Unmarked already: Aspectual expressions in two varieties of English
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper examines variation in the expression of aspect both from a language-internal and a cross-linguistic perspective. We make the following proposals: (i) the morpheme already encodes the meaning of two contrasting phases; (ii) several types of event structures, including that of the Perfect, also encode a similar meaning of contrasting phases, but with particular orderings of phases specified. If in addition we assume Optimality Theory with partial ordering, we derive a range of expressions of a given aspectual meaning that is cross-linguistically supported, and show that already emerges as an unmarked aspectual operator in Colloquial Singapore English.
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