Aspect and Aspectual Type

Aspect and aspectual type are related to the way situations are described in

natural language with respect to their internal structure (Binnick, 1991; Comrie,

1976;Moens,1987;Smith,1997;Vendler,1957;Verkuyl,1993).

Vendler(1957,1967) notes that not all verbs behave identically as far as gram-

matical tense is concerned. For instance, I am running is a valid English sen-

tence, but I am knowing is nonsense. This phenomenon is now known as aspectual type, aspectual class, situation type, Aktionsart, lexical aspect, Vendler class or Vendler/Dowty class.

Vendler introduced four aspectual classes: states, activities, accomplishments

and achievements. In this text we will use the terminology ofDowty(1979), though,

and talk about states, processes (Vendler’s activities), culminated processes

(Vendler’s accomplishments), and culminations (Vendler’s achievements).1

Examples of states are to hate beer, to know the answer, to own a car, to stink. to be sick. Examples of processes are to work, to eat ice cream, to grow, to play the piano. Among culminated processes we find to paint a picture, to burn down,

1

In some of the literature, culminations are further divided into culminations, stricto sensu, and points, but we will ignore this distinction.

2.2 Seminal Work

to deliver a sermon. Finally the class of culminations contains phrases such as to explode, to win the game, to find the key.

States and processes are atelic situations in that they do not make salient a specific instant in time. Culminated processes and culminations are telic situations: they have an intrinsic, instantaneous endpoint, called the culmination (e.g. in the case of to paint a picture, it is the moment when the picture is ready; in the case of to explode, it is the moment of the explosion). Culminated processes consist of a process followed by a culmination (e.g. to paint a picture is a process of painting a picture and a culmination of finishing it).

These classes are distinguished by several linguistic tests. One such test is their occurrence in the progressive: processes and culminated processes have no problem appearing in the progressive (He is running, He is painting a picture), whereas states and culminations often produce ungrammatical sentences (* He is knowing French, * He is recognizing his friend). Another test is the preposition used in durational adverbials: the duration of processes is indicated by durational phrases headed by for (John swam for two hours), whereas in is used with culminated processes to indicate the duration of the process that precedes the culmination (John painted a picture in two hours).

Aspectual type is not a property of words, but rather of phrases. Different

phrases with the same head verb can have different aspectual types. For instance to paint a picture is a culminated process (cf. John painted a picture in two hours),

but to paint pictures is a process (cf. John painted pictures for two hours) (Garey,

1957;Krifka,1992;Platzack,1979;Verkuyl,1972). Additionally, some phrases have an aspectual type different from the aspectual type of their composing elements: to paint a picture is a culminated process but to paint a picture every day is a process (cf. John painted a picture every day for two years). In this example, the phrase every day combines with a phrase that describes a culminated process to produce a larger phrase that describes a process. This is known as aspect shift (or Aktionsart shift).

A phenomenon related to aspect shift is aspect coercion: clashes of constraints on aspectual type often do not result in ungrammatical expressions but rather force a coercion of their aspectual type, with a noticeable shift in their meaning. For instance, for adverbials, as mentioned above, combine with processes. However, a

sentence like John painted a picture for two hours is grammatical, but the culminated process to paint a picture is coerced into a process, with a change in meaning: the sentence no longer means that John finished the painting (the culmination is stripped as the result of the coercion).

Aspectual coercion provides an explanation for the progressive/imperfective para- dox (Bach,1986;Dowty,1979), illustrated by the examples in (12) and (13).

(12) a. John was swimming.

b. John swam.

(13) a. John was painting a picture.

b. John painted a picture.

The paradox is that (12a) entails (12b), but (13a) does not entail (13b). This contrast is due to both (12a) and (12b) describing atelic situations, but (13b) con-

tains a culminated process (the picture was finished), whereas (13a) is an atelic

situation (the picture was not finished). The idea is that the progressive construc-

tion combines with processes, which are atelic. In (13a), the progressive construction

coerces the culminated process of painting a picture into a (non-culminated) process.

The work ofde Swart(1998b,2000) analyzes aspectual coercion as the occurrence

of implicit aspectual operators that are used only when clashes occur. Just like the progressive is an aspectual operator, namely a function from processes to states, there are other aspectual operators that are different in that they are silent. The

sentence in (14), together with a schematic representation of the relative scope

between the different temporal and aspectual elements involved and taken fromde

Swart (1998b), illustrates this idea of implicit aspectual operators. In this case

the silent operator is represented with C_eh, and it is a function from events (the

author reserves this term to refer to telic situations; John played the sonata is a telic situation) to homogeneous (i.e. atelic) situations (as required by the for adverbial,

as mentioned above).1

(14) John played the sonata for eight hours.

[PAST [FOR eight hours [Ceh[John play the sonata]]]]

1

Atelic situations are called homogeneous because they exhibit the subinterval property: if they hold in some time interval t, they hold in every subinterval of t.

2.2 Seminal Work

Moens & Steedman (1988) introduce the concept of “event nucleus”: an event has a nucleus made of a preparatory process followed by a culmination followed by

a consequent state. The examples in (15) mention an event of building a bridge:

(15) a. When they built the 59th bridge, they used the best materials.

b. When they built the 59th bridge, they solved most of their traffic prob- lems.

The preparatory process is the process of actively building the bridge, the culmi- nation is the point when bridge is finished, and the consequent state is the existence of that bridge.

In these examples, the when clause can refer to different parts of the nucleus of building a bridge. The when clause refers to the preparatory process in (15a), and to the consequent state in (15b).

According to Moens & Steedman(1988), the components of this nucleus are op-

tional, and their presence or absence is what determines aspectual type. Aspectual coercion can thus be viewed as adding or removing parts of the nucleus. The au- thors introduced an oft-cited diagram describing the possible transitions involved in

aspectual type coercion, which we show in Figure2.1.

Pustejovsky(1991) explains aspectual phenomena by viewing situations as struc-

tures composed of other situations. For instance, the situations described in (16) are

analyzed as having an internal structure. More specifically and as depicted below

in (17), each of the two sentences is viewed as describing a transition T between a

first situation when the door is not closed (P ) and a second situation when the door is closed (S).

(16) a. The door closed.

b. John closed the door.

(17) T   H H H H H P [¬closed(the-door)] S [closed(the-door)] T    H H H H H H P

[act(j, the-door) ∧ ¬closed(the-door)]

S [closed(the-door)]

Figure 2.1: Possible kinds of aspectual type coercion according toMoens & Steedman

2.2 Seminal Work

(16a) is a culmination and (16b) is a culminated process. ForPustejovsky(1991), the difference between culminations and culminated processes is that the P part

of the latter also includes an act(ivity) predicate (as seen in (17)) between the

two participants of the situation and this activity causes the change of state (the transition from [¬closed(the-door)] to [closed(the-door)]). Such a representation captures the fact that some phrases can modify parts of the situations described in sentences. For instance, almost is ambiguous with culminated processes. A sentence like John almost closed the door can mean that John never started the process of closing it or that he did but he did not finish it. In the second interpretation almost scopes only over the S structure in the representation above.

Aspectual type has several consequences for the way in which the meaning of sentences can be computed, i.e. compositional semantics. Discourse Representation

Theory (DRT; Kamp & Reyle (1993)) is one of the most influent current theories

of compositional semantics. It assumes a representation of tense inspired by the

work ofReichenbach(1947), describing tense with the help of several points in time.

DRT features different modes of composing meaning representations in the presence of temporal location adverbials (e.g. yesterday, last week, in 1974, etc.), depending on the aspectual type of the verb. For states, it assumes that the time in which the state is true overlaps the time picked up by these expressions (cf. John was ill yesterday). In the case of non-stative situations, this relation is more specifically one of inclusion (cf. John broke his ankle yesterday).

The work ofMóia(2000) is relevant to our work, because it is concerned with data

from Portuguese. It studies this interdependence between the semantics of temporal location adverbials and aspectual type. More specifically, other factors are identified that also affect this relation. These factors include causality and quantification. For instance, the interaction between quantification and some kinds of temporal location

adverbials can be seen in the example sentences in (18). (18a) is ungrammatical in

Portuguese whereas (18b) is a possible sentence.

(18) a. * O Paulo comprou este apartamento desde 1980.

Paulo has bought this apartment since 1980.

b. O Paulo comprou três apartamentos desde 1980.