Variation in Tense and Aspect, and the Temporal Interpretation of Complement Clauses
| Autor: | Vera Hohaus, M. Ryan Bochnak, Anne Mucha |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
050101 languages & linguistics
Linguistics and Language History 05 social sciences 06 humanities and the arts 0603 philosophy ethics and religion Linguistics Complement (complexity) Interpretation (model theory) Variation (linguistics) Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) Artificial Intelligence 060302 philosophy 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Semantics. 36:407-452 |
| ISSN: | 1477-4593 0167-5133 |
| DOI: | 10.1093/jos/ffz008 |
| Popis: | In this paper, we investigate the temporal interpretation of propositional attitude complement clauses in four typologically unrelated languages: Washo (language isolate), Medumba (Niger-Congo), Hausa (Afro-Asiatic), and Samoan (Austronesian). Of these languages, Washo and Medumba are optional-tense languages, while Hausa and Samoan are tenseless. Just like in obligatory-tense languages, we observe variation among these languages when it comes to the availability of so-called simultaneous and backward-shifted readings of complement clauses. For our optional-tense languages, we argue that a Sequence of Tense parameter is active in these languages, just as in obligatory-tense languages. However, for completely tenseless clauses, we need something more. We argue that there is variation in the degree to which languages make recourse to res-movement, or a similar mechanism that manipulates LF structures to derive backward-shifted readings in tenseless complement clauses. We additionally appeal to cross-linguistic variation in the lexical semantics of perfective aspect to derive or block certain readings. The result is that the typological classification of a language as tensed, optionally tensed, or tenseless, does not alone determine the temporal interpretation possibilities for complement clauses. Rather, structural parameters of variation cross-cut these broad classes of languages to deliver the observed cross-linguistic picture. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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