We present a manually constructed seed lexicon encoding the inferential profiles of French event selecting predicates across different uses. The inferential profile (Karttunen, 1971a) of a verb is designed to capture the inferences triggered by the use of this verb in context. It reflects the influence of the clause-embedding verb on the factuality of the event described by the embedded clause....

Abstract: The current research examines how the representation of imagined events is constrained by Grammatical Aspect (imperfective/perfective), Lexical Aspect (activities/accomplishments), and first versus third person perspective taking. In one experiment, participants imagined events based on written cues that framed events as completed or as ongoing (e.g., I was exercising). In a follow-up...

The imperfective aspect in Russian competes with the perfective in referring to events whose existence is entailed by the input context. In the first, major part of the paper (sections 1-5) I take a global view on aspectual competition, which is analyzed in light of various pragmatic constraints. It is shown in a bidirectional optimization how the default/unmarked imperfective in the appropriat...

The paper shows how the semantically underspecified imperfective aspect in Russian becomes associated with counterfactual complete events in specific contexts, notably in chess annotations (Restan 1989), while the perfective invariably denotes factual complete events. The counterfactual flavour of the construction invites a comparison with more standard counterfactual conditionals, including so...

This paper reports reaction time studies on aspect processing, and highlights that aspectual asymmetries (perfective vs. imperfective facilitation) in terms of reaction time is dependent on verb types.

Like other Numic languages (Uto-Aztecan), Northern Paiute has a morphological process of durative gemination, which conveys some type of aspect. I describe the semantics of durative gemination in Northern Paiute, locating it within an emerging typology of imperfective aspect from the formal semantics literature. Like the imperfective aspect in other languages, durative gemination has an event-i...

Information structure is normally considered to be orthogonal to the syntaxsemantics interface. However, in this paper, I argue that aspectual operators in Russian, notably the imperfective aspect with complete event interpretations, are sensitive to information structure. My goal is to show how the imperfective aspect can be used either to assert or presuppose the existence of a complete event...

This paper investigates the developmental process through which L2 learners acquire two „imperfective‟ aspect markers in Korean, -ko iss(progressive and resultative) and -a iss(resultative) which attempts to identify language-general and language-specific patterns in the L2 acquisition of the Korean imperfective aspect by Japanese learners by comparing the results with previous research. Study ...

How does language influence the emotions and actions of large audiences? Functionally, emotions help address environmental uncertainty by constraining the body to support adaptive responses and social coordination. We propose emotions provide a similar function in language processing by constraining the mental simulation of language content to facilitate comprehension, and to foster alignment o...