The Compositional Nature of Tense, Mood and Aspect

Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-1-108-83928-0
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 167, 250 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 658 g

Reihe: Cambridge Studies in Linguistics

Bringing together fifty years' worth of cross-linguistic research, this pioneering monograph explores the complex interaction between tense, mood and aspect. It looks at the long way of combining elementary semantic units at the bottom of phrase structure up to and including the top of a sentence. Rejecting ternary tense as blocking compositionality, it introduces three levels obtained by binary tense oppositions.  It also counters an outdated view on motion by assuming that change is not expressed as having an inherent goal but rather as dynamic interaction between different number systems that allows us to package information into countable and continuous units. It formally identifies the central role of a verb in a variety of argument structures and integrates adverbial modifiers into the compositional structure at different tense levels of phrase structure. This unique contribution to the field will be essential reading for advanced students and researchers in the syntax-semantics interface.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Verkuyl, Henk J.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Grammatik, Syntax, Morphologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Semantik & Pragmatik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introductory chapter; 2. How to deal with the long tradition of going ternary?; 3. Binary tense structure; 4. Naive physics and aspectual composition; 5. Levels of interaction between aspect and tense; 6. Binary tense structure and adverbial modification; 7. How to deal binarily with.?; 8. Tense, mood and aspect.

Über Autor(innen)

Verkuyl, Henk J.
Henk J. Verkuyl is Professor Emeritus University of Utrecht Research Institute UIL OTS. This book rounds off a suite of works on tense and aspect, including On the Compositional Nature of the Aspects (1972), A Theory of Aspectuality (CUP, 1993) and Binary Tense (2008).