédiateté », « conséquence infaillible » etc.) attribuées à l’Impf Cf sont souvent trop spécifiques et
plutôt tributaires de marqueurs contextuels (un N de plus) que de l’imparfait. C’est pourquoi nous dirons que l’Impf Cf en emploi
expressif est marqué du point de vue sémantique, nécessitant un plus grand effort de traitement cognitif que l’emploi non
expressif, qui est non marqué. Le statut marqué de l’Impf Cf expressif se traduit aussi par sa faible fréquence, ce que nous
montrerons par des données quantitatives. L’effet produit par l’Impf Cf marqué est la mise en relief (« vivacité », « énergique »)
de P et/ou Q, ce qui explique que cet emploi de l’imparfait sert typiquement d’« issue » ou d’« évaluation » contrefactuelle à une
situation.
Dans cette communication, nous examinerons donc la signification d’un morphème flexionnel peu étudiée dans un certain type
de constructions syntaxiques, en apportant de nouvelles données (base de données comportant plus de cent occurrences de
l’Impf Cf expressif) et une nouvelle hypothèse explicative.
Références
Barcelò, G. J. & Bres, J., 2006, Les temps de l’indicatif en français, Paris : Ophrys.
Berthonneau, A.-M. & Kleiber, G., 2006, « Sur l’imparfait contrefactuel », Travaux de linguistique, 53, 7-65.
Bres, J., 2006, « ‘Encore un peu, et l’imparfait était un mode…’ L’imparfait et la valeur modale de contrefactualité », Cahiers de
praxématique, 47, 149-176.
Caudal, P., 2011, “Towards a novel aspectuo-temporal account of conditionals”, Cahiers Chronos, 22, 179-209.
Corminboeuf, G., 2009, L’expression de l’hypothèse en français. Entre hypotaxe et parataxe. Bruxelles : De Boeck & Duculot.
Dargnat, M. & Jayez, J., 2010, « La cohésion paratactique : une approche constructionnelle », in Béguelin, M.-J., Avanzi, M. &
Corminboeuf, G. (éds), La parataxe. Structures, marquages et exploitations discursives, I-II, Berne : Peter Lang, II, 61-93.
Gosselin, L., 1999, « Les valeurs de l’imparfait et du conditionnel dans les systèmes hypothétiques », Cahiers Chronos, 4, 29-51.
Gougenheim, G., 1938, Système grammatical de la langue française, Paris : D’Artrey.
Gougenheim, G., 1954, Compte rendu de Rohlfs 1954, Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris, 50, 2, 127-129.
Guillaume, G., 1929, Temps et verbe, Paris : Champion 1970.
Ippolito, M., 2013, Subjunctive Conditionals, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Kronning, H., 2009a, « Polyphonie, constructions conditionnelles et discours rapporté », Langue française, 164, 97-112.
Kronning, H., 2009b, « Constructions conditionnelles et attitude épistémique en français, en italien et en espagnol », Syntaxe &
Sémantique, 10, 13-32.
Kronning, H., 2013a, « Ducrot et Wittgenstein : le ‘dit’, le ‘montré’ et le logos apophantikos », in Sullet-Nylander, F., Engel, H. &
Engwall, G. (éds), La linguistique dans tous les sens, Stockholm : Académie Royale Suédoise des Belles-Lettres, 165-177.
Kronning, H., 2013b, « Monstration, véridiction et polyphonie. Pour une théorie modale de la polyphonie », in Chanay, H. de,
Colas-Blaise, M. & Le Guern, O. (éds), Dire / Montrer. Au cœur du sens, Chambéry : Éditions de l’Université de Savoie, Coll.
Langages, 93-115.
Kronning, H., 2014a, « Pour une théorie modale de la polyphonie », Arena Romanistica, 14, 124-139.
Kronning, H., 2014b, « La théorie modale de la polyphonie et les constructions conditionnelles en si », Langages, 1, 17-31.
Martinon, Ph., 1927, Comment on parle en français, Paris : Larousse.
Mazzoleni, M., 2015, “Il diasistema italoromanzo dei periodi ipotetici”, in Jeppesen Kragh, K. & Lindschouw, J. (éds), Les
variations diasystématiques et leurs interdépendances dans les langues romanes, Strasbourg : EliPhi, TraLiRo, 521-531.
Patard, A. & De Mulder, W., 2014, « Aux origines des emplois modaux de l’imparfait. Le cas de l’emploi hypothétique et de
l’emploi contrefactuel », Langages, 193, 33-47.
Rohlfs, G., 1954, Historische Grammatik der italienischen Sprache und ihrer Mundarten, III, Syntax und Wortbildung, Bern: A.
Francke.
Wagner, R. L., 1939, Les phrases hypothétiques commençant par « si » dans la langue française des origines à la fin du XVIe
siècle, Paris : Droz.
Wilmet, M., 20074, Grammaire critique du français, Bruxelles : De Boeck.
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L
LEBAS-FRACZAK Lidia (Clermont-Ferrand). Le mode et le critère de la (dé)focalisation dans les propositions complétives : le
rôle de la « richesse sémantique » du prédicat principal
[email protected]
Selon D. Gaatone, la variété des analyses existantes du subjonctif sur les plans formel, lexical et sémantique mène à conclure que
« le subjonctif, en français moderne, doit être reconnu comme une forme polyvalente » (2003 : 75). H. Nølke avait émis une idée
similaire : « il ne semble pas possible de poser des règles exhaustives [de l’emploi des modes en français] dans le cadre d’une
théorie unitaire » (1985 : 69). En effet, parmi les descriptions « unitaires » du subjonctif, aucune n’a obtenu de consensus ni n’a
eu de succès marqué dans les présentations didactiques.
Si l’on examine les analyses en termes de « virtualisation », pour le subjonctif, et d’« actualisation », pour l’indicatif (ex. Wilmet,
2003 ; Leeman-Bouix, 1994 ; Mailhac, 2000), celles, initiées par G. Guillaume, en termes de saisie du temps « en devenir »
(subjonctif) et « en réalité » (indicatif) (cf. Valin, 1971), ou celles préconisant la suspension de la valeur de vérité par le subjonctif
(ex. Martin, 1983), on constate qu’elles se caractérisent par un grand degré d’abstraction, n’abordant pas suffisamment la
question de la motivation communicative sous-jacente. En effet, il n’est pas toujours évident de comprendre pourquoi, dans tel
ou tel emploi, le locuteur présente un fait comme « virtuel » ou comme « actuel », par exemple. C’est cela qui mène
probablement au constat selon lequel la valeur générale du subjonctif, en opposition à celle de l’indicatif, n’a pas été ou ne peut
pas être établie.
Dans nos travaux précédents (Lebas-Fraczak, 2011a, 2011b), nous avons postulé que le subjonctif se laisse opposer à l’indicatif
en cela qu’il marque la défocalisation du prédicat de la proposition subordonnée. On peut considérer que la notion de
« virtualisation », citée plus haut, relève d’une intuition proche de la notion de « défocalisation ». Cependant, cette dernière a
l’avantage de pouvoir être motivée du point de vue communicatif, car si l’on défocalise le prédicat de la subordonnée, c’est pour
confirmer la supériorité communicative du prédicat de la principale (sachant que la proposition subordonnée fait partie de ce
prédicat dans la plupart des cas), ou, autrement dit, la plus grande pertinence du prédicat de la principale par rapport au but
communicatif de l’énoncé. Par exemple, dans la phrase C’est dommage qu’il soit parti, c’est le prédicat (être) dommage qui
constitue le cœur du propos, le but communicatif du locuteur étant de donner son point de vue sur le fait exprimé dans la
subordonnée, qui est présupposé, et non pas d’informer de ce fait.
L’idée du lien entre le subjonctif et un statut « inférieur » du verbe apparaît chez C. de Boer, qui considère que le subjonctif
exprime la « dépendance, la subordination psychologique du verbe en question à l’idée exprimée dans la principale » (1954 : 70).
Une description semblable est proposée par J.-P. Confais, qui rapporte et exploite des éléments de l’analyse de deux auteurs
allemands, U. Wandruszka et O. Gsell, attribuant un caractère « non essentiel » ou « non mis en relief » au contenu d’une
proposition au subjonctif (2002 : 335).
On peut considérer que la subordination est un facteur syntaxique « défocalisant », ce qui veut dire que, dans une phrase
complexe, la proposition principale est susceptible d’avoir un statut communicatif supérieur à la subordonnée. Selon B.
Combettes, « sans que l’on puisse établir de règle absolue, [...] la subordination permet de marquer, dans de nombreux cas, le
second plan, alors que la proposition principale […] est plutôt réservée à la traduction du premier plan » (1998 : 70). Que cela ne
puisse pas être une « règle absolue » s’explique par le fait que le statut syntaxique supérieur (proposition principale) ne suffit
pas pour garantir à une proposition un statut communicatif supérieur (focalisé) et, inversement, que le statut syntaxiquement
inférieur (proposition subordonnée) ne reflète pas automatiquement l’infériorité communicative (défocalisation). En effet,
comme le préconise l’approche constructiviste, une marque linguistique n’est jamais autonome ; elle ne fait que contribuer au
sens grâce à l’interaction avec d’autres marques. B. Combettes insiste sur la diversité des indices qui permettent de traduire
l’opposition des plans : « morphèmes verbaux (opposition passé simple / imparfait), mais aussi lexique, structure de la phrase »
(ibid. : 69-70). Ainsi, l’infériorité syntaxique (subordination) peut être compensée par la forme « focalisante » du verbe ; c’est,
selon nous, le rôle de l’indicatif, alors que le subjonctif confirme le statut communicatif inférieur du prédicat de la proposition
subordonnée.
Dans cette communication, il s’agira de montrer qu’à l’orientation attentionnelle d’un énoncé constitué par une phrase
complexe avec une subordonnée complétive contribuent conjointement, à part le statut syntaxique de la proposition, le mode
du verbe subordonné et la nature sémantique, plus ou moins « riche », du prédicat de la proposition principale.
En effet, il est possible de comparer les expressions selon leur « richesse », « spécificité » ou « intensité » sémantique (cf. Cordier
& Le Ny, 1975 ; Nølke, 2001 ; Romero, 2007) et de considérer que leur focalisation (ou aptitude à focaliser) dépend de ce facteur
sémantique (cf. Nølke, 2001). C’est le cas des verbes « psychologiques », comme ceux des exemples ci-dessous.
(1)
(2)
(3)
Je pense / imagine / sais qu’elle viendra.
J’espère qu’elle viendra.
Je doute / crains / suis content qu’elle vienne.
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Il semble possible d’avancer que les expressions douter, craindre, être content expriment des états d’esprit « plus intenses » que
penser, imaginer, savoir, ou même espérer. Les expressions comme je pense, j’imagine ou je sais peuvent, elles, être considérées
comme des « introductions », servant à focaliser la séquence qu’elles introduisent. En effet, une phrase complexe comme Je
pense qu’elle viendra indique un but communicatif proche de celui de la phrase simple Elle viendra, ce qui montre le faible
apport sémantique et communicatif du verbe penser dans ce contexte. En comparaison, le but communicatif de la phrase Je suis
content qu’elle vienne ou Je doute qu’elle vienne est clairement différent de celui de la phrase Elle viendra, ce qui montre
l’importance de l’apport sémantique et communicatif des prédicats de la principale (être content, douter). On observe que les
expressions verbales avec un sens « plus riche » apparaissent avec le subjonctif en proposition subordonnée, tandis que ceux
avec un sens « moins riche » apparaissent avec l’indicatif. Cela conforte notre hypothèse selon laquelle le subjonctif marque la
défocalisation du prédicat de la subordonnée en contribuant à la focalisation du prédicat de la principale alors que l’indicatif
permet d’inverser la focalisation.
Les verbes penser et espérer ne sont pas assimilables sur le plan sémantico-communicatif, dans la mesure où espérer, en
« s’enrichissant » grâce à l’ajout d’un adverbe ou d’un circonstant, devient compatible avec l’emploi du subjonctif dans la
subordonnée, comme dans l’exemple (4) ci-dessous.
(4)
Nous espérons toujours / encore / malgré tout qu’elle vienne.
En outre, en associant ce même verbe à la forme impérative, qui peut être considérée comme un moyen d’« intensification »,
celui-ci devient également focalisable, et donc compatible avec l’emploi du subjonctif dans la subordonnée, d’autant plus s’il est
accompagné d’un focalisateur lexical (ex. l’adverbe seulement).
(5)
Espérons qu’elle vienne ! / Espérons seulement qu’elle vienne !
Le fait que l’indicatif puisse être employé au lieu du subjonctif dans les contextes (4) et (5) (comme c’est le cas avec d’autres
expressions) montre que l’emploi de l’un ou de l’autre mode n’est pas une conséquence automatique d’un choix lexical au
niveau de la proposition principale mais constitue une contribution à un effet sémantique donné, via la (dé)focalisation.
Nous nous intéresserons également à la polysémie de certains verbes, par exemple comprendre, dont les sens peuvent être
distingués aussi en termes de « richesse sémantique », selon l’emploi de l’indicatif ou du subjonctif. M. Wilmet considère que «
le choix d’un indicatif ou d’un subjonctif affine ou redessine a posteriori le sémantisme de certains verbes recteurs » (2003 :
327). On peut considérer que c’est en focalisant ou en défocalisant le prédicat de la subordonnée, et, en conséquence, en
défocalisant ou en focalisant le prédicat de la principale, que l’indicatif ou le subjonctif influe sur le sens du verbe de la
principale.
Nous prendrons également en compte le rôle du sens « négatif », lequel peut être envisagé comme s’ajoutant au sens « positif »
dans des expressions « évaluatives » comme : il est possible, douteux, peu probable, impossible, exclu, inenvisageable que…, ainsi
que dans le cas de la forme négative (ex. il n’est pas certain que…) et de la forme interrogative (est-il certain que…), rendant ces
expressions « plus riches » sémantiquement (et compatibles avec une visée polémique) que celles (comme il est sûr, évident
que…) dotées uniquement d’un sens « positif ». C’est par la « richesse sémantique » que nous expliquons la compatibilité de ces
expressions avec le mode subjonctif, celui-ci contribuant à la focalisation des prédicats qu’elles constituent en défocalisant le
prédicat de la proposition subordonnée.
Afin de compléter le tableau, à part les verbes « psychologiques » et les expressions « évaluatives » citées plus haut, nous
aborderons également les verbes « performatifs », dont certains sont compatibles avec l’indicatif (ex. je dis / affirme / signale
qu’il viendra) et d’autres avec le subjonctif (ex. je propose / suggère / demande qu’il vienne), cette distribution pouvant
également s’expliquer à l’aide de la notion de « richesse sémantique », en tant qu’un facteur impliqué dans la (dé)focalisation.
Références
Combettes, B. (1998), Les constructions détachées en français, Paris, Ophrys.
Confait, J.-P. (2002), Temps, mode, aspect. Les approches des morphèmes verbaux et leurs problèmes à l’exemple du français et
de l’allemand, Toulouse, Presses Universitaires du Mirail.
Cordier, F. & Le Ny, J. F. (1975), L’influence de la différence de composition sémantique de phrases sur le temps d’étude dans
une situation de transfert sémantique, Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique, 72, 33-50.
De Boer, C. (1954), Syntaxe du français moderne, Leiden, Universitaire Pers (2e édition).
Gaatone, D. (2003), La nature plurielle du subjonctif français, dans P. Hadermann, A. Van Slijcke & M. Berré (éd.), La syntaxe
raisonnée : Mélanges de linguistique générale et française offerts à Annie Boone à l’occasion de son 60ème anniversaire,
Bruxelles, De Boeck-Duculot, 57-78.
Lebas-Fraczak, L. (2011a), Morphèmes grammaticaux et cohérence, Cahiers du LRL, 4 : 45-63, Presses Universitaires de Blaise
Pascal.
Lebas-Fraczak, L. (2011b), Pour une conception « réellement communicative » des formes grammaticales, Cahiers de
Praxématique, 56, 91-116.
Leeman-Bouix, D. (1994), Grammaire du verbe français. Des formes au sens, Paris, Nathan.
Mailhac, J.-P. (2000), Sens, choix et subjonctif, French Language Studies, 10, 229-244.
Martin, R. (1983), Pour une logique du sens, Paris, PUF.
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Nølke, H. (1985), Le subjonctif, fragments d’une théorie énonciative, Langages, 20, 55-70.
Nølke, H. (2001), Le regard du locuteur 2. Pour une linguistique des traces énonciatives, Paris, Editions Kimé.
Romero, C. (2007), Pour une définition générale de l’intensité dans le langage, Travaux de Linguistique, 54, 57-68
Valin, R. (1971), Leçons de linguistique de Gustave Guillaume 1948-1949, Série A : Structure sémiologique et structure
psychique de la langue française I, Québec, Les Presses de l’Université Laval, Paris, Klincksieck.
Wilmet, M. (2003), Grammaire critique du français, 3e édition, Bruxelles, Duculot.
LEONETTI Manuel (Alcalá). Temporal anaphora with imperfective past
[email protected]
Romance imperfective past (French imparfait, Spanish imperfecto; henceforth IMP) has often been described as an anaphoric,
non-autonomous tense that systematically requires some kind of linguistic antecedent to be licensed. IMP is, thus, considered as
a salient case of temporal anaphora. The anaphoric behaviour of IMP raises two relevant questions, among others: (a) is the
semantics of IMP inherently anaphoric, as claimed, for instance, in Berthonneau & Kleiber (1993)? In other words, how do
anaphoric properties emerge in IMP? (b) is it possible to reconcile this view of IMP with one based on aspectual features like
imperfectivity?
Question (a) may be answered along two different lines (Kleiber 2003): either assuming that the lack of autonomy is encoded in
the semantics of IMP (with a temporal requirement of global simultaneity with respect to a discourse antecedent, as in
Molendijk 1996, or with some condition on the situation acting as temporal frame, as in Berthonneau & Kleiber 1993), or
assuming that it is derived from some other feature of the semantics of IMP, typically imperfectivity (cf. Jayez 1998), thus
suggesting an answer also to question (b).
This presentation aims at offering some empirical evidence in favour of the latter perspective, on the basis of data concerning
the interpretation of Spanish imperfect and French imparfait. I assume that imperfectivity is the crucial feature of IMP. The main
argument is that the dependence on temporal antecedents with IMP varies according to different interpretations, so it cannot
be encoded in the semantics of the tense: more precisely, this dependence is an effect of the interaction of IMP with aspectual
classes of predicates. There is an asymmetry between IL states and derived stative readings (continuous, habitual / generic), on
the one hand, and SL states, dynamic and telic predicates, on the other (progressive and narrative readings). In the first case, the
predicate is assumed to hold for an unspecified interval, and no temporal antecedent is needed. It is the search for textual
coherence that drives the inference of temporal order, and not the need to access an antecedent. In the second case, IMP forces
the interpreter to carve a state out of an activity or a telic event, viewing it from the inside: in doing this, a segment of the
eventuality is singled out, and this segment must hold for an interval that is included within the total interval of the eventuality.
Specifying the temporal location of the segment is compulsory to justify the choice of the imperfective view by the speaker: this
is what gives rise to the search for a reference point. If there is no antecedent for these readings, the choice of IMP is pointless.
In fact, the usual arguments in favour of non-autonomy of IMP are based on the behaviour of eventive predications.
A first kind of evidence for this aspectual asymmetry comes from the interpretation of IMP in isolated sentences like (1) and (2),
where IMP does not require any temporal antecedent to be interpreted:
(1) Hercule Poirot era belga (no francés).
‘Hercule Poirot was Belgian (not French).’
(2) Las musas eran nueve.
‘The muses were nine.’
Crucially, (1) and (2) contain (IL) stative predications; (3), on the contrary, contains a telic predicate, and it is odd if a discourse
antecedent for IMP is not retrieved:
(3) #María se tomaba un café.
‘María was having a coffee.’
A second kind of evidence relates to the conditions for IMP to select an implicit temporal antecedent. The contrast in (4)-(5) was
at the centre of a lively debate on French imparfait in the nineties (Molendijk 1996, Berthonneau & Kleiber 1998). While the IMP
in the third sentence can access an implicit antecedent in (4) - an “implied situation” like ‘Juan was driving his Fiat’-, this is
excluded in (5), which gives rise to an unacceptable sequence, though the same coherence relation could hold in both examples
between the sentence with IMP and the preceding context.
(4) Juan se puso en camino con su viejo Fiat. Le pusieron una multa. Iba demasiado deprisa.
‘Juan set off with his old Fiat. He was fined. He was driving too fast.’
(5) Juan se puso en camino con su viejo Fiat. Le pusieron una multa. #Se saltaba un semáforo en rojo.
‘Juan set off with his old Fiat. He was fined. He jumped a traffic light.’
Two points are worth signalling. The first is that the connection with an alleged temporal antecedent is dependent on lexical
aspect: ‘go too fast’ in (4) is atelic, but ‘jump a traffic light’ in (5) is telic –an achievement. A telic predicate under IMP forces
access to a local explicit antecedent; this requirement cannot be satisfied in (5). Thus, non-autonomy seems to be a consequence
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of using IMP with the kinds of predicates that give rise to interpretations that require a temporal antecedent (i.e. progressive,
narrative, and stage-level states vs continuous and habitual readings). The second point is that the textual connection with
implicit antecedents, as it is evoked in the literature, is not an anaphoric link stricto sensu: it rather looks like a conceptual link
that is established in order to guarantee textual coherence.
Therefore, temporal anaphora with IMP emerges only with a particular set of interpretations, as a result of the search for
relevance in interpretation. There is no reason to assume that IMP is anaphoric per se: what looks like the search for a temporal
antecedent is only a phase in the inferential specification of certain interpretations (more precisely, in the inferential
specification of the basic explicature of the utterance, in Relevance-theoretic terms). Attributing anaphoric properties to IMP,
then, means taking one of the pragmatic effects of its use as a component of its linguistic meaning – an undesirable stance. If an
adequate division of labour is established between linguistic semantics and pragmatic inference, the parallelism between IMP
and pronominal anaphora is, thus, seriously undermined.
References
Berthonneau, Anne-Marie & Georges Kleiber. 1993. « Pour une nouvelle approche de l’ imparfait. L’ imparfait, un temps
anaphorique méronomique ». Langages 112. 147-166.
Berthonneau, Anne-Marie & Georges Kleiber. 1998. « Imparfait, anaphore et inferences ». In Andrée Borillo, Carl Vetters &
Marcel Vuillaume (eds.), Variations sur la référence verbale, 35-66. Amsterdam: Rodopi, Cahiers Chronos 3.
De Mulder, Walter & Carl Vetters. 1999. « Temps verbaux, anaphores (pro)nominales et relations discursives ». Travaux de
Linguistique 39. 37-58.
Jayez, Jacques. 1998. « DRT et imparfait. Un exemple du traitement formel du temps ». In Jacques Moeschler (dir.), Le temps des
événements, 123-154. Paris: Kimé.
Kleiber, Georges. 2003. Entre les deux mon coeur balance ou l’imparfait entre aspect et anaphore. Langue Française 138. 8-19.
Molendijk, Arie. 1996. « Anaphore et imparfait: la reference globale à des situations présupposées ou impliquées ». In Walter De
Mulder, Liliane Tasmowski-De Ryck & Carl Vetters (eds.), Anaphores temporelles et (in)cohérence, 109-123. Amsterdam:
Rodopi, Cahiers Chronos 1.
Sthioul, Bertrand. 1998. « Temps verbaux et points de vue ». In Jacques Moeschler (dir.), Le temps des événements, 197-220.
Paris: Kimé.
LEVILLAIN Pauline (Nantes). Temps et aspect dans l’interro-négative à l’oral en anglais contemporain
[email protected]
Introduction
La présente étude propose d’examiner le rôle que jouent le temps et l’aspect dans les valeurs que revêt l’interro-négative en
discours, en anglais oral contemporain.
La proposition interro-négative est intéressante en ce qu’elle est une forme complexe non seulement syntaxiquement, mêlant
formes interrogatives et négatives au sein d’un même prédicat, mais aussi sur le plan discursif, puisque son statut rhétorique est
controversé. Même si elle peut permettre de renseigner le champ informationnel (Larrivée et Moline, 2009), certains chercheurs
comme John Heritage considèrent qu’elle permet au locuteur d’exprimer un point de vue : « negative interrogatives should be
regarded as accomplishing assertions of opinion rather than questioning » (Heritage, 2002).
Nous nous proposons de prolonger cette réflexion en analysant des extraits de discours oral en anglais contemporain,
notamment en examinant les actes de langage que permettent d’exprimer les propositions interro-négatives au sein d’un corpus
oral.
Problématique
Nous nous interrogeons sur l’impact du temps et de l’aspect du prédicat sur, d’une part, la valeur en discours de l’interronégative et d’autre part, sur la possibilité, le cas échéant, d’expression du point de vue du locuteur. Ainsi, nous répondrons aux
questions suivantes :
- En quoi un changement de forme (temps, aspect) de l’interro-négative modifie-t-il le message que souhaite exprimer le
locuteur, en termes pragmatiques ?
- Le caractère rhétorique de l’interro-négative est-il conditionné par la forme du prédicat ?
- Si certains linguistes considèrent que l’interro-négative permet d’accomplir un acte en discours, quel(s) acte(s) de langage
indirect(s) permet-elle d’exprimer parmi « assertives », « directives », « commissives », « expressives », « declarations » (Searle,
1979) ?
- Un changement de temps et/ou d’aspect du prédicat entraîne-t-il un acte de langage différent ?
Analyse des données
Pour réaliser cette étude, nous analysons les occurrences de propositions interro-négatives extraites du corpus d’anglais oral
authentique « The Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English » constitué par le département de linguistique de
l’Université de Californie de Santa Barbara.
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La perspective adoptée est sémasiologique : une étude de la forme donne accès au sens. Les occurrences sont tout d’abord
identifiées et extraites à l’aide du logiciel CLAN. La forme de la proposition (temps, aspect, schéma syntaxique canonique de
l’interrogation avec inversion auxiliaire-sujet, syntaxe dite « de l’oral » comme dans « You didn’t ask her to dance ? »), le
sémantisme du prédicat (verbes de cognition comme « know », « think », « understand », d’action comme « clear the table »,
« call somebody back ») ainsi que le type de question (avec ou sans mot interrogatif, ouverte ou fermée) font l’objet d’une étude
scrupuleuse. Une fois les occurrences analysées en prenant en compte les éléments co-textuels (gauche et droit) et plus
largement contextuels (situation d’énonciation), des locuteurs natifs proposent des reformulations des occurrences mettant au
jour les valeurs illocutoires et perlocutoires de ces énoncés. D’un point de vue pragmatique, ces valeurs sont exprimées en
termes d’actes de langage indirects que les interro-négatives permettent de réaliser en discours.
Résultats et portée scientifique
L’interro-négative convoque systématiquement les attentes du locuteur. Sur le plan pragmatique, Laurence Horn (2001) met en
lumière la nature contrastive de l’interro-négative. Cette dernière oppose les attentes du locuteur aux faits, aux événements, à
l’évidentiel : « expectations clashing with evidence ».
Lorsque le prédicat est conjugué au présent, la principale valeur que véhicule l’interro-négative est celle de suggestion, plus ou
moins appuyée. Searle (1979) parle de « directives » qu’il paraphrase en « trying to get people to do things ».
Au prétérit, le prédicat fait référence à un événement passé qui, de fait, transforme la valeur de suggestion en reproche (« What, you didn’t ask her to dance? »). L’interro-négative permet non seulement d’exprimer l’incrédulité (« Didn’t you hear about
him? »), l’aspect progressif renforçant l’expression de l’incompréhension dans « Why wasn’t he sitting at her table? », cet
énoncé allant à l’encontre de toute logique. Elle permet aussi de confirmer un dire antérieur (« Didn’t we say, weren’t we saying
that… », « Didn’t you say they filed in 1987? »). Au demeurant, il convient de s’interroger sur la portée de la négation de ces
énoncés afin de déterminer si les présupposés de la proposition sont maintenus.
En conclusion, cette analyse des paradigmes de l’interro-négative permet de faire le jour sur les différentes valeurs qu’elle prend
en discours. Nous démontrons que ce type de proposition vient soutenir le projet argumentatif du locuteur et s’avère être un
outil linguistique important en interaction. A l’instar des « softeners », l’interro-négative permet « d’adoucir » un contenu qui
peut potentiellement poser problème comme donner un ordre ou exprimer un reproche. L’acte de langage indirect qu’elle
accomplit permet alors au locuteur de « ménager la face de l’allocutaire » (Détrie, 2006) afin de rendre plus acceptable un
contenu polémique. Le recours à l’interro-négative s’avère donc être une stratégie de négociation de points de vue majeure en
contexte polémique, permettant d’augmenter les chances d’adhésion de l’interlocuteur au point de vue polémique, et, ainsi, de
vaincre la contingence.
Bibliographie sélective
ALBRESPIT Jean, Construire l’énoncé en anglais : voix, négation, exclamation, interrogation, Toulouse, Presses Universitaires du
Mirail, 2011.
ANQUETIL Sophie, « Quand questionner, c’est réfuter » in FRANÇOIS Jacques, LARRIVEE Pierre, LEGALLOIS Dominique, La
Linguistique de la contradiction, Bruxelles, Peter Lang, 2013.
ANSCOMBRE Jean-Claude, DUCROT Oswald, L’Argumentation dans la langue, Paris, Mardaga, 1983.
BROWN Penelope, LEVINSON Stephen, Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1987.
DETRIE, Catherine. « De la non-personne à la personne : l’apostrophe nominale. Paris, CNRS, 2006.
DU BOIS John, CHAFE Wallace, MEYER Charles, THOMPSON Sandra, ENGLEBRETSON Robert, and MARTEY Nii. 2000-2005.
Santa Barbara corpus of spoken American English, Parts 1-4. Philadelphia, Linguistic Data Consortium. Consultable à l’adresse :
<www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/research/santa-barbara-corpus>.
DUCROT Oswald, Dire et ne pas dire, principes de sémantique linguistique, Paris, Hermann, 1972.
DUCROT Oswald, Le Dire et le dit, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1984.
GRICE Herbert Paul, « Logic and Conversation » in COLE Peter & MORGAN John (dir.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech arts,
New York, Academic Press, 1975.
HERITAGE John, « The limits of questioning: negative interrogatives and hostile question content » in Journal of Pragmatics, 34,
1427-1446, 2002.
HORN Laurence, A Natural History of Negation, University of Chicago Press, 2001.
KERBRAT-ORECCHIONI Catherine, Les Interactions verbales, t. 2, Paris, Armand Colin, 1997.
KERBRAT-ORECCHIONI Catherine, Le Discours en interaction, Paris, Armand Colin, 2005.
KÖNIG Ekkehard, SIEMUND Peter. « Speech act distinctions in grammar » in SHOPEN, T. (dir.), Language Typology and
Syntactic Description, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007, 276–324.
LARRIVEE Pierre, MOLINE Estelle, « Comment ne pas perdre la tête, À propos des effets d’intervention dans les interronégatives
en comment et de leur suspension dans les questions rhétoriques » Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, 104 (1), 2009, p.
185-214.
LEON Jacqueline, « Approche séquentielle d’un objet sémantico-pragmatique : le couple Q-R, questions alternatives et questions
rhétoriques », in Revue de Sémantique et de Pragmatique, n°1, 1997, 23-50.
PONS-RIDLER Suzanne, QUILLARD Geneviève, « La question dans les textes « bilingues » : analyse contrastive » in TTR :
Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction, vol. 8, n°2, 1995, 197-210.
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QUIRK Randolph, GREENBAUM Sidney, LEECH Geoffrey & SVARTVIK Jan, A Grammar of Contemporary English, London,
Longman, 1972.
QUIRK Randolph, GREENBAUM Sidney, LEECH Geoffrey & SVARTVIK Jan, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English
Language, London, Longman, 1985.
SEARLE John R., Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979.
SPERBER Dan, WILSON Deirdre, Relevance: Communication and cognition, 142, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1986.
STIVERS Tanya, “An overview of the question-response system in American English conversation” in Journal of Pragmatics, 42,
2010, 2772-2781.
LHAFI Sandra (Köln). llegar + a + VINF vs venir + a + VINF : ce que le verbe à l’infinitif nous révèle quant au fonctionnement
dialogique de chacune des deux périphrases
[email protected]
Dans la présente communication, nous étudierons les périphrases verbales « llegar + a + VINF » et « venir + a + VINF ». Nous
reprendrons et continuerons une hypothèse que nous avons élaborée ailleurs (cf. Auteur, en préparation, et Auteur, soumis), à
partir de trois échantillons réduits constitués respectivement des constructions marquées me va a + VINF, me llega a + VINF et
me viene a + VINF.
Nous avons montré alors que, à l’intérieur du groupe des périphrases verbales avec infinitif, le type de verbe sélectionné par le
verbe auxiliaire de chacune des trois périphrases verbales pourrait être responsable des nuances de sens entre les trois
constructions, en tout cas dans un contexte énonciativement marqué, où la périphrase signale une distanciation voire un rejet,
de la part du locuteur-énonciateur principal vis-à-vis d’un acte d’énonciation secondaire ou/et de certains de ses paramètres
constitutifs, à savoir l’énonciateur et l’énoncé secondaires. Nous avons essayé de mieux cerner les raisons du choix d’une des
périphrases, dans un contexte déterminé, et de livrer ainsi une description précise du type de rejet qui découle d’un tel choix :
rejet partiel ou total ? Qu’est-ce qui est rejeté ? Le rejet est-il le résultat d’un cheminement réflexif ou s’agit-il d’un rejet subit ?
Nos premières analyses nous ont révélé des préférences particulièrement frappantes pour deux des trois périphrases analysées,
celles en venir et llegar : alors que venir affiche une nette préférence pour les verba dicendi/cogitandi au sens large (111/120
occurrences), llegar est le plus souvent associé à des verbes traduisant une émotion, une sensation, etc. (146/355 occurrences),
tout en accordant une place encore relativement importante aux verba dicendi/cogitandi (69/355). Par ailleurs, à l’intérieur de
cette dernière catégorie, nous avons constaté, pour la périphrase en llegar, une fréquence particulièrement élevée du verbe
convencer (50/69) qui devançait de loin decir (14/69).
Dans la présente contribution, nous approfondirons la question de l’influence de l’infinitif sur la production des effets de sens en
discours, en nous concentrant sur les deux périphrases mentionnées : « llegar a + VINF » et « venir a + VINF », avec l’objectif
d’apporter des éléments de réponse concernant leurs particularités respectives dans des contextes similaires. Par exemple,
comment expliquer la différence entre les énoncés (a) vienen a decir que soy un estorbo et (b) llegan a decir que soy un estorbo
? Notre explication se compose d’éléments pris dans deux cadres théoriques (théories de la grammaticalisation et dialogisme).
(1) D’une part, le sémantisme des deux auxiliaires concernés (venir et llegar), qui est le résultat d’un long parcours de
grammaticalisation plus ou moins avancé selon l’auxiliaire et qui comprend des « résidus » sémantiques issus du verbe plein
originel (en l’occurrence, un verbe de mouvement) transformé en auxiliaire, livre des éléments-clés pour l’interprétation du
fonctionnement de chacune des deux périphrases verbales en discours.
(2) D’autre part, nous optons pour une approche dialogique (cf. Auteur, en préparation ; Auteur, soumis) qui a le mérite de
réinterpréter, de façon énonciative, les résidus sémantiques mentionnés : nous montrerons que les éléments sémantiques
conservés (cf. directionnalité, [type de] déplacement) contribuent au fonctionnement dialogique des périphrases verbales dans
lesquelles ils s’intègrent. Signaux dialogiques, les périphrases verbales indiquent, de par l’auxiliaire et la préposition
directionnelle a qu’elles comprennent, l’orientation à choisir dans la quête des « énoncés secondaires » (e1), (e2), etc. dont
l’énonciateur principal E1 d’un énoncé principal (E) tient compte, lorsqu’il agence ce dernier. L’avantage d’une telle approche est
de permettre une description homogène des deux (et au-delà, tel est notre objectif, de toutes les) périphrases verbales en
emploi pragmatico-émotif. Cette homogénéité permet de proposer un cadre explicatif alternatif réconciliant les explications fort
hétérogènes
avancées
dans
la
littérature
(pour
un
aperçu
voir
Carrasco
Gutiérrez
2008).
Nous affinerons la description en recourant aux différents types de dialogisme retenus par Bres (cf. Bres 2005; Bres/Mellet 2009;
Dendale 2012) – dialogismes interlocutif, intralocutif et interdiscursif) – pour avancer un classement de chacune des trois
périphrases verbales dans l’un des trois types évoqués. Le classement proposé et les affinités qu’il suggère seront par la suite
soumis à un examen critique.
Tests statistiques à l’appui (Fischer exact test, odds ratios), nous mesurerons le degré de représentativité des affinités constatées
(cf. Stefanowitsch/Gries 2003), en nous basant sur deux échantillons de 10.000 occurrences chacun, extraits du corpus Colibri2
(cf. https://webcorpora.org/). L’objectif est d’analyser si un verbe particulièrement saillant pour telle ou telle périphrase verbale
(par exemple, convencer pour llegar a + VINF) présente une réelle affinité avec la périphrase verbale en question. Nous partirons
84
de l’hypothèse nulle, selon laquelle il n’y aurait aucune corrélation entre l’apparition de llegar a et convencer, pour en tester la
validité. Les tests statistiques permettront d’exclure la présence d’une affinité « accidentelle » au sein de nos échantillons
réduits évoqués ci-dessus et de montrer le degré de probabilité que le verbe convencer apparaisse dans tout échantillon de la
périphrase verbale. Si cette probabilité est statistiquement élevée et que l’affinité se distingue de manière significative de celle
observée pour ce même verbe en colligation avec « venir + a », alors l’affinité constatée pourra être considérée comme
réellement existante. L’objectif à long terme est de rassembler toutes les affinités fortes et statistiquement pertinentes afin d’en
extraire des éléments d’explication pour les emplois caractéristiques observés en discours, tous verbes à l’infinitif confondus.
Références bibliographiques
Lhafi, Sandra (en préparation), « Les périphrases verbales ‹ ir a / llegar a / venir a + VINF › et leur rôle en discours : une approche
dialogique ».
Lhafi, Sandra (soumis), « ‹ No me vengas a decir (que)… › vs ‹ No me vayas a decir (que)… › : ressemblances et différences. Une
approche dialogique », publications du Cercle Belge de Linguistique.
Bres, Jacques (2005), « Savoir de quoi on parle : dialogue, dialogal, dialogique; dialogisme, polyphonie… », in : Bres, J., e. a.
(éds.), Dialogisme et polyphonie. Approches linguistiques. Actes du colloque de CERISY. – Bruxelles: De Boeck/Duculot, 2005,
pp. 47–61.
Bres, Jacques/Labeau, Emmanuelle (2012), « De la grammaticalisation des formes itive (aller) et ventive (venir) : valeurs en
langue, emplois en discours », in : Saussure, L. de/Rihs, A. (éds.), Études de sémantique et pragmatique françaises. – Bern: Lang,
2012, pp. 143–165.
Bres, Jacques/Mellet, Sylvie (2009), « Une approche dialogique des faits grammaticaux », in : Langue française 163, pp. 3–20.
Carrasco Gutiérrez, Ángeles (2008), « <Llegar a + infinitivo> como conector aditivo en español », in: Revista Española de
Lingüística (RSEL) 38/1, pp. 67–94.
Dendale, Patrick (2012), « ‹ Oui, il y a encore du pain sur la planche… › À propos de la notion d’énoncé dans la théorie du
dialogisme de Jacques Bres », in : Bres, J., e. a. (éds.), Dialogisme, langue, discours (Gramm-R. Études de linguistique française,
14). – Bruxelles e. a.: Lang, pp. 181–196.
Fogsgaard, Lene (2002), Algunas perífrasis aspectuales del español (Monografías). – Alicante: Publicaciones de la Universidad.
Garachana Camarero, Mar (2009), « Gramática y pragmática en la evolución de las perífrasis verbales. El caso de venir + a +
infinitivo. » Español Actual 92, pp. 69–102.
Gómez Torrego, Leonardo (1988), Perífrasis verbales. Sintaxis, semántica y estilística. – Madrid : Arcos Libros.
Hopper, Paul J./Traugott, Elizabeth Closs (2003 [11993]), Grammaticalization. Second edition (Cambridge Textbooks in
Linguistics). – Cambridge : University Press.
Lhafi, Sandra (2014), « Ein pragmalinguistischer Ansatz zur Beschreibung von Verbalperiphrasen im Spanischen am Beispiel von
‘ir a + infinitivo’ », in : Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie (ZrP) 130/3, pp. 652–670.
Olbertz, Hella (1998), Verbal Periphrases in a Functional Grammar of Spanish. – Berlin/New York : de Gruyter.
Sarrazin, Sophie (2011), « Una semántica del espacio al servicio del aspecto : estar, ir, venir, andar, auxiliares de perífrasis
verbales en español », in : Cuartero Otal, J./García Fernández, L./Sinner, C. (éds.), Estudios sobre perífrasis y aspecto (Études
linguistiques/Linguistische Studien, vol. 5). – München : |peniope|,, pp. 180–198.
Stefanowitsch, Anatol/Gries, Stefan Th. (2003), « Collostructions: Investigating the interaction of words and constructions », in:
International
Journal
of
Corpus
Linguistics
8/2,
pp.
209–243
[cf.
http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/stgries/research/2003_AS-STG_Collostructions_IJCL.pdf].
Torrent-Lenzen, Aina (2003), « La función pragmático-emotiva de las perífrasis verbales en castellano y en otras lenguas
románicas. », in : Pusch, Cl. D./Wesch, A. (éds.), Verbalperiphrasen in den (ibero-)romanischen Sprachen/Perífrasis verbales en
las lenguas (ibero-) románicas. – Hamburg: Buske, pp. 217–230.
LISZKA Sarah (Greenwich). Exploring advanced L2 use of the English present simple and the present progressive from a
syntactic-pragmatic perspective.
[email protected]
Understanding the nature of persistent fossilisation of certain linguistic forms in advanced second language speakers continues
to raise two fundamental questions. The first asks whether or not such selective difficulties are attributable to underlying
differences of functional features between the L1-L2 pairing, and the second asks whether or not they are temporary. Evidence
to suggest that such optionality results from a permanent grammatical deficit leads to a third, little-researched question, that is,
whether or not such a deficit could contribute to non-native-like processes at the linguistic-pragmatic interface. This paper
considers these questions by focussing on the L2 acquisition of the English present progressive She is walking to work (event-inprogress) and the English present simple She walks to work (habitual). It reports the results of an experiment designed to
investigate whether or not L1 French-advanced L2 English speakers are able to successfully acquire the distributional and
interpretational properties underlying these forms. It then compares the current data with two studies by Liszka (2009; 2015)
which show that L1 French advanced L2 speakers have difficulties in consistently matching meaning-to-form for the present
progressive in appropriate environments, i.e. they fluctuate between the use of the present progressive and present simple
forms. From these results, Liszka suggests that adult French L2 learners of English maintain a strong v[uInfl:] from their L1 even
at advanced levels of proficiency. This leads to the raising of English thematic verbs (as in French), yielding an event-in-progress
interpretation for the simple form which is not licenced in L1 English. To further test this claim, this study replicates the three
experimental tasks used in the original studies (two guided ‘spontaneous’ oral production tasks and written gap-fill task).
85
Although the three groups are homogenous in terms of proficiency (i.e. advanced), they represent three different populations
for comparison: English language students learning general English in France (2009); French academics working in a UK university
(2015); post-graduate students studying English at Master’s level, living in France (2016). In light of additional evidence
indicating persistent form-meaning mismatches, the results are used to consider an L1-influenced (permanent) syntactic deficit
as the possible source of difficulty. The implications for native-like pragmatic processes at Logical Form from a Relevance Theory
perspective are then discussed, with particular emphasis on explicature formation and recovery (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/95).
References
Liszka, S.A. (2009) Associating meaning to form in advanced L2 speakers: An investigation into the acquisition of the English
present simple and present progressive. In N. Snape, Y-K. I. Leung and M. Sharwood Smith (eds), Representational Deficits in
SLA: Studies in Honor of Roger Hawkins; LALD Vol 47, pp. 229-246. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Liszka, S.A. (2015) The L2 acquisition of the English present simple – present progressive distinction: Verb-raising revisited. The
Acquisition of the Present. D. Ayoun (ed). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. (1995) Relevance: Communication and Cognition. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
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M
MANGIALAVORI RASIA María Eugenia (CONICET), MUGICA Nora (Nacional de Rosario). Verb structure and SE syntax:
verb-conflated components and aspectual closure in Romance se constructions [email protected] ; [email protected]
This paper focuses on four different but (hopefully) related facts about deadjectival verbs [DV] in Romance along with some
natural extensions for English:
(1) a. The relevance of property-denoting lexical roots [Prop√] (i.e. scale boundedness) and the consequent root-event
homomorphism noted in DVs in both Romance and English;
b. The alternatives following from the availability of different non-eventive relational heads (p0) providing a locus of Pathencoding for DVs in Romance languages like Catalan and Italian;
c. The consequences of the semantic and syntactic specifications of the Path-encoding constituent (p0) for the eventive and
argumental structure of the DV, according to (b).
d. The apparent failure of phrasal COS paraphrases (motion verb+adjective) to render non-resultative/atelic COS in
English in contrast to analytic forms (DVs).
Research Problem. DVs are not a homogenous class. On closer look, divergent aspectual entailments obtain. This difference has
been widely argued to ensue from the scalar specification (boundedness) of the Property-denoting root (Prop√) (cf. Kearns
2007), or from the interpretation of the DV with reference to a closed/open property scale (Hay, Kennedy&Levin 1999). In this
paper we will identify difficulties with this account, and argue instead that the relevance of scale boundedness for telicity is
determined by syntax based on two facts. On the one hand, Catalan and Italian DVs comprise an alternative derivation for
Prop√s which presents consistent aspectual/eventive (atelic) properties regardless of the type of scale contributed by the
root/adjective. A second question has to do with the principles involved in the circumstance that the analytic paraphrase
regularly employed in English (motion verb+adjective) appears to be (unexpectedly) constrained to resultative/telic COS
regardless of open/closed-nature of the property scale—and especially when English DVs find no trouble in delivering the two
aspectual types according to the Prop√ involved (thus accommodating to the aspectual partition observed).
Data & Analysis. We will analyze alternative COS built on Prop√s in order to cast light on the syntactic and/or semantic factors
involved and the way they affect the aspectual contour of the (COS) event delivered. Facts enumerated in (1) will guide the
discussion.
((1)a) Compatibility with proportional/maximality/intensive modifiers shows two DV types: open scale Prop√ essentially
correlates with atelicity/unboundedness (2), closed-scaled prop√ results in telic COS (3). Crucially enough, further tests (negation
scope, subinterval property, etc.) show that ±gradability of Prop√ correlates with ±homogeneity and ±resultativity. In our case,
ascription of the divergence to the Prop√ is encouraged by four specific facts: (i) verbs in (2)-(3) share the same derivational
constituents; (ii) the selection of alternating affixes (other DVs use –a/ø) is not relevant; (iii) neither is categorial type (actually,
the split is also reflected by denominal verbs, cf. Hale & Keyser 2002, Harley 2005); (iv) argument structure realization patterns
do not correlate with the division either: both (2) and (3) comprise verbs entering the causative alternation, as well as (only)
transitive and (only) ergative verbs.
(2) embellecer [embellish], ensanchar [widen], endurecer [harden], endulzar [sweeten]
{#enteramente[entirely]/#parcialmente[partially]/#absolutamente[absolutely]/#completamente
[completely]/apenas[barely]/mucho[a lot]/demasiado[too much]/un poco [a little]}
(3) emblanquecer [turn white], enverdecer [turn green], palidecer [turn pale], enloquecer [go crazy], enmudecer [become mute],
ennegrecer [turn black], enrojecer [turn red], enronquecer [grow hoarse], ensordecer [go deaf], enturbiar [become murky]
{enteramente[entirely]/parcialmente[partially]/absolutamente[absolutely]/completamente[completely]/totalmente[totally]/#ap
enas[barely]/#mucho[a lot]/#demasiado[too much]/#un poco [a little]}
If this is correct, and Prop√ is the element triggering the delivery of a telic/atelic predication, then the situation has an
interesting parallel in the domain of motion verbs and the way telicity is established. Mutatis mutandis—if we accommodate the
0
affix as a path-encoding head (p ); thus accounting for the transitional character of DVs as opposed to Adjs built on the same
Prop√—, the position of the Prop√ in DVs (prior to conflation) on the l-syntactic approach of Hale and Keyser (2002) is equivalent
to the position of (unincorporated) measuring-out arguments such as Goals in motion verbs (e.g. The cart rolled *(to the park) in
an hour)—assuming also that motion is comparable to change. Since property-denoting elements have been long-studied by
differing in properties relevant to measuring-out, such as inherent boundedness (the simplest assumption being that scales may
or may not have maximal/minimal elements; cf. Kearns 2005 i.a.); we can expect Prop√s with different scalar specification
(±bounded) to deliver verbs with different aspectual/eventive properties, and that such properties will be reliably determined in
pretty much the same way that such properties in Goal arguments determine the aspect of motion verbs (cf. Harley 2005 on
denominals). If the telicity/resultativity of a motion/change event hinges on the availability of an endpoint (+max degree) for the
Path, we should expect DVs derived from [+max] Prop√s to be telic and resultative, whereas DVs derived from [-max] roots shall
render atelic and nonresultative COS, as further tests (negation scope, subinterval property) confirm. Hence, event-root
homomorphism can be claimed to accommodate the distribution in (2)-(3).
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((1)b) However, Catalan and Italian DVs suggest that event–root homomorphism may not be a general or defective
0
phenomenon, but a consequence of a (single) type of P being used in Spanish/English. Catalan and Italian offer two productive
affixes for the derivation of DVs (4): an em– prefix [Type1]—comparable to the Spanish affix in (2)-(3)— and a suffix (–eggiare/–
ejar ) [Type2]. Crucially, the resulting verbs show different aspectual properties even if built on the same Prop√. If event-root
homomorphism held invariably, then DVs derived from color-denoting roots, namely, should always be resultative/telic, as
generally agreed according to the bounded nature of the scale imputed to color-denoting roots/Adjs (cf. (3)). Yet, pairings like (5)
show that a bounded [+max] root delivers a telic/resultative predication only when it sits at the right of the affix [Type1], but not
when it precedes it [Type2]: the –eggiare/–ejar alternatives are not telic nor resultative. Unlike Type1(classically defined as
‘becoming x’, where x amounts to the property denoted by the root), Type2 is defined by denoting a state, essentially described
as close or similar to the property denoted by the root (cf. Oltra & Castroviejo 2013). Specific diagnostics converge:
proportional/maximality modifiers are, as expected, not possible with Type2, but natural with Type1; in turn, intensive modifiers
are at least odd with Type2 and natural with Type1 (5). Consistent effects arise in the interaction with perfectivity (e.g. past
perfect is only possible with Type 1 and imperfect tenses are preferred with Type2), telicity/culminativity environments (6)-(7).
The fact that definiteness of the internal DP is not relevant either in Type1 ((7)b) seems to concur with the hypothesis that the
Prop√ is the one measuring-out the event.
(4) Type1.
ITA. arrossire, ingiallire, sbiancare, inverdire
CAT. enrogir, engroguir, emblanquir, enverdir
Type2.
ITA. rosseggiare, gialleggiare, biancheggiare, verdeggiare
CAT. vermellejar, groguejar, blanquejar, verdejar
(5) a. {*abbastanza/*troppo/completamente/totalmente/parzialmente} inverdito
quite
too
completely
totally
partially
turn-green-PAST
b. {abbastanza/troppo/*completamente/*totalmente/*parzialmente} verdeggiato
quite
too
completely
totally
partially
be-greenish-PAST
(6) Dopo aver finito di {arrossire/*rosseggiare}
after have-INF ended of redden seem reddish ‘After having finished reddening]
(7) a. {La campagna/alcune campagne} {verdeggia(no)/*inverdiscono} tutto l’anno.
The countryside/Some countryside
are green(ish)/turn green
all the-year
‘The/some countryside look(s) green all year round]
b. Il sole sbiancò *(due) pareti in 5 minuti.
Cf. Il sole biancheggiò due pareti in 5 minuti
the sun whitened two walls in 5 minutes
the sun be-white(ish) two walls in 5 minutes
‘The sun turned [the] (two) walls white in 5 minutes]
((1)c) Interestingly enough, this divergence is not confined to aspectual semantics. Although we may feel tempted to claim that
the principles behind ERH are just active when the specific semantic properties of the derivational morphology do not override
them, or that Catalan and Italian derivational morphemes like -eggiare introduce their own specific semantic constraints, the
syntactic configuration of VP reveals a significant structural correlation indicating that the divergence would be wrongly confined
to a mere semantic/morphological intervention by the affix. Delivery of COS vs. stative predicates out of Prop√s can be easily
handled by the difference between T(erminal) C(oincidence) and C(entral) C(oincidence) relations encoded (we propose) by the
0
affix (P ) according to the layout sketched in (12). The eventive and argument structure of the resulting DVs present a relevant
correlation: the complexity of the TC fits both the transitional character (COS) and the availability of a projection embedding the
(result) state (the simpler CC necessarily comprised in TC relations, cf. Hale & Keyser 2002 i.a.); plus, it hosts the DP in the correct
position (the internal subject of the ergative verb). Proviso: TC understood as Directed Path avoids a defective telic structure
0
0
(thus, capturing the atelic COS rendered by open scaled P√)). In turn, PC (eggiare) conflates with the phonologically null V giving
a simpler eventive and argument structure, corresponding to a unergative non-eventive (stative) predicate. Auxiliary distribution
(8), ne-clitization (9), Causative/Inchoative alternation (10) and the fact that Type1, unlike Type2, allows passivization more or
less successfully (11) are consistent. If correct, then Prop√ does not measure-out the event in type2 (i.e., the correlation with
motion verbs and goal arguments does not hold) basically since it is not the complement of a directional non-eventive predicate
(PT). Plus, the unergativity of Type2 contributes to the aspectual divergence noted, for the DP would not be in a measuring-out
(internal) position in these DVs either.
((1)d) Eventually, the general approach could be pushed further to accommodate the (apparently unexpected) fact that English
analytic paraphrases are consistently telic and resultative, even if taking [-max]Prop√s (rendering non-resultative/atelic DVs)
unless a comparative (-er) form is added (13) (cf. also –ish). Two facts converge in this circumstance: English Path-conflated verbs
like go feature a V-conflated TC P (PT) which accounts for the telic/directional reading in contrast to the well-known ambiguity
between a directional and a locative reading in Romance equivalents. Second, the Prop√ is not acting freely, but contained in a
further projection (AdjP); this is crucial not only configurationally, but because adjectival categorization has been proved to
determine the aspectual the type of the predicate (thus, whereas Adjs trigger IL predication; DVs render, at least, SL predicates).
Yet, further work on this point is still in order.
(8) a. {ha/*è} rosseggiato, verdeggiato, biancheggiato, gialleggiato, bruneggiato
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b. {*ha/è} arrossito, inverdito, sbiancato, ingiallito, imbrunito
(9) a. Trattamenti che ne {sbiancano/arrossiscono/*biancheggiano/*rosseggiano} la pelle
‘Treatments that make the skin red/white]
b. Non ne {arrossisce/*rosseggia} nessuno di coraggiosi
‘None of them blushes [reddens] out of courageousness]
(10)
La paura lo {sbiancò/*biancheggiò}.
Si è {sbiancato/*biancheggiato} di paura.
‘Fear turned him white [pale]]
‘He turned white with fear]
(11)
Lo zucchero di canna grezzo non è stato {sbiancato/*biancheggiato}
‘Brown cane sugar has not been whitened].
0
(12)
a. [VP [ V0 [PT en-/a-/Ø [PC [DP [PC Prop√]]]]]]]
VP [V [PC [PCProp√, PC –eggiare/ejar]]]]
(13)
a. The sky darkened, but is it not dark [though].
b. The sky {went/turned/grew/got}dark*(er), but it isn]t dark [though].
Results. Spanish and English DVs suggest that the partition between two aspectual/eventive types is predicted by event-root
homomorphism ((1)a); yet, Catalan and Italian DVs indicate that this effect actually hinges on the situation of the Prop√ within
the VP ((1)b). The TC/CC opposition correctly handles the semantics and syntax—specifically, the argument structure realization
patterns and eventive structure—of DVs involving different Ps in the derivation ((1)c): whereas a CC (Post)position (eggiare/ejar)
leads to stative, unergative verbs where the Prop√ does not get to measure the event; a directional (TC) Preposition (en-/a-/Ø)
gives an ergative COS verb where the open/closed nature of the property scale is directly relevant to the eventive determination
of the predicate (event-root homomorphism). In turn, English analytic constructions ((1)d) originally accommodate to the
proposed analogy with motion verbs, but they also show that independent realization of the Prop√ as AdjP is not trivial in this
respect.
Significance. The alternative DV derivations contributed by Italian and Catalan suggest that the correlation between scale
boundedness and telicity is systematic and reliably predicted, but not as general as thought. We provide independent evidence
in favor of previous works claiming the relevance of scale boundedness to be determined by syntax; and that the position of
Prop√s is comparable the one occupied by unincorporated measuring-out Goal arguments in motion verbs, triggering similar
(measure-out) effects. Moreover, Italian can Catalan DVs analyzed establish relevant connections between eventive structure
and argument structure. As for the analysis proposed, the fact that both eventive and argument structure realization patterns
0
can be predicted from the structural nature of the P based on the CC/TC opposition does away with the need to postulate
0
different V s or additional covert (and hard to prove) components in accounting for the divergences noted between DVs. More
importantly, both DVs and analytic COS could ultimately be seen as part of a much more general phenomenon related to the
way that the element in sister-to-V position determines telicity in other (comparable) verbs. In any event, (aspectual) semantics
is not acting freely, but is (transparently) determined by syntax.
MARÍN Rafael (STL), ARCHE Maria J. (Greenwich). The eventive denotation of some deadjectival nouns
[email protected] ; [email protected]
This paper examines the elements, structure and formation process of derived categories, by analyzing the properties of nouns
derived from adjectives in Spanish. We discuss the structure underlying them and argue that, although it is commonly assumed
that deadjectival nouns denote qualities (wisdom) or states (sadness), there is a group of deadjectival nominalizations that can
refer to “instantiations” or “occurrences” of events (Beauseroy 2009), such as imprudence or cruelty. As shown by classical tests
on nominal eventivity (Godard & Jayez 1994), these occurrential deadjectival nouns (ODNs) (1c) behave like deverbal (1a) and
simple-eventive nominals (1b), contrasting with state (1d) and quality-nominals (1e). For instance, they can appear as
complements of take place and behave as count nouns being able to pluralize.
(1) a. Juan hizo dos operaciones/ llevó a cabo
dos discusiones.
Juan made two operations/ conducted
two discussions
b. Juan hizo dos fiestas.
Juan made two parties
c. Juan cometió
dos imprudencias/ varias
crueldades.
Juan carried out
two imprudencies/ several
cruelties
d. *Juan cometió
dos tristezas/varias
perplejidades.
Juan carried out
two sadnessess/ several
perplexities
e. *Juan cometió
varias bellezas/ sabidurías.
Juan carried out
several beauties/ wisdoms
We argue that such ODNs are possible only when coming from evaluative adjectives (cruel, imprudent) due to the fact that such
adjectives are predicated of an event in addition to an individual (Stowell 1991).
(2) Juan fue cruel con Inés
Juan was cruel with Inés
(3) Insultar a Inés fue cruel por parte de Juan
89
to insult to Inés was cruel by part of Juan
We defend that the observed eventivity properties come from functional syntactic structure, which makes these deadjectival
nominalizations different from simple eventive nominals, where the reference to an event is conceptual. Such a syntactic event
structure is tested by the capacity of these nominalizations to license purpose clauses, which is usually taken as a test of
structural eventivity (Borer 2012), since they must be controlled by an event argument.
(4) a. Las discusiones para solucionar el problema.
the discussions to solve
the problem
b. *Las fiestas para sorprender a Inés.
the parties to surprise (to) Inés
c. Las travesuras de Juan para sorprender a
Inés.
the devilries of Juan to
surprise
(to) Inés
At the same time, according to Arche & Marín (2012), we argue that the eventive structure is more defective than the one of
verbs’ (which includes aspectual projections taking the root), as deadjectival nominalizations are not compatible with aspectual
modifiers of the kind of for/in-adverbials. This makes these deadjectival nominalizations lie between deverbal and simpleeventive ones (which arguably consist of a root and a nominalizer).
(5) a. la discusión de los problemas durante/ *en una hora.
the discussion of the problems for/
in an hour
b. la construcción del puente en seis meses.
the construction of.the bridge in six months
c. *la fiesta durante/ en una hora.
the party for/
in an hour
d. *la imprudencia/ crueldad de Juan durante una hora.
the imprudence/ cruelty
of Juan for
an hour
Nouns such as crueldad ‘cruelty’ and imprudencia ‘imprudence’ not only have an occurrential meaning; they also give
grammatical results in contexts proper of quality nouns: una persona de una gran crueldad/ imprudencia ‘a person of a great
cruelty/ imprudence’. Yet, it is not the case that all ODNs allow for a quality reading; some (travesura ‘devilry’, fanfarronada
‘’boast’) only have an occurrential reading: *una persona de una gran travesura/ fanfarronada ‘a person of a great devilry/
boast’. In turn, although all ODNs derive from evaluative adjectives, not all nouns built on evaluative adjectives have an
occurrential realization. Certain nouns, such as amabilidad ‘kindness’ or cautela ‘caution’ have a quality (una persona de una
gran amabilidad/ cautela ‘a person of a great kindness/ caution’) but not an occurrential reading (*Hizo dos amabilidades/
cautelas ‘(S/he) made two kindnessess/ cautions’).These descriptions shed an important finding: all deadjectival nominals
denoting instantiations of events come from so-called dispositional evaluative adjectives, arguably due to the presence of an
event in the structure. Some of these adjectives are ambiguous and can optionally have this event and give rise to ODNs or to
Quality-nouns (cruel, cruelty), which is expected under Arche’s (2006) idea that evaluative adjectives can have either an eventive
(6a) or a dispositional structure (6b). Others lack the Q-reading, which suggest that the base structure in (6b) is not an option for
them.
(6) a. PredP [DPSubject [Event [Pred [A
b. PredP [Subject [Pred [A
References
Arche, M.J. (2006). Individuals in Time. Tense, Aspect and the individual/stage distinction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Arche, M.J & R. Marín (2012). Evaluative adjectives at the light of their nominalizations. Communication presented at LSRL
42.
Beauseroy, D. (2009). Syntaxe et sémantique des noms abstraits statifs. PhD. Diss, Nancy University.
Godard, D. & J. Jayez (1994).Types nominaux et anaphores le cas des objets et des événements. In Cahiers Chronos 1, 41-58.
Stowell, T. (1991). “The alignment of arguments in adjective phrases. In Perspectives on Phrase Structure: Heads and Licensing,
S. Rothstein (ed.), 105–135. New York: Academic Press.
MOIA Telmo (Lisbon). On the semantics of the temporal auxiliary verbs ir and vir in Portuguese
[email protected]
‘As part of the Project: Grammaticalisation of movement periphrases in Romance Languages’
As in many other languages of the world, Portuguese uses motion verbs – in particular, ‘ir’ (‘go’) and ‘vir’ (‘come’) – as temporal
auxiliary verbs, as a result of grammaticalisation processes (cf. e.g. Lima 2001, for a summary of the historical changes of ‘ir’).
The present paper aims at studying the semantic properties of these two verbs as temporal auxiliaries, focusing on the issue of
their competition with regular tense forms. A Reichenbachian view of tense will be adopted, along the lines defined in Discourse
Representation Theory (cf. Kamp & Reyle 1993), adapted to Portuguese in e.g. Peres (1993) or F. Oliveira (2013). Data from large
90
electronic corpora (mainly containing newspaper texts) will be used in order to determine the predominant contemporary uses
in the language. Whenever relevant, differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese (the latter variety largely studied in
several works by J. Oliveira, e.g. J. Oliveira 2006) – as, for that matter, differences between Portuguese and other (mainly)
Romance languages – will be underlined.
The verb ‘ir’ (‘go’) is commonly discussed in Portuguese grammars in connection with the so-called periphrastic future. In fact,
contemporary Portuguese allows (at least) two alternative ways – varying with the level of formality and other stylistic
conditions – of referring to an eventuality taking place after the utterance time: (i) a synthetic future (traditionally called ‘futuro
imperfeito’), historically emerged from a grammaticalisation (into suffixes) of inflections of the Latin verb ‘habere’; (ii) a
periphrastic future, involving a cluster formed by the verb ‘ir’ – typically inflected in the present – and an infinitive (INF) form of
the main verb: (1) “{Farei / Vou fazer} o que me pediste.” [gloss: ‘[I] will-do / go do[INF] the what [you] me asked’; translation: “I
{will do / I am going to do} what you asked me.”].
Rather curiously, Portuguese also allows the verb ‘ir’ to be inflected in the synthetic (imperfective) future, in totally equivalent
constructions, thus exhibiting redundant marking of the future value: (2) Irei fazer o que me pediste. [gloss: ‘[I] will-go do[INF]
the what [you] me asked’]. This interesting construction will be extensively discussed and its competition with the forms of type
(1) – in corpora – will be assessed.
Portuguese imperfective future can express three basic temporal values (cf. Peres 1993): (i) posteriority to the utterance time,
illustrated in (1)-(2) above; (ii) overlapping to a future perspective point, as in (3) below; (iii) posteriority to a future perspective
point, as in (4) below. In the last two cases, synthetic and periphrastic future are also in competition: (3) “A Ana chega às dez.
Nessa altura, eu {estarei / vou estar / ?irei estar} em casa.” [gloss: ‘the Ana arrives at ten at-that time I will-be / go be[INF] / willgo be[INF] at home’; translation: “Ana arrives at 10 pm. At that time, I will be home.”; (4) “Quando o Governo mudar, as coisas
{melhorarão / vão melhorar / irão melhorar}.” [gloss: ‘when the government changes the things will-improve / go improve[INF] /
will-go improve[INF]’; translation: “Things will get better, when the government changes.”].
Portuguese imperfective future can also have several non-temporal values, among which modal values of uncertainty – as in (5)
– and evidentiality – as in (6) – stand out: (5) “A Ana {terá / *vai ter / *irá ter} uns 25 anos.” [gloss: ‘the Ana will-have / goes
have[INF] / will-go have[INF] some 25 years’; translation: “Ana is probably 25 years old.”]; (6) “A empresa {estará / *vai estar /
*irá estar} neste momento em risco de falência, segundo a Moody’s.” [gloss: ‘the company will-be / goes be[INF] / will-go
be[INF] at-this moment at risk of bankruptcy according-to the Moody’s’; translation: “According to Moody’s, the company is at
risk of bankruptcy right now.”]. It is very interesting to note that the verb ‘ir’ cannot be used to express these values, as several
authors have noted. This evinces that the so-called synthetic and periphrastic futures have different grammatical properties, in
need of deeper scrutiny.
Though I will focus on ‘ir’ as a temporal auxiliary, other uses of this verb (where it does not behave a lexical motion predicate)
will be briefly described and inventoried, with the help of the main Portuguese dictionaries. Prominent examples (cf. Móia &
Viotti 2004: 119-120) are: (i) ‘ir’ (always in the imperfective past [IMP], and followed by ‘gerúndio’) as a marker of
non-occurrence (in the past) of an imminent situation: (7) “Os elefantes iam morrendo de sede.” [gloss: ‘the elephants
went[IMP] dying of thirst’; translation: “The elephants nearly died of thirst.”]; (ii) ‘ir’ (with no special tense restrictions, and also
followed by ‘gerúndio’) as a marker of gradual change in time: (8) “As leis {vão / foram / irão} mudando (com o tempo).” [gloss:
‘the laws go / went[IMP] / will-go changing (with the time)’; translation: “Laws {gradually change / gradually changed / will
gradually change}.”.
The verb ‘vir’ (‘come’) – followed by the preposition ‘a’ and an infinitive – can be used as a temporal auxiliary expressing
posteriority to a past perspective point. In this use, it competes with the ‘condicional presente’ (tense with suffix ‘–ria’), arguably
the basic way of expressing this posteriority value (cf. Peres 1993). Note that, since ‘vir’ is also inflected in the ‘condicional
presente’, the periphrastic structures have a redundant marking comparable to that in (2): (9) “O recluso fugiu. {Seria / Viria a
ser} apanhado pouco tempo depois.” [gloss: ‘the prisoner escaped [he] would-be / would-come to be[INF] caught little time
after’; translation: “The prisoner escaped. He would be caught shortly after.”. It is well know that Portuguese ‘pretérito perfeito
simples’ (the simple perfective past [PERF]) often replaces the ‘conditional presente’, in less formal contexts, as the marker of
posteriority to past perspective points. The auxiliary verb ‘vir’ can curiously be inflected in like manner, whence (10) is equivalent
to (9) above: (10) “O recluso fugiu. {Foi / Veio a ser} apanhado pouco tempo depois.” [gloss: ‘the prisoner escaped [he]
was[PERF] / came[PERF] to be[INF] caught little time after’].
Though I will focus on ‘vir’ as a temporal auxiliary, other uses of this verb (where it does not behave a lexical motion predicate)
will be briefly described and inventoried. An interesting example is ‘vir’ followed by ‘gerúndio’, or ‘vir’ with the auxiliary verb
‘ter’ (i.e. in a compound form) followed by the preposition ‘a’ and an infinitive, as a marker of gradual change in time, from a
retrospective perspective; the second possibility seems exclusive to European Portuguese (cf. Móia & Viotti 2004: 124): (11) “As
relações com a China {vêm melhorando / têm vindo a melhorar} ultimamente.” [gloss: “the relationships with the China come
improving / have come[PAST PARTICIPLE] to improve lately”; translation: “The relationships with China have been improving
lately.”].
In a nutshell, this presentation aims at giving an overview of the most common current uses of temporal auxiliary verbs ‘ir’ and
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‘vir’ in Portuguese, using data from large corpora (mainly from newspaper texts), exploring the competition between tense
forms within a formal semantic framework (Discourse Representation Theory) and focusing on grammaticalisation clues that are
noticeable.
References
Kamp, Hans & Uwe Reyle (1993), From Discourse to Logic. Introduction to Modeltheoretic Semantics of Natural Language,
Formal Logic and Discourse Representation Theory, Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Lima, José Pinto de (2001): “Sobre a Génese e a Evolução do Futuro com ir em Português”, in Augusto Soares da Silva (ed.),
Linguagem e Cognição. A Perspectiva da Linguística Cognitiva, Braga: associação Portuguesa de Linguística / Universidade
Católica, pp. 119-145 (reprinted in J. P. Lima, 2014, Studies on Grammaticalization and Lexicalization, München: Lincom
Europa, pp. 69-83).
Móia, Telmo & Evani Viotti (2004), Differences and Similarities between European and Brazilian Portuguese in the Use of the
«Gerúndio», Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 3.1, pp. 111-139.
Oliveira, Fátima (2013), Tempo Verbal, in Eduardo B. Paiva Raposo et al. (orgs.), Gramática do Português, Lisboa: Fundação
Calouste Gulbenkian, pp. 509-553.
Oliveira, Fátima & Ana Cristina M. Lopes (1995), Tense and Aspect in Portuguese, in Thieroff, Rolf (ed.), Tense Systems in
European Languages II, Tübingen, Niemeyer, pp. 95-115.
Oliveira, Josane (2006), O futuro da língua portuguesa ontem e hoje: variação e mudança, tese de doutorado, Universidade
Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
Oliveira, Josane & Sílvia Olinda (2008), “A trajetória do futuro perifrástico na língua portuguesa: séculos XVIII, XIX e XX”,
Revista da ABRALIN, v. 7, n. 2, pp. 93-117.
Peres, João Andrade (1993), “Towards an Integrated View of the Expression of Time in Portuguese (First Draft)”, Cadernos de
Semântica 14, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa.
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N
NILSSON Alexander (Uppsala). Evidentiality and mirativity in Tajik – the case of ‘buda ast’
[email protected]
The aim of my talk is to investigate the evidential or non-witnessed forms of Modern Literary Tajik (MLT) in the light of the
grammatical outline made by Perry in his “A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar” (2005). Since Perry uses the term non-witnessed
to describe these forms, I will also apply this term in this paper.
Particular emphasis of my research thus far has been on the perfect of the verb budan. My primary source in analysing these
non-witnessed forms has been around 400 pages of MLT taken from two novels and one short story. Given the ambiguous
nature of the non-witnessed forms, I have paid particular attention to the context in which they occur, i.e. the development of
the plot and interactions between the characters in order to further substantiate my interpretations.
According to Perry, the non-witnessed forms are mainly used in three different instances a) second-hand information b) logical
inference and c) mirativity (sudden realization). These closely mirror the uses of the non-witnessed forms in the neighbouring
Turkic languages, and also in a broader sense the languages of South-Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Lazard (1999) has
therefore argued that these forms could all be subsumed under the term “mediative” since there is not always a clear-cut
delineation between these three categories. This is something DeLancey (1997) discusses, stating that the three uses of the nonwitnessed form, as seen in Tajik and Turkish “is not an idiosyncratic peculiarity of one language, but a pattern motivated by
cross-linguistically relevant considerations”.
Perry states that the perfect of the verb budan (to be) make up an exception to how the perfect is traditionally used as a nonwitnessed form. He states that these forms (buda ast and došta ast) “always refer to the present time or general truths, when
used in non-witnessed contexts”; they therefore, contrary to the form, do not have a past meaning. He further states that they
are “often found in miratives and gnomic statements”. Perry’s outline therefore excludes the perfect of budan as having a) any
inferential meaning or b) any past meaning.
However, my own research, which I intend to present at the conference, seems to indicate that the form buda ast can be used,
not only to convey mirativity in the present, but also inference in both the present and the past tense.
Ex. 1: Inferential, present
Background: Sharif has captured a fox, which he suspects of killing his hens. He wants to kill the fox, but Faromurz objects to this
cruel act whereupon Sharif questions him:
Eh, aka-yi Faromurz, yak gapho-yi megöyi ki? Dunyo chappa našuda ast ku? Yak hayvon-i muzir buda ast, odam nest
ku, - ranjidatab’ guft Šarif.
Oh, brother Faromurz, what are you talking about? Is the world upside down, or what? It’s a vermin (after all), not a
human being, you know, said Sharif, exasperated.
Comment: In this example, it is very unlikely that Sharif has some kind of realization that this animal was a vermin at that very
moment. After all, he had suspected it of killing his hens and he had set up a trap for this very reason. Therefore, the nonwitnessed form here rather denotes that this is his conclusion, based on all available facts.
It is also interesting to contrast this buda ast with the unmarked negation nest ‘is not’ used right after it. Sharif uses the
perfect when describing the fox as a vermin. This is because this is inferred knowledge, it could be another fox or maybe it
wasn’t a fox at all (in fact in the story, no-one witnessed the incident, but it is mentioned that foxes usually are the culprits when
hens are missing). But Sharif is not using the negated perfect of budan when he states that it is not a human being, since this is
an indisputable fact, not open to discussion.
Ex. 2 - Inferential, past
Background: At the beginning of their courtship, Nozimi talks to Musharraf and praises her in different ways.
- Jovid bodo on röz-e, ki šumo ba dunyo omaded…On röz röz-i nek buda ast.
- May that day that you were born last forever…That day was blessed / good.
Comment: While it is possible to interpret the buda ast here with a present meaning, it makes more sense to see it as being in
the past tense. Also, it is more likely this is an inferential statement rather than a mirative one.
One must distinguish between the buda ast as it occurs in dialogue and in the narrative. In one of the books, Dar orzu-yi padar,
the form buda ast is used profusely throughout the narrative, but not so much in the other books. The reason for this seems to
be the style of narration – in Dar orzu-yi padar, the narrator switches from being a third person omniscient to a third person with
limited knowledge, describing the inner though processes and conclusions of the main characters.
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My hypothesis is therefore that the the non-witnessed forms can, in a broader context, be seen as a literary device used by the
narrator as a short hand for denoting a shift in the epistemology of the narration without resorting to epistemic verbs like ”she
thought, she surmised”:
Ex. 3 – Mirative, present
Background: Musharraf, enraged after her husband had published an article about his lover Shahnoza, asks Khijolat of her
whereabouts.
- Notinj šudi, bacham? – zahrxanda kard xola-yi Xijolat.
- Ha, - az ahvol-i Mušarraf ö xabardor buda ast.
- Are you upset, my child? – said auntie Khijolat with a malevolent laugh.
- Yes, - she [i.e. Khijolat] was aware of Musharraf’s state, (after all).
Comment: Here the last line should rather be interpreted as the thought or realization of Musharraf, although given in the third
person. Using the form buda ast, the narrator signalizes that this is the conclusion / realization of Musharraf that Khijolat was
aware of the article rather than his own omniscient information.
I will conclude this paper with a last example, further displaying how the perfect of budan is used as a narrative technique in
accentuating through whom the information is relayed. When it is relayed through one of the characters, the verb is in a nonwitnessed form, but when the omniscient narrator relays the information, is in the unmarked (witnessed) form:
Ex. 4 - Reported, past
Begohi hamon röz voqea-yi noxush-i digar-e ham ba sar-i Nozimi omada buda ast. Az in Mušarraf vaqte xabardor
šud…[the rest of the sentence is also in the Preterite, i.e. the unmarked form]
In the evening of that very day, another bad thing had happened to Nozimi. When Musharraf heard about this…
Comment: In the first sentence a non-witnessed form is used to convey that this is what Musharraf has heard – i.e. this is
information that Musharraf has gathered from second hand sources. The other sentence, which describes the actions of
Musharraf uses the Preterite, which is the unmarked (witnessed) form for describing actions in the past.
To summarize, my research shows that the perfect of budan is not solely used for the present tense, but that it can convey a past
meaning, too. It is therefore, in use as a non-witnessed form similar to the use of the perfect of other, “normal” verbs.
Moreover, in some instances, it is better interpreted as conveying inference rather than mirativity. In a broader perspective,
given the nature of the non-witnessed form as a marker of processed, new information, it is also used abundantly as a literary
device in some types of narratives for indicating a shift between the narrator’s omniscient knowledge and the limited knowledge
(inferences, second-hand information, realizations) of any given character.
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (2004). Evidentiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press
DeLancey, S. 1997. Mirativity: The grammatical marking of unexpected information. LinguisticTypology 1: 33-52.
Jahani, Carina (2000). Expressions of indirectivity in spoken Modern Persian. In Johanson, Lars & Utas, Bo (eds.) Evidentials:
Turkic, Iranian and neighbouring languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
Lazard, G. 1999. Mirativity, evidentiality, mediativity, or other? Linguistic Typology 3: 91–109.
Perry, John. R. (2000). Epistemic verb forms in Persian of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. In Johanson, Lars & Utas, Bo (eds.)
Evidentials: Turkic, Iranian and neighbouring languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
Perry, John R. (2005). A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar Boston: Brill
NOWAKOWSKA Malgorzata (Krakow). Les interprétations modale, médiative et aspectuelle de la construction polonaise
‘mieć (avoir) + INFINITIF’
[email protected]
On reconnaît habituellement deux emplois de la construction polonaise <mieć (avoir) + INFINITIF> : un emploi modal et un emploi
médiatif (Świderska-Koneczna 1930, Szymański 1991, Lempp 1986, Topolińska 1968, 2000 ; Holvoet 2011, 2012). Le premier
emploi peut être qualifié de déontique et correspond approximativement à la paraphrase ‘X a à faire p’. <mieć + INFINITIF> est
alors en concurrence avec d’autres verbes modaux, notamment musieć et powinno (Jędrzejko 1987, Holvoet 1989, Ligara 1997).
Le second emploi marque un type d’évidentialité généralement qualifié de médiatif ; dans cet emploi, l’énonciateur indique que
l’information véhiculée par son énoncé provient d’une source externe (source secondaire) (Topolińska 1968, 2000 ; Holvoet
2011, 2012). Assez souvent ces deux valeurs ne peuvent pas vraiment être dissociées, de telle sorte qu’on peut parler d’une
coalescence sémantique “déontique-médiatif”. Tel est le cas dans l’exemple suivant :
(1) Mam
to
zrobić.
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avoir 1.PRES.
ceci
faire
Quelqu’un a dit que j’ai ceci à faire.
Cette coalescence persiste même dans un énoncé exclamatif :
(2) Masz
to
zrobić!
avoir 2.PRES.
ceci
faire
Quelqu’un a dit que tu dois le faire !
L’interlocuteur pourrait d’ailleurs continuer le dialogue comme suit :
(3) Kto
tak
qui
le
Qui l’a dit ?
powiedział?
dire 3.PASSÉ
Cependant certains contextes excluent l’interprétation déontique, tout en laissant l’interprétation médiative. Ces contextes se
caractérisent notamment par : la troisième personne du verbe mieć, la présence de l’adverbe rzekomo / jakoby (marque de sens
médiatif), les verbes de certains types sémantiques (notamment les verbes non intentionnels) et même le type de discours (les
nouvelles dans les médias).
L’examen de corpus relativement importants montre qu’il existe un troisième emploi de la construction en mieć : un emploi
aspectuel. La construction pourrait alors être comparée à la construction <aller + INFINITIF> en français. Elle exprime en effet la
prospectivité soit du point de vue du passé, soit du point de vue du présent (futur périphrastique). On sait que selon le système
des trois points de Reichenbach, la prospectivité implique la non-coïncidence du point de référence (R) avec celui de la situation
(E), le premier précédant le second (R – E).
L’analyse du futur périphrastique français révèle l’existence de deux manifestations de la prospectivité, selon que la
forme verbale désigne exclusivement la phase précédant le procès proprement dit (phase préparatoire,
correspondant à R) ou qu’elle désigne la phase du procès (phase processive, correspondant à E). Or, il s’avère que la
construction polonaise exprime seulement le premier type de prospectivité : elle désigne la phase préparatoire.
Ce fonctionnement aspectuel de la construction en mieć peut être observé dans quelques contextes spécifiques,
dont nous citons les plus importants :
la construction en mieć se combine avec l’un des deux adverbes, już ou właśnie, qui marquent la coïncidence ou
proximité d’un point de référence donné et de la localisation de la situation exprimée par le verbe ;
– elle apparaît dans la proposition principale suivie d’une subordonnée en gdy / kiedy (quand) inverse ;
– elle apparaît dans la proposition principale suivie d’une proposition introduite par ale ou a (mais) ;
– elle apparaît dans une subordonnée temporelle introduite par gdy / kiedy (quand).
Il y a encore un cas problématique : un emploi de la construction en mieć qui sert à introduire un point de vue extra-diégétique
dans un texte narratif. Cet emploi polonais correspond à <aller / devoir à l’imparfait + INFINITIF>, décrit par Benveniste. Il est
connu sous l’appellation de « fatalité » ou « destinée » (cf. la discussion sur ces notions dans Vetters et Barbet 2006). Nous
essaierons de montrer que cet emploi ne porte pas de sens modal, mais qu’il découle plutôt de l’« exploitation » de l’emploi
aspectuel. Puisque la prospectivité consiste dans une sorte de bi-temporalité, elle permet d’introduire un point de vue extradiégétique, qui est ultérieur à l’événement narré. L’idée de « fatalité » ou « destinée » n’est donc qu’un effet de sens de la
prospectivité.
L’analyse présentée ici n’est pas contrastive mais l’idée de l’emploi aspectuel de la construction polonaise découle de notre
travail consacré à la traduction du futur périphrastique en polonais. Ainsi, la perspective contrastive ou typologique intervient
indirectement dans cette analyse. Cela dit, le corpus analysé ici ne vient pas de textes traduits, mais du Corpus National de
langue polonaise (Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego).
–
Bibliographie :
Holvoet Axel, (1989). Aspekt a modalność w języku polskim na tle ogólnosłowiańskim, Wrocław – Warszawa – Kraków – Gdańsk
– Łódź: Ossolineum.
Holvoet Axel (2011). O leksykalnych wykładnikach użycia interpretatywnego, Linguistica Copernicana, 1 (5), 77-91.
Holvoet Axel (2012). Polish mieć and the semantic map of interpretive deontics. Zeitschrift für Slawistik, Vol. 57, No. 2, 129-146.
Jędrzejko Ewa, (1987). Semantyka i składnia polskich czasowników deontycznych, Wrocław: Ossolineum.
Lempp Albrecht, (1986). Mieć. ‘To have’ in modern Polish, München: Verlag Otto Sagner.
Ligara, Bronisława, (1997). Polskie czasowniki modalne i ich francuskie ekwiwalenty tłumaczeniowe. Kraków: Universitas.
Reichenbach Hans, (1947). Elements of symbolic logic, New York, The Free Press.
Szymański Maciej (1991). Z problematyki modalno-temporalnej konstrukcji mieć + infinitivus, Studia z Filologii Polskiej i
Słowiańskiej, XXVII, 77-88.
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Świderska-Koneczna Halina, (1930). Użycie czasownika mieć jako posiłkowego w języku polskim, Prace Filologiczne XV, tom I,
263-272.
Topolińska Zuzanna, (1968). Miejsce konstrukcji z czasownikiem mieć w polskim systemie werbalnym, Studia Orientalis 17/3 :
427-431 ; repris in : Topolińska, Z. (2008). Z Polski do Macedonii, vol 1, Kraków : LEXIS, 24-29.
Topolińska Zuzanna, (2000). „Dystans” – informacja zgramatykalizowane w polskim systemie werbalnym?, in: Mindak J. &
Wrocławski K., Folia Philologica Macedono-Polonica, tom 5, Warszawa: UW, 86-93; repris in : Topolińska, Z. (2008). Z Polski
do Macedonii, vol 1, Kraków : LEXIS, 286-292.
Vetters Carl & Barbet Cécile, (2006). Les emplois temporels des verbes modaux en français : le cas de devoir, Cahiers de la
praxématique 47 : 191-214.
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O
OBRTELOVA Jaroslava (Uppsala). Discourse-pragmatic functions of tense/aspect verbal forms in Wakhi narratives
[email protected]
Wakhi (Eastern-Iranian, Pamiri) is a minority language spoken by approx. 58 000 speakers (Ethnologue 2015) in four countries:
Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and China. The corpus for the present study consists of a wide range of oral narratives collected
in the Wakhan valley in Tajikistan, among them folk-tales, legends, anecdotes, traditional stories, autobiographic stories, true
stories, ancestors’ history.
Pakhalina 1975, Gryunberg & Stebline-Kamensky 1976 and Bashir 2009 all distinguish the verbal TAM-forms of Wakhi as follows:
a) basic forms: present-future tense, past tense and perfect; b) derived forms: pluperfect and distant perfect. Aspect is marked
by clitics: -ǝṣ̌ (immediacy, specificity, continuity, iterativity) and –ǝp (non-immediacy), the latter occurs minimally among Wakhis
in Tajikistan.
However, consideration of how the verbal tense and aspectual forms are used in Wakhi narratives sheds more light on the TAM
system of Wakhi verbs. This paper gives an overview with examples of the pragmatic functions of the main three TAM forms
(present-future, past and perfect) as they occur in the Wakhi narratives accompanied or not by aspectual clitics. The analysis of
235 narratives shows that there is a crucial and consistent distinction between stories told as eye-witness accounts and all other
stories. In the eye-witness stories the foreground verbs are always and exclusively in past tense without any aspectual clitic. The
background verbs are in various tense-aspect combinations, depending on the context. In the non eye-witness stories (legends,
historical accounts, re-told true stories, traditional stories, anecdotes, etc.) the foreground verbs are in so-called present-future
tense, alternatively in perfect, without any aspectual clitic. The background verbs are mostly in perfect and in present-future
with aspectual marking for continuity/iterativity. They are never in past tense unless they are the comments of the narrators
about an event directly witnessed by him/herself. It follows from the (above) distribution of TAM forms in narratives that
evidentiality is marked on the discourse level by the choice of the verbal form.
This distribution of TAM forms in narratives also indicates that the use of the verbal form is determined by deictic center rather
than by location on the time axis. The present-future tense does not primarily mark the expected temporal properties of the
verbs. It does not primarily mark the temporal opposition between past and non-past and does not play the role of a historical
present either (as claimed by some linguists). Similarly, the past tense is not used freely for any past event. The crucial distinction
here seems to be the relation to the deictic center.
In the light of this analysis I suggest the following re-labeling and redefinition of the verbal TAM forms in Wakhi.
1) default verb form, unmarked for tense (traditionally called present-future or non-past). Compare Fleischman’s
(1991) claim that “…the primary or basic meaning of the PRESENT tense is ‘timelessness’ or ‘temporal neutrality’ (p.
94). In this verbal form the deictic center (relation to the time of speaking) is not specified. The default verb form
becomes marked for evidentiality in the sense that it indicates the non eye-witness source of the account. The
aspectual clitic -ǝṣ̌ gives temporal dimension when it attaches to the default verb form and is then interpreted as
present or present continuous tense.
2) past tense is marked for tense and functions as a time reference in relation to a deictic center. It is used as a default
tense in eye-witness accounts and statements and as non-default (marked) in non eye-witness accounts.
3) perfect generally “indicates not tense but resultativity, stativity, or inferentiality” (Bashir). The default use of perfect
indicates the resultativity (result relevant in relation to present – deictic center). It is also used in the foreground of
eye-witness accounts to weaken the degree of certainty. In non eye-witness accounts it is typically used for
backgrounding in relation to the main events (stativity) and it can also be used as a foreground verb to indicate the
inferential function.
Example: extract from a historical account [8.1 and 8.2 - perfect in background, stativity; 9.1 -2 default (unmarked for tense) in
foreground]
8.1 d -ǝm Ptыp
, dǝ Yǝmčыn tuǝtk i
prčod
in-DEM1 Ptup (name of the village) in Yamchun be.PF one girl
In this Ptup, in the place called Yamchun there was a girl,
8.2 ɣa xǝšruy tuǝtk -it .
very beautiful be.PF-0.PF
she was a very beautiful girl.
palыw -ǝn
wǝzi -ǝn x̌ ə ,
9.1 yan awɣon -iš cǝ -a
-ABL come -3PL and
then Afghan -PL from-DEM3 side
Then the Afghans come from that side and
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9.2wǝzi -ǝn dыrz -ǝn yaw -i rǝč ̣ -ǝn .
come -3PL take
-3PL she -ACC go -3PL
they come, take her away and go.
References:
Bashir, E. (2009). ‘Wakhi’ in: Windfuhr, G. (ed.) The Iranian Languages, London & New York: Routledge, 825-862
Comrie, Bernanrd (1985). Tense, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Dahl, Östen (1985). Tense and Aspect Systems. Oxford: Blackwell
Dooley, Robert H. & Levinsohn, Stephen H. (2001) Analyzing Narrative, SIL International
Fleischman, S. (1985). ‘Discourse Functions of Tense-Aspect Oppositions in Narrative: Towards a Theory of Grounding’, in:
Linguistics 23, 851-82
Fleischman, S. (1991). ‘Toward a theory of tense-aspect in narrative discourse’ in: Gvozdanovič, J. and Th. Janssen (eds.). The
function of tense in texts, pp. 75-97.
Pakhalina, Tatiana Nikolaevna (1975). Ваханский язык (Wakhi language), Moscow: Akademia Nauk SSSR
Gryunberg, Alexander L. & Stebline-Kamenski, Ivan M. (1976). Ваханский язык (Wakhi language), Moscow: Nauka
Levinsohn, Stephen H. (2011) Self-Instruction Materials on Narrative Discourse Analysis, SIL International.
OLSSON Bruno (Nanyang Technological University). On the actional characteristics of Marind verbs
[email protected]
This talk aims to give some preliminary conclusions on the interactions between actionality and grammatical aspect in Marind (a
Trans New Guinean language of the South Papuan lowlands). The central place of aspectual distinctions in the untangling of the
complex morphosyntax of Marind was first made clear in the grammar by the Dutch missionary Petrus Drabbe, who proposed
that four “aspect classes” [aspectklassen] are to be distinguished in the language (1955: 31–37). The basis for this division is a
combination of semantic properties, basically whether a verb refers to an instantaneous [momentaan] or durative [duratief ]
action, and inflectional possibilities. Drabbe’s four classes are, summarized: (1) Punctual verbs, e.g. wasib ‘hit once’, ambid ‘sit
down (sg. subj.)’; (2) Durative verbs: eg ‘dig’, mir ‘be sitting (sg. subj.)’; (3) Punctual verbs with a “secondary stem” (ending in -a)
indicating the ensuing state: cf. ivim ‘become dark’, ivíma ‘be dark’; (4) Verbs that “can refer to both punctual and durative
processes” (p. 35), e.g. kiparud ‘tie’, itawip ‘extinguish’.
At least two factors make a reconsideration of Marind aspect seem worthwhile. Firstly, a number of questions arise from
Drabbe’s actional classification of verbs. It is often quite difficult to understand why the verbs belong to one class and not the
other: why, for example, is man, glossed in Dutch as komen ‘come’, assigned to the Punctual class, while het ‘go away’ (lopen,
gaan [van hier weg]) is Durative? The semantics of the different diagnostics used to assign each verb to its class are not treated
in detail: for example, Punctual verbs (Class 1) are said to differ from their inability to combine with the ‘Past Durative’ d-prefix,
while the Duratives (Class 2) verbs always take d- in the past; the transaspectuals of Class 4, Drabbe claims, can occur either with
it (-d-kiparud, e.g. ‘tie some coconuts up’) or without it (-Ø-kiparud, e.g. ‘tie a knot’).11 A theory of Marind aspect would require
more precise definitions of the individual verb meanings as well as semantic accounts of the grammatical forms that Drabbe take
to be diagnostic of class membership.
Secondly, the last two decades have seen a surge in attention given to crosslinguistic variation in actionality (see e.g. Tatevosov
2002, Bar-el 2015). Although little research has been devoted to aspect in mainland Papuan languages, it is evident that the
region is home to a wide array of interesting aspectual systems, ranging from the complexities of e.g. Mian (Fedden 2011: 245)
or Nen (Evans 2014) to the ‘languages without tense and aspect’ of the Bird’s Head region (Dahl 2001).
The data used in the investigation were collected during 7 months of fieldwork and consists of recordings of spontaneous
interaction and narratives, coupled with extensive discussion of sentences and their meanings with native speakers.
To analyze the lexicalization patterns of relevance to grammatical aspect, I studied the distribution of a representative sample of
verbs among the three most central aspectual grams in the language. I suggest that the use of the three grams and the
interpretations that arise can be accounted for if a number of actional classes are posited; these classes differ from the ones set
up by Drabbe and also from the four or five classes that are commonly discussed in connection with familiar European
languages. Below, I give a brief characterization of the three grams before outlining the results.
For reference to on-going processes such as ‘the girl is singing’ or ‘they are building a house’ the suffix -e is suffixed to the verb
stem. This suffix can not be used with past time reference, so I will label it the Non-past Durative (dur), here illustrated with the
verb xi ‘eat, drink’ (1).12 Verbs expressing durative situations in the past are obligatorily prefixed with d-, for which I retain
11 The data cited from Drabbe are from the dialect spoken around the district capital Merauke; my own data, to be cited below, comes from a
dialect spoken on the coast further to the west. There are several differences in the aspectual systems of the different dialects, and even between
different villages speaking essentially the same dialect. These differences mostly affect grams that are excluded from this study (e.g. habituals)
and will not be of concern here.
12 Due to the space limitations, the reasons for not using terms such as ‘Progressive’, ‘Resultative’ etc. will not be given here.
98
Drabbe’s label Past Durative (pst:dur) (2). Punctual events such as ‘fall’, ‘drip (once)’ and ‘realize’ occur without any aspectual
morphology in the past. Such forms will be referred to as Zero-forms (3).
(1)
sopi
m-an=xi-e
sopi(Malay)
ACC-3pl.ACT=eat/drink-DUR
‘They are drinking sopi [coconut-derived alcoholic beverage].’
(2)
no-d=mahaj
1sg.ACT-PST:DUR=dance
‘I danced/was dancing.’
(3)
wis
nok a-hin
yesterday
1
3sg.ACT=fall:1.UND
‘Yesterday I fell.’
My analysis differs from Drabbe in that I treat the “secondary stems” of Drabbe’s 3d class as derived verbs forming an aspectual
subsytem of their own, rather than as members of a separate actional class. A large number of such verbs have
resultative/progressive semantics and differ from underived verbs in their inflectional possibilities and their temporal
interpretation in Zero forms (present rather than past).
I will argue (contrary to Drabbe) that none of the underived verbs in Marind are purely durative. Firstly, there are no stative
verbs in Marind corresponding to meanings such as ‘know’, ‘weigh’ or ‘be tall’: with the possible exception of a small set of
morphologically defective verbs describing positional states (‘be sitting/standing/lying’), all verbal expressions referring to states
are derived from inchoative verbs, e.g. wahut-la (become.hungry-LA) ‘be hungry’. Secondly, I show that many of the verbs
described by Drabbe as inherently durative are better regarded as punctual, the clearest examples being verbs such as akam
‘drip’ and taman ‘shoot (an arrow)’ which refer to semelfactive events in their Zero-forms but receive multiplicative
interpretations combined with Past and Non-Past Durative.
Furthermore, I will suggest that Marind differs from many well-known languages in that verb meanings that would be expected
to be lexicalized as atelic/processual verbs, e.g. ‘walk (in the park)’, or accomplishments referring to the culmination of a
process, e.g. ‘build (a house)’, are consistently inchoative-processual in Marind (‘take off for a walk’, ‘start building’). For these
verbs, only the onset of the process and the durative phase following the onset are part of the conventionalized semantics.
Reference to culmination of such events is either inferred from context or expressed explicitly, e.g. by means of a separate
clause (‘. . . until it became finished’). The absence of grammaticalized expression of endpoints is also evident on the sentence
level, as I have been unable to find any type of arguments or adverbials that require a telic reading of the sentence, i.e. there is
no distinction between ‘for X time’ and ‘in X time’, no adpositions expressing the endpoint of motion equivalent to the English to
in to the park, etc. In addition to providing a new account of the actional characteristics of Marind verbs, the results are of
significance to cross-linguistic research on actionality. The Marind system shows several differences to the actional classifications
of familiar European languages, most notably the preponderance of inchoative-processual verbs, the absence of statives and the
apparent irrelevance of telicity for its description. Thus, investigation into Marind aspectuality promises to be relevant to any
theory of the aspect-actionality interface aiming at cross-linguistic coverage.
References
Bar-el, Leora. 2015. “Documenting and Classifying Aspectual Classes Across Languages”. In: Methodologies in Semantic
Fieldwork. Ed. by M. Ryan Bochnak and Lisa Matthewson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 75–109.
Dahl, Östen. 2001. “Languages without tense and aspect”. In: Aktionsart and aspectotemporality in non-European languages. Ed.
by Karen H. Ebert and Fernando Zúñiga. Zürich: ASAS-Verlag, pp. 161–173.
Drabbe, Peter. 1955. Spraakkunst van het Marind: Zuitkust Nederlands Nieuw-Guinea. Studia Instituti Anthropos 11. WienMödling: St. Gabriël.
Evans, Nicholas. 2014. “Puzzles of aspect in Nen”. Presentation given at Workshop on the Languages of Papua 3, Manokwari.
Fedden, Sebastian. 2011. A Grammar of Mian. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Tatevosov, Sergej. 2002. “The parameter of actionality”. In: Linguistic Typology 6, pp. 317–401.
99
P
PAPAFRAGOU Anna (Delaware). Experimental approaches of evidentiality
PATARD Adeline (Caen, Crisco). When past implicates epistemic meanings
[email protected]
It is a well-known fact that past tenses - preterites and imperfects - may convey epistemic meanings, i.e. a subjective judgment
of the speaker on the realization of the denoted situation (see e.g. Fleischman 1989, Dahl 1997, Thieroff 1994, Iatridou 2000,
Doiz Bienzobas 2002, Ippolito 2004, De Mulder and Brisard 2006, Van linden and Verstraete 2008, Patard 2014). Past tenses may
indeed express counterfactuality (the situation is excluded from reality) or uncertainty (the situation’s realization is uncertain):
Counterfactuality
(1) Fre
Un
pas
de plus et
elle
tombait.
One
step
more
and
she
fall-PST.IPFV
‘One step further and she would have fallen.’
{counterfactuality}
Uncertainty
(2) Eng
If you earned (PST) as much as you claim, you would not go around in that old car.
(Dahl 1997 : 108)
{uncertainty}
However the nature of the connection between past and epistemicity is still widely debated. Three main propositions are made
in the literature: (1) epistemicity is a metaphoric interpretation of past (e.g. James 1982, Fleischman 1989), (2) epistemicity and
pastness are elaborated interpretations of the past tense’s underspecified meaning (e.g. Doiz Bienzobas 2002, De Mulder and
Brisard 2006), or (3) epistemicity is a derived interpretation of the past tense’s temporal meaning (e.g. Dahl 1997, Ippolito 2003).
The present paper contributes to the debate by arguing in favor of the third proposition, namely the “pragmatic” one of an
interpretative derivation. The pragmatic proposition is further developed with the notion of conventionalized implicatures (see
also Ziegeler or Patard 2014). The paper concentrates on epistemic implicatures allowed by preterites and imperfects.
I first argue for an aspecto-temporal definition of imperfects and preterits and make the point that the epistemic interpretations
associated to them are modal implicatures that may be cancelled or inhibited (see (3) for instance):
(3) Eng
If the patient had the measles, he would have exactly the symptoms he has now. We conclude therefore that the
patient has the measles. (Iatridou 2000)
⇏ {uncertainty}
The semantics of past tenses is described by means of Reichenbach’s notion of ‘reference point’ (R) and I show that the different
interpretations of past tenses (including the epistemic ones) reflect specific instantiations of R as TT ‘topic time’, AP ‘aspectual
vantage point’ and/or EP ‘epistemic evaluation point’. As will be shown, EP is crucial to the triggering of the uncertainty
implicature: it corresponds to the time when an utteror vouches for the epistemic validity of the proposition and may be
different from the time of speech, as in indirect speech (cf. (4)).
(4) Fre
Marie a dit
que
Pierre venait
Marie say-PRS.PRF
that
Pierre come-PST.IPFV
‘Marie said that Pierre was coming tomorrow.’
R = EP (≠ TT ∧ AP)
demain.
tomorrow
Then, I suggest analyzing the epistemic readings associated to imperfects and preterites as scalar implicatures derived from
Grice’s maxim of quantity: ‘Do not make your contribution more informative than is required’. I expand on the idea found in
Ziegeler 2000, Ippolito 2004 or Verstraete 2006 that past tenses are less informative than alternative tense forms that could be
used in the same contexts, thus forming with them a scale of ‘informativeness’. However, contrary to the previous analyses, I
discriminate two epistemic implicatures depending on the role of tense and/or aspect in the inferential process:
(i)
(5) Spa
the strong implicature of counterfactuality (or {non p}) triggered by the imperfective aspect of imperfects
according to the scale <imperfective past, perfective past> :
Salía
(vs salí)
del
trabajo, cuando el
leave-PST.IPFV (vs leave-PST.PFV) from the work, when the
‘I was leaving (vs left) work when the boss called me.’
salía {R = ∧ AP}⇒ {non psalí}
jefe me llamo.
boss me call-PST.PFV
100
(ii)
(6) Ita
the weaker implicature of uncertainty ({p is uncertain}) triggered by past tense as opposed to present tense
according to the scale <past tense, present tense> (which directly emerges from the interpretation of R as EP, i.e. in
the example from a past evidential meaning) :
Domani Paolo lavorava
(vs lavora)
fino
alle sei del
Tomorrow Paolo work-PST.IPFV (VS work-PRS) until
the six of the
‘Tomorrow Paolo was supposed to work (vs is working) until six p.m.’
lavorava {R = EP} ⇒ {plavora is uncertain}
pomeriggio.
afternoon
Finally, I demonstrate that epistemic contexts in which past tenses are used exhibit different degree of conventionalization that
mirrors the two intermediate stages of Heine’s model (2002) for semantic change:
(i)
the stage of “bridging contexts”: the past or imperfective meaning (the source meaning) and the epistemic
inference it leads to (the target meaning) are contiguous in the interpretation (as in (5) and (6) quoted above);
(ii)
the more stage of “switch contexts”: the past or imperfective meaning is backgrounded (or even overruled) so that
the target epistemic meaning is the only accessible meaning in the interpretation (as in (1) and (3) quoted above).
The proposed analysis offers an explanation for the semantic puzzle sometimes called ‘fake tense/aspect’ found in some modal
context of past tenses (e.g. Iatridou 2000). It also provides a diachronic scenario for the origin of the epistemic uses of past
tenses that seems to be confirmed by diachronic data from Germanic languages (cf. Dahl 1997) and Latin (cf. Patard and De
Mulder 2014).
References
Heine, Bernd, 2002. On the Role of Contexts in Grammaticalization. In: Wischer, I., Diewald, G. (Eds.), New reflections on
grammaticalization. Amsterdam, John Benjamins, pp. 83-101.
Dahl, Östen, 1997. The relation between past time reference and counterfactuality: a new look. In: Athanasiadou, A., Dirven, R.
(Eds.), On conditionals again. Amsterdam, John Benjamins, pp. 97–114.
De Mulder, Walter, Brisard, Frank, 2006. L’imparfait marqueur de réalité virtuelle. Cahiers de praxématique (47), 97-124.
Doiz Bienzobas, Aintzane, 2002. The preterit and the imperfect as grounding predications. In: Brisard, F. (Ed.), Grounding. The
epistemic footing of deixis and reference. Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 299-347.
Fleischman, Suzanne, 1989. Temporal distance: A basic linguistic metaphor. Studies in Language (13), 1–50.
Iatridou, Sabine, 2000. The Grammatical Ingredients of Counterfactuality. Linguistic inquiry (31), 231-270.
Ippolito, Michela, 2003. Presupposition and implicatures in counterfactuals. Natural Language Semantics (11/2), 145-186.
Ippolito, Michela, 2004. Imperfect Modality. In: Guéron, J., Lecarme, J. (Eds.), The Syntax of Time. Cambridge, MIT Press, 359387.
James, Deborah, 1982. Past tense and the hypothetical. A cross-linguistic study. Studies in Language (6), 375–403.
Patard, Adeline, De Mulder, Walter, 2014. Aux origines des emplois modaux de l’imparfait: Le cas de l’emploi hypothétique et de
l’emploi contrefactuel. Langages (193), 33-47.
Patard, Adeline, 2014. When tense and aspect convey modality: reflections on the modal uses of past tenses in Romance and
Germanic languages. Journal of Pragmatics (71), 69-97.
Thieroff, Rolf, 1994. Inherent verb categories and categorizations in European languages. In: Thieroff, R., Ballweg, J. (Eds.),
Tense systems in European languages. Tübingen, Niemeyer, pp. 3-45.
Van linden, An, Verstraete, Jean-Christophe, 2008. The nature and origins of counterfactuality in simple clauses. Cross-linguistic
evidence. Journal of Pragmatics (40), 1865-1895.
Verstraete, Jean-Christophe, 2006. The nature of irreality in the past domain: evidence from past intentional constructions in
Australian languages. Australian Journal of Linguistics (26/1), 59–79.
Ziegeler, Debra, 2000. Hypothetical Modality. Grammaticalisation in an L2 Dialect. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, John
Benjamins.
PECORARI Filippo (Bâle), JEZEK Elisabetta (Pavia). From lexicon to text: a Generative Lexicon account of associative
anaphora between event-denoting expressions
[email protected] ; [email protected]
1. ASSOCIATIVE ANAPHORA AND EVENTS
Our presentation aims at a fine-grained modeling of specific types of associative anaphora, by means of the formal tools offered
by Generative Lexicon Theory (Pustejovsky 1995). We focus on associative relations connecting two event-denoting expressions
in the text.
Anaphora is the most important linguistic symptom of the referential continuity of the text. It ensures the overall cohesion of the
text by linking together discourse referents. The most basic examples of anaphora, according to a vast body of literature, are the
coreferential ones, where the NP anaphor refers to the same entity referred to by the NP antecedent. In some cases, however,
anaphor and antecedent do not refer to the same discourse referent, but are linked by an indirect relation. This is the case of
associative anaphora (also called “bridging (anaphora)”, cf. Clark 1975), a phenomenon that has received a good deal of
attention (cf. in particular the French literature: Schnedecker et al. 1994, Charolles & Kleiber 1999, Kleiber 2001). The associative
101
anaphor establishes a new discourse referent in the text by means of a definite NP; the definite article signals that the new
entity is accessible by the addressee, who, however, has to infer a relation between the entity referred to by the anaphor and a
previously introduced one.
Most of the previous studies on associative anaphora have focused on examples involving a part-whole relation between objectdenoting expressions, such as a tree-the trunk, or a locative relation, such as a village-the church (cf. especially Kleiber 2001).
Little attention has been paid so far to associative relations involving two event-denoting expressions, in spite of the fact that the
latter are inherently complex and multidimensional configurations, and therefore good candidates for indirect anaphoric
reference; their lexico-semantic features — from temporal phases to typical participants — can easily be exploited by the
speaker/writer to generate an associative anaphor and reinforce the cohesion of the text (cf. Apothéloz & Reichler-Béguelin
1995).
The interplay between event-denoting expressions and associative anaphora has been mainly studied by linguists with regard to
participant relations, i.e. those involving an event-denoting antecedent and an object-denoting anaphor referring to a
participant in the action denoted by the former (e.g. an operation-the surgeon). To our knowledge, examples of associative
anaphoric relations between two event-denoting expressions are still to be investigated systematically.
As far as event-denoting expressions are concerned, antecedents can be syntactically realized either by VPs or NPs, whereas
anaphors can only be definite NPs, in which the definite article discloses the associative anaphoric nature of the expression. The
linking relation between an antecedent and an associative anaphor can be established on a lexical semantic basis, on
expectations of textual coherence or on encyclopedic world knowledge. We are interested in relations that are licensed by the
lexicon and in those that are located at the border between lexical information and pragmatic knowledge. The main focus of the
work we are presenting on this occasion is on parthood relations between events; in order to model them, we use the notion of
subevent, introduced in GL, which we review in the next section.
2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
In order to represent associative anaphora between event-denoting expressions focused on parthood relations between events
(see section 1), we adopt the system of lexical representation proposed in Generative Lexicon (henceforth GL, cf. Pustejovsky
13
1995), where it is assumed that lexical items may be associated with a set of interconnected informational structures. For our
present purposes we focus on Event Structure (ES), Argument Structure (AS) and Qualia Structure (QS).
ES specifies the event type associated with an expression. The primitive event types posited in classic GL are States (S), Processes
(P) and Transitions (T). Processes and Transitions may have subevents, i.e. temporal parts associated with different phases of the
main event.
AS encodes the participants in the event which are selected as arguments by the predicate. There are three primitive
argument types in the standard theory: arguments which are obligatorily discharged in the syntax (True arguments), arguments
which may remain unexpressed under certain conditions (Default arguments) and arguments which cannot be expressed (unless
they are further specified) because they are already incorporated in the predicate (Shadow arguments).
Finally, QS encodes the most idiosyncratic aspect of the meaning of the word. The standard account of QS foresees four
relations: the Formal (F) encoding taxonomic information, the Constitutive (C) encoding the part-of relation, the Telic (T)
introducing the intended goal or function associated with the object and the Agentive (A) specifying the factors involved in the
object’s origin. When applied to event-denoting expressions, QS receives a somewhat different interpretation in the model;
particularly, F is assumed to introduce the (result) state and A the causing act or process.
In our analysis, we use ES, AS and QS as heuristic and taxonomic tools to model and classify the various types of
associative anaphoric relations that can be observed between event-denoting expressions in texts.
3. DATA AND DISCUSSION
In our work we examine Italian data on associative anaphora manually extracted from the web corpus itTenTen, queried
through the Sketch Engine query system (Kilgarriff et al. 2004). An example is given in 1:
(1) Nel film “Ghost – Fantasma”, il protagonista Sam Wheat è ucciso a bruciapelo. Dopo la morte, l'uomo diventa un
fantasma dai contorni luminescenti.
‘In the film “Ghost”, the main character Sam Wheat is killed point blank. After his death [lit. the death], the man
becomes a ghost with a glowing profile’.
The relation between the antecedent è ucciso (‘is killed’) and the anaphor la morte (‘the death’) in (1) can be represented by the
GL representation proposed for the verb kill below.
13
The potential of GL for the modeling of associative anaphora has already been highlighted by previous studies, especially in the Italian
literature (cf. Caselli 2009, Ježek & Pecorari 2014, Korzen 2014).
102
The antecedent VP is headed by the verb uccidere, which in its literal meaning denotes a transition composed of an initial
subevent introducing the causing act (e1, i.e. the act of killing someone) followed by a subevent introducing the end state (e2,
i.e. someone being dead). The anaphor la morte is licensed by the QS and ES of the antecedent; it is the end state of uccidere,
introduced by the Formal quale of the verb.
The example above is straightforward and shows a purely lexical relation between an event and one of its subevents. In the
presentation, we will analyze more complex cases, such as those where the associative link is licensed by a relation of
precondition that acts as a bridge between lexical semantics and pragmatic knowledge and needs to be added to the standard
account of Qualia relations.
Our analysis confirms the semantic complexity of event-denoting expressions and the strong potential reflected by this property
on textual associative anaphoric uses. GL proves to possess a useful system for representing the interplay between ES, AS and QS
and distinguishing what aspect of the antecedent licenses associative anaphora. QS, in particular, can be exploited to represent
the controversial boundary between lexically encoded information and commonsense knowledge.
References
APOTHELOZ, DENIS, and MARIE-JOSE REICHLER-BEGUELIN. 1995. Construction de la référence et stratégies de désignation.
Travaux Neuchâtelois de Linguistique (TRANEL) 23. 227–71.
CASELLI, TOMMASO. 2009. Using a Generative Lexicon resource to compute bridging anaphora in Italian. Procesamiento del
Lenguaje Natural 42. 71–78.
CHAROLLES, MICHEL, and GEORGES KLEIBER (eds.). 1999. Special Issue on «Associative Anaphora». Journal of Pragmatics 31, 3.
CLARK, HERBERT. 1975. Bridging. Theoretical Issues in Natural Language Processing, ed. by Roger C. Schank and Bonnie L.
Nash-Webber, 169–74. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
JEŽEK, ELISABETTA, and FILIPPO PECORARI. 2014. Associative anaphora between event-denoting expressions. Res per Nomen IV.
Les théories du sens et de la référence. Hommage à Georges Kleiber, ed. by Emilia Hilgert, Silvia Palma, Pierre Frath, and René
Daval, 627–43. Reims: Editions et Presses Universitaires de Reims.
KILGARRIFF, ADAM; PAVEL RYCHLY; PAVEL SMRŽ; and DAVID TUGWELL. 2004. The Sketch Engine. Proceedings of the XI
Euralex International Congress, July 6-10, 2004, Lorient, France, ed. by Geoffrey Williams and Sandra Vessier, 105–16.
KLEIBER, GEORGES. 2001. L’anaphore associative. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
KORZEN, IØRN. 2014. Implicit association in political discourse. On associative anaphors in Italian and Danish EU proceedings.
Tra romanistica e germanistica. Between Romance and Germanic, ed. by Iørn Korzen, Angela Ferrari, and Anna-Maria De
Cesare, 217–36. Bern: Peter Lang.
PUSTEJOVSKY, JAMES. 1995. The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge/London: MIT Press.
SCHNEDECKER, CATHERINE; MICHEL CHAROLLES; GEORGES KLEIBER; and JEAN DAVID (eds.). 1994. L'anaphore associative.
Aspects linguistiques, psycholinguistiques et automatiques. Metz: Université de Metz/Paris: Klincksieck.
PHAN Trang (Ghent), DUFFIELD Nigel (Konan). A Nano-Syntax account of the Negation Constraint on the Perfect in
Vietnamese
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
This paper is concerned with an interaction between clausal negation and grammatical aspect, such that certain aspectual
readings, which are otherwise available, are excluded in negative contexts. This Negation Constraint has been observed in a
number of typologically unrelated languages, cf. Miestamo et al (2011). Here, the focus is on Vietnamese, most specifically, on
the distribution and interpretation of the free grammatical morpheme đã, which has eluded a satisfactory analysis, despite
several recent attempts; see esp. Trinh (2005), Duffield (2013) and Phan (2013). We present an analysis in terms of Nanosyntax,
which remedies some of the previous shortcomings.
In previous work, đã has been variously treated as a preterite marker, as a perfective, and as a perfect aspect marker: depending
on the particular context and the associated predicates, all of these analyses are plausible (see Phan 2013); the question
remains, however, as to its essential properties. The most striking intepretive alternation is illustrated in (1): whereas đã is
usually ambiguous between perfect and preterite readings (1a), in negated contexts, such as (1b, c), only the preterite
interpretation is available (irrespective of predicate type):
(14)
a. Anh-ấy
đã
đến.
103
3S.M
DA
come
‘He has come’ OR ‘He came.’
b. Anh-ấy
đã
không
3S.M
DA
NEG
‘He did not come.’
c. Anh-ấy
đã
chưa
3S.M
DA
NEGPRF
‘He hadn’t come.’
đến.
come
đến.
come
Here, we argue that a satisfactory analysis of this Negation Constraint is best achieved through a better understanding of the
more basic question concerning the nature of đã. We tackle this prior question through a careful exposition of the ways in which
đã combines with different classes of predicate (Vendler 1957). Adopting insights from Klein (1994), we demonstrate that đã is
semantically a combination of (dissociable) aspectual and temporal components: đã is aspectual in as much as it directs our
attention to the initial stage of the situation time (TSit); however, it is also temporally relational, in so far as its meaning also
refers beyond the internal structure of the situation; in addition, đã anchors the initial stage of the situation time prior to the
default Utterance Time. Our examination thus implies that the type of aspectual meaning signalled by Vietnamese morphemes is
qualitatively distinct from the kind of aspectual semantics observed in European languages, which typically focuses on a binary
(perfective/imperfective) distinction, and which is concerned with the terminal boundaries of events or situations. (We also
indicate how this semantic characterization allows us to account for borderline atemporal usages of đã.)
Having thus identified and isolated the various components of đã, we are in a better position to explain the Negation Constraint.
Previously, Trinh (2005) argued that đã was homophonous between two lexical morphemes, having different points of initial
merger: on his analysis, ‘perfect ĐÃ1’ is initially merged lower in Asp, then raises to T (yielding the ambiguous interpretation of
đã in 1a); by contrast, ‘preterite ĐÃ2’ is taken base generated in T (yielding the exclusive preterite interpretation in 1b).
Although Trinh manages to derive the loss of aspectual reading under negation contexts through an established mechanism
(HMC; cf. Travis 1984; Pollock 1989) his proposal is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. In particular, his account fails to
capture the undoubted semantic relationship between the two putative homonyms đã PERFECT and đã PAST. In addition, his
account presents no explanation as why these two homonyms may not co-occur, even in negated contexts; compare English
that. The examples in (2) clearly show the unacceptability of ‘doubled’ đã:
(15)
a.*Anh-ấy
3S.M
DA
‘He didn’t come.’
b.*Anh-ấy
đã
3S.M
DA
‘He hadn’t come.’
đã
NEG
không
DA
come
chưa
NEGPRF
đã
DA
đã
đến.
đến.
come
Duffield (2013) and Phan (2013) also derive the negation constraint from head-movement conditions. However, unlike Trinh
(2005), they argue—invoking the Multifunctionality Hypothesis (Bobaljik, Travis and Lefebvre 1999; Duffield 2014), in which
grammatical meaning inheres in syntactic heads rather than in the lexical exponents of these heads—that only one
underspecified lexical item is involved, that đã is ambiguous where it is first merged to Asp and later raised to T, and
unambiguous if directly inserted. While Duffield & Phan’s Multifunctionality approach nicely captures the intuition that different
interpretations of đã result from different syntactic environments, and accounts for the absence of doubled đã in affirmative
contexts, it still leaves open why sentences like (2) are ungrammatical.
In this paper, we offer a revised solution to the intricate behaviour of đã using three SpellOut principles from nanosyntactic
theory: the Superset Principle, the Adjacency Requirement, and the principle of Cyclic Override.
Within the nanosyntax framework, lexical items are inherently lexico-syntactic objects, each morpheme being instantiated by a
layered syntactic structure. By hypothesis, the Vietnamese lexicon contains two abstract lexical items, ĐÃ and CHƯA, associated
with the syntactic structures as in (3b) and (4) respectively. The lexical entry for Vietnamese đã is not simply a bundle of features
as in (3a) but an asymmetric structure as in (3b):
Likewise, the lexical entry for ‘chưa’ is shown in (4):
104
By the Superset Principle, a single L(exical)-tree can match more than one S(yntactic)-tree and the L-tree must be the same size
or larger than the S-tree for a successful match. The L-tree in (3b) can match all of the S-trees in (5), yielding the multifunctional
ambiguity effect of affirmative đã:
Similarly, the L-tree in (4) can match all of the S-trees in (6):
Syntax is built up step by step, and in each step syntax will look at the lexicon to see if there is a match. In the case of negative
perfect contexts, assume the following steps in the syntax workplace:
(7) Syntax workplace
a. Step 1: Beginning from Perfect°, the lexicon offers two ways of spelling out the perfect, using either đã or
chưa
b. Step 2: In the presence of negation, we build up Neg° on top of Perfect. Now there is only one possibility
offered by the lexicon to spell-out Neg>Perfect, namely, chưa
c. Step 3: The derivation proceeds, building Past° on top of Neg>Perfect. There is no match for the whole trunk
in the lexicon. Since spellout only targets adjacent layers (by the Adjacency Requirement), here the lexicon only
allows one scenario: Neg>Perfect is spelled-out by chưa and Past° is exclusively spelled-out by đã. In this case,
đã no longer gets to spell out Perfect° though its L-tree contains Perfect°. As a result, the perfect reading of đã is
lost in negative contexts.
Furthermore, the unacceptability of *đã chưa đã in (2) is accounted for by the principle of Cyclic Override, which states that
higher-level spellouts cancel out lower-level spellouts. Consider, consider the derivational process of đã in negative contexts:
By means of this procedure, we end up both with the right word order đã chưa—correctly blocking the combination of *đã chưa
đã—and with the right interpretation—correctly excluding the perfect reading of đã in these contexts.
In conclusion, the nanosyntactic spellout account proposed here allows us to maintain the advantages of Duffield & Phan’s
earlier approach, in terms of lexical economy (non-reduncancy), whilst offering the syntactic flexibility (allowing for a single Ltree to match more than one S-tree) of a more syntactically nuanced analysis, one that allows for a principled analysis of this
otherwise ad hoc constraint.
105
Selected references:
Duffield, N. (2013).
“Head-First: On the head-initiality of Vietnamese clauses”. In: Hole, D. & Löbel, E. (Eds.). Linguistics of Vietnamese: an
International Survey, pp. 127-155. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.
Miestamo, M. & Van der Auwera, J. (2011). “Negation and perfective vs. Imperfective aspect”, Chronos, 22, 65-84.
Phan, T. (2013). Syntax of Vietnamese Aspect. PhD, University of Sheffield. Starke, M. (2009). “Nanosyntax: A short primer to a
new approach to language.” In: Svenonius, P. et al (Eds.), Nordlyd: Special issue on Nanosyntax 36, pp. 1-6.
Trinh, T. (2005). Aspect of Clause Structure in Vietnamese. MA, Humboldt University.
106
R
RITZ Marie-Eve, RICHARD Sophie (Western Australia). The functions of the auxiliary ‘have’ in Australian English vivid
narratives.
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
The aim of this paper is to examine a particular type of auxiliary ellipsis in sequences of present perfect (PP) clauses in Australian
English narratives and police media reports, and to contrast it with non-ellipsed cases. The paper builds on previous work by
Engel & Ritz (2000), Ritz & Engel (2008), Ritz (2007, 2010) which showed that in this English variety and the two genres
examined, the PP has acquired some of the functions of the Simple Past (SP), namely, it can be used in sequences expressing
temporal progression, and combines with past-time adverbials. Nonetheless, the PP can still be used to express perfect meaning,
and can be best described as a ‘pragmatic past tense’. The PP can be shown to contrast with the SP and Narrative Present in
discourse to produce a range of effects. (Ritz, 2010:3411)
Within this context, it is interesting to take a closer look at sequences of clauses where the common subject is ellipsed. Example
(1) shows such a case in the second clause, where the presence of a past participle suggests that two PPs have been conjoined
and that the auxiliary has been ellipsed:
(1) …the frisbee’s hit a chandelier, broken part of it, and it’s landed down on a guy who’s sitting in the audience. (Triple J
radio, Sydney, 28.02.2000)
Of course, many English verbs have identical past participle and SP forms, as exemplified in (2). Here, the two underlined clauses
are conjoined with ‘and’, leading to the reasonable assumption that the second VP, ‘held it’ is in its past participial form:
(2) ‘‘And then he’s taken him up into his arms, he’s rocked it and held it like it was his own child and then taken him off to the
ambulance,’’ Mr. Fitzgerald said. [Quote from a police officer describing the rescue by a police constable of a baby from
a house on fire.] (The West Australian, 12.4.2000)
So that the full form would then be “…and [he’s] held it…”. However, now consider (3):
(3) A vehicle has pulled up behind him and a male person has walked over to the driver’s side […] The male driver has
panicked and drove away. (Craig Bailey, WA Police Media, 26.7.2005) (Ritz, 2010:3405)
Here, the second VP in the two underlined conjoined clauses has the form of a SP. While such examples are not overly frequent,
they are exemplified in our corpora, even sometimes in cases of reasonably ‘fixed’ constructions such as ‘go and VP’:
(4) …so I’ve thrown the biggest tanti [tantrum], gone and hid under me bed for the most of the day… (Nova 93.7 FM radio,
Perth, 19 02. 2004)
We also find cases where the first of two conjoined clauses is in the SP and the second, with an ellipsed subject, is in the PP:
(5) This [= a bottle] was thrown through the driver’s open window and has struck the driver in the left eye. (Ros Weatherall,
WA Police Media, 4. 11. 2005).
Given the above examples, we need to be cautious about the way in which we code data. When presented with examples such
as “he’s come out/turned around and said…”, or any sequence of clauses with an ellipsed subject and a verb whose past
participle has the same form as a SP, we cannot be certain that the form of the VP is intended to be the same in each clause. Nor
can the presence of an irregular participle guarantee that the form is indeed a perfect, as, at least for some speakers, the
distinction between the two forms appears to have become blurred. This is illustrated in example (6) where the auxiliary
combines with the SP form of undo:
(6) … I had a bright pink halter neck dress on. And um, he’s undid it just as they’ve taken the photo and both coconuts have
fallen out. (Nova 93.7 FM radio, Perth, 7. 02. 2004)
The present paper explores the hypothesis that the auxiliary (either realized in full as has/have or morpho-phonologically
reduced as ’s/’ve) may be becoming a marker in its own right, and so serves specific discourse functions, showing a widening in
its scope and exemplifying a process that has been shown to be typical of semantic change (Traugott and Dasher, 2002). In order
to examine the question further, we focus on the contrast between examples where the auxiliary is repeated in each of a
sequence of clauses (as in (7)) with examples where it is not present (as in (1) and (2) above).
(7) So I’ve got a texta, I’ve held her head straight and I’ve written on her forehead ‘Hi Mum, I’ve tried drugs for the first time.’
(Triple J radio Sydney, 29.02.2000)
107
We use a set of three corpora, (i) spoken narratives contributed by speakers calling Australian radio chat-show programs; (ii)
spoken narratives collected through face-to-face interviews; (iii) more formalized written narratives exemplified by police media
reports. We explore the discourse functions of the auxiliary in terms of its ability to define distinct sub-episodes, in a sense
‘bracketing’ particular sequences of VPs denoting a set of temporally ordered events that relate to the main topic, following
Ritz’s (2007, 2010) initial analyses. Finally, we discuss our results in relation to Ritz’s proposed semantics for this vivid narrative
perfect.
References:
Engel, Dulcie, Ritz, Marie-Eve, 2000. The use of the present perfect in Australian English. Australian Journal of Linguistics 20
(2), 119–140.
Ritz, Marie-Eve, Engel, Dulcie, 2008. ‘Vivid narrative use’ and the present perfect in spoken Australian English. Linguistics 46
(1), 131–160.
Ritz, Marie-Eve, 2007. Perfect change: synchrony meets diachrony. In: Salmons, J., Dubenion-Smith, S. (Eds.), Historical
Linguistics 2005. Selected papers from the 17th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, 31 July–5 August 2005.
Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 284. Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 133–147.
Ritz, Marie-Eve. 2010. “The perfect crime? Illicit uses of the present perfect in Australian police media releases.” Journal of
Pragmatics 42: 3400-3417.
Traugott, E. C. & Dasher R. B. (2002). Regularity in semantic change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
RODRIGUEZ Rosique Susana (Alicante). Distance, bridging, assessment: Future and mirativity in Spanish
[email protected]
When it seemed that the debate on future focused on the primacy of the epistemic meaning over the temporal one, or vice
versa, or on which analytical tool –either evidentiality or modality– was broader (Jaszczolt 2009; Brisard 2010; Escandell 2010,
2014; Langacker 2011; Giannakidou & Mari 2012; De Saussure 2013), attention has been deviated towards some other uses –the
discursives (Squartini 2012) –, as exemplified by the Spanish mirative case shown in (1):
(1) –A partir de ahora […] le dices a tu hermana que me llame don Enrique siempre que haya alguien delante […]. Y se
había ido a escape a contárselo a ella, a su hermana Carmen:
-¡Seráfut idiota el tonto que tengo por marido!
[From there on, tell your sister to call me Mr. Enrique as long as there are people around. And he had rushed out to tell
her, her sister Carmen: — Such an idiot, the stupid that I have as a husband!] (http://books.google.es).
Mirativity is considered a universal category which marks the status of a proposition with respect to the speaker’s general
knowledge structure. It makes a distinction between information that forms part of the speaker’s integrated picture about the
world and new information which does not belong to that integrated picture. Since it has surprise –or a sense of unprepared
mind– as a core meaning, an evaluative component is usually ascribed to mirativity (Aksu & Slobin 1986; DeLancey 1999, 2001;
Aikhenvald 2012; Peterson 2013).
However, the mirative value triggered by Spanish future is not necessary linked to new information, but to information that has
just been activated (Dryer 1996). Once this is assumed, the mirative cases can be explained in parallel to some other discursive
uses –such as the persuasive or the concessive–, and can also be related to future’s temporal and epistemic values.
In order to provide a unitary explanation of the different values of Spanish future, a wide definition is needed. Future may thus
be defined as a kind of deictic instruction –i.e. distance forward (Fleischman 1989)– which may be projected along a subjectivity
axle (Traugott 1989, 2010) and which comes across the different levels of meaning established by Sweetser (1990), trough
successive widenings of scope (Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 1994). At the content level, future operates inside the proposition, and
it is consequently understood in terms of temporality. At the epistemic level, future is projected upon the proposition, and may
be interpreted in evidential terms (in the sense that the speaker makes an inference or a calculation) as well as in epistemic
terms (in the sense that the speaker evaluates the proposition as probable). For this to happen, however, there is a requirement:
future must be dislocated –that is, extracted from its natural context of posteriority (Rojo y Veiga 1999). Finally, at the utterance
level, future is projected upon the speech act, and plays different interpersonal roles (Pérez Saldanya 2002), which can be
related to different conceptions of intersubjectivity (Traugott 2010; Nuyts 2012; Leiss 2014). Again, there is a sine qua non for
this to happen: information occurring in future must be activated.
The distinction between activated and non-activated information arises orthogonally to that of old vs. new information.
Activated information is that which is at issue at the moment of speech; i.e., information that the speaker knows that is profiled
in the addressee’s mind. Specifically, it is possible to trace a continuum which has the focus of attention as the most salient,
prominent information. We may also find here accessible (Prince 1992) or inferable (Dryer 1996) information, which is the one
that has not been activated as such but is related to some activated information. The mechanism which leads us to relate non-
108
activated information to activated one is bridging (Clark 1977). In cases such as (1), the information occurring in future is
presented as an accessible or inferable conclusion from a previous activated situation.
When future contains information that has just been activated, distance is projected upon the utterance. In evaluative contexts,
such as (1), it is negatively interpreted; that is, speaker expresses some kind of rejection or criticism towards the activated
situation. It may explain why mirative uses of future in Spanish always have a depreciatory sense –(2)–, and thus do not work
with positive assessments – (3)–; more surprisingly, this negative flavor even arises in suspended structures –(4)–. In this sense,
Spanish future differs from other Romance languages, such Italian –(5)– (Squartini 2012).
(2) ¡Será tonto!
[Such an idiot!]
(3) # ¡Será guapo!
[Such a handsome!]
(4) ¡Serás…!
[Such a…]
(5) Sarà carina questa bambina!
[What a nice girl!]
Although Spanish mirative future is related to some other discursive uses, such as concessive –(5)–, they are not exactly the
same, in contrast to what Rivero (2014) argues.
(6) Te digo que era encantadora, y, cuando me decían que era judía, le digo yo: ¡caray! pues seráFut. judía, pero parece que
tiene más fe que los que no somos judíos, la verdad
[I’m telling you that she was lovely and, when I was told that she was Jewish, I said to her: oh, my! Well, she may be
Jewish, but she seems to have more faith than those of us who are not Jewish, actually]
(RAE, CREA, Oral, sf)
Both concessive and mirative futures are the projection of distance upon the utterance when information has just been
activated. However, there are some differences between them: on the one hand, whereas concessive future refers to the focus
of attention, mirative future introduces information accessible from a previous one via bridging; on the other, whereas
concessive future establishes a relationship between arguments, mirative future establishes a relationship between a situation
and the speaker’s reaction / assessment towards it. All in all, concessive future plays a role in the counter-argumentation
process, while mirative future plays an expressive speech act.
In sum, Spanish future may exhibit a mirative sense and play an evaluative function. This happens when information occurring in
future is accessible via bridging from a previous activated situation: distance is then projected upon the utterance and it triggers
the speaker’s rejection or negative assessment towards the situation. More generally, the mirative uses of future in Spanish
represent another example in which the unitary deictic definition of future –distance forward– applies.
References
Aikhenvald, A. 2012. “The essence of mirativity.” Linguistic Typology 16: 435-485.
Aksu-Koç, A. & Slobin, D. 1986. “A psychological account of the development and use of evidentials in Turkish.” In W. Chafe &
J. Nichols dirs. Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology. Norwood: Ablex Publishing Company. 159-167.
Brisard, F. 2010. “Aspects of virtuality in the meaning of the French imparfait.” Linguistics 48 (2): 487-524.
Bybee, J., R. Perkins & W. Pagliuca. 1994. The Evolution of Grammar. Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the
World. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
Clark, H. 1977. “Bridging”. In P.N. Johnson-Laird & P.C. Wason, eds. Thinking: Readings in cognitive science. London / New
York: Cambridge University Press, 411-420.
De Saussure, L. 2013. “Perspectival interpretations of tenses.” In K. Jaszczolt & L. De Saussure eds. Time. Language, Cognition
and Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 46-72.
DeLancey, S. 1997. “Mirativity: the grammatical marking of unexpected information.” Linguistic Typology 1 (1): 33-52.
DeLancey, S. 2001. “The mirative and evidentiality.” Journal of Pragmatics 33: 369-382.
Dik, S. 1997. The Theory of Functional Grammar. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Dryer, M. 1996. “Forms, pragmatic presupposition, and activated propositions.” Journal of Pragmatics 26: 475-523.
Escandell, V. 2010. “Futuro y evidencialidad.” Anuario de Lingüística Hispánica 26: 9-34.
Escandell, V. 2014. “Evidential futures: The case of Spanish.” In P. De Brabanter, M. Kissine & S. Sharifzadeh eds. Future Tense
vs. Future Time: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 219-246.
Fleischman, S. 1989. “Temporal distance: A basic linguistic metaphor.” Studies in Language 13 (1): 1-50.
Giannakidou, A. & Mari, A. 2012. “The future of Greek and Italian: An epistemic analysis.” Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
17: 255-270. http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/Dk3NGEwY/GiannakidouMari.pdf
Jaszczolt, K. 2009. Representing Time: An Essay on Temporality as Modality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leiss, E. (2014): “Modes of modality in an Un-Cartesian framework”. In S. Cantarini, W. Abraham & E. Leiss eds. Certaintyuncertainty- and the attitudinal space in between. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: Jonh Benjamins, 47-64.
Nuyts, J. 2001a. Epistemic Modality, Language, and Conceptualization. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Nuyts, J. 2001b. “Subjectivity as an evidential dimension in epistemic modal expressions.” Journal of Pragmatics 33: 383-400.
Nuyts, J. 2012. “Notions of (inter) subjectivity.” English Text Construction 5 (1): 53-76.
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Pérez Saldanya, Manuel. 2002. “Les relacions temporals i aspectuals.” In J. Solà, M.R. Lloret, J. Mascaró & M. Pérez Saldanya
dirs. Gramàtica del Català Contemporani. Barcelona: Empúries. 2567-2662.
Peterson, T. 2013. “Rethinking mirativity: The expression and implication of surprise.” Ms., University of Toronto [available at:
http://semanticsarchive. net], 2013.
Prince, E. 1992. “The ZPG letter: Subjects, definiteness, and information status.” In W. Mann & S. Thompson eds. Discourse
Description: Discourse Analyses of a Fundraising Text. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 295-325.
Rivero, M. L. 2014. “Spanish inferential and mirative futures and conditionals: An evidential gradable modal proposal.” Lingua
151: 197-215.
Rojo, G. & Veiga, A. 1999. “El tiempo verbal. Los tiempos simples.” In I. Bosque & V. Demonte dirs. Gramática Descriptiva de
la Lengua Española. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. 2867-2934.
Squartini, M. 2012. “Evidentiality in interaction: The concessive use of the Italian Future between grammar and discourse.”
Journal of Pragmatics 44: 2116-2128.
Sweetser, E. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Traugott, E. 1989. “Subjectification in grammaticalisation.” In D. Stein & S. Wright eds. Subjectivity and Subjectivisation.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 31-54.
Traugott, E. 2010. “(Inter)subjectivity and (inter)subjectification: A reassessment.” In K. Davidse, L. Vandelanotte & H.
Cuyckens eds. Subjectification, Intersubjectification and Grammaticalization. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. 29-71.
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S
SAUSSURE Louis de (Neuchâtel). Experiential evidentiality with sporadicity
[email protected]
This talk explores the assumption that sporadic aspect conveys experiential evidentiality (either personal or hearsay), i.e. the
speaker has knowledge of a property through an event, or several events, where he gained it. Such an evidential feature is tied
to the kind of existential quantification involved in sporadicity and sets the focus on actual culmination(s), in turn linking
sporadicity to perfectivity rather than to imperfectivity. To put it shortly, sporadicity is, we suggest, the perfective equivalent of
(imperfective) iteration.
The notion of sporadicity was introduced in the 1960s to account for cases where a modal verb of possibility (can, possibly may
in English, pouvoir in French etc.) gives rise to a quantificational reading, either temporal, as in (1), existential as in (2) or
ambiguously both as in (3). Italics spell out the quantification(s):
(1) He can tell awful lies (Palmer 1988)
He tells sometimes awful lies
(2) Welshmen can be tall
Some Welshmen are tall
(3) Lions can be dangerous
Some lions are dangerous
Lions are sometimes dangerous
The literature on sporadicity is mostly dedicated to establish the semantic or inferential path that leads from modality (can,
pouvoir) to quantification. The issue itself is of particular interest notably because sporadic utterances seem to bring in various
modal meanings at the same time, such as epistemic and ability modalities, and at the same time sporadic utterances with can
or pouvoir don’t seem to be reducible to one of them in particular. In Barbet & Saussure (2012) it is suggested that the sporadic
reading is triggered on the basis of a dynamic root modal reading which is pragmatically enriched for reasons of informativeness,
since the mere modal reading is underinformative in such cases. More recently (Saussure 2014), we argued that sporadicity is
the most basic type of possibility.
In this paper we focus on the nature of the temporal-aspectual interpretation involved in sporadic utterances. We observe that
sporadic aspect appears with various linguistic forms including explicit quantifiers such as sometimes in English or parfois in
French. Our examination focuses on sporadicity in French but we keep an eye on English as a matter of comparison. In Raeber,
Saussure & Sthioul (2015) we discuss a surprising fact involving sporadic utterances: they can’t be negated (in the sense that a
negation cannot have a narrow quantificational scope with such utterances). This appears with examples like these:
(4) Luc peut être odieux (Kleiber 1983)
Luc can be odious / Luc is sometimes odious
(4’) Luc ne peut pas être odieux (Raeber, Saussure / Sthioul 2015)
Luc can’t be odious
Normally, negation can scope over quantifiers only, as with (5):
(5) Luc n’est pas souvent gentil
Luc is not often kind
where the most natural reading implies that Luc is kind at times, but not often. Nothing of the sort happens with (4) which can
only mean (6):
(6) It is impossible that Luc is odious.
In such cases, it seems that negation takes scope over a relic of modality still semantically available in the sporadic sentence so
that it converts possibility to impossibility. But the phenomenon is not restricted to modal-verb-induced sporadicity. In Raeber,
de Saussure and Sthioul (2015) we noticed that negation is problematic with other expressions dealing with quantification. This
happens with ‘sometimes’ / ‘parfois’. With such quantifiers, negation is either strange or calling for a derived reading:
(7) # Luc n’est pas parfois odieux
Luc is not sometimes odious
(7) can only have an echoic metalinguistic reading (Jean is not ‘parfois’ odious). We also show that the negation problem appears
with non-temporal quantifiers:
(8) # Pas quelques étudiants sont venus
Not some students came
111
The comparison with other types of quantifiers, where negation works properly, is puzzling: Pas tous les étudiants… Pas
beaucoup d’étudiants… Not all students…; not many students… have no problem raising a meaning where students actually
came, however not in that particular quantity (all, many, etc.). What these quantifiers have in common with ‘modal’ sporadicity
is that they introduce both existence and undetermined quantities; they are basically sporadic. Sporadic events occur
occasionally, and sporadic properties are to be found occasionally in sets of individuals. That is, without any prediction on the
amount that is going to be selected. ‘Luc can be odious’ is compatible with Luc being seldom, or often, odious. The same
indeterminacy appears with parfois (‘Luc is sometimes / parfois odious’ means that he is such on indefinitely many or few
occasions) as well as in non-temporal quantifiers (‘Some students came to the party’ or ‘Quelques étudiants sont venus à la fête’)
won’t tell us if there were many or few; all that we know or assume is that not all of them came (through scalar inference) and
that more than one came (probably a plurality of them). Negating such quantities is problematic inasmuch as it is unresolvable
pragmatically, because the set of conclusions that NEG+SPOR jointly trigger is both inconsistent (all or none) and clueless
(Raeber, Saussure & Sthioul 2015).
However, there is more to sporadicity than inderterminate quantification. In Barbet & Saussure (2012) we suggested that
sporadicity involves the existence of background knowledge about the type of individuals (therefore a ground for a dynamic
modality). The fact is that if what ‘ligres’ are is unknown, (9) below can only trigger an epistemic reading, not a sporadic one:
(10) Les ligres peuvent être dangereux
Ligers can/may be dangerous
The interpretation we suggest now is that if there is no actual experience that that events of this type have already occurred or
that elements of the set do satisfy the property (in the restricted sense of having the specific experience of getting to know P on
a specific event) by the speaker (or anyone around), then sporadicity can’t occur. Lakoff (1972) notices that (11)
(11) Football players can be sex maniacs
is only compatible with a world where at least one football player has shown to be a sex maniac in the past (a requisite absent
from epistemic modality). We add that there is here a trace of the speaker having gotten to know a fact of this sort in the past in
a non-trivial way (i.e. not in the sense that all utterances presuppose Gricean quality).
Through an examination of the various markers of temporal sporadicity, including dialectal usages of the French surcomposé
past, we will delineate a picture of sporadic aspect as involving the evidence of previous occurrence. We notice, by contrast, that
the imperfective tense in French is not involving any such evidentiality, whereas perfective tenses, in particular the French passé
compose, does involve existential quantification (although not necessary involving actual experience).
(12) Cet hotel acceptait les chiens
This hotel used to accept dogs
(13) Cet hôtel a accepté les chiens
This hotel has accepted dogs
Whereas (12) does not at all entail that any dog has ever been accepted by the hotel, (13) is more likely about a world where at
least one dog has actually been accepted. This is even clearer with utterances of dialectal French with surcomposé past tense:
Cet hôtel a eu accepté les chiens. Such facts are closely tied to grammatical aspect: the imperfective disprefers culminating
events (unless accommodation), contrarily to the perfective. They lead us to consider that sporadic aspect, involving evidentiality
of experience, in the sense of ‘an lived event of getting knowledge of something’, thus existential quantification, is more tied to
the perfective than to the imperfective. Sporadicity is therefore a perfective counterpart of the iterative, which is imperfective.
We draw from this picture a few further claims, notably about the evaluative feel of can-sporadic utterances. We suggest that it
might be a consequence of the experiential meaning – the speaker has noticed a certain recurring worthwhile fact – and not of
an epistemic component attached to the modal.
Barbet C. & de Saussure L. 2012. “Sporadic aspect as a pragmatic enrichment of root modality”. In: Russi C. & C. Nishida (Eds),
Building a bridge between communities of the Old and New Worlds: Current research in tense, aspect, mood and modality. New
York: Rodopi, 25-43.
Kleiber G. 1983. “L’emploi ‘sporadique’ du verbe pouvoir en français”. In: David J. & G. Kleiber (Eds), La notion sémanticologique de modalité. Paris: Klincksieck, 183-203.
Lakoff R. 1972. “The Pragmatics of Modality”. In: Peranteau P. M., J. N. Levi & G.C. Phares (Eds), Papers from the 8th Regional
Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, 229-246.
Palmer, F. R. 1988. The English Verb. London: Longman, 2nd revised ed.
Raeber T., de Saussure L. & Sthioul B. 2015. “Sporadique et passé surcomposé: la négation impossible”. In: Pitar, M. & J. Goes
(Eds), La négation : études linguistiques, pragmatiques et didactiques, Arras: Presses Artois Université, 111-128.
de Saussure, L. 2014. “Verbes modaux et enrichissement pragmatique”. Langages 193: 113-126.
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SHLUINSKY Andrey, ARKADIEV Peter (Russian Academy of Sciences). Derivational viewpoint aspect systems: a crosslinguistic perspective
[email protected]
;
[email protected]
Starting from Dahl’s (1985) notion of ‘Slavic-style aspect’ it is generally recognized that the ‘basic’ aspectual opposition of
perfective vs. imperfective / progressive may be organized in two ways in the languages of the world. Some languages have an
inflectional aspect system where perfectivity resp. imperfectivity is expressed by obligatory TAM markers and is often dependent
on tense (e.g. the perfective vs. imperfective past tenses distinction in many languages). Other languages have a derivational
aspect system where perfectivity resp. imperfectivity is a lexical feature of a verb, and a verb expressing the opposite viewpoint
may be derived via imperfectivizing resp. perfectivizing derivational markers, which are non-obligatory, independent of other
TAM values and often lexicalized. For all what we know, derivational aspectual systems are a cross-linguistic rarity; to date, they
have been discussed almost exclusively based on the data of Slavic and neighbouring languages, see e.g. Breu 1992, Dickey 2000,
Tomelleri 2010, Arkadiev 2014, 2015. As a result, the peculiarities of Slavic aspect are implicitly attributed to derivational aspect
systems in general, without recognizing them as a broader cross-linguistic type where Slavic systems form just one — and rather
idiosyncratic — subclass.
Still, derivational systems radically different from the better known Slavic type are attested in a number of languages of diverse
areas and genetic groupings. First, these are the non-Slavic languages of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, which are known to
be to some extent similar to Slavic languages in the morphology of aspect: Baltic languages [< Indo-European], Ossetic [< Iranian
< Indo-European], Yiddish [< Germanic < Indo-European], Istro-Romanian [< Romance < Indo-European], Livonian [< Finnic <
Uralic], Ugric languages [< Uralic], Kartvelian languages. Second, these are some languages of Siberia, such as Samoyedic
languages [< Uralic] and Evenki [< Tungusic < Altaic]. Third, these are some (yet) sporadic examples of languages from other
parts of the world, such as some Qiangic and Gyalrongic languages [< Sino-Tibetan], Chadic languages (Margi), some Oceanic
languages (Mokilese and Kusaiean), some languages of South America (Quechuan, Aymaran and Mapuche [< Araucanian]), some
languages of North America (Nootka [< Wakashan], Pomoan languages and West Greenlandic [< Eskimo-Aleut]).
We present the results of a pilot cross-linguistic study of such systems based on available descriptions and our own fieldwork
data; our sample is neither exhaustive nor balanced, however, we believe that it allows us to make some preliminary
generalizations.
We distinguish three subtypes of derivational aspect systems.
1. Perfectivizing derivational aspect systems in which most of the underived verbs are imperfective. In such systems
perfectivizing markers are at least partially based on locative expressions (cf. the notion of ‘bounder-based perfectives’ from
Bybee & Dahl 1989), and therefore individual languages usually have many perfectivizers. Imperfectivizing markers may be
absent. Perfectivizing markers expressing the culmination of a telic process (‘eat smth.’ > ‘eat smth. up’) are always present in
such systems, while inchoative or delimitative perfectivizing markers for states or atelic processes may be absent. Such systems
are found in Slavic and neighbouring languages, as well as in Margi and Oceanic languages.
2. Imperfectivizing derivational aspect systems in which most of the underived verbs are perfective. In such systems there are
always more than two imperfectivizing markers, while perfectivizing markers may be absent. Those systems which have
perfectivizing markers always have them for perfectivization of stative or activity verbs, while perfectivization of telic processes
may be absent. Such systems are characteristic of Samoyedic languages, Evenki and Mapuche.
3. Derivational aspect systems with no acute trend to perfectivizing or imperfectivizing in which the ratio of perfective and
imperfective underived verbs is not abrupt and both perfectivizing and imperfectivizing derivations are productive. Such systems
are found in Quechua, Nootka, West Greenlandic and Pomoan languages.
Further classification of derivational aspectual systems is based on such parameters as 1) expression of perfectivization (prefixes
or suffixes), 2) expression of imperfectivization (prefixes or suffixes), 3) number of perfectivizing and imperfectivizing derivations
(zero, one, two, more than two), 4) available semantic types of perfectivization resp. imperfectivization. We distinguish the
following types of perfectivization: i) completive perfectivization of telic processes, ii) ingressive or terminative perfectivization
of atelic processes, iii) perfectivization of state (usually inceptive), iv) delimitative perfectivization, denoting a temporally
bounded situation not reaching its inherent endpoint (if any); and imperfectivization: i) event-internal imperfectivization,
focusing on the durative phase of a situation, ii) event-external imperfectivization, merging singular events into a series of
multiple events (iterative) or reinterpreting events as properties (qualitative/habitual). In addition to that we look at whether
languages have secondary perfectivization resp. imperfectivization, i.e. recursive application of aspectual derivation to verbs
already derived by imperfectivization resp. perfectivization.
The clustering of the surveyed aspectual systems is presented in the NeighborNet format (Huson & Bryant 2006).
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We see 1) a relatively homogeneous and at the same time genetically and geographically diverse cluster of languages lacking
imperfectivization (Georgian, Hungarian, Yiddish, Latvian, Livonian, Margi, Aymara); 2) a relatively homogeneous cluster of
languages showing a “balance” of perfectivization and imperfectivization (Kashaya, Eastern Pomo, West Greenlandic, South
Conchucos and Huallaga Quechua – languages of the Americas); 3) a highly heterogeneous cluster of languages with
predominant imperfectivization (Samoyedic, Evenki, Nootka, Mapuche, Imbabura Quechua); 4) a highly heterogeneous cluster of
languages with predominant perfectivization (Slavic, Lithuanian, Mansi, Istro-Romanian; Ossetic, Qiang, Tangut; + outsiders
Mokilese and Kusaiean).
The preliminary survey we have conducted has yielded the following empirical generalizations regarding the :
1) For perfectivizing aspectual systems:
1a) Perfectivization of atelic processes and states implies perfectivization of telic processes.
1b) Secondary perfectivization implies secondary imperfectivization.
2) For imperfectivizing aspectual systems:
2a) Perfectivization of telic processes implies perfectivization of atelic processes and states.
2b) Secondary imperfectivization implies secondary perfectivization.
3) For both types of aspectual systems:
Delimitative perfectivization implies non-delimitative perfectivization of atelic processes and states.
In sum, our typological study shows that, first, derivational aspectual systems, though rare, are attested all over the world, and,
second, exhibit variation along several important parameters. The better known “Slavic-style aspect” is just a subtype of such
systems, itself not really homogenous and admittedly not the most frequent cross-linguistically.
Acknowledgment:
Peter Arkadiev’s work has been supported by the Russian Foundation for the Humanities, grant # 14-04-00580.
References
Arkadiev, Peter (2014). Towards an areal typology of prefixal perfectivization. Scando-Slavica 60(2), 384–405.
Arkadiev, Peter (2015). Areal’naja tipologija prefiksal’nogo perfektiva (na materiale jazykov Evropy i Kavkaza) [Areal Typology
of Prefixal Perfective in the Languages of Europe and the Caucasus]. Moscow: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury.
Breu, Walter (1992). Zur Rolle der Präfigierung bei der Entstehung von Aspektsystemen. In: M. Guiraud-Weber, Ch. Zaremba
(éd.), Linguistique et slavistique. Melanges offerts à Paul Garde, t.1. Paris, Aix-en-Provence: Presses universitaires de Provence,
119–135.
Bybee, Joan L., & Östen Dahl (1989). The creation of tense and aspect systems in the languages of the world. Studies in Language
13.1, 51–103.
Dahl, Östen (1985). Tense and Aspect Systems. Oxford: Blackwell.
Dickey, Stephen M. (2000). Parameters of Slavic Aspect: A Cognitive Approach. Stanford: CSLI.
Huson D.H. & D. Bryant (2006). Application of Phylogenetic Networks in Evolutionary Studies. Molecular Biology and
Evolution 23(2), 254–267.
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Tomelleri, Vittorio S. (2010). Slavic-style aspect in the Caucasus. Suvremena lingvistika 69, 65–97.
SILLETTI Alida Maria (Bari). ‘Aller + infinitif’ et ‘andare a + infinitif’ : l’effet de sens « illustratif »
[email protected]
Dans cette contribution, nous entendons analyser la forme itive en français et en italien, notamment la périphrase ‘aller +
infinitif’ et celle de l’italien ‘andare a + infinitif’. Plusieurs recherches, dépassant les grammaires traditionnelles (telles que celle
de Riegel et al 1995), soulignent l’évolution des emplois de la périphrase du français (Vetters & Lière 2009 ; Bres & Labeau 2012 ;
2013a ; 2013b). En italien, il nous semble qu’‘andare a + infinitif’ a surtout été étudiée comme périphrase aspectuelle et moins
comme périphrase itive par rapport au français. Tant les grammaires que les études sur les périphrases verbales de l’italien
s’intéressent généralement à des structures réalisées sur le verbe andare plus lexicalisées qu’‘andare a + infinitif’ (Amenta &
Strudsholm 2002), à savoir ‘andare + gerundio’ et ‘andare + participe passé’. Par conséquent, ‘andare a + infinitif’ y est souvent
absent (citons, parmi les grammaires, Serianni (1988) et, au seins des études spécialisées, par exemple, Squartini (1998) et Laca
(2005)). Il existe néanmoins des études récentes, telles que celle de Levie (2013), qui portent sur cette périphrase de l’italien et
sur ses emplois à la lumière de sa grammaticalisation encore en cours.
D’une manière générale, pour expliquer le traitement des deux périphrases, Sornicola (1976) et Amenta & Strudsholm (2002)
mettent en évidence que les emplois de la périphrase italienne sont distincts de ceux d’‘aller + infinitif’. Nous nous alignons à
leurs remarques en les appliquant à l’analyse d’abord linguistique, ensuite contrastive, de ces deux périphrases.
Pour ce qui concerne notre cadre méthodologique, nous nous appuyons sur les auteurs qui considèrent ‘aller + infinitif’ comme
une forme verbale indépendante et à part entière, dont l’interprétation dépend strictement du contexte (Vet (2007 ; 2011) ;
Vetters & Lière (2009) ; Lière (2013)). Nous nous servirons des travaux de Larreya (2005) et de Bres & Labeau (2012) pour
identifier ses effets de sens. Parmi ceux-ci, nous isolerons l’effet de sens « d’illustration ». Ce dernier a été d’abord répertorié
pour ‘aller + infinitif’ par Damourette & Pichon (1911-1936) dans la langue orale et ensuite repris par Larreya (2005) sous
l’appellation « effet de caractérisation ». La restriction sur la dimension diamésique y étant désormais levée (Larreya (2005) et
Bres & Labeau (2013)), cet emploi apparaît également à l’écrit. Il se caractérise par la référence à un événement qui s’est déjà
vérifié, à une évaluation ou encore à une définition à partir desquels le sujet parlant peut orienter son dire. Ainsi, dans de telles
conditions, on ne peut parler que d’une (éventuelle) orientation explicite ou sous-entendue à l’avenir, alors que d’autres
dimensions temporelles, voire atemporelles, ancrent à notre avis cet effet de sens parfois hors du temps chronologique.
Nous conduirons l’analyse d’‘andare a + infinitif’ par le biais de la même approche adoptée vis-à-vis d’‘aller + infinitif’. Nous
présenterons les emplois déjà reconnus de la périphrase itive de l’italien à partir d’études spécialisées en la matière (dont l’effet
« extraordinaire » d’‘andare a + infinitif’ (Levie 2013)) pour ensuite focaliser notre attention sur l’effet « d’illustration ».
Du point de vue contrastif et à la lumière de notre analyse des deux structures verbales en français et en italien, nous estimons
qu’‘aller + infinitif’ et ‘andare a + infinitif’ ne sont pas proches lors du processus traductif. Pour le prouver, nous nous servirons
d’un corpus comparable et d’un corpus parallèle pour effectuer une analyse comparative et contrastive des deux structures
verbales. Nos textes sont tirés de la presse, notamment Le Monde diplomatique, l’hebdomadaire italien L’Espresso et le portail
de presse européenne Voxeurop.eu (www.voxeurop.eu). Le corpus comparable se compose d’articles de presse et d’interviews
tirés des deux périodiques français et italien et du portail Voxeurop.eu par rapport aux années 2014, 2015 et 2016. Le corpus
parallèle inclut en revanche des traductions en italien d’articles et de revues de presse originairement publiés en français tirés du
portail Voxeurop.eu, ainsi que des articles originairement publiés en français par Le Monde diplomatique, traduits en italien et
publiés sur le site italien du Monde diplomatique, hébergé par le portail du quotidien italien Il Manifesto. Ces textes datent de
2009 à 2016. Nos corpus sont petits, ils comptent environ deux millions de mots au total. Il s’agit de corpus ouverts et
synchroniques qui peuvent à notre avis servir d’échantillon du langage (Sinclair 1996) et être représentatifs d’une réalité plus
large (Mellet 2002), à savoir l’identification des conditions d’apparition de l’effet de sens « illustratif » d’‘aller + infinitif’ et
éventuellement d’‘andare a + infinitif’. Le choix de ces corpus dépend du fait de vouloir se concentrer sur la langue écrite pour
ainsi confirmer non seulement la présence de l’effet de sens d’illustration à l’écrit, mais également dans des textes différant du
web (Lansari 2009) comme corpus (Wooldridge 2004). En outre, puisque la plupart de nos textes relèvent d’articles
d’approfondissement, d’éditoriaux, d’analyses, de points de vue, nous nous attendons avoir affaire à des textes à dominance
informative et explicative, parfois pourvus de séquences argumentatives (Adam 2010), qui portent en tout cas sur des sujets
d’actualité mais qui contiennent, plus que d’autres types de textes (nous le supposons), des indices propices à l’emploi, à leur
intérieur, de l’effet de sens illustratif. Quant aux traductions, il nous paraît intéressant de vérifier la perception des traducteurs
(nous l’imaginons, italophones ou bilingues, de par leurs noms aux résonances italiennes) à l’égard d’‘andare a + infinitif’ en tant
que structure assez ou moins proche d’‘aller + infinitif’ tant du point de vue formel que sémantique.
Au sein du premier corpus, après avoir relevé les occurrences d’‘aller + infinitif’ comme périphrase itive, au présent et à
l’imparfait, nous vérifierons la manière dont chaque occurrence est traduite en italien et, parmi les emplois de la périphrase
française, nous isolerons l’effet de sens d’« illustration ». Les critères adoptés pour identifier ce dernier effet de sens relèvent du
genre et du type de séquences (Adam 2010) ; du test de remplacement de notre forme verbale par une forme verbale
115
flexionnelle ; de la personne verbale et plus en général du sujet d’‘aller + infinitif’ ; du type de verbe ; du contexte. Puisque nous
supposons qu’‘andare a + infinitif’ ne figure pas comme traduction d’‘aller + infinitif’, nous utiliserons notre second corpus pour
rendre compte des attestations d’‘andare a + infinitif’, ainsi que pour relever si cette périphrase exprime l’effet « d’illustration ».
Il est évident que les résultats issus de cette recherche à peine entamée, conduite sur de petits corpus et sur un même genre,
seront ensuite à évaluer dans des corpus plus importants tant par volume que par type de textes. C’est ce que nous entendons
faire dans des travaux futurs.
Bibliographie citée
ADAM, Jean-Michel, Les textes: types et prototypes, 2010, Paris : Armand Colin.
AMENTA, Luisa & STRUDSHOLM, Erling, « ‘Andare a + infinito’ in italiano », Cuadernos de Filología Italiana, 9, 2002, pp.
11-29.
BRES, Jacques & LABEAU, Emmanuelle, « De la grammaticalisation des formes itive (aller) et ventive (venir) : valeur en
langue, emplois en discours », in DE SAUSSURE, Louis & RIHS, Alain (éds.), Études de sémantique et pragmatique françaises,
Berne, Peter Lang, 2012, pp. 143-165.
BRES, Jacques & LABEAU, Emmanuelle, « About the illustrative use of the aller + infinitive periphrasis in French », in
LABEAU, Emmanuelle & BRES, Jacques (éds.), Evolution in Romance Verbal Systems, Berne, Peter Lang, 2013a, pp. 171-202.
BRES, Jacques & LABEAU, Emmanuelle, « Aller et venir : des verbes de déplacement aux auxiliaires aspectuels-temporelsmodaux », Langue française, numéro spécial L’expression du temps à travers l’espace : entités, relations et formes coordonné par
ASIC, Tijana & STANOJEVIC, Veran, sept. 2013b, pp. 13-28.
BYBEE, Joan, PERKINS, Revere & PAGLIUCA, William, The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect and Modality in the
Languages of the World, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994.
DALBERA, Jean-Philippe, « Le corpus entre données, analyse et théorie », Corpus [en ligne], 1, 2002, URL :
http://corpus.revues.org/10
DAMOURETTE, Jacques & PICHON, Édouard, Des mots à la pensée : essai de grammaire de langue française, Paris, D’Artrey,
tome V, 1911-1936.
LANSARI, Laure, Les périphrases verbales aller + inf. et be going to, Paris, Ophrys, 2009.
LARREYA, Pierre, « Sur les emplois de la périphrase aller + infinitif », in BAT-ZEEV SHYLDKROT, Hana & LE QUERLER,
Nicole (éds.), Les périphrases verbales, Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, John Benjamins, 2005, pp. 337-360.
LEVIE, Yordanka, « Valla a capire la gente ! About the extraordinary use of the andare/venire + infinitive periphrasis in Italian »,
Studii de Ştiintă şi Cultură, 2013, vol. 9, 2, pp. 21-36.
LIÈRE, Audrey, Entre lexique et grammaire : Les périphrases verbales du français, Thèse de Doctorat non publiée, 2013.
MELLET, Sylvie, « Corpus et recherches linguistiques », Corpus [En ligne], 1, 2002, URL : http://corpus.revues.org/7.
RIEGEL, Martin, PELLAT, Jean-Christophe, RIOUL, René, Grammaire méthodique du français, Paris, PUF, 1995.
SERIANNI, Luca, Grammatica italiana. Italiano comune e lingua letteraria. Suoni, forme, costrutti, Turin, UTET, 1988.
SINCLAIR, John, « Preliminary recommendations on corpus typology », EAGLES Document TCWG-CTYP/P, 5, 1996,
http://www.ilc.pi.cnr.it/EAGLES/corpustyp/corpustyp.html.
SORNICOLA, Rosanna, « Vado a dire, vaiu a ddicu: problema sintattico o problema semantico », Lingua Nostra, XXXVII, 1976,
pp. 65-74.
SQUARTINI, Mario, Verbal Periphrases in Romance: Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization, Amsterdam, Walter De
Gruyter, 1998.
VET, Co, « The descriptive inadequacy of Reichenbach's tense system: a new proposal », Cahiers Chronos 17, Amsterdam,
Rodopi, 2007, pp. 7-26.
VET, Co, « L’aspect grammatical en français », in NEVEU, François, BLUMENTHAL, Pierre, LE QUERLER, Nicole (éds.), Au
commencement était le verbe. Syntaxe, sémantique et cognition, Mélanges en l’honneur du Professeur Jacques François, Berne,
Peter Lang, 2011, pp. 443-465.
VETTERS, Carl, LIÈRE, Audrey, « Quand une périphrase devient temps verbal : le cas d’aller + infinitif », Faits de langue,
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SILVAGNI Federico (Autònoma de Barcelona). Some copular constructions are d-states
[email protected]
PROBLEM AND GOAL. According to the recent distinction between Kimian and Davidsonian States (Maienborn 2005b, 2007, 2011) all
copular constructions are true stative (i.e., Kimian) expressions. While in principle the K/D approach has improved research on
non-dynamic verbal predicates, the treatment of copular constructions as a uniform stative class has two major shortcomings: (i)
it creates an asymmetry between the domains of non-verbal and verbal predication, and (ii) it does not allow for an accurate
analysis of the aspectual differences we find among copular expressions. On the basis of data from some Romance languages
(namely Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian), this talk provides evidence that, contrary to what has been suggested, copular
constructions also split, at least, into the K- and D- classes.
DATA. Based on three classical diagnostics for events (1-3), Maienborn (2005b, 2007, 2011) examines the behaviour of state
expressions and distinguishes between “D-States” and “K-States”. D-States are those non-dynamic verbs (e.g. sit, stand, lie,
gleam) that meet the criteria for typical Davidsonian eventualities (1-3a): they can serve as complements of perception verbs
(1a) and they can combine with event-related locative modifiers (2a), as well as with manner adverbs or comitatives (3a). In
contrast, K-States (such as know, weigh, own) do not satisfy any of those diagnostics (1-3b) and are thus treated as true stative
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verbs. According to Maienborn, copular constructions belong to this last class (K-States), because they behave uniformly like
pure stative expressions (1-3c), regardless of whether the predicate denotes an Individual-Level (IL) or a Stage-Level (SL)
property.
(1) Perceptual reports:
a. I saw the child sit on the bench.
b. *I saw the tomatoes weigh 1 pound.
c. *I saw the child be on the bench.
(2) Locative modifiers:
a. The pearls gleamed in her hair.
b. *The tomatoes weighed 1 pound besides the carrots.
c. *Bardo was hungry in front of the fridge.
(3) Manner adverbials and comitatives:
a. Carolin sat motionless at the table.
b. *Bardo owned thriftily much money.
c. *Bardo was calmly tired.
(Maienborn 2011: 819-820)
Despite what English data suggest, copular constructions in Romance languages show a different behaviour with respect to the
above-mentioned Davidsonian diagnostics: only a subpart of copular expressions are excluded, as typical K-States are (4-6
column a.), while others meet the Davidsonian criteria, thus behaving as true D-States (4-6 column b.). In particular, they are
allowed in perceptual reports (4b), they allow locatives with the proper event-related interpretation (‘there is a state of the
subject, and this state holds in a place’) (5b), and they can be modified by manner adverbs and comitatives (6b) (cfr. Rothstein
14
2005 on English).
a.
4) Perceptual reports:15
SP
*Vi a Ana ser {estudiante / de Canarias}.
PT
*Vi a Ana ser {estudante / das Canárias}.
FR
IT
*J’ai vu Anne être {étudiante / des Canaries}.
*Ho visto Anna essere {studentessa / delle Canarie}.
‘I saw Ana to be {a student / from the Canaries}’
5) Locative modifiers:
SP
*Ana es {estudiante / de Canarias} en la biblioteca.
PT
*A Ana é {estudante / das Canárias} na biblioteca.
FR
*Anne est {étudiante / des Canaries} à la bibliothèque.
IT
*Anna è {studentessa / delle Canarie} in biblioteca.
‘Ana is {a student / from the Canaries} in the library’
6) Manner adverbials, comitatives, etc.
SP
*Ana es {estudiante / de Canarias} {tranquilamente /
con sus libros}.
PT
*A Ana é {estudante / das Canárias} {tranquilamente /
com os seus libros}.
FR
*Anne est {étudiante / des Canaries} {tranquillement /
avec ses livres}.
IT
*Anna è {studentessa / delle Canarie}{tranquillamente
/ con i suoi libri}.
‘Ana is {a student / from the Canaries} {calmly / with
her books}’
b.
Vi a Ana (estar) {sola / tumbada / de pie / sentada}.
Vi a Ana (ficar / ??estar) {sozinha / deitada / de pé /
sentada}.
J’ai vu Anne (être) {seule / allongée / debout / assise}.
Ho visto Anna (stare) {da sola / stesa / in piedi /
seduta}.
‘I saw Ana {alone / lying / standing / sitting}’
Ana está {sola / cansada / tumbada / de pie / sentada}
en su habitación.
A Ana está {sozinha / cansada / deitada / de pé /
sentada} no seu quarto.
Anne est {seule / fatiguée / allongée / debout / assise}
dans sa chambre.
Anna è {da sola / stanca / stesa / in piedi / seduta} in
camera sua.
‘Ana is {alone / tired / lying / standing / sitting} in her
room’
Ana está {tumbada / de pie / sentada} {tan ricamente /
con su perrito}.
A Ana está {deitada / de pé / sentada} {tranquilamente
/ com o seu cãozinho}.
Anne est {allongée / debout / assise} {tranquillement /
avec son chien}.
Anna è {stesa / in piedi / seduta} {tranquillamente /
con il suo cagnolino}.
‘Ana is {lying / standing / sitting} {calmly / with her
dog}’
In addition to these evidences, we can point out further tests in which some copular expressions behave as Davidsonian
eventualities, and therefore copular constructions still appear divided into two groups. Those copular expressions that show a Dbehaviour, first of all, can be quantified (7b); second, when they head a “free adjunct” absolute construction (Stump 1985), this
14
In the examples we use predicates that can hardly be coerced, in order to ensure their default interpretation.
In these cases the appearance of an overt copula in the infinitive depends on the syntactic structure of the copular phrase itself. Moreover, its
acceptability varies among languages: in French the copula is optionally present, Portuguese prefers ficar, while in Spanish and Italian the copula
is totally natural when the state is conceived of as being controlled by the subject (cfr. García Fernández & Gómez Vázquez, 2015).
15
117
can be interpreted as expressing a temporal relation with the main sentence (8b). Third, these copular constructions appear to
be interpreted as ‘happenings’. For instance, in the present tense, the eventuality can be interpreted as occurring ‘here and
now’, that is, as being restricted to the time of the utterance (9b). Moreover, when located in the past, these eventualities can
be interpreted as if they happened only once or several times (10b). In contrast, none of these criteria are met by the other
group of copular expressions: they reject quantification (7a), no temporal interpretation can arise from their absolute
constructions (8a), they lack the ‘here and now’ reading in favour of a generic interpretation (9a) and, provided that they are
felicitous in the past, their are not naturally interpreted as happenings (10b).
a.
7) Quantification:
SP
*Cada vez que Ana es {estudiante / de Canarias}...
PT
*De cada vez que a Ana é {estudante / das Canárias}...
FR
*À chaque fois qu’Anne est {étudiante / des
Canaries}...
*Ogni volta che Anna è {studentessa / delle
Canarie}...
IT
‘Every time Ana is a {student / from the Canaries}...’
b.
Cada vez que Ana está {sola / cansada / enfadada /
tumbada / de pie / sentada}, se queja.
De cada vez a Ana está {sozinha / cansada / chateada /
deitada / de pé / sentada}, ela queixa-se.
À chaque fois qu’Anne est {seule / fatiguée / en colère
/ allongée / debout / assise}, elle se plaint.
Ogni volta che Anna è {da sola / stanca / arrabbiata /
stesa / in piedi / seduta}, si lamenta.
‘Every time Ana is {alone / tired / angry / lying /
standing / sitting}, she complains’
8) Temporal reading of the absolute clause:
SP
Siendo {estudiante / de Canarias}, Ana tiene
descuentos en los vuelos.
[≠ *Cuando es {estudiante / de Canarias}...}
PT
Sendo {estudante / das Canárias}, a Ana tem desconto
nos voos.
[≠ *Quando é {estudante / das Canárias}...]
FR
En étant {étudiante / des Canaries}, Anne a des
réductions sur les billets d’avion.
[≠*Lorsqu’elle est {étudiante / des Canaries}...]
IT
Essendo {studentessa / delle Canarie}, Anna gode di
sconti nei voli.
[≠ *Quando è {studentessa / delle Canarie}...]
Estando {sola / cansada / enfadada / tumbada / de
pie}, Ana no consigue concentrarse.
[= Cuando está {sola / cansada / enfadada...}...]
Estando {sozinha / cansada / chateada / deitada / de
pé}, a Ana não consegue concentrar-se.
[= Quando está {sozinha / cansada / chateada...}...]
En étant {seule / fatiguée / en colère / allongée /
debout}, Anne n’arrive pas à se concentrer.
[= Lorsqu’elle est {seule / fatiguée / en colère...}...]
Da {sola / stanca / stesa / in piedi}, Anna non riesce a
concentrarsi.
[= Quando è {sola / stanca / stesa...}...]
‘Being {a student / from the Canaries}, Ana can enjoy
discounts on her flights’
‘Being {alone / tired / angry} / Lying / Standing, Ana
cannot concentrate’
9) ‘Here and now’ reading:
SP
Ana es {estudiante / de Canarias}.
[≠ Aquí y ahora]
PT
A Ana é {estudante / das Canárias}.
[≠ Aqui e agora]
FR
Anne est {étudiante / des Canaries}.
[≠ Ici et maintenant]
IT
Anna è {studentessa / delle Canarie}.
[≠ Qui e ora]
Ana está {sola / cansada / enfadada / tumbada / de pie
/ sentada}. [= Aquí y ahora]
A Ana está {sozinha / cansada / chateada / deitada / de
pé / sentada}. [=Aqui e agora]
Anne est {seule / fatiguée / en colère / allongée /
debout / assise}. [= Ici et maintenant]
Anna è {da sola / stanca / arrabbiata / stesa / in piedi /
seduta}. [= Qui e ora]
10) Happening reading in the past:
SP
*En su juventud, Ana fue de Canarias.
En su juventud, Ana fue estudiante (#solo una vez /
#varias veces).
PT
*Na sua juventude, a Ana foi das Canárias.
Na sua juventude, a Ana foi estudante (#só uma vez /
#várias vezes).
FR
*Dans sa jeunesse, Anne a été des Canaries.
Dans sa jeunesse, Anne a été étudiante (#une seule
fois / #plusieurs fois).
IT
*Da giovane, Anna è stata delle Canarie.
Da giovane, Anna è stata studentessa (#solo una volta
/ #varie volte).
Durante nuestro último viaje, Ana ha estado {sola /
triste / enferma / tumbada / de pie / sentada} {una sola
vez / muchas veces}.
Durante a nossa última viagem, a Ana esteve / ficou
{sozinha / triste / doente / deitada / de pé / sentada}
{só uma vez / várias vezes}.
Pendant notre dernier voyage, Anne a été {seule /
triste / malade / allongée / debout / assise} {une seule
fois / plusieurs fois}.
Durante il nostro ultimo viaggio, Anna è stata {da sola
/ triste / malata / stesa / in piedi / seduta} {solo una
volta / molte volte}.
‘In her youth, Ana was from the Canaries’
‘In her youth, Ana was a student (only once / several
times)’
‘During our last trip, Ana was {alone / sad / sick /
lying / standing / sitting} {only once / several times}’
DISCUSSION. From the data provided above it emerges that copular constructions in Romance languages are split at least into two
groups, as far as their aspectual content is concerned: while a group rejects any criteria for Davidsonian eventualities, as
predicted by the K/D approach (4-10 column a.), many copular constructions do not meet the K-predictions and behave as
proper D-States (4-10 column b.). Two additional observations support this claim. First, typical D-State verbs in English (namely
sit, stand and lie) correspond to copular expressions in Romance (cfr. 4-10 column b.), suggesting that a D-account for some
118
copular constructions is not thoughtless, but rather desirable. Second, the division found among copular expressions coincides
with the well-known distinction between IL and SL predicates, which has also been analysed in a Davidsonian framework (Kratzer
1988/1995). For instance, in Spanish and Portuguese the distinction is overtly displayed by the copular alternation: serIL / estarSL
(SP, Fernández Leborans 1999, RAE & ASALE 2009, a.o.); serIL / estarSL – ficarSL (PT, Cunha 2007, 2011, Raposo 2013). This last
evidence not only reinforces our observation about the D-nature of some copular expressions, but it also suggests that the IL/SL
distinction is deeply involved in the K/D contrast (contrary to what has been stated by recent studies such as Maienborn 2005a
or Jaque 2014 for Spanish, for example). In short, the core claim of this paper is that copular constructions in Romance are not
indiscriminately K-expressions, but, as well as non-dynamic verbal predicates, they are to be distinguished between K- and DStates. This proposal has three major advantages: (i) as far as inner aspect is concerned, it maintains a parallelism between
verbal and non-verbal predication; (ii) it allows for a more thorough understanding of the aspectual distinctions among copular
constructions; and (iii) it points to a connection between the Stativity/D-eventivity distinction and the IL/SL distinction (cfr. also
Hoekstra 1992).
REFERENCES
Cunha, L. F. (2007). Semântica das predicações estativas. Muenchen: Lincom.
Cunha, L. F. (2011). Phase states and their interaction with individual-level and stage-level predicates. In Á. Carrasco Gutiérrez
(Ed.), Sobre estados y estatividad. Muenchen: Lincom, 45–62.
Fernández Leborans, M. J. (1999). La predicación: las oraciones copulativas. In I. Bosque & V. Demonte (Eds.), Gramática
descriptiva de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 2357–2460.
García Fernández, L., & Gómez Vázquez, D. (2015). More than a copula: Complex predicates with estar and the clitic se. In I.
Pérez Jiménez, M. Leonetti & S. Gumiel Molina (Eds.), New Perspectives on the Study of Ser and Estar. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins, 23–50.
Hoekstra, T. (1992). Aspect and Theta Theory. In I. M. Roca (Ed.), Thematic Structure. Its Role in Grammar. Berlin, New York:
Foris, 145–174.
Jaque, M. (2014). La expresión de la estatividad en español: niveles de representación y grados de dinamicidad. Phd Thesis,
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
Kratzer, A. (1995). Stage-Level and Individual-Level Predicates. In G. N. Carlson & F. J. Pelletier (Eds.), The Generic book.
Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 125–175.
Maienborn, C. (2005a). A discourse-based account on Spanish ser/estar. Linguistics, 43(1), 155–180.
Maienborn, C. (2005b). On the limits of the Davidsonian approach: The case of copula sentences. Theoretical Linguistics, 31(3),
275–316.
Maienborn, C. (2007). On Davidsonian and Kimian states. In I. Comorovski & K. von Heusinger (Eds.), Existence: Semantics and
Syntax. Dordrecht: Springer, 107–130.
Maienborn, C. (2011). Event semantics. In K. von Heusinger et al. (Eds.), Semantics. Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 802–829.
RAE & ASALE (2009). Nueva gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa.
Raposo, E. P. (2013). Orações copulativas e predicações secundárias. In E. P. Raposo et al. (Eds.), Gramática do Português.
Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
Rothstein, S. (2005). States and modification: A reply to Maienborn. Theoretical Linguistics, 31, 375–381.
Stump, G. T. (1985). The Semantic Variability of Absolute Constructions. Dordrecht: Reidel.
SIMINICIUC Elena (Fribourg, Oxford). Les sens modaux du présomptif roumain à la lumière d’une étude quantitative de
corpus.
[email protected]
L’observation selon laquelle le présomptif (toutes formes de futur confondues) présente un haut niveau de spécialisation pour
des valeurs modales telles que la valeur épistémique et la valeur concessive fait l’objet d’un consensus de la part de chercheurs
comme Iliescu, Zafiu, Reinheimer-Rîpeanu, Popescu, qui ont été amenées à parler d’une grammaticalisation de la valeur modale
du présomptif roumain au détriment de sa valeur déictique originelle (valeur qui était largement déployée en dacoroumain du
XVII au XVIIIè siècle). En dépit de l’observation unanime d’une tendance de spécialisation du présomptif dans la transmission des
sens modaux, le degré de spécialisation de chacune des 3 formes de futur constitutives du paradigme présomptif reste très peu
étudié jusqu’à présent et une étude quantitative systématique n’a pas encore été menée.
Pour pallier cette carrence, nous avons comparé les fréquences relatives des 3 formes de futur au présomptif en prenant en
considération trois variables : (a) la distribution de chaque valeur modale repertoriée pour chacune des 3 formes du présomptif
dérivées du futur colloquial ; (b) la distribution de chaque forme selon la catégorie de la personne et du nombre et (c) la
distribution de chaque forme selon le verbe utilisé au présomptif- et finalement (d) nous avons analysé l’impact de ces 3
variables sur le degré de spécialisation de chaque forme prise séparément. Le cadre théorique utilisé dans la description des
valeurs modales du présomptif est celui de la pragmatique énonciative et il a été décrit dans Rossari, Ricci, Siminiciuc (à
paraître). De plus, dans la description de la valeur concessive nous avons eu recours à la notion d’enchaînement argumentatif
telle que développée par Ducrot (2004) dans une étude consacrée à la distinction entre la concession rhétorique et la concession
linguistique. L’impossibilité d’un enchaînement co-orienté argumentativement avec la séquence discursive au présomptif est le
trait commun des toutes les valeurs modales repertoriées : valeur épistémique, valeur concessive, valeur renforçative, valeur
d’emprunt, valeur énonciative.
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Dans une étude contrastive interlangues portant sur le futur en français, en italien et en roumain (Rossari, Ricci, Siminiciuc à
paraître) il a été observé que le futur synthétique italien et le futur colloquial roumain partagent plus de valeurs modales (ex.
valeur concessive, valeur épistémique) que le futur synthétique français et le futur synthétique italien. Si le futur italien et le
futur français déploient en synchronie tantôt un sens futural (déplacement de l’état de chose, de l’action désignée par le verbe à
un moment ultérieur à celui de l’énonciation), tantôt un sens énonciatif (déplacement de l’énonciation à un moment ultérieur à
celui de l’énonciation effective), en revanche le futur colloquial roumain s’est spécialisé dans la transmission des sens modaux,
ayant développé un fonctionnement énonciatif.
Malgré l’intérêt que présente cette observation, le corpus sur lequel la plupart des études mentionnées se fondent est un corpus
choisi selon la démarche corpus-informed et, de ce fait, la méthode d’investigation est une méthode exclusivement qualitative.
Pour valider les hypothèses en cours sur l’état actuel de grammaticalisation du futur colloquial roumain, nous avons interrogé
dans un premier temps un corpus journalistique de 10 millions de mots, constitué par nos propres soins et importé sur la
plateforme Sketch Engine. Les résultats de l’analyse quantitative ont validé l’hypothèse en cours sur la spécialisation du
présomptif pour la valeur épistémique et pour la valeur concessive, mais en même temps ont révélé la persistance d’une valeur
modale à portée intraphrastique, dite valeur indéfinie, très peu étudiée jusqu’à présent.
Suite à l’identification de la valeur indéfinie, présente dans des proportions proches de la valeur épistémique dans notre corpus,
nous avons analysé dans un deuxième temps les fréquences relatives de chacune des valeurs modales les plus fréquentes
(épistémiques, concessive, indéfinie) des 3 formes de futur dans deux tranches diachroniques du même corpus (Dilema veche)
afin d’observer une éventuelle courbe évolutive ou une stabilisation de ces valeurs. Les deux tranches diachroniques (DV1, DV2)
sont séparées par une diachronie courte de 15 ans.
Tableau 1.
Corpus/
Formes
DV1
19932000
DV2
20142015
OI16
OIG
OIP
Total formes/ 1 million de mots
5.66
0.80
2.26
8.73
11.81
0.81
8.55
21.17
Distribution de la valeur épistémique sur l’ensemble des formes du présomptif et sur chaque forme prise séparément.
Tableau 2.
Corpus/
Formes
DV1
19932000
DV2
20142015
OI
OIG
OIP
Total formes/ 1 million de mots
3.39
0.16
1.29
4.85
8.55
1.01
1.22
10.78
Distribution de la valeur concessive sur l’ensemble des formes du présomptif et sur chaque forme prise séparément.
Tableau 3.
Corpus/
Formes
OI
OIG
OIP
Total formes/ 1 million de mots
DV1
19932000
DV2
20142015
7.60
1.45
3.39
12.45
12.01
1.22
7.32
20.56
Distribution de la valeur indéfinie sur l’ensemble des formes du présomptif et sur chaque forme prise séparément.
Résultats :
16
Pour rendre comparable les résultats des deux corpus le calcul de la fréquence relative s’est fait par rapport à un million de mots pour
l’ensemble des formes analysées dans les tableaux 7-13.
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(1) Si le classement des valeurs les plus fréquentes de OI/OIG/OIP reste le même pour les deux tranches diachroniques
analysées, en revanche le nombre d’occurrences dans DV2 augmente significativement pour chaque valeur. Ainsi, la valeur
épistémique et concessive ont chacune une fréquence deux fois plus élevée dans le corpus DV2 (2014-2015) que dans le corpus
DV1 (1993-2000). Cette observation pourrait être interprétée comme l’indicateur d’une évolution en cours de OI et OIP vers un
fonctionnement énonciatif.
Néanmoins, le fait que la valeur modale indéfinie à portée intra-phrastique connaît une augmentation de fréquence
directement proportionnelle aux valeurs épistémique et concessive pourrait être l’indice d’une stabilisation de son
fonctionnement énonciatif concomitant à son fonctionnement modal intra-phrastique.
(2) Parmi les trois formes de futur constitutives du paradigme présomptif, la forme la plus fréquente est OI, suivie de OIP
(v. tableaux 1,2,3).
(3) Le verbe « être » conjugué à la troisième personne du singulier présente la plus haute fréquence. Ces deux dernières
observations permettent de valider l’hypothèse en cours sur le degré élevé de grammaticalisation de la forme OI au détriment
des deux autres formes (OIG et OIP) consitutives du mode présomptif.
A plus long terme, les résultats de nos premières recherches en synchronie seront comparés aux résultats obtenus suite à
l’investigation d’un corpus en diachronie (XVII-XIX) dans le but de poursuivre la trajectoire du processus de spécialisation du
présomptif pour les sens modaux (concessif et épistémique).
Références bibliographiques :
Ducrot, O., 2004, « Argumentation rhétorique et argumentation linguistique », in Doury, M. & Moirand, S. (éds.),
L’argumentation aujourd’hui. Positions théoriques en confrontation, Paris, Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 17–33.
Iliescu M., 2000, « Grammaticalisation et modalités en roumain : le futur déictique et épistémique », in Coene, M., de Mulder, W.,
Dendale, P., D’Hulst, Y. (éds.), Traiani Augusti vestigia pressa sequamur. Studia linguistica in honorem Liliane Tasmowski,
Padova, Unipress, 429-441.
Mihoc T., 2014, « The Romanian Future-and-Presumptive Auxiliary », in McGill Working Papers in Linguistics, 24.1, 64-80.
Popescu, C.-M., 2013, Viitorul si condiționalul în limbile romanice, Editura Universității, Craiova.
Reinheimer-Rîpeanu S., 2000, « Le présomptif roumain : marqueur évidentiel et épistémique », in Coene, M., De Mulder, W.,
Dendale, P., D'Hulst, Y. (ed.), Traiani Augusti Vestigia Pressa Sequamur. Studia Linguistica in honorem Lilianae Tasmowski,
Padova, Unipress, 481–491.
Rossari, C., 2014b, « How Does a Concessive Value Emerge? », in Ghezzi, C. & Molinelli, P. (eds.), Pragmatic markers from
Latin to the Romance languages, Oxford, Oxford University Press Series Diachronic and Historical Linguistics, 237-259.
Rossari, C., Ricci, C., Siminiciuc, E. (à paraître) « Les valeurs rhétoriques du futur en français, italien et roumain », in Le futur
dans les langues romanes, Bern, Peter Lang.
Saussure, L. de, 2014, « Verbes modaux et enrichissement pragmatique », in Langages 193/1, 113- 126.
Squartini, M., 2004, « Disentangling evidentiality and epistemic modality in Romance », in Lingua 114, 873-895.
Zafiu, R., 2009, « Interpretări gramaticale ale prezumtivului », in Zafiu, R., Croitor, B., Mihail, A.-M., (eds.), Studii de gramatică.
Omagiu Doamnei Profesoare Valeria Guţu Romalo, Bucureşti, Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti, 2009, 289-305.
SKALA Julia (Vienne). Notions of the Past: A Cognitive Construction Approach to Past Time Grammar
[email protected]
This talk will present, based on an analysis of a specialized sub-corpus compiled of sample sentences from the BNC, a
comparison of three English tense-aspect constructions (TAC) denoting pastness: the present perfect, the past simple and the
past progressive. In particular it will discuss the theoretical implications of Cognitive Grammar’s and Construction Grammar’s
abilities to explain and account for speaker’s choices of tense and aspect when, with regards to the temporal distance between
speech time (S) and event time (E), as well as participants and Aktionsart, the use of any of the three forms is apparently
feasible.
A long-standing tradition in linguistic research assigns TACs a deictic function, namely that of anchoring a situation in relation to
another time frame, such as, most obviously, that of speech time. In Reichenbach’s (1947: 71) words “[t]he tenses determine
time with reference to the time point of the act of speech”. This assertion has been expanded (e.g. already by Leuscher 1977) to
include non-temporal functions as well, but linguists focused on this temporal distance in order to elaborate on the senses of
various tenses for a long time (cf. Dirven et al. 1989; Sinclair 2005; Declerck 2006). In many cases, however, the temporal
distance between S and E or the actual duration of an event will not necessarily be helpful. In sentences like for instance (1), (2)
and (3), they can, in fact, be the same.
(1) She made a huge pot of strong coffee. (BNC A0L)
(2) Tony and Nathan have made tea and soup and we have some before going out to feed the first batch of dogs. (BNC
A6T)
(3) [T]he bell rang as he was making coffee. (BNC CN3)
While Reichenbach (1947) recognized the insufficiency of this and adapted his representation, introducing R, a reference point, a
place in time where the utterance is grounded, this point of reference helps to disambiguate the three TACs to a certain degree
only.
121
Figure 1: The difference between past time TACs in Reichenbach’s model
He (Reichenbach 1947: 83) accounts for the bar covering R and E in the Past Progressive (which he calls “Simple Past, Extended”)
17
by stating that the progressive implies duration or repetition . Both do not apply in (3), for example, since the act of preparing a
hot beverage might take the same amount of time in (1), (2) and (3), nor in (4), where the action that was perceived as the
unlocking of the door cannot be considered as taking particularly long as such, or as being repeated.
(4) [H]e found he had succeeded in locking it when he had thought he was unlocking it. (BNC H8T)
The illustration of the present perfect in Figure 1 falls short for similar reasons. While it works well for the given sample
sentence, it does not cover other prominent senses such as in (5), where E unarguably includes S as well and should therefore be
noted down as such, rather than being distanced from S and R as it is in the model. Purely deictic models can account for neither
of these.
(5) Iris has known Philippe for quite a long time. (BNC GVH)
These are just some of the many possible examples that demonstrate that TACs do much more than just locate processes or
states along the time axis. Already, Reichenbach’s model exceeds the notion of pure temporal deixis, as R cannot be objectively
fixed but is rather an agreement between addresser and addressee, and often depends on the context and co-text of an
utterance. Cognitive Grammarians expands on such considerations. In Depraetere and Langford’s (2012: 137) words: “When
more than one form can be used to refer to a particular time-sphere, each of the alternative forms highlights a particular vision
of the situation or time-sphere”. This element of choosing between more than one available forms happens on all levels of
constructions, be it morphological (e.g. of versus ‘s in the genitive construction), on the word level (e.g. between triangle and
three-sided polygon) or in a multi-word construction like the tense aspect combinations discussed here. Which variant is selected
depends on how a speaker might be construing – how he or she is “conceiving and portraying” – (Langacker 2009: 317) the
situation.
Building on more traditional descriptions of tense and aspect, this paper consequently extends the notions of temporal
reference and deixis to that of reference to a conceptualization in the mind of a speaker, i.e. to the way a given situation is
construed by the relating party rather than an utterance’s truth value or conditions. In this, it draws on a number of factors that
have been analyzed as possibly bringing to bear on such a construal. For one thing, these include co-textual factors such as the
tense and aspect of the verbs surrounding the construction in question as well as the temporal adverbs present in the utterance,
as these are often perceived as being acquired as one chunk, one construction in which the individual elements are informed by
and inherit meaning from each other (e.g. Goldberg 2009: 95). For another, factors that can be identified as part of the construal
of a situation such as specificity, prominence and perspective, as identified by Langacker (2008: 55ff.) are analyzed. The aim is to
arrive at a clearer picture as to what factors do, in fact, come into play when speakers chose between the pastness TACs.
To this end, a 50,000 word data base consisting of situation triplets like (1), (2) and (3) and their immediate context was sampled
from the BNC. In order to achieve a measure of representativeness for the phenomenon under scrutiny, the basis for the choice
of verbs was Biber et al.’s (1999: 367ff.) list of “most common lexical verbs in each semantic domain”. All this already implies
that the corpus assembled is highly specialized and not representative of the English language as a whole. In order to still achieve
a certain degree of balance and representativeness in respect to the pastness TACs, the registers of the sample sentences for
each TAC were chosen in accordance to their distribution in the balanced corpus of Biber et al. (1999: 456, 461, 462).
This resultant sub-corpus was analyzed in terms of a number of possibly salient factors such as Aktionsart of the verb, co-textual
factors, profiling, perspective and constructional sequence. The resulting meaning descriptions focus on the speaker’s
conceptualization of a given situation and the way the listener is invited to construe the situation accordingly. Prominence and
co-textual construction factors are eventually identified as most central.
Selected References
Bybee, Joan. 2010. Language, Usage and Cognition. Cambridge: CUP.
17
Reichenbach’s model is chosen as a point of comparison here, as even modern, cognitive accounts such as, e.g. Radden & Dirven (2007:
202ff.) still base their work on it, dividing temporal reference into before- and after- past, which, essentially, amounts to a very similar
classification.
122
Davies, Mark. 2004 - . BYU-BNC. Based on the British National Corpus of OUP, http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/ (November 2011 January 2013)
Declerck, Renaat. 2006. The Grammar of the English Verb Phrase: Volume 1: The Grammar of the English Tense System: A
Comprehensive Analysis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Goldberg, Adele E. 2009. “The Nature of Generalization in Language”.Cognitive Linguistics 20. 201-224..
Langacker, Ronald W. 2008. Cognitive Grammar. Oxford: OUP.
Langacker, Ronald W. 2009. Investigations in Cognitive Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Reichenbach, Hans. 1947. Elements of Symbolic Logic. London: Macmillan.
SLABAKOVA Roumyana (Southampton, Iowa). Acquiring temporal meanings without tense morphology: the case of L2
Mandarin.
[email protected]
As is well known, Mandarin Chinese does not use dedicated inflectional morphology to mark past tense. Comprehension of
Mandarin temporality depends on lexical items such as time adverbials (e.g., yesterday, next week), viewpoint aspect
morphemes (e.g., le ‘termination or completion,’ zai ‘ongoing state or event’, etc.) and discourse context tracking. Since English
has dedicated tense morphemes, comprehension of temporality does not crucially depend on aspectual, lexical and adverbial
means. Therefore, the English-Mandarin temporality contrast can be described as a form-meaning mismatch, leading to
anticipation of acquisition challenges. This experimental study assumes that something akin to the Deictic Principle (Smith
&Erbaugh, 2005; Lin 2003, 2006) is in place: Complete actions are generally interpreted as past; ongoing actions are typically
interpreted as non-past. This is a universal pragmatic principle that can be canceled by overt temporal expressions. With respect
to L2A, two opposing predictions are possible. Since Mandarin temporality presents learners with a form-meaning mismatch,
acquisition may be protracted and hard (DeKeyser 2005: Slabakova 2009). On the other hand, since temporality is a universal
grammatical property and its Mandarin means of expression also work for English (in addition to the morphological marking),
acquisition may be easy. These predictions were tested in the comprehension of 28 natives and 48 ChineseEnglish bilinguals,
using three different tasks. One task invited participants to consider sentences without context and choose among four possible
temporal interpretations. Another task gave them context in the form of a story. Findings indicate that learners were indeed
guided by the universal deictic pattern, although to different extents. When the native judgments were categorical, learner
choices were also categorical (sentences with le, zai, zhe, bare states and activities). When natives indicated in their choices that
temporal meanings might vary, learners’ choices also fell in that same range (sentences with bare resultatives, accomplishments
and guo). The story task results suggest that intermediate learners had more difficulty than advanced ones in using the remote
adverb for temporal information. The translation task results point to a development in acquiring the most complex
combinations of temporal meanings. The general findings indicate learner sensitivity to the universal deictic principle and the
linguistic input even at intermediate proficiency levels.
SUN Hongyuan (Picardie) , CERCLL (EA 4283). A tensed analysis for Mandarin
1.
[email protected]
Mandarin is traditionally considered a “tenseless” language since it lacks overt tense morpheme that we find in “tensed”
languages such as English. This paper provides evidence for a T projection in Mandarin. In particular, we investigate the “future”
construals of B(are) S(entences) (sentences with no aspectual markers), and make two claims: i) Mandarin has a T projection for
a phonologically null tense morpheme NONFUT, which restricts the reference time (RT) of BSs to non-future times; and ii) BSs
that allow future-oriented readings without a modal contain an implicit modal.
Temporal anchoring of BSs and a covert tense
18
BSs with stative predicates yield present readings in out-of-the-blue contexts (1a, 2a). Present and past time adverbs can fix the
RT to present/past times (1a-b, 2a-b), while future time adverbs cannot (1c, 2c).
(1) a. (Xiànzài) Lùlu
xǐhuān lǚxíng.
now
Lulu like
travel
‘(Now,) Lulu likes travelling.’
(2) a. (Jīntiān) Lùlu
hěn
jǔsàng.
today Lulu
very
frustrated
‘(Today,) Lulu is frustrated.’
b. Yǐqián Lùlu
xǐhuān lǚxíng.
before Lulu
like
travel
‘Lulu used to like travelling.’
b. Zuótiān Lùlu
hěn
jǔsàng.
yesterday Lulu
very
frustrated
‘Yesterday, Lulu was frustrated.’
c. Yǐhòu Lùlu
after Lulu
18
*(huì) xǐhuān
MOD like
lǚxíng.
travel
c. Lùlu míngtiān *(huì) hěn
Lulu tomorrow MOD very
jǔsàng.
frustrated
Bare eventive predicates behave differently: they allow habitual readings (i), which we discuss in more detail in the talk.
(i) Tíngting
tiào
bāléi-wǔ.
Tingting
dance
ballet-dance
‘Tingting dances ballet.
123
‘Lulu will like travelling in the future.’
‘Lulu will be very frustrated tomorrow.’
The restriction on the adverbial modification of BSs provides evidence for a zero tense “NONFUT” in Mandarin, defined in (3),
which only selects for past or present times as the RT of
BSs. (cf. Matthewson (2006)’s tensed analysis of St’at’imcets; see
also Sybesma (2007) for a tensed analysis of Mandarin)
(3) [[NONFUT]]g,c = λt: t < tc or t ⊇ tc. t
The structure in (4) shows how NONFUT rules out adverbs like míngtiān ‘tomorrow’.
(4)
2. Evidence for NONFUT tense
There is independent evidence for a NONFUT tense in Mandarin.
Firstly, the two-way tense system is attested in other languages. According to Comrie (1985), the past/non-past distinction can
be found in German and Finnish. The future/non-future split is observed in Karitiana, Inuktitut, Rukai & Hua (Storto 2013, Comrie
1985, Swift 2004, Haiman 1980, Chen 2008).
The second piece of evidence comes from sentences with ONE bare predicate, which describe plural eventualities with more
than one temporal location (both past and present). Take (5) for instance.
(5) Qián-tiān hé jīntiān Lùlu dōu hěn
before-day and today Lulu dou very
jǔsàng.
frustrated
Inspired by Matthewson (2006)
(5) is used to convey that the state of Lulu’s frustration holds during the day of the utterance jīntiān, and also the day that is two
days earlier than the UT qián-tiān. There are 2 states that are not adjacent: one in the past, and the other in the present, and
only one predicate. The absence of an appropriate translation in English is due to the absence of an underspecified tense
NONFUT in English. We can translate the sentence in English only by using 2 tensed predicates.
3. Futurates
In Mandarin, there are however BSs that allow future readings with appropriate future time adverbs, and without an overt
modal (6).
(6) Míngtiān
Lùlu hěn
máng.
tomorrow
Lulu very
busy
‘Tomorrow, Lulu will be very busy.’
We show that whether a bare sentence can receive future readings without a modal depends on whether the eventuality
described by the predicate can be scheduled / controlled by an agent or caused by natural forces (Reichenbach 1947, Binnick
1991 among others).
BSs allowing future-oriented readings in Mandarin ((7) vs. (8)) and present-tensed sentences allowing future-oriented readings
(futurates) in English ((7') vs. (8')) and French ((8") vs. (8")) are very similar, suggesting that future construals in languages with or
without overt tense morpheme might have common sources.
(7) Mǎkè
jīnwǎn dào.
Make
tonight arrive
‘Make arrives tonight.’
(7') Mac arrives tonight.
(7") Mac arrive
Mac arrive.PRES.3SG
‘Mac arrives tonight.’
(8) Mǎkè
yǐhòu *(huì) wàngjì Mǎlì
MOD forget Mali
Make
later
‘Make will forget Mali later.’
(8') *Mac forgets Mary later.
(8") *Mac oublie
Marie plus tard.
Mac forget.PRES.3SG Marie more late
Intented: ‘Mac will forget Marie later.’
ce
this
soir.
evening
We argue that the future construals of BSs in Mandarin are licensed by implicit modal ingredients (Copley 2002, 2008), and that
Mandarin futurates assert non-future PLANS for future-oriented eventualities rather than future eventualities.
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(9) PLAN(d)(P)(w)(t) is defined iff d directs P in w at t.
If defined, PLAN(d)(P)(w)(t) = 1 iff d is committed to P in w at t.
(Copley 2008)
References:
Binnick, R. I. (1991). Time and the verb. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chen, C.-f. (2008). Aspect and Tense in Rukai: Interpretation and Interaction. PhD Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin.
Comrie, B. (1985). Tense. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Copley, B. (2002). The Semantics of the Future. PhD Thesis, MIT.
Copley, B. (2008). The plan's the Thing: Deconstructing Futurate Meanings. Linguistic Inquiry, 39.
Haiman, J. (1980). Hua, a Papuan Language of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea. Studies in Language Companion Series , 5.
Matthewson, L. (2006). Temporal semantics in a superficially tenseless language. Linguistics and Philosophy , 29 (6), 673-713.
Reichenbach, H. (1947). Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York: Free Press.
Sybesma, R. (2007). "Whether we Tense-agree overtly or not." Linguistic Inquiry 38: 580-587.
Storto, L. (2013) "Temporal and aspectual Interpretations in non-finite clauses." In Time and Tame in Language. Cambridge
Scholars Publishing.
Swift, M. (2004). Time in child Inuktitut: A developmental study of an Eskimo-Aleut language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
125
T
TOVENA Lucia M. (Paris 7), DONAZZAN Marta (Köln). Verbal morphology, nominal aspect
[email protected] ; [email protected]
Deverbal event nouns ending by -ata in Italian, e.g. sciata (descent on ski), mangiata (big eating), are deverbal nominalisations
where an inflectional form possibly is at the origin of the word-formation pattern, the feminine form of the (Latin) past
participle, but the diachronic process of re/grammaticalization is not yet entirely understood. The pattern is viewed as the result
of a reanalysis of the form that is associated with a change of semantic function (Meyer 1990, Rohlfs 1969), or due to the fact
that the form took up the functions of another Latin suffix (Collin 1918). In either case, these nominals are feminine forms used
to refer to particular delimited events. The singularisation of the events could come from feminine gender (Acquaviva 2005) or
from perfectivity (Ippolito 1999, Gaeta 2000, Tovena 2014). On the one hand, feminine form can be morphologically more
marked and be used for singulative meaning in several languages from different families. On the other hand, traditional
contributions of perfective aspect are the possibility of viewing events as complete (making endpoints visible) and of focussing
on the event, not on its result state.
In this talk, we propose an integrated account by which the semantics of the deverbal event noun is determined by the
Aktionsart of the verbal base and the aspectual information contributed by the present days derivational suffix—information
which is diachronically inherited from a past inflexional morphology function. We show that aspectual constraints apply to the
input and the output of the word formation process, adopting a rule based word-formation way of describing the phenomenon
for the sake of clarity. First, we establish the empirical ground concerning actionality, an issue related to what gets into the word
formation process. Second, we discuss a constraint concerning grammatical aspect that applies to what comes out of the word
formation process. More specifically, we show that the restriction of atelicity and dynamicity on the verbal base that is
nominalised is relevant for computing the aspectual contribution of the suffix, which is to provide a boundary for the atelic
event. Furthermore, it is relevant for characterising the argument structure of the derived noun, which enforces the syntactic
realisation of an external argument discharging the thematic role of agent or causer associated with the activity type.
Aspectual constraints in the input: restriction to activity predicates The view that -ata nominals are mostly based on verbs that
are dynamic atelic predicates has been recently challenged (Folli & Harley 2013). However, we show that there is an aspectual
constraint of atelicity on the verb phrase by looking at restrictions on participants that discharge the role of Theme, e.g. una
lavata di camicie (a washing of shirts) vs. ??una lavata delle camicie (a washing of the shirts). Themes can give a special
contribution to the construction of the structure of the event, in particular for accomplishments. The suppression of sources of
delimitation via restrictions on Themes is an operation one can make sense of by assuming that the formation of -ata event
nouns indeed is subject to Aktionsart constraints. Moreover, predicates of achievements appear to be possible bases only under
restricted conditions that are similar in nature, i.e. the nominalisation ending in -ata is acceptable if the verb gives access to a
preparatory phase that is processual and can become the depicted event via coercion, e.g. entrata (entering) vs. # esplosa
(explosion). Finally, statives are out.
Aspectual constraints in the output: the contribution of the suffix Next, we endorse the hypothesis that the -ata ending
originates in past participle morphology. In becoming a nominalising suffix, this ending has specialised and nowadays contributes
the operation that actualise the discretisation of the domain of a potential event predicate. Therefore, it is a derivational suffix
with aspectual content. The derivation should be kept distinct from inflectional suffixation, contra (Ippolito 1999), because past
participle formation in Italian is not sensitive to aspectual classes in the way we see for ata nominals (Tovena 2014). Our first
stab at formalising the contribution of the -ata ending is to propose that it is a suffix that combines with a verbal stem and works
like an event modifier that measures the event using contextual information, cf. (1).
(1) λPλe[P(e) ∧ μ(τ(e))=d ∧ d≥Min(μ(τ(e)))]
We assume a measure function for times μ, which is a variable over measure functions such as hours or minutes. The perfective
content is captured by applying such contextually determined function μ to the temporal trace of the event, i.e. τ(e), and
assigning its value to a variable d. As we have seen, the predicate of events P instantiated by the verb base is restricted to
denoting in a homogeneous domain. A homogeneous dynamic predicate (activity) can be divided down to minimal intervals
(Dowty 1979) and preserve its nature. The duration of the minimal interval is in most cases underspecified and depends on the
particular predicate, but via Min(μ(τ(e)), the minimal duration of an event of type P gets related to the actionality restrictions in
the input. Finally, the events referred to via -ata nominals do not have to be short and can vary in duration. We capture this fact
by specifying that the value of d is superior or equal to the relevant minimal duration.
Realisation of event particulars: the role of the external argument Next, we tackle the issue of the existence of the described
event. The base is taken to provide an event type that, if instantiated in the world of evaluation, has the value associated to e as
its realisation. While it is generally assumed that the instantiation of events is handled at the level of the Tense node, we claim
126
that, in the case of -ata nouns, the instantiation of the event particular is enforced at the level of the noun, in virtue of the
semantic contribution of the derivational suffix. Despite the fact that it originates as a past inflexional suffix, -ata does not
project a Tense layer itself. We claim that the identification of a particular event at the NP level is due to the presupposition of
an individual discharging an agentive role in the argument structure of the deverbal noun. We propose that the identification of
a particular event is obtained via the identification of the individual causally responsible for it, building in this sense on the
shared assumption that causes identify events (Davidson 1967). Recall that -ata nouns denote events of the activity type, which
means that their only argument is the external one. In this respect, note also that independent existence, as per Dowty
(1991:573), is the more fundamental property of agentive proto-role, because it is the property that stands as a prerequisite for
all properties that characterise verbal entailments for the external argument.
Our claim is supported by empirical evidence. First, note that -ata nouns always refer to specific events. They resist generic
interpretations (Gaeta 2000), a ban that is not shared with nominalisations in general (2a) vs. (2b).
(2) a. #La letta/#una letta è un’attività solitaria.
The read-ATA/ a read-ATA is a private activity
b. La lettura è un’attività solitaria.
The read-URA is a private activity
‘Reading is a private activity’
Second, -ata nouns are by large the only morphologically derived event nouns in Italian to appear in complex predications, and
we take this fact as a hint of the strong preference for these event nouns to have their external argument realised. It is a
property of complex predications that the subject of the light verb is obligatorily coreferential with one of the arguments of the
event noun (Alba-Salas 2004), cf. (3). Thus, contrary to (4a), where dare is a full verb, (4b) is interpretable only when the modifier
materna receives a type-reading (a mother-like scolding).
(3) #Mario ha fatto una telefonata di Paolo.
(Mario made Paolo’s phone call)
(4) a. Mario ha dato l’eredità materna a Gianni.
Mario gave Gianni the legacy from his mother.
b. Mario ha dato una sgridata materna a Gianni.
Mario gave Gianni a maternal scolding.
We propose to express the presupposition of a unique agent or causer of the event denoted by the derived noun by the
predicate initiator in the lexical entry of the nomi- nalising suffix (5).
(5) λPλe[P(e) ∧ initiator(x,e) ∧ μ(τ(e))=d ∧ d≥Min(μ(τ(e)))]
The role initiator associates the event e to an individual, but in the case of complex predications the realisation of the individual
itself is handled at the level of the main predicate, through coidentification with a controller subject of the light-v. The external
argument position of -ata nouns is at least semantically active, and the event noun imposes some specific constraints on the
realisation of a complex predicate.
Conclusions In this talk, we seek to give an account of the semantics of deverbal -ata nouns, which have been described as
denoting discretised (Acquaviva 2005) and par- ticularised events (Gaeta 2000) and as being bound to enter complex
predications (Folli & Harley 2013). We show that, taking seriously the constraints on the lexical type of the verbal predicate that
enters the derivation, we can account for the observed seman- tic restrictions in a principled way. Atelic homogeneous events
are bounded arbitrarly by the aspectual operator contributed by the derivational suffix. Next, the presence of a semantically
active trace of the agentive argument of the activity predicate explains the preferred realisation of the external argument in a
complex predicational structure, and is responsible for the individuation of the event denoted by the derived noun.
References
Acquaviva (2005), Significati delle nominalizzazioni in ATA in Italiano e loro correlati morfologici, 37 congresso della SLI
Alba-Salas (2004), Fare light verb constructions and Italian causatives: Understanding the differences. Rivista di Linguistica 16.2,
283-323
Davidson (1967), Essays on Actions and Events, Clarendon
Dowty (1979), Word meaning and Montague grammar, Reidel
Dowty (1991), Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language 67, 547–619.
Folli & Harley 2013, The syntax of argument structure. Journal of Linguistics 49, 93-125
Gaeta (2000), On the interaction between morphology and semantics: The Italian suffix -ata. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 47, 205–
229
Ippolito (1999), On the past participle morphology in Italian. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics (33), 111–137.
Tovena (2014), Aspect and -ata event nouns in Italian. Handout ConSole XXII, Lisbon.
127
V
VAN GELDEREN Elly (Arizona State): The Aspect Cycle
[email protected]
In this talk, I discuss some of the changes that affect the argument structure and aspect throughout the history of English. This
sheds light on the universality of the aspectual division in manner and result, the major theta-roles that depend on this, and the
special status of the Theme. For instance, I show that unaccusatives are reanalyzed as causatives or copulas, due to the
importance of the Theme with telic verbs, but not as unergatives or unergatives as unaccusatives. Object experiencer verbs are
reanalyzed as subject experiencer verbs but not the other way round. The reason for this is that verbs hang on to their Themes
and the appearance of certain theta-roles is constrained by others.
Argument structure and aspect are part of our larger cognitive system and not restricted to the language faculty. As such, they
play a role in acquiring, for instance, a theory of mind and our moral grammars. Agents may be assigned more responsibility than
Causers; Goals are more salient than Sources. Theta-roles themselves are a reflection of the deeper aspectual distinction in
manner (durative and unbounded) and result (telic and bounded) which children are aware of from their first (English) words,
using –ing with durative verbs and past tense –ed with telic ones. If argument structure and aspect are outside the linguistic
system, pre-linguistic humans could have had it and other species may have it as well. If argument structure is universal in that
sense, it is directly tied to the conceptual structure, as argued by Jackendoff in various publications (e.g. 1997) and only
indirectly to the syntax.
The aspect connected to the cognitive structure of a verb and its arguments is often called the lexical or inner aspect.
Grammatical or outer aspect can emphasize the inner aspect or change/coerce it. Outer aspect can coerce the aspect of a
sentence and is important in enabling a reanalysis. Outer aspect has changed in a major way in the history of English. The
prefixes on verbs (and some auxiliaries) indicate perfectivity in Old English but imperfective is not specially marked. At the end of
Old English, definite articles start to appear, as well as telic adverbs, as the prefixes disappear, taking over the boundedness
(perfectivity). However, it isn’t till the 19th century that the progressive –ing becomes obligatory with durative verbs. At the
moment, it is increasing its range to statives and the question is if that means statives are changing their meaning or if –ing is
now extended as imperfective.
In short, I will describe some changes in inner and outer aspect throughout the history of English and see if one influences the
other.
VANEK Norbert (York). How grammatical aspect modulates categorisation and expression of event time in Chinese and
[email protected]
English
Research problem
Our understanding of the ways in which language structure influences event expression [1,2] is currently disproportionate to
how much less we know about the broader question of the impact of language on temporal cognition [3]. Recent studies show
that when speakers of different languages are asked to concentrate on watching events in preparation for a verbal description,
significant crosslinguistic differences appear in terms of focus on event components prior to and during speech, which
corresponds to how readily particular components are formally encodable in the given language [4,5]. Zooming in on
grammatical aspect, studies report that speakers of languages without a grammatical marker for ongoingness (e.g. German,
Swedish) tend to view events holistically with the inclusion of endpoints, whilst speakers of aspect languages (e.g. Spanish,
English) typically omit endpoints when preparing and giving dynamic event descriptions [6,7]. There is accumulating evidence
that crosslinguistic differences in aspect marking can also impact non-verbal cognitive processing [8,9]. Whether comparable
contrasts emerge for language pairs with seemingly similar systems ([+aspect] in both Chinese and English) has remained
unaddressed, even though it is of particular interest when the source and target systems appear to be more similar than in fact
they are [10].
This study aims to fill that gap by examining whether native speakers’ event categorisation and expression changes as a function
of aspectual differences in the grammatical systems of English vs. Chinese. Corpus data suggests that English is more ‘action
oriented’ (Zhangsan is falling asleep) while Chinese is more ‘result oriented’ (Zhangsan fell asleep) [11], which is attributable to
the incompatibility of the Chinese ongoingness markers zai and zhe with resultative verb constructions (RVCs) (Figure 1). Unlike
in English, if imperfective marking in Chinese (zai, -zhe) is unavailable on the source phase in RVCs [12, p.746], it remains open to
inquiry whether this structural contrast affects in predictable ways how speakers express and categorise event phases of
immediate relevance.
128
Zhangsan is falling asleep
* Zhangsan
zai
keshui
Zh-NOM PROG fall asleep
* Zhangsan keshui–zhe
Zh-NOM fall asleep-DUR
(Q1) Expression: How does linguistic performance measured via aspectual focus differ in online language production, i.e. whilst
watching events unfold?
(Q2) Verbal categorisation: To what extent is verbally primed categorisation in English vs. Chinese speakers action-oriented vs.
results-oriented?
(Q3) Non-verbal categorisation: If linguistically-modulated preferences occur in the verbal tasks, are they also detectable in
nonverbal judgements?
Methodology
Three experimental scenarios with novel tasks were used to test a group of Chinese and a group of English native speakers (N=66
per group). In Experiment 1, the production task was to retell 22 short animations in one sentence as soon as the participants
recognised the event. The stimuli consisted of of 11 critical items with achievement-type events (cut off a branch, hang a hat on
a hook), and 11 distractors with activity-type events (pull a suitcase, cycle on the pavement). All animations were controlled for
clip length (4.0 seconds), event type (11 typically instantaneous events, 11 typically homogeneous events), agent size, direction
of movement, transition point at 2.0 sec in each achievement, equal distance covered by the agent in source phase and in target
phase; and the clips were normed for event familiarity and visual similarity outside experiments via ratings from Chinese and
English subjects not participating in the main tasks. In Experiment 2, participants first listened to a model sentence (e.g. The boy
is throwing away a Frisbee; Nánhái rēng zǒu fēipán), and then they saw two videos side by side played simultaneously twice.
One video was source-phase-centred (SPC, i.e. showing the initial 2.5 seconds from the 4-second clip +[+++++-]-------- ) and the
other video was target-phase-centred (TPC, i.e. showing the final 2.5 seconds +++++[+------]--- ). The task was to decide after
viewing the videos which one corresponds most to the model sentence. In Experiment 3, participants first saw a model clip
(equidistant from the transition point +++[+++---]------ ). Then they saw two clips added to the bottom half of the screen (one SPC
and one TPC), played twice together with the model above them. The task was to decide which of the two clips looks most like
the model. There were two versions of the nonverbal categorisation task, one without distraction and one using a dual-task
paradigm (repeat non-words) to suppress subvocal verbalisation.
Results and Discussion
Preliminary results from production data signal statistically significant between-group differences in aspectual foci (ENGL1 =
action-focussed, CHINL1 = result-focussed). While English speakers routinely marked verbs denoting both activities and
achievements with [+ing] as ongoing, Chinese speakers showed sensitivity to event type by typically marking activities with [zai]
and achievements with the perfectivity marker [le]. Categorisation data shows that linguistically-modulated preferences surfaced
not only in verbal but also in non-verbal judgements. English speakers more frequently categorised source phases as being more
similar to the model sentence and also to the model clip, whereas Chinese speakers opted for the target phase more often. In
order to check the statistical significance of these differences, the data is currently being fitted to a logit regression model, with
source phase choice as the binary dependent variable and as a function of the fixed effects of group (Chinese vs. English).
Another important finding is that differences observed in the first three tasks disappeared in the dual categorisation task with
verbal interference, in which neither group showed a strong preference for either alternate. This discrepancy is in line with
earlier related findings [4,8], and suggests that the way grammatical aspect is encoded in a language can directly influence event
cognition patterns, but these effects are transient and only appear when language can be relied on as a task solving device. The
present study contributes to the debate on temporal cognition with a novel insight that not only dichotomous grammatical
systems (e.g. [+/- aspect] contrast between English and German) but also seemingly similar systems ([+aspect] in both Chinese
and English) can highlight distinct temporal features which speakers use as a basis for event categorisation and expression.
References
[1] Slobin, D. (2003). Language and thought online: Cognitive consequences of linguistic relativity. In D. Gentner and S. Goldin–
Meadow (eds) Language in Mind. Advances in the Study of Language and Thought, 157–191. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
[2] Von Stutterheim, Ch. & Nüse, R. (2003). Processes of conceptualisation in language production: Language–specific
perspectives and event construal. Linguistics: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences, 41 (5), 851–881.
129
[3] Bohnemeyer, J. & Pederson, E. (2011) (eds.), Event Representation in Language and Cognition. Cambridge: CUP.
[4] Trueswell, J. & Papafragou, A. (2010). Perceiving and remembering events cross linguistically: Evidence from dual-task
paradigms: Journal of Memory and Language, 63, 64-82.
[5] Gennari, S., Sloman, S., Malt, B., & Fitch, T. (2002). Motion events in language and cognition. Cognition, 83, 49–79.
[6] Schmiedtová, B., von Stutterheim, Ch. and Carroll, M. (2011). Language-specific patterns in event construal of advanced
second language speakers. In A. Pavlenko (ed.) Thinking and Speaking in Two Languages, 66–107. Clevedon: Multilingual
Matters.
[7] Bylund, E. and Jarvis, S. (2011). L2 effects on L1 event conceptualization. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14, 47–59.
[8] Athanasopoulos, P. & Bylund, E. (2013). Does grammatical aspect affect motion event cognition? A cross-linguistic
comparison of English and Swedish speakers. Cognitive Science, 37, 286-309.
[9] Flecken, M., Athanasopoulos, P., Kuipers, J., Thierry, G. (2015). On the road to somewhere: Brain potentials reflect language
effects on motion event perception. Cognition, 141, 41-51.
[10] Chen, J., Su, J. O’Seaghdha, P. (2013). Enduring moments: The extended present in Chinese speakers’ orientation to event
time. Journal of Pragmatics, 45, 90-103.
[11] Xiao, R. & McEnery, T. (2004). Aspect in Mandarin Chinese. A corpus based study. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
[12] Klein, W., Li, P. & Hendriks, H. (2000) Aspect and assertion in Mandarin Chinese. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory,
18, 723-770.
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W
WADA Naoaki, WATANABE Jun-Ya (Tsukuba). Be going to and aller: A temporal structure-based analysis of ‘go’-futures in
English and French
[email protected] ; [email protected]
Sentences with the ‘be going to + infinitive’ form (henceforth BGT-futures) have been studied extensively, especially in
comparison with those with the ‘will + infinitive’ form (henceforth will-futures) (e.g. Binnick 1972, Brisard 2001, Haegeman 1989,
Nicolle 1998, Wekker 1976). Sentences with the ‘aller + infinitive’ form (henceforth aller-futures) have also been analyzed by
many studies, especially in comparison with those in the French simple future tense (henceforth simple futures) (e.g. Fleischman
1982, Helland 1995, Smith 1997, Vet 1994, Watanabe 2014). Although there are many grammar books and monographs
referring to the comparison of the two ‘go’-future forms (e.g. Fleischman 1982), most of them merely state that they both
represent present-oriented futures or proximal futures and cannot explain the following facts: (a) aller-futures often do not
occur with future time adverbials, as in ?Je vais lui écrire demain and ??Un jour, je vais t’expliquer (cf. Watanabe 2014), but BGTfutures do, as in I am going to paint my bedroom tomorrow and One day I’m going to explain you her life (google); (b) allerfutures often correspond to both will-futures and BGT-futures, as in Ne t’assieds pas sur ce rocher, il va tomber vs. Don’t sit on
that rock – it {will/is going to} fall (Larreya 2001); (c) aller-futures correspond only to will-futures when the speaker makes
his/her decision at the time of speech (S) based on the speech situation and/or preceding context, as in “Voulez-vous d’une vie
propre? Comme tout le monde?” Vous dites oui, naturellement. Comment dire non? “D’accord. On va vous nettoyer... vs. “Do you
want a good clean life? Like everybody else?” You say yes, of course. How can one say no? “OK. You’ll be cleaned up... (Celle
2004/2005); and (d) aller-futures correspond to will-futures, not to BGT-futures, when they show characteristic behavior, as in
Une femme va se mettre du maquillage et s’habillera bien pour elle-même, pas pour les autres vs. A woman will make herself up
and dress elegantly for herself (Larreya 2001). As far as we know, a small number of studies (Celle 1997, 2004/2005, Larreya
2001, Lansari 2009) have given a detailed analysis of the temporal phenomena of BGT-futures and aller-futures in comparison
with those of will-futures or simple futures, including the ones mentioned above. Their analyses are based on the properties of
the constituents of the four future forms, e.g. ‘movement’ verbs, modal will or future tense, perfective or progressive aspect,
and to (and its correspondent) (Celle, Larreya) or abstract notions such as ‘préconstruction’ and ‘détermination qualitative’ vs.
‘détermination quantitative’ proposed within the framework of Culioli’s Théorie des Opérations Énonciatives (Lansari). They are
explanatory to a considerable extent. However, Celle and Larreya do not base their explanations on a general theory of tense;
they cannot explain the different behaviors of the future forms systematically from a common perspective. Lansari considers the
differences by claiming that in general, BGT-futures put emphasis on quantitative aspect, but aller-futures on qualitative aspect.
However, because she does not attribute the claim to the temporal semantics of the future forms, it is not motivated. An
analysis based on the rich temporal semantics of tense forms in a general theory of tense is more explanatory, because it can
motivate and analyze the temporal phenomena of the same and different languages in detail and in a unified way.
To pursue such an analysis, we adopt the tense theory proposed by Wada (1996, 2000, 2001, 2009, 2011, 2013a, 2014), a
general theory of tense which has been a basis for the temporal structure-based analysis of temporal phenomena in English. It
can basically be extended to the French tense system because French, like English, has finite tense forms that inflect with respect
to person, number, and mood; this inflectional system plays a crucial role in constructing temporal structures (i.e. structuralized
temporal meanings) which serve as ‘templates’ for determining the temporal values of the tense forms. This theory predicts that
French shows different temporal phenomena from English, because French has future tense inflection, but English does not. In
fact, the English will-future and its alleged French counterpart (simple future) show a number of differences. Wada (2013b) has
already accounted for them, showing a possibility that the tense theory is useful for a contrastive analysis of the future forms in
English and French. Therefore, we explain the temporal phenomena of BGT-futures and aller-futures in comparison with those of
will-futures and simple futures along the lines of Wada’s analysis.
To this end, we revise the temporal structures of will-futures and BGT-futures presented by Wada and (re)construct those of
(French) simple futures and aller-futures based on Watanabe’s (2014) semantic descriptions of them. The temporal structure of
the finite forms consists of two types of tense information: a time-sphere (grammatical time-range) signified by a tense
inflection and an event time denoted by the verb stem. Thus, will-futures, BGT-futures, and aller-futures involve the present
time-sphere (represented by the present tense inflection) and two event times, i.e. the event time of the finite form located in
the present and the event time of the infinitive (with its arguments and adjuncts) that lies after now, but simple futures involve
the future time-sphere (represented by the future tense inflection) and the event time located in the future. Temporal focus
(TF), i.e. a focus directed at the event time of the situation that the speaker is paying special attention to, and assertive modality
(assertion), i.e. a speaker’s mental attitude when s/he construes/states the relevant situation as a fact, also play important roles.
In the case of BGT-futures and aller-futures, the TF is directed at the event time of the preliminary stage denoted by be going to
or aller, which is accompanied by assertion; what is present relative to the time of assertion, i.e. S, is ‘assertable’. The presence
of to in BGT-futures express the path to the end of the preliminary stage and the realization of the infinitival situation on the
time line (Duffley 1992), whereas the absence of ‘to’ in aller-futures does not guarantee them. The presence of progressive
131
aspect in BGT-futures makes the preliminary stage ongoing at S, but the absence of progressive aspect in aller-futures does not
necessarily do so. In the case of will-futures, the event time of the modal will (which represents predictive modality, or
prediction, at S) coincides with S and the TF is directed at the event time of the infinitive because the speaker is concerned with
the infinitival situation itself. In the case of simple futures, the only event time is located in the future, at which the TF is
directed.
These temporal structures can systematically explain the four phenomena observed above. Let us start with phenomenon (a).
Aller-futures usually require a future situation as a continuation from the present because the speaker asserts that the
preliminary stage for the infinitival situation obtains at S. Thus, the combination of aller-futures and future time adverbials,
which makes the situation separated from S, is normally odd. However, when the continuation between S and the infinitival
situation is implied by the context, the ‘continuation requirement’ is met contextually. Under this condition alone, the absence
of ‘to’ (expressing the path to the realization of the infinitival situation) enables the infinitival situation to be located separately
from S with the modification by a future time adverbial, as in Dimanche prochain, vous allez désigner l’Assemblée Nationale pour
cinq ans (Watanabe 2014). On the other hand, BGT-futures always guarantee the link between S and the infinitival situation
because of the presence of the preliminary stage at S and the properties of to; the continuation requirement is always met in
terms of the temporal structure. Thus, the addition of future time adverbials does not affect the continuation requirement, such
a combination being allowed. Second, phenomenon (b), i.e. the correspondence of aller-futures to both will-futures and BGTfutures, is also explained in terms of their temporal structures. Because aller-futures do not include progressive aspect, the
preliminary stage is not necessarily ongoing at S and can start at or just after S, but the possibility that it is ongoing at S is not
excluded (French simple forms allow imperfective readings). When the preliminary stage is viewed as starting at or just after S,
aller-futures correspond to will-futures, which contain the prediction (associated with will) occurring at S, because both futures
have an element that occurs at (or around) S. When the preliminary stage is taken as ongoing at S, aller-futures correspond to
BGT-futures, whose temporal structure contains the preliminary stage that has started before and is ongoing at S. As for
phenomenon (c), the reason why aller-futures correspond only to will-futures when the speaker makes his/her decision at S in
reaction to the speech situation and/or preceding context is due to their temporal structures involving an element that occurs at
S. Simple futures are excluded here because the absence of a situation occurring at S does not facilitate the reaction pattern;
BGT-futures are excluded because the preliminary stage has already started before S and cannot indicate that the relevant
decision occurs at S. Finally, phenomenon (d) is explained as follows. Because infinitives are assumed to express potential
situations (Duffley 1992), they are easily able to express situations representing generality or characteristics, i.e. non-specific or
general ones; such situations are not linked to the real time line by themselves. Thus, aller-futures and will-futures (both
including infinitives) can express them. BGT-futures basically cannot describe them because they involve to, an element linking
the infinitival situation to the real time line.
The results of our temporal structure-based analysis are better than those of the previous studies to the extent that the former
has treated the temporal phenomena of the future forms in English and French systematically from a common point of view and
explained the correspondences and differences of the four future forms based on the rich temporal semantics. Our approach has
another merit because it can be easily extended not only to other future forms (e.g. the simple present) or past- and presentreferring forms in English and French, but also to tense forms in other languages such as German and Dutch (Wada 2015).
References
Binnick, R. (1972) “Will and be going to II,” CLS 8. 3-9.
Brisard, F. (2001) “Be going to: An exercise in grounding,” Journal of Linguistics 37, 251-285.
Celle, A. (1997) Etude Contrastive du Futur Français et de Ses Realisations en Anglais. Paris: Ophrys.
Celle, A. (2004/2005) “The French future tense and English will as markers of epistemic modality,” Languages in Contrast 5,
181-218.
Duffley, P. (1992) The English Infinitive. London: Longman.
Fleischman, S. (1982) The Future in Thought and Language: Diachronic Evidence from Romance. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Haegeman, L. (1989) “Be going to and will: A pragmatic account,” Journal of Linguistics 25, 291-317.
Helland, H. (1995) “A compositional analysis of the French tense system,” In R.Thieroff (ed.) Tense Systems in European
Languages II. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 69-94.
Lansari, L. (2009) Linguistique Contrastive et Traduction. Les Périphrases Verbles Aller + Infinitif et Be Going To. Paris: Ophrys.
Larreya, P. (2001) “Modal verbs and the expression of futurity in English, French and Italian,” In J. van der Auwera & P. Dendale
(eds.) Modal Verbs in Germanic and Romance Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 115-129.
Nicolle, S. (1998) “Be going to and will: A monosemous account,” English Language and Linguistics 2, 223-243.
Smith, C. (1997) The Parameter of Aspect, 2nd ed. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Vet, C. (1994) “Future tense and discourse representation,” In C. Vet & C. Vetters (eds.) Tense and Aspect in Discourse. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter, 295-323.
Wada, N. (1996) “Does Doc Brown know which expression takes us back to the future: Be going to or will?” English Linguistics
13, 169-198.
132
Wada, N. (2000) “Be going to and be about to: Just because Doc Brown was going to take us back to the future does not mean that
he was about to do so,” English Linguistics 17.2, 386-416.
Wada, N. (2001) Interpreting English Tenses: A Compositional Approach. Tokyo: Kaitakusha. / Wada, N. (2009) “The present
progressive with future time reference vs. be going to: Is Doc Brown going back to the future because he is going to reconstruct
it?” English Linguistics 26.1, 96–131.
Wada, N. (2011) “On the mechanism of temporal interpretation of will-sentences,” Tsukuba English Studies 29, 37–61. Wada, N.
(2013a) “On the so-called future-progressive construction,” English Language and Linguistics 17, 391-414. Wada, N. (2013b) “A
comparative analysis of some differences in the use of ‘future’ tense in English and French,” paper presented at AFLiCo 5, at
University of Lille III (Lille).
Wada, N. (2014) “A temporal structure-based analysis of the be to-construction,” paper presented at Chronos 11, at Scuola
Normale Superiore (Pisa).
Wada, N. (2015) “Differences in the semantic range of the English, Dutch, and German perfects and C-gravitation,” paper
presented at ICLC 13, at Northumbria University (Newcastle).
Watanabe, J. (2014) Furansugo no Zisei to Modarithi [Tense and Modality in French]. Tokyo: Sobi-shuppansha. Wekker, H.
(1976) The Expression of Future Time in Contemporary British English. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
WERKMANN HORVAT Ana (Oxford). On Deontic Modality and Authority in Croatian: A Judge Parameter Analysis
[email protected]
The aim of this paper is to provide an analysis based on the notion of judge parameter (Stephenson 2007) that accounts for
different levels of strength in Croatian modal system. It is widely claimed (von Fintel and Iatridou 2008, Rubinstein 2012) that
ought and should (weak necessary modals) are somehow weaker than have to and must (strong necessity modals). Though it is
possible to find similar relations in Croatian, differences exist. There is a strength relationship among necessity modals morati
(transl. must) and trebati (transl. ought to/should) where morati is the stronger one, as well as among possibility modals smjetti
(transl. may/be allowed to) and moći (transl. may/can) where smjetti seems to be the stronger one. Though it seems quite
unusual to claim that there is a strength difference between deontic existential modals, it appears that native speakers
consistently report strength differences, similarly to universal modals, morati and trebati. This difference is captured in examples
(1) and (2):
(1) Context: Your mom never lets anyone eat before everyone is sitting. Once everyone is seated, she says:
a) Sada možete
jesti
b) ? Sada smijete
jesti
Now may.PRES.2PL
eat.INF
now may.PRES.2PL eat.INF
You may now eat.
You are now allowed to eat.
(2) Context: The Head commander in an army base never lets anyone eat before all soldiers are seated. Once everybody is
seated, he says:
a) Sada smijete
jesti
b) ? Sada možete
jesti
now may.PRES.2PL
eat.INF
now may.PRES.2PL eat.INF
You are now allowed to eat.
You may now eat.
The usual tests for modal strength and modal scalarity relations that are based on domain restriction (von Fintel and iatridou
2008; Rubinstein 2012) reveal interesting results for Croatian. Examples (3) and (4) show a strength relationship that seems to be
similar to English must and ought. While the entailment works in the predicted direction in case of necessity modals, it does not
hold for possibility modals (assuming they are both of the same modal flavour). Therefore, an account based on domain
restriction does not predict correct results for (5) and (6).
(3) Trebaš
učiti,
ustvari, moraš.
ought. PRES.2SG. study.INF in fact must.PRES.2SG
You ought to study, in fact, you have to.
(4) * Moraš
učiti,
ustvari, trebaš.
Must.PRES.2SG study.INF in fact ought.PRES.2SG
You have to study, in fact, you ought to
(5) ? Možeš
učiti,
ustvari, smiješ.
May.PRES.2SG study.INF in fact may.PRES.2SG
You may study, in fact, you’re allowed to.
(6) ? Smiješ
učiti,
ustvari, možeš.
May.PRES.2SG study.INF in fact may.PRES.2SG
You are allowed to study, in fact, you may.
133
The main goal of this paper is to account for differences in strength among Croatian modals which will be achieved by switching
the focus of the analysis from domain restriction, which is the basis for many of the previous approaches such as von Fintel and
Iatridou’s (2008) and Rubinstein’s (2012) proposals, to the judge parameter (Stephenson 2007). The reason to this lies in the fact
that an account based on domain restriction could not predict correct results for examples (5) and (6) since it assumes a clearer
modal scale than the one found in Croatian. Therefore the proposal goes along the line of Stephenson’s (2007) work on
epistemic modals in order to account for both necessity and possibility modals. Stephenson’s theory is based on the notion that
the semantics of epistemic modals do not only rely on quantificational force and the nature of the modal base, but also on the
person whose knowledge is relevant. In order to account for the “knowers” dependency of epistemic modals, the judge
parameter is introduced. Stephenson (2007) leaves us with the question whether analysis of other expressions, apart from
predicates of personal taste and epistemic modals, could employ the judge parameter. Therefore I aim to extend Stephenson’s
account to deontic modals. But why opting for Stephenson’s account? Since a domain restriction analysis could not account for
(5) and (6), a non-domain restricting alternative is needed. Also, Stephenson’ account is, in a way, able to formally capture the
fact that native speakers’ intuitions on differences between modals consistently include the notion of authoprity as the key
difference between morati and trebati, and between smjeti and moči. On this view, these are the lexical entries proposed for
deontic morati and trebati in Croatian:
(7) ⟦morati⟧ c,g,f,j = λp.λw. for all w’ ∈ maxgj (w) (∩f (w)):p(w’)=1
(8) ⟦trebati⟧ c,g,f = λp.λw. for all w’ ∈ maxg(w) (∩f (w)):p(w’)=1
Lexical entries proposed in (7) and (8) are based on standard Kratzer’s approach (1991, 2012) that employ ordering sources. The
crucial difference between the denotations proposed for morati as opposed to trebati is the existence of the notion of judge in
(5). In brief, the judge parameter influences the ordering source and determines the final ordering of the possible worlds. In a
way, the judge parameter represents the dominant authority figure that seems to be present in semantics of strong necessity
modals and is often reported by native sprakers as something to what Croatian deontic modals are sensitive. Also, since the
difference between these modals lies in the presence of the judge parameter, it does not depend on differences in domain
restriction. In other words; a weaker modal will not be more restricted, the domain restriction in both modals stays the same but
the difference in meaning lies in the ordering imposed by the judge parameter. This appears to be crucial for the possibility
modals since it assumes the lack of clear modal scalarity seen in (5) and (6). Therefore, in line with (7) and (8) above, novel lexical
entries are proposed for smjeti and moči:
(9) ⟦smjeti⟧ c,g,f,j = λp.λw. there exists w’ ∈ maxgj (w) (∩f (w)):p(w’)=1
(10) ⟦moći⟧ c,g,f = λp.λw. there exists w’ ∈ maxg(w) (∩f (w)):p(w’)=1
This paper explores some important notions in current research on modal strength. On the top of that list are definitely
possibility modals, which have been put on the back burner in recent modal strength literature. Furthermore, it opens up a new
way of looking at modal strength since it supports the idea that though thete is a difference in strength among both necessity
and possibility modals, it does not lie in the size of quantification but rather in the notion of the judge parameter. It also raises
important future research questions about whether it is possible to neatly arrange all modals on a scale with respect to their
strength or not by revealing data that supports the latter option. Finally, one of the aims of this paper is to contribute to the field
by showing that Croatian can make important contributions to current debates about modal systems and modal strength.
References
von Fintel, K. & Iatridou, S. (2008). How to say ought in foreign: The composition of weak necessity modals. In Time and
modality, (pp. 115–141). Springer.
Kratzer, A. (1981). The notional category of modality. Words, worlds, and contexts, 38–74.
Kratzer, A. (1991). Modality. Semantics: An international handbook of contemporary research, 639–650.
Kratzer, A. (2012). Modals and conditionals: New and revised perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rubinstein, A. (2012). Roots of modality. PhD thesis, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Stephenson, T. (2007). Judge dependence, epistemic modals, and predicates of personal taste. Linguistics and Philosophy, 30(4),
487–525.
134
Z
ZATO Zoltan (ILLA-CSIC). Dimensional Adjectives and their Nominalizations: A Revisited Degree-based Approach
[email protected]
Introduction. According to Bierwisch (1989), gradable adjectives are divided into two classes: dimensional (tall, wide, short…),
which express relations between individuals and degrees, and evaluative (pretty, happy, lazy…), which involve ungraded
conditions. In this talk, I will only focus on dimensional adjectives and their nominalizations.
Based on Kennedy & McNally (2005) and Kennedy (2007), among others, dimensional adjectives are relative, since they are
context-dependent in the positive form and do not entail a contextual standard of comparison in comparatives. According to
these authors, they lexicalize open scales. I will consider Spanish dimensional adjectives, like alto ‘tall’, and their related nouns,
like altura ‘height’. I will propose that both categories are derived from an acategorial root alt- and will provide a formal analysis
for them, as well as for the comparative structures in which they appear.
The data. Masià (2013) argues that the nominalizations derived from gradable adjectives inherit the adjectival scale. Given that
in (1) the adjectives alto and profundo ‘deep’ are relative, their respective nominalizations altura and profundidad ‘depth’ are
also relative, which renders them incompatible with modifiers that pick out maximal degrees on the scale:
(1) a. ??completamente alto / ??totalmente profundo.
‘completely tall’ / ‘totally deep’
b. ??completa altura / ??total profundidad.
‘complete height’ / ‘total depth’
These nominalizations usually constitute mass nouns, as shown in (2), where they behave like canonical mass nouns such as
agua ‘water’ when combined with certain determiners:
(2) a. mucha/poca/bastante altura/agua/*casa.
‘a lot of/little/quite height/water/house’
b. Juan tiene más altura/agua/*casa que María.
‘Juan has more height/water/house than María’
However, in contrast with canonical mass nouns, these nominalizations neutralize the type/quantity distinction in certain
constructions (see Tovena 2001 for Italian):
(3) a. tal vino / tanto vino.
(type/quantity reading)
‘such wine’ / ‘so much wine’
b. tal altura / tanta altura.
(only quantity reading)
‘such height’ / ‘so much height’
(4) a. ¿Qué vino quieres? / ¿Cuánto vino quieres?
(type/quantity reading)
‘What wine do you want?’ / ‘How much wine do you want?’
b. ¿Qué altura tiene? / ¿Cuánta altura tiene?
(only quantity reading)
‘What height does it have?’ / ‘How much height does it have?’
Another salient property of dimensional nominalizations is that, unlike their related adjectives, they do not license a non-neutral
or contrastive interpretation when appearing alone. Whereas in (5a) the adjective expresses a property of the building that is
evaluated relative to a contextual comparison class, in (5b) the noun only expresses that the building is endowed with certain
dimension, which yields a tautology:
(5) a. Este edificio es alto/ancho/largo.
‘This building is tall/wide/long’
b. #Este edificio tiene altura/anchura/largura.
‘This building has height/width/length’
Finally, the co-occurrence of the degree phrase (highlighted in bold) with dimensional adjectives is odd, while it is acceptable
with their corresponding nominalizations:
(6) a. ?Este edificio es trescientos metros de alto.
this building is three hundred meter of tall
b. ?Esta piscina es dos metros de profunda.
this pool is two meter of deep
(7) a. Este edificio tiene una altura de trescientos metros.
this building has a height of three hundred meters
b. Esta piscina tiene una profundidad de dos metros.
this pool has a
depth of two meters
135
The analysis. From the data in (5) we can conclude that the semantics of the noun altura ‘height’ does not entail the semantics
of the adjective alto ‘tall’. Thus, since the adjective cannot yield the noun, and the noun cannot yield the adjective because the
former is phonetically longer than the latter, I propose that both the noun and the adjective come from an acategorial root alt-.
The root lexicalizes the (open) scale, defined by Kennedy (2007: 4) as a “set of degrees totally ordered with respect to some
dimension (height, cost, etc.)”.
In (8a), I suggest a denotation for the root alt- that is based on one of the usual denotations proposed for gradable adjectives
(vid. Morzycki to appear for a review). The adjectival morphology -ADJ takes a gradable root and saturates the degree d
associated with the individual x by evaluating it with respect to the degree d’, which corresponds to the standard of comparison
(see 8b). Thus, the adjective alto ‘tall’ is of the type <e,<d,t>>: it takes an individual x and evaluates its degree of height d on the
basis of a standard of comparison d’ (see 8c). In the positive form, as in Juan es alto ‘Juan is tall’, the context provides a
contextual standard of comparison stc such that d must be greater than or equal to it (see 8d). I assume that the standard of
comparison can be dealt with like an optional argument in the sense of Blom et al. (2011); consequently, the variable d’ can be
saturated by the context.
In comparatives, the degree word (más ‘more’, menos ‘less’, igual de ‘as’) introduces a standard of comparison, but the
denotation of the adjective already includes a standard. The Interpretive Economy principle (Kennedy 2007) states that the
conventional meaning of the expression of a sentence maximizes its contribution over context-dependency. Given that a relative
adjective does not encode an endpoint on the scale and so its standard would be determined contextually, this principle
guarantees that the individual’s degree d is only evaluated with respect to the standard of comparison introduced by the degree
word. Finally, the comparative clause (que-clause in Spanish) saturates d’: the operator max (Rullman 1995) takes the set of
degrees of an individual and returns its maximal degree, (see 8e).
(8) a. ⟦alt −⟧ = λdλx.
(x, d).
b. ⟦−ADJ⟧ = λGλxλd′∃d. G(x, d) ∧ d ≥ d′,whereGisagradableroot.
c. alto = λxλd′∃d.
(x, d) ∧ d ≥ d′.
(j, d) ⋀ d ≥ stc].
d. Juanesalto = ∃d[
‘Juan is tall’
(j, d)⋀d > max{d′:
e. JuanesmásaltoqueMaría = ∃d[
(m, d′)}].
‘Juan is taller than María’
The standard of comparison would then be encoded in the adjectival morphology, which contrasts with what is commonly
assumed in degree-based approaches, in which the standard is encoded in the null degree morpheme POS (Kennedy 2007; a.o.).
In the analysis presented here, POS is unnecessary: the context provides a contextual standard stc, and that is possible because
the denotation of the adjective predicts that the holder’s degree must be evaluated with respect to another degree (the
standard of comparison d’). In order for that to be feasible, d’ must be an optional argument in the sense of Blom et al. (2011).
Drawing on Bochnak (2013), who proposes that the noun derives from the adjective and the nominal morphology changes the
order of its arguments, I argue that the noun derives from the root and the nominal morphology -NOM changes the order of its
arguments (see 9a). Thus, the nouns are of the type <e,<d,t>>: they take an individual and return the individual’s set of degrees
or interval. Note that the nouns have the same denotation as the adjectives, but they differ in that only the latter entail a
standard of comparison. The main advantage of positing the same type is that it predicts that both forms combine with the same
degree words and comparative clauses. Based on Barker (1995) and Bochnak (2013), I assume that the possessive verb tener
‘have’ denotes an identity function on relations P (see 9c). Since altura ‘height’ denotes the relation required by tener, the
denotation of tener altura ‘have height’ corresponds to that of altura, see (9b) and (9d). In (9e), I propose a denotation for the
structure in which altura co-appears with a degree phrase and, in (9f), a denotation for the comparative:
(x, d).
(9) a. −NOM = λGλxλd. G(x, d).
b. altura = λxλd.
c. tener = λP. P.
d. teneraltura = λxλd.
(j, d) ∧ d = 2meters].
e. Juantieneunaalturade2metros = ∃d[
‘Juan has a height of 2 meters’
(j, d)⋀d > max{d′:
f. JuantienemásalturaqueMaría = ∃d[
‘Juan has more height than María’
(x, d).
(m, d′)}].
Conclusions. In sum, in deriving both the adjective and the noun from an acategorial root, this analysis accounts for their
semantic similarities and differences: both alto and altura lexicalize the same (open) scale, but the former expresses a relation
between two degrees as part of its denotation, whereas the latter denotes a set of degrees once the individual argument is
saturated.
In addition, in incorporating the standard of comparison into the adjectival morphology, the analysis allows dispensing with the
empty category POS, whose existence raises several issues of theoretical nature (Morzycki to appear; a.o.).
Extensions. The analysis presented here poses some challenging questions. I will mention two. First, if Bierwisch’s (1989)
hypothesis is correct, evaluative adjectives, and by extension evaluative nouns, do not encode degrees, so the analysis presented
136
here would not be applicable to them. Francez & Koontz-Garboden (2015) claim that evaluative nouns denote mass substances,
i.e. mereologies. Nevertheless, just like these nouns lexicalize scales, they seem to be sensitive to the relative/absolute
distinction (according to Kennedy 2007, absolute adjectives, like dirty, are not context-dependent in the positive form and entail
a contextual standard in comparatives). Moreover, evaluative nouns seem to differ from canonical mass nouns when appearing
in certain syntactic environments (Tovena 2001). Therefore, it is necessary to develop an analysis that accounts for their
(apparent) contradictory properties.
Two, the hypothesis displayed here, whereby roots lexicalize the scale, shows a prominent contrast with the conception of roots
usually assumed in Distributed Morphology. For example, Harley (2014: 16-18) claims that roots are “simply units of
morphosyntactic computation” and, therefore, “meaningless outside particular morphosyntactic contexts”. The advantages and
shortcomings of each proposal must be checked empirically.
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