Formal semantics constitutes the framework of the research presented here, and the aim is to provide a solution to the imperfective paradox; i.e. explain why \Max was running" entails \Max ran", but \Max was running home" does not entail \Max ran home". This paper is divided into two parts. In Part I we evaluate what I will call the Eventual Outcome Strategy for solving the imperfective paradox...

Notions like markedness, competition, underspecification, context sensitivity and pragmatic implicatures play an important role in traditional Slavic aspectology. I propose in this paper to give these somewhat vague theoretical constructs a more explicit status within the framework of bidirectional optimality theory (BiOT), introduced in (Blutner 1998, 2000). Blutner’s BiOT can merge these elem...

This paper brings new evidence to bear on the topic of the Imperfective Paradox – a semantic puzzle involving tense-aspectual categories that lack completion entailments. The lack of completion entailments is usually associated with the so-called progressive and conative readings, illustrated in the Russian sentences in (1) and (2) respectively. In these examples, the matrix event described by ...

Previous research in child language acquisition identifies discrepancies between child and adult use of verbal inflectional morphology In this paper, we consider a case of partial undergeneralization where children's use of the-ed and-ing endings seems constrained by the aspectual class of the host verb. Children, more than adults, seem reluctant to generalize the imperfective morpheme to state...

In general linguistics, the functions of perfective and imperfective aspect have been thoroughly investigated in domain realis, especially past tense. However, there are languages which exhibit this sort contrast other domains, for example, imperative. The aspectual grams imperative may differ significantly from those documented realis. present paper, I argue that is case Lithuanian. build on s...

Abstract Almost sixty years ago, W.C. van Unnik demonstrated that the participle συµβάλλουσα in Luke 2:19 does not mean “pondering” but Mary was “understanding” heavenly message. The limited reception of his view, especially anglophone literature and translations Bible, stems from misconceptions about lexical definition imperfective aspect , as well a problematic interpretation phrase “to keep ...

This study investigated the aspect first hypothesis which claims that children initially use verbal morphology to mark aspect and not tense. Experiment 1 tested 46 two- and three-year-old children's comprehension of tense as it is marked in the auxiliary system using a sentence-to-scene matching task. Children were presented with multiple performances of the same event and asked where a charact...

Such verbs contain two or more prefixes and the imperfective suffix. In a given context they behave as either unambiguous perfective or unambiguous imperfective verbs, so their grammatical status is fully resolved. Now, this behavior fails to be revealed by the standard diagnostic tests used to determine the perfective or imperfective status of Russian verbs (see Section 3): under those tests, ...

Hae-Young Kim, Youngon Choi (2016), Development of Aspect Morphology in Korean. Journal of Language Sciences 23(4), 203-225. The present study examined the development of aspect marking in Korean with a focus on -ko issand –a issimperfective markers, compared with progressive and perfective markers. First, we examined the comprehension accuracy of 3-4-year-old Korean-learning children, while ob...