1. General Background
In Slavic languages, when a speaker talks about a completed event, he or she chooses a perfective form of a verb. In certain contexts, however, imperfective aspect is used despite reference to a completed event, as presented in (1), (2), and (3) for Polish, Czech, and Russian, respectively.
1Polish
| P |
pervoe |
| |
|
in this |
tavern |
I wrote.pfv.1sg |
Dudkin |
| |
|
ljubovnoe |
pis’mo |
k Vere |
|
| |
|
love |
letter |
to Vera |
|
| |
|
‘In this tavern, I wrote my first love letter to Vera.’ |
| |
b. |
PisalI |
karandaš-om. |
jej |
cviety |
| |
|
wrote.ipfv.1sg |
pencil.inst |
|
|
| |
|
‘I wrote it in pencil.’ |
| |
c. |
i |
priglašalI |
jejo |
v teatr. |
| |
|
and |
invited.ipfv.3sg |
her |
to theater |
| |
|
and had invited her to the theater.’ |
| |
|
|
|
Forsyth (1970, p. 86) |
| (1) |
Marysia: |
Jaki |
piękny |
kolor |
ornamentu |
Czech
| (2) |
Marie: |
To je |
ale krásná |
barva |
ornamentu |
(3) |
Maria: |
Kakoj |
krasivyj |
cviet |
ornamienta |
| |
Mary: |
what |
| | nice |
color |
ornament. | gen |
| Mary: |
It is |
such nice |
| | color |
ornament. | gen |
Mary: |
what |
nice |
color |
ornament.gen |
|
na |
| |
na | ścianie. |
|
|
|
| stěně. |
|
| |
na |
stienie. |
| |
|
|
|
|
on |
wall |
|
|
|
| |
on |
wall |
|
| |
on |
wall | |
|
|
|
|
|
Chciałabym |
mieć |
taki |
sam |
w salonie. |
| |
Chtěla bych |
mít |
stejnou |
ve svém obýváku. |
| | |
Ja by |
ꭓotiela |
imieť |
takoj že |
|
want.cond |
have |
| v mojej gostinoj. |
|
want.cond |
havesuch |
same |
in room |
| same |
in my room |
|
In (11), the second event described by means of imperfective aspect is a sub-event of the first event that was expressed by means of perfective aspect. Altogether, imperfective aspect is suitable in contexts involving an Explanation, Elaboration, or Background relation, but not in Narration (Occasion) contexts.
4. Fake Imperfective in General-Factual Contexts
Grønn (
2015) argues that imperfective aspect is ambiguous and it can express both imperfective (the reference time is part of the event time) and perfective semantics (the event time is part of the reference time), as shown in (12).
| (12) |
a. |
[[PFV]] = λtλe.e ⊆ t |
| |
b. |
[[IPFVongoing ]] = λtλe.t ⊆ e |
| |
c. |
[[IPFVfactual ]] = λtλe.e ⊆ t ‘fake IPFV’ |
The imperfective used under the interpretation analogous to perfective in (13c) is licensed in general-factual contexts and it is referred to by
Grønn (
2015) as a ‘fake’ imperfective, which may in some contexts win the competition with perfective aspect (for example, in contexts in which the narrative use of perfective is not justified). As
Grønn (
2015) himself admits, he does not make it clear why the speaker should prefer the imperfective over the perfective in contexts of aspectual competition. He also correctly states that the differences in the interpretation of perfective and imperfective aspect can be extremely subtle, especially in the case of the presuppositional imperfective, where perfective can be used almost interchangeably with imperfective.
Additionally,
Grønn (
2015) draws an analogy between the semantics of tenses and nouns. In most Slavic languages there is no overt [±def] marking on nouns that are ambiguous with respect to the [±def] semantics.
Grønn (
2015) claims that such an ambiguity is present also in the temporal domain. In his account,
Grønn (
2015) builds on
Partee (
1973), who proposes that tenses in natural languages are not operators but pronouns and there is a division of labor between the English morphological tense (
-ed), which is anaphoric (definite), and temporal auxiliaries (
have P-ed,
will P), which are indefinite. Concerning Russian,
Grønn (
2015) proposes that the deictic past tense has the following semantics [[PAST*]] = λt. t < s* (s* = the speech time) and it comes with a covert indefinite or definite article. Both times and events may be definite (discourse old) or indefinite (discourse new) and an indefinite tense or event introduces a new discourse referent, while a definite tense is anaphoric to an old discourse referent. According to
Grønn (
2015), existential imperfective contexts display an indefinite tense and indefinite aspect, whereas presuppositional imperfective contexts display a definite tense and definite aspect.
5. The Anaphoric Nature of Aspect in General-Factual Contexts
Gehrke (
forthcoming b) argues against the ‘fake’ imperfective view and shows that it is possible to account for the use of imperfective aspect to refer to completed events by using a standard, unified semantics of the imperfective. Regarding existential factual contexts,
Gehrke (
forthcoming b) claims that imperfective is preferred because the event is iterative and imperfective is used to refer to a plural event (see also
Klimek-Jankowska et al. forthcoming;
Klimek-Jankowska and Błaszczak 2021). This is compatible with the view that Russian perfective has to do with event uniqueness (see
Mueller-Reichau 2018 and
Gehrke (
forthcoming a) this volume for a similar conclusion). Concerning presuppositional imperfective contexts,
Gehrke (
forthcoming b) proposes that in such contexts, imperfective is anaphoric to a completed event that is part of the common ground and the imperfective elaborates on it by zooming in on a narrower reference time.
Gehrke (
forthcoming b) discusses one of the examples from her joint corpus research with Olga Borik (
Borik and Gehrke 2018) in which they focus on imperfective past passive participles (PPPs) in Russian, which are often claimed not to exist but, in spite of that, are attested in corpora under a factual imperfective meaning. The context in question is illustrated in (13).
Russian
| (13) |
Čto |
kasaetjsa |
platy |
deneg, |
to plačenyI |
byli |
|
| |
what |
concerns |
payment |
money.gen |
so paid.ipfv |
were |
|
| |
naličnymi |
šest’ |
tysjač |
rublej |
|
|
|
| |
in-cash |
six |
thousand |
Rubles |
|
|
|
| |
‘What concerns the payment: 6000 Rubles were paid in cash.’ |
| |
I COND |
want |
have |
| |
Czy |
możesz |
mi |
powiedzieć, |
jaką |
| |
| such |
in my room |
|
Můžeš |
mi |
říct, |
jakou |
barvou |
Q |
| |
Podskaži, |
kakoj |
kraskoj |
ty jego |
risovalaI. |
can.2sg |
me |
can.2sg |
metell |
which |
| tell |
which |
paint |
| |
tell |
wich |
paint |
you it.acc |
painted.ipfv.f |
|
farbą |
| | go |
jsi | malowałaśI. |
ho |
malovalaI |
| ? |
|
|
| |
|
paint. |
| | INSTR |
it.acc |
painted.ipfv.2sg.f |
|
|
| |
| be. |
| 2sg |
| it. |
| acc |
| painted. | ipfv.f |
|
|
Russian
| ‘Mary: What a beautiful color of an ornament on your wall. |
| |
| I would love to have one in my living room. |
| |
| Can you tell me which paint you | painted it with?’ |
In this context, the speaker expresses his or her appraisal of the beautiful color of the ornament on the wall and asks the hearer about the paint used to paint the ornament. It is evident that the past event of painting the ornament reached the result state and the event was completed because the holder of the result state is available in the current conversation. In spite of that, imperfective aspect can be used (interchangeably with perfective aspect). This use of imperfective is only attested in Slavic languages, but not in Spanish, French, or Italian (cf.
Cipria and Roberts 2000;
Hacquard 2006;
Deo 2009). These contexts are called
general-factual and they are challenging for all the semantic theories of perfective and imperfective aspect aiming at formulating its invariant semantics that will cover all of its possible uses and attempting to distinguish it from the semantics of perfective aspect.
Grønn (
2004, p. 81) points out that one of the criteria defining factual imperfective contexts is the use of telic events.
2 Following
Grønn (
2015), these complete events were treated as those that produce a relevant result (though he admits that this assumption is a working hypothesis). Most scholars dealing with this issue state that in general-factual contexts, emphasis is shifted away from the result (see
Swan 1977;
Comrie 1976;
Grønn 2004;
Mueller-Reichau 2018).
The choice of imperfective in these contexts is a strategy used to avoid perfective. In other words, even though reference is made to a completed event in general-factual contexts, something prevents the use of perfective aspect. The questions that arise are:
What prevents the use of perfective in general-factual contexts? If it is not the result that is stressed in general-factual contexts,
what is stressed instead? According to
Grønn (
2004), when the focus is on the existence of an event within an extended indefinite assertion time, the target state validity of telic predicates is less relevant, and imperfective is preferred (it comes to existential factual imperfective contexts) (see also
Mueller-Reichau 2014). When the assertion time is narrow and specific, the target state validity of telic predicates is relevant and the perfective is more likely to win the competition. Finally, the most important question is how to differentiate between the semantics of perfective and imperfective aspect if both can be used to talk about completed events. A slightly different, though potentially related, explanation is given by
Śmiech (
1971, p. 44) who suggested that imperfective aspect can be used in place of perfective aspect in general-factual contexts when the result of an action is known or when it is possible to infer from the surrounding discourse that the result of the action was achieved. It may be the case that there are different reasons for why imperfective is used in different types of general-factual contexts. In fact,
Padučeva (
1996) and
Grønn (
2004), in their discussion of factual imperfective contexts in Russian, distinguish between two kinds of factual imperfective contexts: (i)
existential and (ii)
presuppositional, which are exemplified for Russian in (4), (5), and (6), respectively.
′) ⊏
g(
e) (in contexts which refer to unbounded eventualities) or whole event reading
g(
e′) =
g(
e) (in general-factual contexts referring to completed events). Moreover,
Altshuler (
[1] 2012) suggests that the choice of an aspectual form is determined by how it interacts with coherence relations in constraining the ordering of eventualities in discourse. He claims that Russian imperfective is incompatible with the Narration (his Occasion) relation, as illustrated in (9).
Altshuler (
2012), Russian imperfective can be used in contexts in which the described event precedes (under an Explanation relation) or overlaps (under an Elaboration or Background relation) with the event mentioned in the previous utterance. An example of an Explanation relation in Russian is provided in (10).
In (10b), there is a causal relation between the flower-giving event and the kissing event. The kissing event expressed by means of perfective is situated in the result state of the flower-giving event, which is expressed by means of imperfective even though the linear order of the utterances describing these events is reversed.
An example of an Elaboration relation in Russian is in (11).
| (11) |
a. |
V ètoj |
posternoj |
ja napisal |
In (14), the payment event (
e1) is introduced by means of a nominalisation,
plata ‘payment’, and the imperfective past passive participle,
plačenyI ‘paid’, used in the main clause introduces the second event (
e2) that is anaphorically related to the already introduced payment event.
Gehrke (
forthcoming b) builds on
Altshuler’s (
2014) partitive semantics for the imperfective aspect where the reference time
t is part of the run time of
e2 (
t ⊆
τ (
e2)). As pointed out by
Gehrke (
forthcoming b), the intuition that the payment event
e1 (and thereby also
e2) was ‘completed’ follows from the discourse structure. More specifically, event completion information is already given in
e1 (its run time falls within the first reference time
t1). Since
e2 is identical to
e1, the event completion reading of
e2 follows from its anaphoric link with
e1. The second reference time,
t2, is part of the run time of
e2, and, by identity with
e1, it is also part of
e1. As a result of this anaphoric link between
e1 and
e2, the process of interpretation leads to zooming in on a narrower reference time within a bigger reference time. Consequently, imperfective used to express
e2 expresses a standard relation [[ipfv]]: λtλe.t ⊆ e and the completion reading follows from the anaphoric relation of
e2 with
e1, where
e1 is completed. This proposal allows
Gehrke (
forthcoming b) to maintain a uniform semantics of imperfective verbs. However, it is not clear how this solution would address the observation that in presuppositional imperfective contexts perfective is often freely interchangeable with perfective. If the anaphoric link is always there in presuppositional factual contexts, why would some speakers opt for perfective aspect at all? It is also not clear how this analysis would capture the variation in the use of aspectual forms in factual contexts in different Slavic languages.
6. General-Factual Perfectives
Mueller-Reichau (
2018) focuses on the contexts in which Czech displays general-factual perfectives, whereas the eastern language of Russian displays general-factual imperfectives and shares Polish patterns with Czech. His analysis is based on existential factual contexts with the temporal adverbial
ever, wherein the imperfective is preferred in Russian when the reference is made to a completed past tense event vaguely located in time. In fact, imperfective is obligatory when achievement predicates are used in Russian, as shown in (14).
Russian
| (14) |
Ty kogda-libo |
terialI/ |
*poterialP |
kliuchi? |
|
| |
you ever |
lost.ipfv |
lost.pfv |
keys |
|
| |
‘Have you ever lost keys?’ |
The same context strongly prefers the use of perfective in Polish and Czech, as shown in (15) and (16), respectively (see
Dickey 2000).
Polish
| (15) |
Czy |
kiedykolwiek |
zgubiłeśP/ |
??gubiłeśI |
klucze? |
|
Czech
| (16) |
ZtratilP |
/??ztrácelI |
jsi |
kdykoliv |
klíče? |
| |
Q |
ever |
lost.pfv |
lost.ipfv |
keys |
|
| |
lost.pfv |
lost.ipfv |
be.2sg |
ever |
keys |
| |
‘Have you ever lost keys?’ |
| (10) |
a. |
Niedielju nazad |
Marija |
pocelovalaP |
Dudkina. |
| |
|
week ago |
Maria |
kissed.pfv.3sg.f |
Dudkin |
| |
|
‘A week ago, Maria kissed Dudkin.’ |
| |
b. |
On |
The punctual achievement
lose can be assigned to a single (unique) point in time. According to
Mueller-Reichau (
2018), this contrast follows from the different semantics of Czech, Polish, and Russian perfective aspect. More precisely, Czech and Polish perfective is used whenever the speaker wants to refer to an event that is completed and unique in the relevant context, whereas Russian perfective more strongly encodes target state validity (which implies event completion and uniqueness), as follows from the semantics in (17) and (18).
| |
| [[PFV | Russian]] = λPλt∃e[P(e) ∧ e ⊆ t ∧ ¬ ∃e’ [P(e’) ∧ e’ ≠ e] ∧ fEND(t) ⊆ fTARGET(e) ] |
Mueller-Reichau (
2018) argues that in (15) and (16) the speaker’s coding of the event as unique follows from accidentality. In Russian (14), the imperfective must be used because the expression of target state validity is not intended. The notion of target state validity is formally defined by means of the condition f
END(t) ⊆ f
TARGET(e). To meet the condition of target state validity, the event has to have a specific reference time. This is incompatible with general-factuals, which require the event to be located in a reference time that is “big and floating”.
Mueller-Reichau (
2018) (quoted after
Grønn 2004) focuses only on variation in aspect choices in existential factual contexts in Polish, Czech, and Russian.
7. Discourse-Level Information and Temporal (In)definiteness in General-Factual Contexts
Another recent study that addressed the issue of variation in the distribution of aspect in general-factual contexts is
Klimek-Jankowska (
2020), who investigated the preferences in aspect choices in existential and presuppositional factual contexts in eastern and western Poland. For this goal, she conducted an online questionnaire in which the participants from western and eastern Poland were asked to fill in the missing verbs in presuppositional and existential factual contexts involving an Elaboration coherence relation (in which the result holder, i.e., the subject of the result sub-event, is available at the moment of speaking). An Elaboration coherence relation is explained in (19) in accordance with
Lascarides and Asher (
1997), who observed that temporal relations are calculated not only compositionally but also on the basis of defeasible rhetorical relations.
| Polish |
|
|
|
|
| (21) |
Zarząd |
wybudowałP |
most (e1). |
|
|
| |
Council |
built.3sg.pfv |
bridge.acc |
|
|
| daril | I |
jej |
cviety |
| |
Najlepszy |
architekt |
sporządzałI |
jego |
projekt (e2). |
|
|
| | he |
best | gave.ipfv.3sg |
architecther |
drew_up.3sg.ipfvflowers |
| its |
project. | acc |
|
|
‘He had given her flowers |
| |
|
c. |
i |
priglašalI |
jejo |
v teatr. |
| |
|
and |
invited.ipfv.3sg |
her |
to theater |
| |
|
and had invited her to the theater.’ |
| |
|
|
|
Altshuler (2012, p. 45) |
| (17) |
PFVCzech ↝ completedness + uniqueness |
| |
[[PFVCzech |
| (19) |
Elaboration (1,2): 2’s event is part of 1’s event (perhaps by being in the preparatory phase or result state). 2’s event is a sub-event of 1’s event as in (20). |
| Roditeli |
ispugalis’P, |
dumaja, |
čto s nix |
| |
|
parents |
got.scared.pfv.3pl.rfl |
thinking |
that from them |
| |
|
trebujut |
oplatu |
|
|
| |
|
require |
payment |
|
|
| |
|
‘The parents became scared, thinking that they were required to pay.’ |
| |
b. |
V panike |
oni |
{pozvoniliP/#zvoniliI} |
nam… |
| |
|
in panic |
they |
called.pfv.3pl/
called.ipfv.3pl |
us |
| |
|
‘Panicking, they called us…’ |
| |
|
|
Altshuler (2012, p. 38) (Russkij doctor v Amerike, Goljaxovskij) |
| (4) |
Ja vaši |
očerki |
o Sibiri |
čitalI, |
| |
I your |
essays |
on Siberia |
read.ipfv.3sg |
| |
mne oni |
očen’ |
nravjatsjaI. |
| |
me.dat they |
very |
appeal. ipfv.3pl |
|
| |
‘I have read your essays on Siberia. I like them a lot.’ |
| (5) |
A |
deti |
kričali: |
papa, papa! |
| |
and |
children |
cried |
dad dad |
| |
Za |
čto |
umerP? |
|
| |
for |
what |
die.pfv.3sg |
|
| |
‘And the children cried out: Dad, dad … Why did you die?’ |
| |
Pri, |
Tovarišči, |
no počemu |
že ko mne? |
| |
well |
friends |
why |
to me |
| |
Čem |
tut |
ja? |
|
| |
what |
did |
I |
|
| |
‘Well, my friends, why are you asking me? I’ve nothing to do with it.’ |
| |
Ja, |
čto li, |
ubivalI? |
|
| |
Me, |
what |
killed.ipfv |
|
| |
‘Did I kill him?’ |
|
| |
Grønn (2004, p. 25) (Uppsala Corpus) |
| (6) |
Zimnij |
Dvorec |
stroilI |
Rastrelli. |
| |
winter.acc |
palace.acc |
built.ipfv |
Rastrelli |
| |
‘It was Rastrelli who built the Winter Palace.’ |
| |
|
(example quoted by Gehrke forthcoming a from Glovinskaja 1982) |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
In the existential factual context in (4), the existence of
at least one event denoted by the verbal predicate is asserted (focused).
3 In (4), it is asserted that the speaker has read essays on Siberia, which happened once or on several occasions, and on each of these occasions the event most probably reached its result state (was completed). In the presuppositional factual context in (5), children ask why their dad died using a perfective verb,
umerP ‘die’. In a later context, someone responds by asking a rhetorical question,
Did I kill him? using an imperfective verb,
ubivalI ‘kill’, which refers to a completed event whose result state (the father’s death) is contextually recoverable from the verb
die used in the preceding sentence.
4,5 Another example of a presuppositional factual imperfective context is given in (6), where the past event of building the Winter Palace is presupposed and the following context provides new information and states that it was Rastrelli who built it. Even though an imperfective verb is used, it refers to a completed event because the object is available in the current discourse. The temporal location of the past presupposed event is not necessarily specified.
6 Presuppositional general-factual contexts are typically used in cleft structures or
wh-questions. In both kinds of factual contexts (existential and presuppositional), imperfective verbs describe events that are understood as completed, but the focus is intuitively shifted away from the result of the event. In existential factual contexts, it is shifted to the event’s indefinite temporal location, while in the presuppositional factual contexts the focus seems to be shifted to the process leading to a result state with the result state being contextually recoverable. In what follows, different approaches to the use of imperfective aspect in general-factual contexts will be discussed in order to create a proper background for the analysis of the results of study.
2. Aspectual Cometition in General-Factual Contexts
In order to account for the use of imperfective aspect to refer to completed events in general-factual contexts,
Grønn (
2004) assumes a very weak semantics of imperfective aspect where the event time overlaps the reference time (
e ○
t) (in the spirit of
Klein 1995), and this underspecified semantics can be contextually strengthened to encode either e ⊆ t (to refer to unbounded single ongoing or plural events) or t ⊆ e (to refer to completed events when perfective aspect is for some reason inappropriate).
Grønn (
2004) accounts for it by resorting to aspectual competition between perfective aspect and the strengthened variant of imperfective, whose semantics are in fact analogous to perfective. He suggests that different factors underly this aspectual competition in existential and presuppositional factual contexts. In existential factual imperfective contexts, imperfective is preferred when the focus is on the existence of an event within an extended indefinite assertion time and the target state validity of telic predicates is less relevant. Existential factual imperfectives usually contain vague adverbs such as
earlier,
once,
never,
ever, which do not locate the event at a narrowly specified time.
Grønn (
2004, pp. 273–74) suggests that perfective aspect “explicitly requires the target state to be valid at the end point of the assertion time. Aspectual competition gives rise to a pragmatic implicature saying that factual IPFV is used by the speaker either in order to convey the message that the target state has been cancelled, or in case the validity of the target state is irrelevant in the discourse situation”.
3. Aspect and Rhetorical Relations in General-Factual Contexts
Similarly,
Altshuler (
2014) proposes a weak semantics of imperfective aspect, which can be contextually strengthened. He argues that aspectual operators are functions from a set of VP events to a set of VP-event-parts whose location is relative to: (i) temporal information and (ii) discourse connectivity. Regarding imperfective aspect,
Altshuler (
2014) describes it as a weak partitive operator referring to a partial event
e′ in world
w* that is part of (⊑) the whole event
e in world
w, as defined in (7).
| (7) |
[[IPF]] = λPλe′∃e∃w[STAGE(e′, e, w*, w, P)] |
A stage of an event is defined as in (8).
| (8) |
[[STAGE(e′, e, w*, w, P)]]w,g = 1 iff a–d are satisfied: |
| |
a. |
the history of g(w) is the same as the history of g(w*) up to and |
| |
|
including τ(g(e’)) |
| |
b. |
g(w) is a reasonable option for g(e’) in g(w*) |
| |
c. |
[[P]]w,g = 1 |
| |
d. |
g(e’) ⊑ g(e) |
| |
|
|
As a result of strengthening, imperfective may obtain a proper part reading g(e
In (9), there is a Narration (Occasion) relation between the event of the parents’ getting scared and them calling their children. The use of the imperfective in (9b) is infelicitous. However, as pointed out by
| (20) |
The council built the bridge (e1). The best architect drew up its project. (e2). |
In the Polish translation of this classic example of an Elaboration relation, it is possible to use imperfective aspect to refer to a complete event
e2 of drawing up the plans in the past, as shown in (21).
| |
| ‘The council |
| built |
| the bridge. The best architect |
| drew up |
| its project.’ |
| ]] = λPλt∃e[P(e) ∧ e ⊆ t ∧ ¬ ∃e’ [P(e’) ∧ e’ ≠ e]] |
| (18) |
PFVRussian ↝ completedness + uniqueness + target state validity |
Klimek-Jankowska (
2020) shows that perfective aspect is preferred in presuppositional factual contexts and imperfective is preferred in existential factual contexts, but perfective is generally more often used in both types of factual contexts in western Poland than in eastern Poland. What is more, it seems to be the case that in presuppositional factual contexts involving an Elaboration relation the choice of imperfective aspect depends on whether the focus is on the initiator, the process, or the result sub-event. Imperfective is more often used when the focus is on the initiator or process sub-event.
In her account of the observed patterns of variation in aspect use, she relies on
Ramchand’s (
[2] [3] 2008b) formal framework of aspect and temporality. Based on the central idea of the Distributed Morphology (DM) (see
Halle and Marantz 1993),
Ramchand (
[2] [3] 2008b) postulates the existence of the event phase of the derivation (the first-phase syntax), which consists of three sub-events: a causing (initiation) sub-event, a process sub-event, and a sub-event corresponding to a result state. Each of these sub-events is represented as its own projection, ordered hierarchically, and each of them has an event participant projected in the specifier position. The initiation sub-event is a causational projection (
vP in the recent literature) with an external argument referred to as the
INITIATOR. The initiation sub-event
e1 leads to the process sub-event
e2 that is present in every dynamic verb. The process sub-event
e2 corresponds to the VP projection with the
UNDERGOER in the specifier position. The process sub-event may optionally lead to the result phrase corresponding to the result state of the event with the
RESULTEE (the holder of a ‘result’) in the specifier position. In this chain of events,
e1 causally implicates
e2 and
e2 causally implicates
e3.
Ramchand’s (
[2] [3] 2008b) first phase syntax is embedded under the second phase where temporal variables are introduced. The first phase introduces an event variable and the time variable is introduced at the level of AspP in the second phase of the derivation. The event variable and the temporal variable are related formally by a temporal trace function
τ(
e) that maps an event to the ‘timeline’ that it occupies. Next, the tense head of TP combines with AspP to bind the time variable and relate it with respect to the speech time. In
Ramchand’s (
2008a) proposal, the reference time introduced in Asp is a time instant (not an interval). Her proposal is that perfective events introduce a definite reference time (a specific moment within the temporal trace of the event) while imperfective events introduce an indefinite reference time (an arbitrary moment within the temporal trace of the event). More precisely, when the result sub-event is present in the first phase syntax, the time variable
t must be part of the process sub-event and part of the result sub-event, which boils down to the placement of the time variable at the single unique transition point between the two sub-events. By contrast, imperfective aspect in
Ramchand’s (
2008a) system specifies that the time variable is situated at an arbitrary point within the run time of the process part of the event.
7To sum up, in
Ramchand’s (
2008a) system, there are two kinds of (in)definiteness of the temporal variable: (i) (in)definiteness with respect to the temporal trace of an event [INDEFINITENESS AT THE MICRO-LEVEL] and (ii) (in)definiteness of t with respect to the utterance time [INDEFINITENESS AT THE MACRO-LEVEL]. In her discussion of aspect choices in presuppositional factual contexts involving an Elaboration discourse relation,
Klimek-Jankowska (
2020) argues that when the event is complex in the first phase syntax and it consists of all the three sub-events, the placement of the temporal variable with respect to the temporal trace of an event depends on whether the focus is more on the initiation, process, or result sub-event. When the focus is on the result sub-events, it is more likely to lead to the placement of the temporal variable at the transition point between the process and result sub-event (leading to definiteness with respect to the temporal trace of an event), but when the focus is more on the initiation or process sub-events, it is more likely to lead to the placement of the temporal variable at an arbitrary point within these two sub-events (leading to indefiniteness with respect to the temporal trace of an event). In the latter case, even though imperfective is used, the result sub-event is understood to be a necessary consequence of the initiation and process sub-events due to the availability of the holder of the result state in the current conversation. This is how event completion reading is inferred in these special Elaboration presuppositional contexts.
Regarding existential factual contexts containing explicit markers of indefiniteness of the temporal variable such as
once,
ever, indefiniteness with respect to the utterance time may encourage language users to place the temporal variable at an arbitrary point within the temporal trace of an event, thereby leading to its indefiniteness with respect to the runtime of an event. This leads to more frequent choices of imperfective aspect in these special contexts. It appears that in existential factual contexts, the issue of the past event reaching the result sub-event is less relevant than the fact that the event happened at an indefinite time with respect to the utterance time, and the issue of whether the event was completed or not remains implicit during the interpretation process.
Klimek-Jankowska (
2020) suggests that in existential factual contexts, there is a competition between the choice of perfective and imperfective aspect and the ultimate choice depends on whether the speaker chooses to put more emphasis on the definiteness of the temporal variable with respect to the temporal trace of a decomposed complex event or on the indefiniteness of the temporal variable with respect to the moment of speaking. In
Ramchand’s (
2008a) formalism, the spell-out domain is either vP or CP (see
[4] [5] 2005b). Since both types of (in)definiteness are specified before CP (at the level of AspP and TP), the phonological realizations associated with them in the form of perfective and imperfective Vocabulary Items compete for insertion at the level of CP. The choice of the aspectual form may depend on very subtle nuances of context and on what kind of (in)definiteness is more relevant in a given scenario. According to
Klimek-Jankowska (
2020), in some Slavic languages the definiteness of the temporal variable with respect to the temporal trace of an event wins over the indefiniteness of the temporal variable with respect to the moment of speaking (leading to the choice perfective aspect), and in other Slavic languages it is the other way around. In Polish, there is a stronger preference to express the definiteness of the temporal variable with respect to the temporal trace of an event in western Poland than in eastern Poland.
8. Motivation for the Planned Study
All these studies agree that the choice of imperfective aspect in general-factual contexts that refer to completed events is determined by discourse-level information (information structure and rhetorical relations) and the extent to which the result state of the past complex event is relevant in the current discussion. This is consistent with the results of a recent psycholinguistic study conducted by
Hye-yeon and Kaiser (
2021). They pose an independent set of questions that appear to be very relevant to the discussion of the use of imperfective aspect to refer to event completion in general-factual contexts.
Hye-yeon and Kaiser (
2021) investigated how discourse-level information interacts with verb-level information to guide the representation of object states, which builds on the central ideas of the Question Under Discussion (QUD) framework (see e.g.,
Beaver et al. 2017;
Hye-yeon and Kaiser 2021). According to the QUD framework, utterances are interpreted relative to the question being part of the interlocutors’ current communicative exchange (the so-called Question Under Discussion).
Hye-yeon and Kaiser (
2021) ask whether the QUD related to the subject or object of the event affects the mental representation of object states and, if so, how this information interacts with the lexical semantic information encoded on the verb. More precisely, they studied how comprehenders represent objects depending on whether the QUD relates to the result of manner verbs such as
hit,
wash,
pour (which do not entail change-of-state) as compared to result verbs such as
clean,
break,
melt (which describe situations with a clear result entailed by the action). In the case of manner verbs, a potential change-of-state of the object can be inferred but is not semantically required, as shown in (22a). By contrast, in the case of result verbs, the object has to undergo a change-of-state (it is not defeasible), as shown in (22b).
| (22) |
a. Mary hit the window, but it didn’t break. |
[manner verb] |
| |
b. # John shattered the window, but it didn’t break. |
[result verb] |
In their self-paced reading experiment,
Hye-yeon and Kaiser (
2021) examined how rapidly comprehenders read linguistic material associated with potential change-of-state inferences in contexts with change-of-state oriented vs. subject-oriented QUDs, as well as with result verbs and manner verbs. In conditions with change-of-state oriented QUDs, participants read the target word equally quickly in the manner verb and the result verb conditions. This suggests that, even if the verb does not semantically entail a change-of-state, the presence of a change-of-state oriented QUD makes participants more likely to construct a representation where the object undergoes a change-of-state. In other words, when the QUD indicates that the inquiry is about the (changed) result state of the object, the event representation can be enriched to include a notion of a changed state, even though this is not included in the lexical semantics of manner verbs. This shows that discourse-level information exerts an influence on the mental representation of object states during event comprehension. An interesting question to be addressed regarding general-factual contexts is how QUDs that are related or unrelated to the result state of the past complex event affect the choice of perfective or imperfective aspect referring to completed events.
Klimek-Jankowska (
2020) provides preliminary evidence that imperfective is more frequently used in presuppositional factual contexts when the QUD is agent-oriented, and hence associated with its initiation sub-event (the emphasis is shifted away from the result subevent), as compared to when it is result-oriented, and hence potentially makes the change of state of the past event more relevant. Analogously to
Hye-yeon and Kaiser (
2021), people may ask whether discourse-level information interacts with verb-level information to guide the representation of past complex events. More specifically, do creation verbs such as
build,
bake,
embroider,
sew, which lead to the existence of the object make the result state more relevant than verbs that only affect the object, e.g.,
iron,
water,
comb,
wash,
repair. If so, does it depend on whether the QUD is agent-oriented or result state-oriented? Regarding existential factual contexts, are aspect choices affected by whether the current QUD relates more to the outcome of the past event rather than its indefinite temporal location? Finally, will these factors influence aspect choices to the same extent in Polish, Czech, and Russian? As argued by
Dickey (
[6] 2015), East Slavic languages license more uses of imperfective aspect in general-factual contexts than west Slavic languages, with Polish, Serbian, and Croatian being in an intermediate zone.
Mueller-Reichau (
2018) in his study of the aspectual behavior of Polish, Czech, and Russian in general-factual contexts argues that Polish is not ‘in between’, but rather follows the Czech pattern.
Dickey’s (
[6] 2015) and
Mueller-Reichau’s (
2018) research set new important trends, but many of their generalizations are made based on random data. The goal in this study is to verify the micro-typology of aspect proposed by
Dickey (
[6] 2015) based on more data and replicable procedures.
Notes
| 1 |
Importantly, in most tested factual contexts, both perfective and imperfective forms are possible. Hence, this study is mainly about preferences in aspect choices in factual contexts.
|
| 2 |
Following Padučeva (1996); Gehrke (forthcoming a) points out that there are also general factual imperfective with atelic events which are ignored in the literature related to the distribution of aspect in general factual contexts as the main focus is on the question of why imperfective aspect is used to refer to past completed events.
|
| 3 |
Heim (1987) analyzed ever as meaning ‘at least once’, and having alternatives meaning ‘at least n times’, where n > 1.
|
| 4 |
Pragmatic presupposition is understood as as in Stalnaker (1973).
|
| 5 |
|
| 6 |
It is possible to use imperfective aspect to refer to completed events in presuppositional when-questions which suggests that their temporal location may be focused (part of new information).
|
| 7 |
Klimek-Jankowska (2020) assumes following Tatevosov (2011, 2015, 2020) that the aspectual operators IPFV and PFV act at the level of AspP (and are phonologically null) and their morphological exponents merge lower in the hierarchy.
|
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