(Typological Studies in Language 1) Paul J. Hopper (Ed.)-Tense-Aspect_ Between Semantics and Pragmatics-John Benjamins Publishing Company (1982).pdf

TENSE-ASPECT

PREFACE 

This volume consist of articles based on contributions to a Symposium 

entitled: Tense and Aspect: Between Semantics and Pragmatics which was held 

on the U.C.L.A. campus in May 1979. The participants were an informal 

group of linguists, sharing, perhaps, some common assumptions about language 

in its relationship to communication and cognition. . 

Before sending the volume on its way, I would like to thank all the participants 

for their help and advice. A special word of appreciation is due to Wallace 

Chafe and Bernard Comrie for their editorial counsel and for their involvement 

as discussants. 

The Series Editor, Talmy Givón, has worked untiringly to help see the 

volume through to publication; the Symposium owes him a great debt for his 

leadership and intellectual inspiration. And to Mr. John Benjamins, of the 

John Benjamins B. V., our publisher, go our sincere thanks for agreeing to 

support this venture. 

Paul J. Hopper 

Binghamton,N.Y.,1981. 

vii

INTRODUCTION 5 

ies from author. It has become customary, especially in dicussions of Slavic 

languages, to distinguish rather carefully between Aspect and the category of 

Aktionsart ('kind of action'). This distinction is an important one because, in 

Russian for example, an aspectual process may carry with it a simultaneous 

nuance of the type cital 'read [impf. pret.]': procital 'read [pf. pret.]': pocital 

'read a little [pf. pret.]'; the two latter forms being in the 'perfective aspect', 

but differing in the further nuance of 'attenuation' possessed by the last. Because 

of the highly categorial nature of aspect in Russian, Slavists are apt to to 

be more insistent on the distinction between the extra lexical value imparted 

by a prefix (the Aktionsart) and the purely categorial difference between perfective 

and imperfective in which such value is missing (aspect sensu stricto). 

However, it is not always clear where the boundary between aspect and Aktionsart 

is to be drawn, and Comrie (1976: 6-7) sensibly eschews the distinction 

altogether. The tendency among most linguists who have written about aspect, 

especially non-Slavists, in the West has been the same, that is, to regard 

all phenomena which are not clearly tense or modality as aspectual. 

Another assumption which is commonly made in work on aspect is that a 

morphological distinction of the Russian kind can ultimately be assigned an 

'invariant' meaning (Timberlake, this volume: 305-331). Although this assumption 

is probably a prerequisite to talking about aspect at all, the nature of 

the relationship between the form and the supposed invariant is a matter of 

controversy; again, Timberlake's contribution (this volume) suggests a quite 

subtle and complex one. Yet that aspect finds its ultimate source of explanation 

in a static, synchronic, sentence-level or word/phrase-level domain, and 

that the linguist's problem is one of 'stalking the wild invariant' (Timberlake, 

this volume: 305 ), that of finding and completely characterizing this semantic 

invariant in purely local structures, is a basic strategy of aspectology. 

In the present essay, the term Aspect is restricted to discussion of the 

semantic/pragmatic division of what is often called 'actions with a view to their 

completion', that is, aspect in the Slavists' sense of perfective and imperfective 

(or 'complexive' and 'constative', cf. Lloyd 1979: 71-79 for discussion of 

these terms), but without, of course, the implication of morphological realizations 

of any particular kind. The chief premise of this essay is a hypothesis that 

the fundamental notion of aspect is not a local-semantic one but is discoursepragmatic, 

and is characterizable as completed event in the discourse. Although 

in a given language the morphological or syntactic means for expressing 

this function may intersect with, or even be identical with, other morphosyntactic 

systems, such as Aktionsart, modality, diathesis, etc. each of which

6 PAUL J. HOPPER 

may in turn have other functions, I am suggesting that the encoding of percepts 

in the world always takes place within a discourse rather than a sentence 

framework, 3 and that the potential or real bounding of events in this discourse 

is a significant parameter in the strategies for formulating an utterance. This 

parameter may be seen as one of discreteness: an event must be bounded at its 

inception and conclusion in order for its limits in respect to adjacent events to 

be maintained without overlap and hence without ambiguity. By contrast, 

states, on-going processes, and repeated events are not limited in this way, 

and do not need to be perceived discretely since overlapping does not obscure 

the chronological order of events, it being characteristic of states and on-going 

actions not to be so ordered. 

2.10 That event sequencing is an important linguistic can easily be illustrated; 

it is probably true to say that a majority of languages have some morphological 

device, even if it is a simple 'adverb' such as the hen of Saramaccan 

(Grimes and Glock 1970: 410, 412), which signals the function 'successive 

event'. In this section I illustrate the contrast between sequenced events and 

non-sequenced states and actions from traditional Malay narrative texts (cf. 

also my previous papers Hopper 1979a, 1979b), in this case the Hikayat Abdullah 

(Abdullah 1932). 

2.11 Malay Narrative 

In the traditional Malay narrative style the distinction between sequenced 

events and states or on-going actions is conveyed grammatically as 

follows: 

1. The durative/stative is expressed by clauses in the so-called active 

form, in which the verb is prefixed by meN- (active), ber- (middle/generic), or 

ter- (spontaneous/statal-passive), and the enclitic event marker -lah is absent. 

This type of discourse is appropriate for descriptions and for habitual and generic 

actions, as in the following passage, in which the character of Stanford 

Raffles is described: 

. terlalu pandai ia memberi hormat akan orang, serta 

and very skillful he MEN-give respect to people and 

dengan manis muka-nya; berbahasa dengan orang enchek 

with gentle face his BER-speak well with people mister


dengan enchek, tuan dengan tuan. Dan lagi banyak ia 

with mister tuan with tuan and also much he 

menaroh kasehan akan orang, maka tangan- nya terbuka 

MEN-give love to people and hands his TER-open 

pada orang miskin. Dan lagi terlalu pandai ia membunoh 

to people poor and also very skillful he MEN-kill 

perkataan orang. Dan lagi selalu apabila ia berchakap dengan 

wordiness people and also always when he BER-speakwith 

tersenyum-senyum, dan lagi terlalu kuasa ia memereksa akan 

TER-smile and also very keen heMEN-examine to 

segala perkara yang dahulu-dahulu 

all matters which of-the-past 

Translation: 4 "He was adept at showing people the proper respect, always 

with a pleasant expression on his face. He spoke politely to people, 

returning Mister with Mister, tuan with tuan. He treated people 

kindly, and his hands were always open to the poor. Yet he knew how 

to silence those who were wordy. He smiled always as he spoke. He 

delved enthusiastically into all things of the past." 

In such backgrounded discourse the subject of a clause is almost invariably 

placed before the verb, i.e. the word order is SVX. 

2. In the preceding passage none of the states or actions is viewed perfectively, 

since single, concrete events are not being related in a sequence. By 

contrast, in the following, events are being viewed as being in chronological 

sequence. The completion of each event is presented as a prerequisite for the 

ineception of the next event, and for this reason each event is seen in its entirely. 

Furthermore, the events are concrete, Visible' occurrences. The language 

of this kind of discourse in Malay is quite different from that of the preceding 

durative and characterological descriptive passage discussed above. In particular, 

i. The word order has a strong tendency to be VSX, with the verb 

preceding the subject; 

ii. The verb may have the 'emphatic' particle -lah attached to it, especially 

if the verb is intransitive; 

iii. If transitive, the clause is almost invariably ergative, with a special 

form for the transitive agent. For third-person agents, this form is


-nya suffixed to the verb if pronominal, and if nominal, an oblique 

noun phrase introduced by the preposition oleh. 

The following is an example of this style: 

. datang-lah tukang kayu itu mengintai-ngintai di-chelah 

and came LAH carpenter the peer between-bars 

kandang itu. tiba-tiba di-tampar-nya sakali muka China 

cage the and suddenly ERG slap AGT hard face Chinese 

sa belah muka-nya maka jatoh-lah orang China itu terpengsaan 

one-side face his and fellLAH Chinese the fainting 

seperti orang mati. maka berlari-lah orang memberi tahu 

like man dead and ran LAH people give news 

raja. Maka apabila di-lihat oleh raja hal itu,terlalugovernor 

and when ERG-see by governormatter the very 

lah sangat amarah-nya, maka di - suroh - nya supai tembak 

LAH great anger his and ERG ordered AGT sepoy shoot 

harimau itu dengan perluru, maka mati-lah harimau itu 

tiger the with bullet and die LAH tiger the 

sa-bentar itu juga. 

moment that very 

Translation: "Now the carpenter came and peered between the bars 

of the cage. Suddenly [the tiger] slapped the Chinese hard in the face, 

so that one of his eyes were taken out, and his face was wounded on 

one side, and he fell into a faint like a dead man. They ran to tell the 

Governor. When the Governor saw what had happened, he became 

furiously angry, and ordered a sepoy to shoot the tiger with a bullet, 

and the tiger died instantly." (52) 

It can be seen that the perfective events are 'foregrounded'; for example, the 

action of peering between the bars is not presented as part of the event sequence, 

but is explanatory background; it is therefore coded as non-eventive, 

without the -lah or VS word-order characteristic of events. Against such a 

backdrop of non-events, the actual events stand out as figure against ground 

(cf. Wallace, this volume), signalled grammatically by morphological and 

syntactic markers.


2.2 Paradigmatic Aspect: Russian 

The Slavic languages are, of course, the proto-types of 'aspect languages' 

, at least from the point of view of the history of aspectology. That the 

choice of 'perfective' vs. 'imperfective' verb forms has a great deal to do with 

the sequencing of events has long been recognized. The importance of this 

feature in the selection of aspect is repeatedly emphasized in Forsyth's monograph 

A Grammar of Aspect (1970), and is given prominence also in Timberlake's 

contribution to the present volume. 

2.21 The Perfective of the Past as an Event Sequencer 

There can be no doubt that the past perfective has this function in Russian; 

it is mentioned in most treatments of aspect, and furthermore the interplay 

between the perfective for 'foregrounded' event lines and imperfective 

for 'backgrounded' scene settings and descriptions is well understood (cf. Forsyth 

1970: 9-10, Hopper 1979a: 57-90; Maslov 1980). As regards sequencing, 

Forsyth observes: "The expression of a sequence of actions is one of the most 

characteristic function of perfective verbs in an extended context" (1970: 65), 

and moreover commonly "... each completed single action follows the previous 

one the order in which they are narrated" (ibid.). Thus in one example: 5 

...VynulP iz karmana svežuju packu papiros', razorvalP ejë 

he-took from pocket new packet cigarettes tore-open one 

s ugla, vytrjasP na ladon' tri papirosy. Odnu zažalP v 

at corner shook-out on palm three cigarettes one he-held in 

zubax dve protjanulP nam. Potom dostalP spicki 

teeth two he-held-outto-us then he-took-out matches 

Translation: "He took a new packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, 

tore open one corner and shook out three cigarettes on to his palm. 

One of them he held between his teeth, the other two he extended to 

us. Then he got out his matches" (65). 

Past events which are not thought of as being suqenced, on the other hand, are 

in the imperfective. The imperfective thus gives the sense of randomly distributed 

happenings, which may be quite dynamic, but whose chronological order 

of occurrence is not being insisted on. The following passage, for which the 

original Russian is not supplied, is taken from Timberlake's paper; the example 

was omitted in the published version:


...Peasants returning from the city whipped [impfv.] their horses and rushed 

by [impfv.] in silence past these regularly distributed figures with their highly 

felonious appearance. The soxoz managers and the authorities rumbled by 

(impfv.] on carts and demonstratively showed [impfv.] the colonists their 

double-barrelled and sawn-off shotguns, while people on foot stopped 

[impfv.] at the bridge and waited [impfv.] for other travellers. 

While I was around the colonists never misbehaved [impfv.] or bothered 

[impfv.] the travellers, but when I wasn't they allowed [impfv.] themselves 

some dirty tricks, so that soon Zadarov refused [pfv.] to take the revolver and 

demanded [pfv.] that I absolutely had to spend time out on the road. So I began 

[pfv.] to go out with every detachment, but still gave [impfv.] the revolver 

to Zadarov, so as not to deprive him of deserved pleasure. 

The habitual actions here do not come to a conclusion with the event verbs 'refused', 

'demanded', and 'began', but are thought of as on-going. The three 

perfective verbs, however, are sequenced among themselves, and in fact the 

morphological difference between perfective and imperfective is a clear signal 

that these, and only these, events are presented as sequenced, and that they 

are not sequenced with respect to the imperfective verbs. This does not prevent 

each (hypothetical) individual action among the habitual actions from 

being in sequence with other individual actions; presumably each individual 

action of 'stopping at the bridge' is in sequence with an instance of 'waiting'; 

but the whole action of 'stopping at the bridge' for all occasions of stopping is 

not supplied with a terminus at which a subsequent event could begin. 

2.22 Additive Meanings of the Perfective Past 

By 'additive' meanings I shall intend those wholly or partially grammaticized 

meaning of an aspect which are extensions of the discourse function. To 

the extent that an additive meaning can be accounted for by the possibility of a 

subsequent event, even though no such event is explicit in the discourse, part 

of the discourse function adheres to the form as a part of its meaning. 

2.221 Conatives and Related Meanings 

The Russian imperfective may in some contexts be used in the sense of 

'try to' (Forsyth 1970: 71-13), e.g. 

My dolgo resali 1 zadacu, i nakonec resili ejë 

we long solve:impfv. problem andat-last solve:pfv. it 

"We spent a long time trying to solve the problem, and at last we 

solved it" (71).


In this and other examples the imperfective verb denotes an action which is 

not followed by another, that is, it is incomplete. The traditional notion of an 

incomplete (or uncompleted) action to characterize the imperfective explains 

this conative function of the imperfective, but misses the generalization that a 

conative cannot itself be followed by any other action than the success or failure 

of the attempt; and even here the 'trying' is not felt to stop at the point 

when the outcome is decided. In a sense, then, verbs of trying have no 'next 

event' against which to butress themselves, as can be seen from the strangeness 

of the word then in a disclosure such as: 

?We tried to open the door. Then we could not open it. 

?We tried to open the door. Then we succeeded in opening it. 

This sense of a 'next event', or its impossibility, is quite consistent with the 

wider function posited by Forsyth into which conatives fit as a class: 

"...the expression of an action which has not yet taken place, but which is 

considered as part of a plan or programme to take place... Within a context 

relating to the past, such a 'scheduled' action is expressed by the imperfective 

past; the perfective would mean that the action had in fact already taken 

place, but the imperfective expresses it as a fact towards which events are 

moving..." 

(Forsyth 1970: 73) 

Thus, in an example from a history book (translation from Forsyth, aspects indicated 

as in the Russian): 

"According to the terms of the Treaty of Turkmanchai, the Erevan and Nakhichevan 

khanates were to go [impfv.] to Russia. Persia lost [impfv.] her right 

to keep a fleet on the Caspian and undertook [impfv.] to pay large indemnities 

to Russia." 

(Forsyth 1970: 73) 

It seems then that the additive meaning of unsuccessful or open-ended action 

is not part of the meaning of the imperfective in itself, but must be inferred 

from the context given the discourse meaning 'no Next Event asserted or implied' 

. In fact a perfective verb may be ambiguous precisely to the extent that a 

successful outcome is inferrable or simply the action's completion. Thus although 

on sdal eksamen 'he sat [pfv.] the examination' may be taken to imply 

that he passed the examination, this interpretation is not inevitable: "[T]he 

semantic contrast in such pairs," Forsyth points out (71), "depends on context, 

and cannot be raised to the status of a lexical meaning." 

2.222 The Resultative Perfect in Russian 

States and conditions resulting from a previous action form a well estab-


lished verbal category in many languages. According to whether the on-going 

state or the antecedent action is viewed as fundamental, the resultant perfect 

may be semantically allied with a continuing state or a completed action. 

In Russian the resultative perfect is expressed by the perfective past: 

Moroz snova krepkij— podulP severnyj veter 

frost again strong got-up:pfv north wind 

"It's a hard frost again — the north wind has got up" 

(Forsyth 1970: 74) 

Such perfects may indicate states only, in which the antecedent action is extremely 

vague: 

Sloj rudy zalëgP ocen' gluboko 

deposit ore lie:pfv. great depth 

"The ore deposit lies at a great depth" 

(cit. Forsyth 1970: 74-75) 

In this sentence (in which the imperfective would have been possible also), 

some remote sense of a prior activity adheres to the verb, much as in the English 

"is situated", but this meaning is almost totally grammaticized as a stative. 

Ultimately, however, the source of the grammaticization is to be found in the 

sense of an action leading to a state from which other actions are 'cleared' to 

proceed. It seems to me that this is precisely the meaning of the English perfect, 

which functions to bring the language user up to the present and thus prepares 

the stage for an imminent action of some kind (one thinks of the plot 

summaries of 'the story so far' preceding a story episode, which are commonly 

formulated in the Perfect). Forsyth's discussion of the verb priglasat' [impfv.]/ 

priglasit' [pfv.] "to invite" particularly implies such an analysis. With the perfective, 

the invitation is still in force, and thus suggests an imminent action (to 

accept or to reject): 

On priglasilP menya v gosti, i zavtra pojdu 

he invite:pfv. me on visit andtomorrow I-go 

"He has invited me to visit him, and tomorrow I shall go" (76) 

Here the act of going is clearly consequent on the event of issuing the invitation, 

and the 'next event' interpretation of the perfect/perfective priglasil is 

quite natural. But in the next example, with the imperfective verb priglasal, 

the invitation remains unbounded by an acceptance or a non-acceptance: 

On priglasal 1 menya v gosti v proslomgodu. Vètom godu ja 

he invite:impfv. me on visit last year This year I


ždal, cto on menya tože priglasit, no on ne priglasilP. 

expected that he me again invite but he not invite:pfv. 

Translation: "Last year he invited me to go and stay with him. I was 

expecting him to invite me this year too, but he hasn't done so" (76). 

Forsyth's explanation of the imperfective priglasal here is as follows: "... the 

imperfective past [for some verbs] can be used to describe events which have 

left behind no perceptible consequences; the process is relegated entirely to 

past time and remains unconnected to present circumstances" (76). But this 

does not account for the use of the imperfective in such contexts; for one could 

characterize a past tense narrated event in exactly the same terms. What 

seems to be crucial is not the remoteness of the event of priglasal "invited 

[impfv.]" but the lack of insistence by the speaker on a follow-up action. The 

in force' interpretation of a verb of inviting is thus an inference from the situation 

in which acceptance or rejection are still possible options, i.e. an assumed 

next event, rather than the other way around. 

The resultative perfect then is a semantic extension of the basic function 

of the perfective aspect, to indicate events which are in sequence and are 

therefore bounded by one another. If this meaning has largely faded in the 

case of the perfective to indicate states, this fact is to be viewed as an expected 

development from discourse pragmatics to a fixed, 'sedimented' grammatical 

and semantic structure. From a typological viewpoint the 'perfect' has a 

strong tendency to develop as an autonomous category, with numerous additive 

meanings (as shown by several of the papers in the volume, including Li, 

Thompson and Thompson; Slobin and Aksu; and L. Anderson, "The perfect..."). 

2.30 State to Process in Malay Narrative 

In 2.10 above I showed that sequenced events in Malay are formulated in 

an Ergative construction if the verb is transitive, and usually have the enclitic 

particle -lah if intransitive. In both cases the verb precedes the subject. An intransitive 

verb which intrinsically denotes a state will thus be transformed into 

an action if -lah is attached to it and if the subject is placed after the verb, as in 

the following: 

maka mati-lah harimau itu sa-bentar itu juga 

and dead LAH tiger the moment that very 

"And the tiger died instantly" 

The context for this clause is given in the longer quotation in 2.11 above.


Compare also the following: 

ada-lah kira-kira sa-puloh hari lama-nya gajah itu 

and were LAH about ten days period elephants the 

dalam kandang, maka lemah-lah sudah segala gajah itu 

in enclosure and weak LAH by-now all elephants the 

oleh sebab tiada makan dan minum itu 

by reason not eating and drinking the 

"Now the elephants had been in the enclosure for about ten days, and 

had become by now weak from not having eaten or drunk." 

(Abdullah 1932:63) 

The state predicates lemah 'weak' here, and mati 'dead' in the previous 

sentence, are in their contexts converted into process predicates lemah-lah 'to 

have become weak' and mati-lah 'to die'. The temptation here for the linguist 

is to construct a morphological paradigm: 

STATE 

PROCESS 

mati 

mati-lah 

lemah 

lemah-lah 

much as grammarians of Russian do with the perfective and imperfective verb 

froms. To do so in the case of Malay would be erroneous, however, since -lah 

is not a morphological level form but a discourse particle which serves to individuate 

a foregrounded verb and hence indirectly to track a set of events along 

a chronologically sequenced line. If in carrying out this discourse function -lah 

happens to 'convert' an intrinsically statal predicate into a processual one, this 

is a by-product of its primary function. 

Such by-products, of course, have a habit of becoming entrenched in the 

form of morphological paradigms (cf. Givón 1979, e.g.). Suppose now a sentence 

with -lah is presented in isolation from any discourse context. Can the native 

user of the language make sense of it? 

A Malay sentence like: 

Mati-lah anak raja itu 

die LAH prince the 

in isolation would apparently convey the meaning "The prince is (now) dead", 

or "The prince has died". That is, it receives an interpretation identical to the 

Perfect : an event (of dying) results in a state (of now being dead), with the further 

implication that the 'decks are cleared' for a subsequent event. In Malay 

this meaning is even more transparent in isolation by the fact that the morphology 

of the 'Perfect' is identical with that which functions as a 'next event' 

marker in narrative discourse.


3.00 Some Conclusions 

In his paper for this volume, Givón looks to the pidgin/creole situation 

for the essence of aspectual functions. Following Bickerton, Givón posits 

three such functions which are central to the act of communication. 

1. Knowing the temporal order of occurrence of past events, 

2. Being able to distinguish between sensory input and one's own 

imagination, 

3. Being able to tell whether an event has occurred once or has protracted 

itself. 

(Givón, this volume, 48-49). The second and third of these functions are instantiated 

as the categories of realis/irrealis (2) and punctual/durative-iterative 

(3). The first is the function which I have been calling perfective/imperfective. 

Perfective aspect functions at its core to sequence events in chronological 

order. If autonomous meanings of 'completed action' or the like accrue to it 

these are synchronically additive meanings; however much they may increase 

the discourse range of the 'perfective' form, they do not undermine the characteristic 

discourse sequencing function. The centrality of this function is essentially 

acknowledged by Timberlake (this volume, 317) who notes that closure 

is the most important feature for triggering the perfective; for 'closure' is 

surely the clause-level correlate of the sequencing function. The other meanings 

of the perfective aspect might then be regarded as manifestations of the 

invariant (for which Timberlake tentatively proposes 'wholeness of event (or 

the like)' [§5], the metafeature which functions as 'a statement of consistency 

among various conditions on a rule'. 

The problem with such invariants is that there does not seem to be any obvious 

way in which to reveal the predominant meaning over against the subordinate 

meanings. Perhaps the relationship among the various meanings 

should not be seen as a derivative one, with each meaning a slightly different 

manifestation of a superordinate meaning, but instead should be viewed in a 

'family resemblance' fashion, with each additive meaning of a category becoming 

a new core to which other meanings might be added. Such a model 

would certainly account for the semantic complexity of a long-sedimented 

morphological category like Russian aspect. It would be consistent with the 

approach adopted by L. Anderson (this volume), and in all probability not incompatible 

with that of Timberlake. 

That the synchronic source of the 'family resemblance' chain of meanings 

is discourse sequencing has been proposed in this essay. In Russian, which has


gone a considerable distance in semanticizing various aspectual functions, the 

perfective aspect still serves the function of sequencing an event line. In Malay, 

where the event sequencing function has remained to a large extent ungrammaticized, 

presumably because it was never concentrated in a single 

morphological or syntactic form, semantic functions sedimented out of discourse 

functions are only marginal. Consequently, the difference between 

'actions' such as (in the A passage above) memberi 'give', memereksa 'examine', 

membunoh 'kill, silence' on the one hand, and 'events' such as datang-lah 

'came', ditampar-nya 'it slapped him', jatoh-lah 'fell', mati-lah 'died' on the 

other, cannot be characterized in any consistent way by semantics, but can only 

be captured by reference to a global discourse function, namely 'mere action' 

as opposed to 'event of the discourse', the latter consisting of events presented 

as individualized and sequenced, the former consisting of happenings 

and states presented as backgrounded, concurrent, generic, or on-going. 

This introduction has related a view of Aspect as an essentially discourselevel, 

rather than a semantic, sentence-level phenomenon. I have presented it 

in this way out of a conviction that morpholoical and local-syntactic accounts 

of aspect are either incomplete or, to the extent that they are valid, essentially 

show the sentence-level correlates of discourse structures. My proposal does 

not, so far as I can see, conflict with the recognized achievements of recent 

work on aspect, but it does argue that our understanding of aspect should be 

rooted in the last resort in discourse. I would go on to suggest that this does not 

imply a continued search for the discourse "uses" of morphological aspect, 

but that a more profitable direction of research is to study the types of aspectual 

functions which are central to discourse as a universal phenomenon and 

then to examine the typical extensions of these functions as they become grammaticized. 

Dwight Bolinger has remarked, in another context: "It does not 

wrap things up; it is a prelude, but a time comes for preludes, after a long series 

of deafening finales" (Bolinger 1975: 554). I hope that these words will 

stand as a motif for this entire volume. 

FOOTNOTES 

1) This point is made forcefully by Friedrich (1974: 2), who comments on Chomsky's "utterly 

rudimentary" analysis of English aspect morphology in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. 

2) This is the traditional view, in fact; thus for Prokosch (1938:146) tense is 'subjective', aspect is 

'objective'. It is also the view developed in Jakobson's well-known monograph (1957).


3) See Grimes and Glock 1970: 415. This might be the place also to acknowledge the influence of 

the work of R. Longacre and his colleagues on the concept of sequencing developed in the present 

paper. No one who is familiar with their work could seriously doubt the centrality and the universality 

of this concept in both discourse and grammar. 

4) The translations from Malay are my own; they are actually paraphrases, and the reader is referred 

to the sub-linear glosses for more exact meanings. 

5) Transliterations from the Cyrillic are my own, and follow the standard system. The sub-linear 

glosses are mine, but the translations are Forsyth's. 

REFERENCES 

Abdullah Munshi, bin Abdul Kadir. 1932. Hikayat Abdullah, Jalid yang pertama. 

Singapore: Malay Publishing House Ltd. (Malay Literature Series, 

4) 

Anderson, John M. 1973. An Essay Concerning Aspect: Some considerations 

of a General Character arising from the Abbé Darrigol's analysis of the 

Basque Verb. The Hague: Mouton & Co. 

Bolinger, Dwight. 1975. Aspects of Language. Second Edition. New York: 

Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, Inc. 

Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect. An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect 

and Related Problems. Cambridge: University Press. (Cambridge Textbooks 

in Linguistics.) 

Forsyth, John. 1970. A Grammar of Aspect. Usage and Meaning in the Russian 

Verb. Cambridge: University Press. (Studies in the Modern Russian 

Language.) 

Friedrich, Paul. 1974. On Aspect Theory and Homeric Aspect. Chicago: University 

of Chicago Press. (IJAL Memoir no. 28) 

Givón, Talmy. 1979. On Understanding Grammar. New York: Academic 

Press. (Perspectives in Neurolinguistics and Psycholinguistics.) 

Grimes, Joseph, and Naomi Glock. 1970. "A Saramaccan narrative pattern" 

Language 46,2 (Part 1): 408-425. 

Hopper, Paul J. 1979a. "Some observations on the typology of focus and aspect 

in narrative language" Studies in Language 3,1: 1979, 37-64. 

1979b. "Aspect and Foregrounding in discourse" in T. Givón, ed., Discourse 

and Syntax. New York, Academic Press. (Syntax and Semantics 

vol. 12.) pp. 213-241.


Jakobson, Roman. 1957. Shifters, Verbal Categories,and the Russian Verb. 

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 

Lloyd, Albert L. 1979. Anatomy of the Verb. The Gothic Verb as a Model for a 

Unified Theory of Aspect, Actional Types, and Verbal Velocity, Amsterdam: 

John Benjamins B.V. (Studies in Language Companion Series, vol. 

4) 

Maslov, Ju. S. 1980. "Struktura povestvovatel'nogo teksta i tipologia slavyanskix 

vido-vremennyx sistem" Svantevit (Aarhus, Denmark) 6,1: 43- 

70. 

Prokosch, Eduard. 1938. A Comparative Germanic Grammar. Baltimore: 

Linguistic Society of America. (William Dwight Whitney Linguistic Series.)

THE DISCOURSE MOTIVATION FOR THE PERFECT ASPECT: 

THE MANDARIN PARTICLE LE 

Charles N. Li Sandra A. Thompson R. McMillan Thompson 

Santabarbara UCLA UC 

1. Introduction 

Friedrich (1974:S36) has proposed that aspect systems can be analyzed in 

terms of three "basic aspect categories": 

1. Durative, continuative, etc. 

2. punctual, completive, perfective, etc. 

3. stative, perfect, etc. 

Hopper (1977/79), (1979) has shown that an explanation for the universality 

of the distinction between categories (1), the durative, or Imperfective, and 

(2), the punctual, or Perfective, can be given in terms of their different discourse 

functions: the Perfective is used to relate or narrate events, while the 

Imperfective is used to provide information on ongoing, concurrent, background 

happenings. The distinction is most easily seen in narrative discourse, 

where the Perfective clauses conveying the main story-line events, presented 

in sequential order, each denoting a discrete event which is contingent on the 

completion of the prior one, contrast sharply with the Imperfective clauses 

signalling the supporting, on-going, durative, or habitual events, which occur 

as "ground" to the perfective "figures". 

But what about Friedrich's third "basic aspect category", the stative, or 

Perfect? Can it be understood in terms of its discourse function as well? We 

think it can. The key to explaining the Perfect lies in the concept of stativity, as 

Friedrich notes. But it is more than simple stativity: the essence of the Perfect 

is its function of relating events/states to a Reference Time l , either to the time 

of the narrative or to the time of the speech act. 2 

Viewed in this way, Friedrich's three basic aspect categories, then, can all 

be seen to have an essentially pragmatic function, which is why they merit special 

markings in so many languages: distinguishing figure from ground in relat-

20 CHARLES N. LI, SANDRA A. THOMPSON & R. McMILLAN THOMPSON 

ing experience for Perfective and Imperfective, and bringing states of affairs 

into the "current" situation for the Perfect. Herein, too, lies their essential 

asymmetry: the Perfective and Imperfective aspects are found in reporting 

events in their relations to each other; the Perfect is found in comments which 

relate situations to a Reference Time. 

Our purpose in this paper is to show that one member (le) of the set of "attitudinal" 

sentence-final particles in Mandarin performs many of the functions 

of the Perfect aspect. 

We have stated that Perfective and Imperfective functions can be distinguished 

most sharply in narrative discourse, where the foregrounded, or main 

story-line events are coded differently from the backgrounded supporting or 

concurrent events. In conversation, a typical use of the Perfective is to tell 

about (relate or narrate) a punctual event or series of events, as in: 

(1) He just kicked me. 

(2) I ate two helpings of lasagne, drank two glasses of brandy, and 

fell asleep. 

Perfective morphology, for those languages that have it, is used, in fact, for 

any event which, like a narrative event, is being viewed in its entirety without 

regard for its internal, temporal complexity (Comrie (1976)): this can include 

assertions in the future and imperatives, as in: 

(3) I'll kill him. 

(4) Get that guy! 

as well as events which are temporally bounded: 

(5) He reigned for 15 years. 

(6) He stood there for an hour. 

In contrast, the Imperfective in narrative typically provides the on-going or 

anterior "backdrop" for the main event-line. By extension, then, we find it in 

conversation in habitual sentences, as in: 

(7) She used to read The New Yorker. 

(8) I get up at 7:30. 

in durative/continuous sentences, as in 

(9) I'm fixing your supper. 

(10) He kept on crying. 

(11) She was watching TV.

PERFECT IN MANDARIN 21 

and in iterative contexts: 

(12) He keeps pinching me. 

(13) She coughed during the whole concert. 

The Perfect, on the other hand, is found in narrative as well, but there, as 

we mentioned above, it functions to relate situations to the time of the narrative. 

English can use the "past perfect" for this function: 

(14) At that time she had already signed the papers. 

(15) By the next day, we had decided not to see them. 

In narrative, then, the Perfect functions to inject background comments 

which are relevant to the situation existing at a given point in the narrations. 

In conversation, the Reference Time is the time of the speech event; the 

Perfect in conversation is thus deitic, as the other two basic aspect categories 

are not. 4 Sentences such as the following are illustrative: 

(16) I have read four detective stories this evening. 5 

(17) The soup is hot now. 

(18) We've eaten, thanks. 

It seems to us, then, that the three basic aspect categories outlined by 

Friedrich define a "cardinal" aspect system, of which individual languages' aspect 

systems can be seen as particular instantiations. In Section 2 of this paper, 

we will present an analysis of Mandarin le; in Section 3 we will suggest some 

implications of our findings for a universal approach to the Perfect aspect. 

2. The Mandarin le 6 

le is one of six commonly used sentence-final particles, all of which have 

functions which can be loosely characterized as "attitudinal". Besides le, 

these include: 

(i) ne: signals the speaker's response to his perception of an expectation 

on the part of the hearer: 

(ii) 

(19) A. tArnen hěn qióng 7 

they very poor 

They're very poor. 

B. tarnen yǒu san- tiáo niú nel 

they exist three- CL cow 

(But) they have three cows! 

ma: signals a question:


(20) ni jintian jiäo- shu mal 

you today teach- book 

Do you teach today? 

(iii) ba: solicits agreement from the hearer: 

(21) nǐ hē shuï bal 

you drink water 

Why don't you drink some water or Drink some water, OK? 

(iv) ou: signals advice or a friendly warning: 

(22) bié shēngì ou 

don't angry 

Say, don't get angry, OK? 

(v) a: reduces the forcefulness of the speech act, making it more polite: 

(23) shéia? 

who 

(yes?) who is it? 

The basic communicative function of le is to signal a 'Currently Relevant 

State' (= CRS). That is, le claims that a state of affairs has special current relevance 

to some particular Reference Time. The Mandarin le, then, can be easily 

seen as an exponent of the Perfect aspect, the basic discourse function of the 

Perfect being, as we have said, to relate some state of affairs to the "current" 

time, i.e., in the unmarked case, the conversational setting in which the 

speaker and hearer are participating as interlocutors. 

Now why should this be a function important enough to be considered 

one of three cardinal aspect points and to be marked explicitly in so many languages? 

The reason is simply that it is the speech situation which is of most immediate 

concern to the participants in it. It is often important to signal that a 

proposition bears upon the immediate speech situation because the knowledge 

that it does may determine what the participants do next. In other words, 

in a broad sense, the Perfect aspect says that some event, state, or comment is 

relevant to the "here and now" of the speech situation. Precisely what the relevance 

is, of course, must be inferred by the hearer, but as a participant in the 

speech event, he can be expected to carry out this inferential process with minimal 

difficulty. 

To convey an idea of how le is used, let's briefly consider each of the three


parts of the characterization 'Currently Relevant State' in turn. 

First, what is meant by 'current'? As we have said, the unmarked 'current' 

time is the speech situation; however, if another Reference Time besides 

the speech situation is being referred to in the conversation, then by extension 

the statement signalled by the sentence with the le is claimed to be relevant to 

that particular Reference Time. For example, if someone calls Mr. Liao, who 

is out, the person who answers the phone may say: 

(24) ta qù mǎi dongxi le 

he 8 go buy thing CRS 

He's gone shopping. 

The le says that his having gone shopping is "current" with respect to some 

time, and since no time is explicitly mentioned, it is straightforwardly assumed 

that his having gone shopping is relevant to the present, i.e., that he is out as of 

the present time at which the conversation is taking place. On the other hand, 

suppose two people are discussing whether Mr. Liao made a long-distance 

phone call two days ago; in this situation one can say: 

(25) (nèi tiän) tā qù mǎi döngxi le 

(that day) he go buy thing CRS 

(That day) he went out shopping. 

meaning that the state of his having gone shopping was relevant to the time the 

conversationalists are discussing, namely 'that day' in the past. 

By the same token, if someone wants to see you next month, but you 

know that you will be in Japan at that time, you say: 

(26) (xià- gēyuè) wǒ jiù zài Ribën le 

(next-CL month) I then at Japan CRS 

(Next month) I'll be in Japan. 

Again, the state of your being in Japan will be current with respect to the time 

being discussed; here it is 'next month'. 

In fact, the time can even be hypothetical, and le will then relate the proposition 

signalled by the sentence to that hypothetical time. For example, if 

you ask someone if s/he is Chinese, s/he could say: 

(27) wo yào shi Zhöngguo-rén jiu bu huì shuö zèmma zäo- 

I if China- person thennot likely speaksuch badde 

Zhongguo-huá le 

NOM China- speech CRS


If I were a Chinese, then I wouldn't be speaking such bad Chinese. 

Now let's look at the examples presented so far from the point of view of 

'Relevance'. This is a notion that is very much a matter of the context in which 

the le sentence occurs ; le claims that some state of affairs signalled by the sentence 

is "relevant" for the speaker and the hearer, and the speaker assumes 

that the hearer can figure out from the context in just what ways it is relevant. 

In the situation we set up for: 

(24) ta qù mai dǒngxi le 

he go buy thing CRS 


the state of his having gone shopping is clearly relevant to the caller's desire to 

talk with him: the caller can't do so because he isn't here. Similarly, in discussing 

whether or not he made a phone call two days ago, the state of his having 

gone shopping in sentence (25) is relevant because in this context, it establishes 

that he couldn't have made that phone call. 

In exactly the same way, in the context of someone wanting to see you 

next month, sentence (26) is relevant because it claims that the state of your 

being in Japan will prevent that person from being able to see you, and in (27) 

the speaker's hypothetical statement about her/his bad Chinese is relevant in 

denying your assumption that s/he is a Chinese. 

Here is a minimal pair which shows clearly the difference between simply 

referring to a state and talking about a state which is relevant to something going 

on now. Sentence (28) A. expresses a simple neutral state: 

(28) A. zhèi-ge mùguâ hĕn tián 

this-CL papaya very sweet 

This papaya is very sweet. 

(28) B., with le, however, expresses much more: 

B. zhèi-ge mùguâ hĕn tián le 

this-CL papaya very sweet CRS 

This papaya is very sweet. 

Though not conveyed by the English translation, (28) B. means that the 

sweetness of the papaya is relevant for the current situation. So, for example, 

I could say (28) . if I had guessed that the papaya was sweet and indeed, upon 

eating it, found that it was, or if, conversely, I had guessed that it wouldn't be


sweet, but discovered while tasting it that I was wrong. One could even say 

(28) . if one wants to announce a new "discovery" of the sweetness of the papaya, 

or if one wants the hearer to discover its sweetness so the hearer will eat 

it. 

Finally, the definition of le includes the idea of 'state'. This means that le 

always treats an event signalled by the sentence as a state of affairs and claims 

that that state is currently relevant to some time. Let's use (24) once more as 

an illustration: 

(24) ta qù mǎi döngxi le 

he go buy thing CRS 


The serial verb sequence qù mǎi 'go buy' involves an action, but sentence (24) 

with le is not talking about the action of his going out or buying, but about the 

state of his having gone shopping and its relevance for the present situation. 

Here is a striking contrast which illustrates this difference: if one wants to 

tell you what he did simply by describing an action, he will use a sentence like 

(29) A.: 

(29) A. wo he- le san bei kafei 

I drink- PFV three- cup coffee 

I drank three cups of coffee. 

(29) A., for example, could be used to answer a question such as "What have 

you done that's made you so nervous?", or as part of a narrative of the afternoon's 

activities. But (29) ., with le, expresses something quite different: 

B. wo he- le san bei kafei le 

I drink- PFV three- cup coffee CRS 

I've drunk three cups of coffee. 

(29) . does not say simply that he drank three cups of coffee ; that is conveyed 

by (29) A. What (29) . says is that the state of his having drunk three cups of 

coffee is relevant for the current situation, because, let's say, you want him to 

have another cup and he's telling you why he shouldn't, or because he wants to 

show that he likes coffee if you claim that he doesn't, or because he wants to 

announce this fact to you as a piece of news (see E. below). 

Now, of we are essentially correct in saying that le has the discourse function 

in Mandarin of signalling a 'Currently Relevant State', then several facts 

about its distribution immediately become clear. First, there is the fact that le 

is never used when the speaker is simply asserting a general truth; for example,


(30) rénjia jia- xïn, ta jiu yǎn-hong 

people increase- salary s/he then eye-red 

When other people get a raise, s/he gets envious. 

Similarly, general states or ongoing situations involving no change are 

generally not described with le. For example, 

(31) gongsï- de zhàngmu hĕn - qingchu 

company- GEN account very clear 

The company's accounts were very clear. 

(32) tä shuö- de gen ni shuö- de bu yíyàng 

s/he say- NOM and you say- NOM not same 

What s/he says and what you say are different. 

Another type of situation in which le is not found is a simple assertion of 

an event which happened in the past. 

(33) wo juéding zhèi yàng bàn 

I decide this way do 

I decided to do it this way. 

(34) wëndù jiàng- de hĕn kuài 

temperature drop- de very fast 

The temperature dropped very quickly. 

Finally, le is very rare in expository and scientific writing and practically 

non-existent in news-reporting, speeches, lectures, and proclamations. For 

example, in "A Twelve Point Proclamation by the Non-Nationalist Politicians 

in Taiwan" (1978), there isn't one occurrence of le. Following the U.S. recognition 

of the People's Republic of China, the same group of politicians issued 

another proclamation. Again, it does not contain any occurrence of le. In the 

Chinese news dispatch of the joint communiqué by President Carter and Vice- 

Premier Deng on February 1,1979, not one occurrence of le can be found. In 

seven pieces of news reporting randomly chosen from the pages of the February 

23 issue of Southern California Chinese News Dispatch published by the 

Southern California Chinese Service Association, we found no occurrence of 

le. 

Similarly, descriptive writing contains few, if any, occurrences of le; as a 

sample, we randomly selected twenty pages from Zhongguo Lîshï Gàiyào 

(Outline of Chinese History, p. 1-5, p. 34-35, p.51-55, p.84-86) and found only 

one occurrence of le.


The reason for the extremely low incidence of le in these types of discourse 

is straightforward: the requisite Reference Time is missing. Recall that 

the unmarked Reference Time is the speech situation; it is this requirement on 

the use of le which accounts for the impression that le is, like the other sentence-final 

particles of Mandarin, essentially an "attitudinal", "conversational" 

particle. 

Normally sentences expressing an event or situation in the future, requests, 

and commands also do not occur with le: 

(35) wǒ qù pào chá 

I go steam tea 

I'll go make tea. 

(36) women yào yi- pán pàocài 

we want one plate pickle 

We want a plate of pickles. 

(37) bǎ fán- wǎn dì gĕi wǒ 

ba rice- bowl hand to I 

Hand me the rice bowl. 

In the contexts we've given for these sentences, then, that is, in talking 

about simple general truths, on-going states, past and future events, and commands 

and requests, where no currently relevant state is involved, le will not be 

used. This doesn't mean, of course, that le can't be used with any of the sentences 

(30)-(36) that we've used as examples; it often can be, but then it will always 

imply current relevance in one of the five ways to be discussed below. 

le can be found, however, in written narrative, where it serves, as suggested 

above, to bring a state of affairs into the time at which the narrative is 

taking place. The use of le in narrative is then entirely analogous to its use in 

conversation except that the reference point is, predictably, narrative time 

rather than speech time. Here is an example from the story "Jing-jing de 

Shengri" (Jing-jing's Birthday) by Chen Jo-hsi (1976:2): 

(38) nèi- shí, wO zhèng huái-zhe lǎo-èr yïjing bäthat-time 

I precisely bear-DUR old-two already eightge 

yuè le 

CL month CRS 

At that time, I was already 8 months pregnant with my second 

child.


The ways in which le signals 'Currently Relevant State' can, for convenience 

of exposition (only), be grouped into five categories; that is, a sentence 

with le can convey CRS if the state of affairs it represents: 

A. is a changed state 

B. corrects a wrong assumption 

C. reports "progress so far" 

D. determines what will happen next 

E. is the speaker's total contribution to the conversation at that 

point 

Each of these five categories represents a slightly different type of situation in 

which le indicates that a state of affairs signalled by the sentence is relevant to 

that current situation. 

A. Change of State 

One of the most common ways in which a state of affairs is relevant to the 

present situation is when that state of affairs represents a change from an earlier 

state. 9 That means that some state of affairs holds now which didn't hold 

before. In each case the relevance of the new state of affairs hinges on the fact 

that it is a change. Here are some illustrative minimal pairs: 

(39) A. tA zhīdao nèi- ge xiāoxi 

s/he know that- CL news 

S/He knows about that piece of news. 

B. tā zhïdao nèi- ge xiäoxi le 

s/he knows that- CL news CRS 

S/He knows about that piece of news now. (S/He hadn't 

before). 

(40) A. (In response to being asked whether the speaker knows 

about a meeting) 

wo zhïdao 

I know 

Yes, I know. 

B. (The speaker, who went to the wrong room once before, 

has been reminded which room the meeting will be held 

in) 

wo zhïdao le 

I know CRS 

Now I know (i.e., I have learned).


(41) A. (To a head waiter who has asked how many people there 

are) 

women èr-shí-sì-ge 

we 2- 10- 4- CL 

There are 24 of us. 

B. (One tour guide to another when the last tourist, after 

some delay, has finally climbed on the bus) 

women èr-shi-sì-ge le 

we 2- 10- 4-CLCRS 

Now there are 24 of us. 

(42) A. wo yào qù 

I will go 

I'm going to go (a simple statement of intention). 

B. wo yào qù le 

I will go CRS 

I'm going after all (I had thought I wouldn't). 

(43) (Waiter in restaurant after having been asked whether they 

have any guötiĕ 'fried dumplings') 

A. méi-yöu 

not-have 

No. 

B. méi-yöu le 

not-have CRS 

Not anymore (i.e., we've run out). 

(44) (To person serving food) 

A. wo bu chï 

I not eat 

I'm not going to eat. 

B. wo bu chï le 

I not eat CRS 

I'm not going to eat anymore (either I've had enough food 

or I've changed my mind as to whether I'll eat, i.e., my not 

eating is a new situation). 

(45) A. xìnfĕng- lï zhuäng-bu- xià zhèi-xiE zhàopiàn 

envelope- in fit- not- descend this-several photo


These photos won't fit in this envelope. 

. xìnfeng- lï zhuang-bu- xià zhèi-xia zhàopiàn 

envelope- in fit- not- descend this-several photo 

Here are some further examples: 

le 

CRS 

There's no more room in this envelope to fit these photos. 

(period) 

(46) yǒu -le zhèi-ge rìguäng deng chúfáng jiu loang 

exist-PFVthis-CLflourescent light kitchen then bright 

duo le 

much CRS 

Now that we have this flourescent light, the kitchen is much 

brighter. 

(47) (a 3-year old child upon finishing building a house out of 

blocks) 

fángzi le 10 

house CRS 

It's a house (now)! 

(48) tä hǎo le 

s/he good CRS 

S/He's well (now). 

(49) dào Zhongshän Lu le 

arrive Zhongshan Road CRS 

Here we are at Zhongshan Road. 

(50) kexi ta bu zài cun- lï le 

pity s/he not at village- in CRS 

It's too bad s/he's no longer in the village. 

(51) bié mi- lù le 

don't lose- road CRS 

Don't lose your way (again this time). 

All the examples we've seen so far illustrate the "change of state" in terms 

of the present time, the time of speaking. However, as we mentioned earlier, 

if the sentence refers to another time, say general time, as in (52), future, as in


(53), or past, as in (54), then the change of state is relevant to that general or 

future or past time. 

(52) guò- le shàng- xià- ban- de shíhou huöche jiu 

pass- PFV ascend- descend- work-NOM time train then 

kong le 

empty CRS 

Once rush-hour is over, the train becomes empty. 

(53) tarnen-de xuéxiào míngnián jiu yào zhäo 

they- GEN school next:year then will accept 

nüsheng le 

women:student CRS 

Next year (the changed state will be that) their school will accept 

women students. 

(54) (Describing an afternoon of walking) 

women zou de hǎe lèi le 

we walk EXT very tired CRS 

We had walked so much that we'd gotten very tired, (i.e. period) 

Sometimes the "change" is simply a realization on the part of the speaker, 

though not necessarily a change in the objective situation. Chao 

(1968:798), for example, points out that a sentence like 

(55) xià yu le 

fall rain CRS 

It's raining. 

can be used not only when it has just begun to rain, but also when the speaker 

has just discovered that it is raining. Similarly, young children often use le in 

commenting on something which has just come to their attention, as in: 

(56) (a 3-year-old child who has just noticed the parrot in the zoo) 

zhè shi yïngwu le\ 

this be parrot CRS 

This is a parrot! 

Here are some further illustrations of the use of le for situations which are 

newly realized by the speaker: 

(57) (Two friends haven't seen each other for a long time: one asks 

the other where s/he has been)


A. wo dào nánbù qù-le yi- tàng 

I to south go-PFV one-time 

I took a trip to the south. 

B. ou yuánlái ni dào nánbù qù-le; nánguài häo 

oh so youto south go-PFV no:wonder very 

jiŭ méi kànjian nǐ le 

long not see youCRS 

Oh, so you went to the south; no wonder I haven't seen 

you for a long time. 

(58) (To roommate who has just returned from class) 

nǐ huí- lái le 

you return-come CRS 

You've come back. 

As another set of illustrations, we note that explicit requests to be 

"brought up to date" about a certain person, a certain event or a certain situation 

will typically elicit responses representing announcements of information 

new to the person making the request, and these always take le. 

(59) A. Zhang Meiyïng zuijin zĕmma yàng? 

Zhang Meiying recently how way 

How is Zhang Meiying these days? 

B. (1) ta jiéhun le 

she marry CRS 

She's gotten married. 

(2) ta bèi kaichú le 

she BEI expelled CRS 

She's been expelled (from school). 

(3) ta huí- guó le 

she return- country CRS 

She's gone back to her country. 

What all of these examples share is the message of a state which is new, or 

changed from the way it was before or from the way the speaker thought it was 

before. 

Before moving on to the next set of contexts, we would like to relate to 

this discussion a remark made by Chafe (1970:126), who points out that 

(60) The soup is hot.


can be understood either as asserting a relative state, i.e., that the temperature 

of the soup is high, or as asserting an absolute state, i.e., that the soup has 

reached the intended temperature. The two interpretations would contrast in 

Mandarin, with the second reading, where the new state is claimed to be currently 

relevant, being expressed with a le: 

(61) A. tāng hĕn rè 

soup very hot 

The soup is hot. 

B. tāng rè le 

soup hot CRS 

The soup has gotten hot (enough now, which it wasn't before). 

B. Correcting a Wrong Assumption 

Another common way in which a state of affairs becomes relevant to a 

particular situation is when that state of affairs is different from what the hearer 

has been assuming. 

(62) A. (Someone pointing to a 7-Up) 

wo he qìshuï 

I drink 7-Up 

I (want to) drink 7-Up (neutral). 

. (Someone responding to the hostess' claim that s/he is not 

taking any of the food offered to her/him) 

wo hë qìshuï le 

I drink 7-Up CRS 

(But) I have been drinking 7-Up. 

(63) (To the accusation that the speaker has spent the afternoon 

sleeping) 

wo kàn- le sān- bĕn shü fe! 

I look- PFV three- CL book CRS 

(What do you mean?!) I have read three books! 

(64) (Busy waiter who has just been asked to bring more rice) 

hǎo, hao, mashàng fe! 

O.K., O.K., immediately CRS 

O.K!, O.K! (I'm bringing it) right away (already)!


(65) A. wo xiäng zhäo fángzi ban- jiä 

I think look:for house move- home 

I think I'm going to find a new place to move to. 

B. (Surprised by A's statement because of her assumption 

that A would leave soon) 

n bu shi mǎshàng jiu yào huí Rîben le ma? 

you not be immediately then will return Japan CRS Q 

(But) aren't you going back to Japan right away? 

Each of the examples (62)-(65) illustrates a le sentence which is relevant 

to the current situation because it contradicts an assumption which has been 

explicitly brought out in the preceding conversation. But sometimes a le sentence 

can be relevant because it contradicts an assumption which has not been 

mentioned at all, but which the speaker knows the hearer holds. Here is a particularly 

nice example from a newspaper cartoon: 

(66) (The dog Scamp calls out to his friend the duck who is flying 

past him supposedly migrating south) 

häi, Guä- Gua! nǐ wàng bei-fang qù lel 

Hey, Quack-Quack you toward north go CRS 

Hey, Quacky! You're going north (and not south, as you obviously 

are assuming) ! 

Often, in reporting something unusual that just happened, le is used because 

the state of affairs contradicts our normal expectations. For example, 

(67) wo zuotiän zuò-le yi- jiàn huái shi le 

I yesterday do- PFV one- CL bad matter CRS 

(I must tell you that) I did a bad thing yesterday (which you 

wouldn't have expected). 

This second set of examples has shown how le is used to express a state 

that is Currently Relevant to correct a wrong assumption on the part of the 

hearer. As we have seen, this wrong assumption may be explicitly brought out 

in the conversation, it may be an assumption which the speaker has held or 

knows the hearer holds, or it may be a normal assumption that people hold unless 

told differently. 

C. Progress So Far 

Sometimes a state of affairs is relevant to the current situation in that it 

brings the hearer "up to date" on the progress made so far in a more extensive


project or venture which both speaker and hearer know about. So if the hearer 

knows, for example, that the speaker is working on Tang Dynasty poetry, 

the speaker can say: 

(68) Táng shï sān- bai- shöu wo bèi- chu- lái- 

Tang poem three- hundred-CL I memorize- exit- comele 

yi- bàn le 

PFV one-half CRS 

Fve memorized half of the Three Hundred Tang Poems now 

(so far). 

Note that this example contains both a perfective suffix -le and a CRS particle 

le. Since the event which represents the progress made so far is typically a perfective, 

bounded event (in this case, completing the memorizing of 150 

poems), many sentences which illustrate the use of le in signaling current relevance 

by giving the progress to date in a more extensive project turn out to 

have both perfective -le and CRS le. 

Here are some examples: 

(69) (Talking about the "project" of my living arrangements) 

wö zài nàli zhù- le liäng-ge yuè le 

I at there live- PFV two -CL month CRS 

Fve lived there for two months (now). 

(70) nèi- wei nüshi huái-le bä-ge yuè yùn le 

that- CL woman bear -PFV 8- CL month pregnancy CRS 

That woman is eight months pregnant. 

But progress to date can also be expressed by non-perfective sentences. 

For instance a visitor in China trying to have as many Chinese experiences as 

possible may say to the host: 

(71) wo jïntiān zaochén chï yóutiáo lel 

I today morning eat fritter CRS 

I had a youtiao this morning! 

(where yóutiáo is a very typical Chinese breakfast item). 

Similarly, if the hearer knows that the speaker has been planning to go to 

the Zhangs for dinner or that the speaker has been hoping to get an invitation, 

then the speaker can tell the hearer what has been achieved with that project 

with sentence (72):


(72) wo zuótiān dào Zhāng jiā chï-fàn le 

I yesterday to Zhang home eat-food CRS 

(Well,) I (finally) went yesterday to have dinner at the 

Zhangs. 

The use of le sentences giving "progress so far" in a larger venture, project, 

or ongoing concern is another clear illustration of presenting a state of affairs 

as being currently relevant, relevant in assessing how far we have come in 

the larger venture. 

D. What Happens Next 

Another class of contexts in which a state of affairs is relevant are those in 

which that state of affairs determines what happens next. For example, sentence 

(73) could be currently relevant as a signal to the hearer that something 

else can happen now: 

(73) wo xi- hǎo- le yīfu le 

I wash- finish- PFV clothes CRS 

I've finished washing the clothes (so: 

i. now we can go to the movies 

ii. you can do your yoga in the laundry room 

iii. I'm free to play chess with you, 

(etc.) 

Example (74) can be viewed in the same way: 

(74) wo hē- le san- bēi lel 

I drink-PFV three-glass CRS 

(Look -I tell you) Fve drunk three (whole) glasses! (so: 

i. don't pour me any more! 

ii. quit saying gānbēi 'bottoms up' to me! 

iii. let's just talk now, 

(etc.) 

Often a le sentence is used to announce that a new state of affairs is just 

about to be realized and the hearer is expected to make an appropriate response. 

A minimal pair makes the point strikingly: 

(75) A. Xiǎo Huáng kuài yào lái 

Little Huang fast will come 

Little Huang will be here soon (a simple neutral comment, 

or an answer to a question).


. Xiao Huáng kuài yào lái le 

Little Huang fast will come CRS 

(Hurry!) Little Huang is about to arrive (so: 

i. hide the gifts! 

ii. put your pants on! 

iii. get ready to holler "surprise" !, 

etc.) 

E. Closing a Statement 

A very interesting use of le in signalling the current relevance of a state of 

affairs is its function as a mark oí finality. That is, for many le sentences in conversations, 

speakers report the intuition that the le "completes" the sentence, 

that without it, the sentence sounds incomplete, as if the speaker intends to 

say more. It is almost as though the le were functioning as a sentence-final 

punctuation marker. Yet many sentences in conversation do not have this 

marker. Why, then, do some sentences seem to need it in order to sound 

"complete" to speakers? 

The answer is that when a person tells about something that happened or 

mentions a state of affairs as his contributions to the conversation and not as a 

response to some question or comment from another person, le is required to 

tell the hearer what the proposition has been introduced for, by saying "this is 

my contribution to the conversation". Without le, the proposition would elicit 

an "and what about it?" response; it would need another clause (such as one 

beginning with so, because, or but) which would "validate" it by explicitly stating 

what the speaker brought it up for. In other words, le is required to tell 

the hearer that the proposition is relevant to the speech situation by being 

"newsworthy" in and of itself; it brings a statement into the current situation 

by tagging it as the speaker's total contribution as of that moment. 

Here is a minimal pair: 

(76) A. (to child) 

nï wèishémma kü? 

you why cry 

Why are you crying? 

B. (child) 

tä dǎ- le wo yi- quán 

s/he hit- PFV I one- punch 

S/He punched me.


(77) (to friend) 

ta dǎ- le wo yi- quán le 

s/he hit- PFV I one- time CRS 

(What I want to say is that) s/he punched me! (and that's it). 

The contrast here is clear: as a response to a question, the relevance of the 

child's remark in (76) is clear and needs no le to mark it, while the same comment, 

made in a context where it serves to announce a piece of information to 

the hearer must have the le to signal that the volunteered information is all 

that the speaker has to contribute at the moment. Here is a precisely parallel 

example: 

(78) A. (To friend who has asked why the speaker didn't choose a 

certain university) 

yïnwei nàli xuéfèi tài guì 

because there tuition too expensive 

The tuition is too high there (neutral response). 

B. (One student to another standing in line to pay fees) 

xuéfèi tài gui lel 

tuition too expensive CRS 

(I tell you) the tuition is (really) too high! 

We can look at this function of le from a slightly different point of view. 

As we have seen, a sentence which answers a particular question may not need 

le because its relevance is very obvious (unless, of course, le is required fot expressing 

one of the other types of relevance we have considered). The same 

sentence, on the other hand, functioning as a piece of volunteered information 

does need le to "finish" it and signal that it is the speaker's total contribution 

at the moment. In addition to answering a question, the sentence without 

the le can also function as background to some further information. For example, 

compare sentences (79) A. and .: 

(79) (Commenting on a mutual friend) 

A. ta yïjing líkai Mëiguo le 

s/he already leave America CRS 

S/He's already left America. 

B. ta yïjing líkai Mĕiguo, 

s/he already leave America,


i. suǒyi qù dāng-bïng le 

so go be-soldier CRS 

S/He has already left America, so s/he's gone into the 

military. 

ii. xiànzài zài Zhöngguo jiäo- shü 

now at China teach- book 

S/He has already left America and is now teaching in 

China. 

It is easy to see that (79) A. is an example exactly like the others, (77)-(78), 

which we have been examining in this section, and it ends with le, just as we 

would expect, since it completes the presentation of a state of affairs to the 

hearer. The very same sentence occurs in (79) ., but without the le; in this 

case it must be followed by another clause. It becomes the background to 

another piece of news, the le now going at the end of the whole remark. 

This use of le can even be seen to function in "wrapping up" a story; here 

it signals the current relevance of the state of affairs represented by the last 

line in the story by signalling that the story is now over. Here is an example 

showing the end of a story. 

(80) jiéguo women jiu ban hui Zhöngguo le 

in: the:end we then move return China CRS 

In the end, we moved back to China. 

As we have now come to expect, the same sentence without the le would be a 

simple report of what happened; with the le, sentence (80) conveys that the 

state is relevant to the current situation in which we are talking; here that state 

represents the end of my story and the opportunity for you to take your turn. 

The examples in this section have shown, then, that another way in which 

le can signal a state which is currently relevant is when it announces the end of 

one's contribution to the conversation. 

F. le Signalling CRS in More Than One Way 

As we emphasized earlier, it is quite obvious that the five ways in which le 

can signal CRS, which we have discussed in A-E, are not clearly distinct from 

one another. Many of our examples could have illustrated more than one of 

the uses. For example, the sentence 

(81) tā huí- guó le (cf. (59) .) 

she return- country CRS


can be used in each of these five ways. It can be a state relevant to the current 

situation as a changed state, (A), i.e., 

(i) She has now returned to her country. 

or as a correction of someone's mistaken assumption, (B): 

(ii) She 

has returned 

is returning 

or as a report of "progress so far", (C), e.g. 

(iii) 

to her country. 

(as a part of her project to start an export business,) she 

has returned to her country. 

or as a state which will determine what happens next, (D), e.g. 

(iv) 

She's returned to her country (so she is going to cause 

some problems). 

or, finally, as the speaker's total contribution to the conversation at that point, 

(E),e.g. 

(v) 

(Say, did you know that) she's returned to her country! 

Since we are claiming that le has one basic communicative function, it is to be 

expected that these sub-functions, which we have isolated specifically for convenience 

in exposition, should turn out not to be clearly distinct from each 

other; in a given context, for example, a le sentence could at once be announcing 

a mistaken assumption on the part of the hearer, and serving as the speaker's 

total contribution to the conversation at that point. 

What we are suggesting is that the addition of le to a sentence signals that 

the state of affairs represented by the sentence to which it is attached is currently 

relevant, the exact ways in which it is relevant being a matter for the hearer 

to decide on the basis of her/his knowledge of the relationship between her/ 

him and the speaker, of the situation in which they are interacting, and of the 

world at large. 

3. Perfect Aspect in Universal Grammar 

Having suggested that, very broadly speaking, there may be discourse 

grounds for thinking of aspect in terms of three basic aspect categories — Perfective, 

Imperfective, and Perfect — and having shown how le is used in 

Mandarin to signal a currently relevant state, we may now ask whether there is 

any justification for considering le to be a manifestation of Perfect aspect. As 

Anderson (this volume) puts it, given that a grammatical category will not


have exactly the same range of uses in different languages, why are linguists 

willing to use the same name for the category in two different languages? 

At first glance, the fact that aspect is generally thought of and typically 

represented grammatically as a verbal category would seem to disqualify le as 

an aspect marker, since it is clearly a sentence-final, and not a verbal, particle. 

On the other hand, if we adopt a "cluster" view of the universality of functional 

categories such as aspect 11 , then seeing le as an exponent of the Perfect 

seems quite well-motivated indeed. 

According to a "cluster" concept of grammatical categories in universal 

grammar, there need not be any single set of semantic parameters which is 

shared by the grammatical manifestations of a given category, say, "passive", 

or "reflexive", or "Perfect", cross-linguistically. Rather, what determines 

that a construction or morpheme in a given language might be a manifestation 

of a given grammatical category is its expression of certain "core" meanings 

which are "typical" of that grammatical category. From the fact that it expresses 

these core meanings we can predict that it will also express other related 

(and more peripheral) meanings, though not necessarily all of the same 

ones as does the "Perfect" in another language. (See Anderson's discussion in 

this volume.) Our position is that we can come closer to an understanding of 

aspect by taking a cross-linguistic perspective; the important issue is not 

whether a given grammatical category in a language "should" be labeled "Perfect 

aspect", but rather the extent to which the semantic space which it occupies 

overlaps in significant ways with that occupied by a given grammatical 

category in another language. 

FOOTNOTES 

1) See Reichenbach (1947) for a theory of time specification in which this term is distinguished 

from speech time and event time. 

2) See Chung and Timberlake (1978), who make the same point by referring to the Perfect as 

"relational" in a way that Perfective and Imperfective are not. 

3) English morphology, as is well-known, does not directly reflect any of the basic aspect categories. 

However, for convenience, we will give examples in English to suggest the discourse role of 

these three aspect categories. 

4) We are grateful to Maureen Schmid for calling our attention to this fact. 

5) See McCoard (1978) for the most comprehensive treatment to date of the semantics and pragmatics 

of the English present perfect verb form, which does the bulk of the work of signalling the 

Perfect in the language.


6) The sentence-final le is not to be confused with the Perfective aspect verb suffix -le, with which 

it happens to be homophonous. Evidence that they are distinct includes the fact that the Perfective 

-le is suffixed to verbs, while le occurs sentence-finally; they can therefore co-occur: 

(i) wo chï-le sān- wan miàn le 

I eat-PFV three-bowl noodle CRS 

I ate three bowls of noodles. 

(CRS = 'Currently Relevant State', to be defined shortly in the text) 

In the following discussion, we will adopt these conventions in referring to these two morphemes, 

following Spanos (1977): the Perfective verb suffix will be glossed PFV and written with the hyphenated 

form -le, while the sentence-final particle, with which we will be primarily concerned 

here, will be glossed CRS and written with the unhyphenated form le. Wang (1957:99) represents 

the Chinese grammatical tradition in referring to -le as a marker of aspect and to le as a marker of 

mood. Chao (1968:246-7) suggests further that the two LE's are etymologically distinct, the sentence-final 

le deriving from a verb meaning 'come' (lái in modern Mandarin), and Perfective -le deriving 

from a verb meaning 'finish' (liao in modern Mandarin). The etymology of the Perfective -le is 

essentially uncontroversial, but Chinese grammarians are by no means in agreement on the origin 

of the Perfect le. For comprehensive discussions of the Perfective -le, and its interaction with le, see 

Li and Thompson (1981) Rohsenow (1978), Spanos (1977), (1979), and Chao (1968); for briefer 

discussions, see the references cited in these works. Baron (1970) and Spencer (1970) provide summaries 

of the Chinese, European, and American treatments of -le. 

7) The data in the examples to follow come largely from actual conversations in which we have 

been participants. Some are isolated examples which have been made up or taken from various 

written works; these have been checked with several Mandarin speakers for their naturalness in the 

contexts we hypothesize for them. 

The abbreviations used in our glosses are: 

CRS = Currently Relevant State 

PFV = Perfective aspect 

GEN = genitive 

NOM= nominalizer 

CL = classifier 

EXT = extent clause marker 

BEI = "passive" marker 

Q = question marker 

8) There is no gender distinction in the pronoun system of any of the Chinese languages; except 

where context dictates otherwise, we will gloss the third person singular ta as 's/he'. 

9) There have been several substantial treatments of le in the Chinese linguistics literature, including 

Chao (1968), Spanos (1977), (1979), and Rohsenow (1978). Chao (1968) classifies ten disparate 

"uses" of le, which he documents extensively but does not attempt to unify. Of the ten uses 

isolated by Chao, this "change of state" function, which, as Chao's discussion makes amply clear, is 

actually just one of the uses of le, has been taken as its only function by most grammarians, including 

Baron (1970), Teng (1973), Rygaloff (1973), DeLancey (1977), Rohsenow (1978), and Kwan- 

Terry (1979), who ignore its other functions altogether. One exception is Spanos ((1977), (1979)) 

who presents a comprehensive proposal to account at once for the suffix -le and the particle le by 

positing one basic meaning from which the uses of both of them can be derived by a set of Gricean 

pragmatic principles. According to him, the meaning of LE is the


Realization of x at time, t, in context, c, by the subject s or the speaker, s, where x is filled in 

by some morpheme, verb, verb phrase, or sentence which involves some action, process, 

quality, or state of affairs. (p. 146) 

In other words, Spanos considers both -le and le to be instances of one basic semantic category, 

which he characterizes in terms of a notion of "realization". We think he errs in not distinguishing 

between the two distinct morphemes, but we applaud his explicit recognition of the pragmatic nature 

of le and the depth of the discussion which he provides. 

10) We are grateful for this example from the child language transcripts of M. Erbaugh. 

11) Our thanks to Lloyd Anderson for showing us how to think about le as a Perfect in these 

terms. 

REFERENCES 

Baron, Stephen. (1970)."Aspect le and Particle le in Modern Spoken 

Mandarin", Seton Hall University, M. A. Thesis. 

Chafe, Wallace. (1970). Meaning and the Structure of Language. Chicago: 

University of Chicago Press. 

Chao, Yuen-ren. (1968). A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. Berkeley and Los 

Angeles: U. Press. 

Chen, Jo-hsi. (1976). Yin Xian-zhang (Mayor Yin). Taibei: Yuan-jing Publishing 

Co. 

Chung, Sandra and Alan Timberlake. (1978). "Tense, Mood, and Aspect", 

draft prepared for Shopen, T. et al. (eds.) Language Typology and Syntactic 

Field Work. (in preparation). 

Comrie, Bernard. (1976). Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

DeLancey, Scott. (1977). "Mandarin Aspect Particles", paper presented at 

conference on Aspect, Brown University. 

Friedrich, Paul. (1974). "On Aspect Theory and Homeric Aspect", UAL, 

40.4, Part 2, Memoir #28. 

Givón, Talmy. (1979). Discourse and Syntax. New York: Academic Press. 

Hopper, Paul. (1977/79). "Some Observations on the Typology of Focus and 

Aspect in Narrative Language", NUSA: Linguistic Studies in Indonesian 

and Languages of Indonesia, Vol 4. 14-25. Also in Studies in Language 

3.1:37-64,1979. 

. (1979). "Aspect and Foregrounding in Discourse", in Givón (1979). 

Kwan-Terry, Anna (1979). "The case of the two le's in Chinese", Computational 

Analyses of Asian and African Languages 10:39-55. 

Li, Charles N. and Sandra A. Thompson (1981). Mandarin Chinese: A Func-


tional Reference Grammar. Berkeley and Los Angeles: V.C. Press 

McCoard, Robert. (1978), The English Perfect: Tense-choice and Pragmatic 

Inference. Amsterdam: North-Holland. 

Reichenbach, Hans. (1947). Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York: Free 

Press. 

Rohsenow, John. (1978). Syntax and Semantics of the Perfect in Mandarin 

Chinese. University of Michigan, Ph. D. Dissertation. 

Rygaloff, Alexis. (1973). Grammaire élémentaire du chinois. Paris: Presses 

Universitaires de France. 

Spanos, George. (1977). A Textual, Conversational, and Theoretical Analysis 

of the Mandarin Particle LE. University of Arizona, Ph. D. Dissertation. 

. (1979). "Contemporary Chinese Usage of LE: A Survey and a Pragmatic 

Proposal", Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers' Association Part 

I:14.1:36-70, Part II:14.2:47-102. 

Spencer, Margaret. (1970). The verbal Aspect System of Standard Colloquial 

Chinese. University of Michigan,Ph. D. Dissertation. 

Teng, Shou-hsin. (1973). "Negation and Aspect in Chinese", Journal of'Chinese 

Linguistics, 1.1:14-37. 

Wang, Li (1957). Zhongguo Xiàndài Yufā (Modern Chinese Grammar). 

Shanghai.

THE FUNCTION OF INUKTITUT VERB MODES 

IN NARRATIVE TEXTS 

IVAN KALMÁR 

University of Toronto 


1. History of research 

2. Outline of mode suffixes 

3. Method of study 

4. The main, optative, and imperative vs. the relative modes 

5. The appositional and the participial modes 

6. Formalizing the results 

7. The significance of unclear cases 

8. Universal, cultural, and individual discourse strategies 

9. Conclusion 

0. This paper presents a new method of studying verb modes in Inuktitut 

narrative texts. l The method results in a theory offering a consistent framework 

for the explanation of how modes function in the language. 

Inuktitut verb modes show that a theory of linguistic function must be 

different from a theory of linguistic form. Unlike in a theory of form, in a theory 

of function an element to which the theory does not assign a unique description 

does not necessarily constitute a counterexample. In some circumstances, 

such "doubtful" examples point to interesting cultural or individual 

differences between the narrative strategies of the speaker and of the linguistobserver. 

As this paper is a pioneering one it was felt advisable to limit its scope. 

Only the modes termed primary, only the Iglulingmiut dialect, and only narrative 

texts are considered, although there are indications that the remarks 

made here apply equally to other dialects and to other genres of text.

46 IVAN KALMAR 

1. The history of the literature on verb modes in Inuktitut starts with the 

Grammatica Grönlandica Danico-Latina of Paulo Egede, which appeared in 

Denmark in 1760. With superb intuition, Egede, the missionary-explorer 

turned linguist, sensed the formal and semantic parallels among a number of 

diverse suffixes in what we know to be the West Greenlandic dialect. He 

classed these suffixes together as "moods" (modi). Presumably he called them 

"moods" because in his search for European paralells the category of mood 

was the closest he could find. Yet most of the so called modi of West Greenlandic 

are not a "verbal category that reflects the attitude of the speaker" 

(Lehmann 1976: 140) in the usual sense of expressing "the speaker's commitment 

with respect to the factual status of what he is saying" (Lyons 1969:307). 

Admittedly, the literature is unanimous in describing the indicative, interrogative, 

and optative in Inuktitut as analogous in function to the moods 

that go by the same names in European languages. However, the other Inuktitut 

"moods" have little to do with "degrees of factuality" and deal instead with 

the relation between one predicated event or attribute and another. For example, 

the so-called conjunctive mood has been variously described as expressing 

an event that is concommitant with another (Egede 1760:115), the 

cause of another (Kleinschmidt 1851:88), and/or prior "or at least not posterior" 

to another (Bergsland 1955:53). One might get the impression that some 

"moods" express the same sort of thing as moods in European languages, and 

others express something else. But if such were the case then the similarity in 

form of all "mood" suffixes (to be explained below) would go begging for a parallel 

similarity of meaning. We would have to claim that totally disparate 

semantic functions are being served by a unified formal category. 2 (We show 

below that mode suffixes do indeed constitute a unified formal category.) 

However, the so-called "moods" do have comparable semantic functions. 

In narrative texts at least, these functions correspond to those of mood 

only in part. Their chief aim is instead to place each predication within the 

context of the text as whole. "Moods", and let us henceforth call them by the 

possibly less semantically prejudiced term modes, make it possible to single 

out essential as opposed to background information, to distinguish events that 

develop rather than elaborate the speaker's message, and to differentiate between 

predications with focus on the predicate from those where the focus is 

on the arguments or participants. To prove that this is so, I will briefly outline 

the formal characteristics of verb-mode suffixes, and then examine their use in 

two narrative texts.

INUKTITUT VERB MODES 47 

2. According to the position of the suffix that express them, the modes of Inuktitut 

may be divided into primary and secondary. The primary mode suffix 

precedes the secondary. For example, the relative-mode suffix -g must be followed 

by either the conjunctive suffix -a/0. the subjunctive suffix -u/0. or the 

dubitative suffix -magaat. Consequently, the relative mode may be referred to 

as primary and the others as secondary. 

The following is a list of the primary-mode suffixes in the Iglulingmiut dialect 

(Rasmussen 1930, Harper 1974, Dorais forthcoming), to which we limit 

our attention in this paper. 3 The examples are from the first-person oneplace 

4 paradigm of the verb taku- "see". Examples of primary-mode suffixes 

are in italics. The surface shape of many of these changes according to principles 

that need not detain us here. (On the phonology of Eskimo see Rischel 

1974) 

Mode Suffix Example 

Main V takuvuŋa 

Negative declarative laq takuŋŋi/aŋa 

Optative li taku/aŋa 

Imperative 0 takugit (2nd person) 5 

Participial j takujurja 

Non-future appositional llu takulluŋa 

Future appositional lu taku/urŋa 

Negative appositional na takunarŋa 

Relative g takugama 

In order to have a reasonably delimited field of inquiry I ignore the secondary 

modes altogether. Furthermore, I have found too few examples of the negative 

declarative mode to say anything significant about it, and will ignore it as 

well. (At any rate, verbs in the negative declarative seem to alternate freely 

with main-mode verbs that include the negative suffix -ggit.) Other simplifications 

in our analysis are made possible by the fact that several of the modes apparently 

differ not in their narrative function but in some other way. The 

main, optative, and imperative modes differ along the dimensions declaration/command 

and 2nd person/other persons, and we make the assumption 

that insofar as their function in the structure of text is concerned they are identical. 

Likewise, the various appositionals are considered together because 

they differ along the positive/negative dimension or in time reference only. 

The justification for assuming functional identity within these two groups are


the generalizations obtained in our analysis. The modes whose function we 

will consider are, then, the main-optative-imperative (MOI), the appositional 

modes (APP), the participial (P), and the relative (REL). 

3. To study the function of these verb modes, I have borrowed a method 

used by Lévi-Strauss in his analysis of myths. Lévi-Strauss (1963:213) proceeds 

as follows: 

The myth will be treated as an orchestra score would be if it were unwittingly 

considered as a unilinear series; our task is to reestablish the correct arrangement. 

Say, for instance, we were confronted with a sequence of the type: 

1,2,4,7,8,2,3,4,6,8,1,4,5,7,8,1,2,5,7,3,4,5,6,8...., the assignment being to 

put all the l's together, all the 2's the 3's, etc. ; the result is a chart: 

1 2 4 7 8 

2 3 4 6 8 

1 4 5 7 8 

1 2 5 7 

3 4 5 6 8 

We may do the same to a narrative text in Inuktitut, where instead of to a sequence 

of numbers we shall pay attention to a sequence of modal suffixes on 

the verb of each consecutive clause. This will make it possible to present the 

text with those verbs that have the same modal suffix appearing in the same 

column. 

Although I have studied a large number of texts, limitations of space will 

only permit me to include two: Texts 2 and 5 of Rasmussen's Iglulik Eskimo 

Texts (1930). Text 2 is a simple one and will serve to introduce the method of 

study as well as to clarify the function of the commonest modes, i.e. the mainoptative-imperative 

group and the relative. Text 5 is more complex and will 

permit an analysis of the other modes. 

In the following, each column corresponds to a mode or a mode group. 

(In the "main-optative-imperative (MOI)" group, a clause is in the main 

mode unless otherwise indicated in parentheses.) Consecutive numbers indicate 

the temporal sequence of the clauses in the text. For easy readability I 

give only the English translation, which follows Rasmussen with some modifications. 

The Inuktitut original appears in the Appendix.


Let us start, then, with Text 2. 

MOI APP REL 

3. He (2) cried out loud, 

4. "Those who play there (1) 

may they be closed over!" (OPT) 

1. Some children (1) went 

about playing as usual in a 

fissure at Nauya. 

2. A breathing-hole hunter 

(2) kept hearing them out 

there on the ice at the 

breathing hole. 

tagvali 

nauk 

5. They (1) were shut in 

/closed over by ice/ 

6. This fissure, the parents 

tried to open it. 

7. It was impossible. 

8. They (1) were hopelessly 

lost. 

9. They(l) cried unceasingly. 

10. They (1) could do nothing but keep 

looking up /out of the fissure/. 

11. They (1) could be seen from up there 

by their family. 

12. Someone said about the breathinghole 

hunter, 

13. "May the breathing-hole sealer over 

there change into frost!"

50 IVAN KALMÁR 

14. He (2) continued breathing-hole 

sealing. 

15. His (2) wife (3) worried about his 

life. 

taimannaak 

16. She (3) went out after him (2). 

17. She (3) came to him (2). 

18. He (2) was covered with frost. 

19. She (3) started to beat the frost off him. 

20. In the end she (3) finished him completely 

/i.e. nothing was left of him/. 

asuilaarŋ 

21. He (2) completely ceased to exist. 

4. A glance at this text is enough to clarify the function of the commonest 

modes — the MOI and the relative. Reading down the relative column we get 

some sense of a plot, but this column alone does not furnish us with anything 

approaching a secure understanding of the story line. On the other hand, the 

MOI column creates a fully explicit "story line", provided that 1. the reference 

of the pronominal elements translated as "he", "she", "it", etc. is known 

(coreference in the Texts is shown by numbers in parentheses), and 2. commands 

given in the optative and imperative mode are understood to be 

obeyed automatically. 

The second condition appears to be satisfied in all traditional Inuit texts. 

The curse given in the optative form in clause 4 is confirmed as effective by 

clause 5. But the wish expressed in the other optative clause, clause 13, is never 

explicitly described as having been effective — its effectiveness is assumed. 

The assumption that directly quoted wishes take place automatically is common 

not only in traditional Inuit stories but also in the folk tales of other, including 

European peoples. This much having been said, the clauses that make 

up the MOI column are easily seen as conveying the essential gist of the story. 

We establish the opposition essential/non-essential as a contrastive feature 

expressed by the opposition between the MOI and the relative modes. 

The MOI modes foreground the essential information in a story, while the relative 

mode expresses background information. 6 

It is because of its backgrounding function, perhaps, that so many of the


basic grammars claim the Inuktitut relative mode to express causation (with 

the conjunctive secondary mode), condition (with the subjunctive), or doubt 

(with the dubitative). Causation, condition, and doubt are merely some of the 

semantic characteristics of background information. In Text 2, clause 15 

could be the cause of clause 16; and clause 18 could be the cause of clause 19. 

But all the other clauses belie everything that has been said in the literature, 

for they express neither cause, nor condition, nor doubt. 

5. Having considered the relatively short and simple Text 2, we are now prepared 

to analyze a longer text in which the appositional and participial modes 

appear more frequently: Text 5 of Rasmussen's collection. 

Text 5 

MOI APP REL 

1. The foolish raven (1) 

married a goose. 

2. In fact he married two. 

3. The geese (2) would 

journey to their land-ofno-winter. 

4. The big raven was asked to 

stay at home. 

5. It was too far for him. 

6. considering how tired he 

could get. 

tagvaliguuq 

7. The geese passed over faraway 

lands. 

11. We will unite ourselves with you." 

8. "The journey is long, 

9. you will become tired 

10./When/ we return here 

(subjunctive) 

naungilaa ("but no")


asuilaaguuq 

14. He (1) was one of the group. 

17. He (1) followed them 

far behind. 

18. He (1) glimpsed them 

now and then. 

19. But he (1) was left behind. 

12. He (1) was very devoted 

to his wives. 

13. They started off. 

15. They started off to their 

land. 

16. They flew. 

20. The geese were tired. 

21. They (2) landed out 

there on the open sea. 

.22. They rested. 

23. He (1) caught up with 

them. 

24. He (1) remained hovering 

above them. 

25. They (2) rested. 

27. He (1) followad them. 26. They(2)started off again. 

28. They (2) became tired. 

29. They (2) landed on the 

sea again. 

30. He (1) remained 

hovering above them. 

31. They rested. 

32. They started off. 

33. They flew some distance 

again. 

34.They rested. 

35. He (1) just remained 

hovering above them. 

36. They rested 

37. They started off the 

fourth time.


38.They flew for the 

fourth time. 

39. They settled to rest. 

40. He was exhausted, 

41. "Two wives, place yourselves 

side by side!" 

asuilauguuq 

42.They placed themselves 

side by side. 

43, He landed on top of 

his wives. 

44. He tried to keep 

them together. 

(...) 

47.They settled. 

48. They flew some distance 

49. He (1) could barely 

keep on hovering above. 

(... a repetitious sequence with no MN clause follows ..) 

amma tagva 


side-by-side!" (IMP) 

62. They were afraid that 

they would freeze. 

63. Their older brothers 

addressed their two 

younger sisters, 

57.They (2) landed. 

58.He (1) came up to 

them. 

60. He sat down on top of 

his wives again. 

61. He wore off their 

feathers.

54 IVAN KALMÁR 

65. "He wants you to place 

yourselves together. 

66. He settles /down on you/. 

asuilauguuq 


side-by-side!" (IMP) 

asuilaguuq 

70. They placed themselves 

side-by-side 

73. He sat down onto the 

water. (Ravens cannot 

swim.) 

64. (While) their husband 

dropped behind, 

67. You should suddenly 

separate." 

68. He was very tired 

71. He sat down. 

72. They suddenly went 

their separate ways 

over the sea. 

sujuapiguuq unaa 

"Brother-in-law!" 

"Brother-in-law!" 

74. Lift me up by my chest!" (IMP) 

tagvali 

75. He was left behind. 

Reading down the various columns, we see that the relative and the main 

modes have the same function as in Text 2, with perhaps some problems in the 

"main" column. 

One of the problems concerns stretch 12: "We will unite ourselves with you".


To make the full sense out of this statement, we must consider also stretch 11, 

which identifies the time-condition for the reunion proposed in stretch 12: 

"When we return here." This does not mean that stretch 11 should perhaps 

have been in a main mode. It does not express an essential event; in fact it does 

not express an event at all, but a time-condition. 

It is important to emphasize that the purpose of the mode system is not to 

present a series of main-mode verbs that can tell the story independently of 

the rest. Rather, the system distinguishes between essential and non-essential 

information. It is merely a common consequence of this that "main columns" 

of narratives read as independent stories. This consequence does not obtain 

when an essential piece of information is conditional. Its condition is presented 

"in the background column", (REL), while the conditionally valid information 

itself is in the main mode. 

Another problem is the presence of non-clausal elements, given in the 

original Inuktitut and italicized. These express the speaker's view of the story. 

Normally, they refer to his organization of the narrative into segments and 

are the equivalent of the English "and then", "well then", "all of a sudden", 

and the like. But in some cases they interfere with the story. This happens between 

clause 11 and 12, where the speaker exclaims nauŋŋilaa "but no!" implying 

not only that the raven, previously called foolish, was stubborn, but also 

that he refused the geese's advice to stay behind. This piece of essential information 

is communicated by a non-clausal element rather then by an MOI 

mode. 

But these qualifications taken care of, the MOI modes and the relative 

function in Text 5 as they did in Text 2. We can now turn to the other modes. 

Reading down the APP column does not furnish any evidence as to the function 

of the appositional modes. There is little logical or narrative coherence to 

the appositional clauses, except where they follow each other. The reason is 

that the vertical dimension in our text diagram represents the development of 

the story. But while the MOI mode (and some non-clausal elements) represent 

the essential development, and while the relative expresses background 

developments, the appositional modes express no development at all. Rather, 

they elaborate at the point of development that the story has reached by 

means of the other modes. Therefore, it is in most cases the horizontal dimension 

of the graph that must be considered. And indeed, most appositional 

clauses may be associated with a clause to their left or right. 

In the text as given above, appositional clauses are connected to the 

clauses they elaborate by arrows. In some cases several appositional clauses


elaborate each other. In those cases they may be written one below the other 

but it is not clear that here the vertical sequence expresses development. 

Rather, it is just a result of the necessity to parcel clauses out in time (by the 

speaker) and on paper (by the writer). In reality, sequences of appositional 

clauses such as 17-19 and 38-39 all elaborate at the same point in the story development. 

The elaborating function of the appositional explains why standard 

grammars say that the appositional suffix means "while" or "at the same time 

as". In some cases the translation seems forced, as in clauses 2 and 6 in Text 5. 

The common claim in the literature that appositional clauses modify a main 

clause (e.g. Bergsland 1955: sec. 31) is probably false, since semantically at 

least they can also modify a relative-mode clause or another appositional one. 

We now come to the last remaining mode, the participial. Reading down 

the "P" column, it is as if we saw a television camera focus on the reaction of 

individuals to some action taking place off screen. While the action itself is expressed 

by true verbs, the verb-like but potentially nominal participial (Bergsland 

1955:43) is used to focus on the state of the participants in the action. In 

Text 5, most participial clauses present the raven in a state of constant hovering 

above the sea while the geese land and rest. The last clause states the effect 

of the whole story on the raven : "He was left behind". (This is a frequent concluding 

device in all of Rasmussen's Texts.) 

Participial clauses, then, do not present essential developments, but they 

comment on the result events have on the state of participants. Since in most 

cases a refocusing of the narrative on a participant is not new information Paillet 

concluded that the participial expresses old information, while new information 

requires the main mode (ms, n.3). Often this is true, but only as a consequence 

of participant-focus. Elsewhere the participle expresses new but 

non-essential information, as in all of the participial clauses of Text 5. 

The distinction between the participial and the other modes is, then, one 

of participant-focus vs. event focus. 

6. I see in the above analysis the confirmation of a theory about Inuktitut 

verb modes. In this section, the theory is presented in an explicit form, followed 

by a discussion of how it may be tested. The function of Inuktitut verb 

modes is postulated as follows. Each clause may be classified as to its place in 

the discourse along three dimensions: 1. essential vs. background information; 

2. development vs. elaboration; and 3. event vs. participant focus. 7 We 

may reduce each dimension to a positive and a negative term. Background in-


formation may then be regarded as non-essential, elaboration as lack of development, 

and participant focus as the absence of event focus. This allows us to 

define only three attributes of the clause in the context of the discourse, as follows: 

Essential Information (ESS) is felt by the speaker to be a proposition without 

which the discourse would not have the characteristics of a text, in our case 

of a narrative text. The text would not "sound like a story". 

Development (DEV) is felt by the speaker to be an attribute of propositions 

that further the plot from one point to the next. 

Event-focus (EVT) is used by the speaker when he feels the predicate part of 

the proposition to be more important than the arguments. 8 

If we postulate that each of these attributes may have a positive or a negative 

value, then the following combinations are theoretically possible. 

Essential information + - - - + + 

Development + + ._ - + - 

Event focus + + + - - + 

1 2 3 4 5 6 

MOI REL APP 

Each possible combination is assigned a number. 

We see that there are eight possibilities. However, only four are actually 

realized in Inuktitut: The MOI modes express combination 1, the relative 

combination 2, the appositional combination 3, and the participle combination 

4. The other combinations are not realized. This is no accident. 

The realization of combinations 5-8 is ruled out be certain relationships 

that hold between each attribute. For example, if a clause expresses essential 

information then it also expresses event focus, because the events, not the 

state of the participants in them, is what constitutes the backbone of a narrative. 

Also, an essential event naturally describes development, not elaboration. 

And finally, any clause that describes development places the focus on 

the event and not on the participant, because development of course consists 

of events. 

Accordingly, we formulate the following laws, presented in standard logical 

notation (Laws la, 2a, and 3a are corrolaries of 1, 2, and 3, respectively): 

P


LAWS 

1. ESS EVT la. EVTESS 

2. ESS DEV 2 a . D E V E S S 

3. DEV EVT 3a. EVT DEV 

Law 1 explains why combinations 5 and 7 do not exist: if a clause is —EVT it 

must also be -ESS. Law 2 rules out 6 and 7: here -DEV "illegally" coexists 

with 4-ESS. Law 3 further helps to "outlaw" 8, which is at the same time 

-EVTand+DEV. 

7. The theory presented here leads to certain predictions about the choice of 

verb-mode suffix once the positive or negative status of a clause has been established 

along each of the dimensions, ESS, DEV, and EVT. But it is possible 

that two observers will not agree on the classification of a clause along 

these dimensions. For example, in the sequence of clauses 1-6 in text 5, the 

classification of some clauses is clear, but the classification of others is not. 

The sequence is: 

1. The foolish raven married a goose 

2. In fact, he married two. 

3. The geese would journey to their land-of-no-winter. 

4. The big raven was asked to stay at home. 

5. It was too far for him. 

6. Considering how tired he could get. 

A posteriori, after examining the verb modes as they appear in the text, we can 

classify these clauses in accordance with their verb-mode markings as 

1. essential information 

2. elaboration 

3. background information 

4. essential information 

5. background information 

6. elaboration 

However, were we to classify the clauses a priori, before seeing the text, we 

might consider 2 and/or 3 essential information also. True, we can probably 

agree that in a polygamous society the fact that one has two wives as opposed 

to one is not too startling, and that the yearly migration of the geese is taken 

for granted by an Inuit audience who, moreover, may already be familiar with 

raven-marries-goose-and-flies-South stories. So we can understand why such


information may not be seen as essential. But on the other hand, we could also 

give reasons why it should be essential. Clauses 2 and 3 are examples of 

"doubtful cases" in the application of our theory. Such doubtful cases are 

common and must be discussed. 

The danger posed to the theory by "doubtful cases" is obvious. In most 

branches of descriptive linguistics ambiguity of classification is dubbed "lack 

of explicitness" and is considered a serious weakness. This however, is due to 

the fact that most branches of descriptive linguistics deal with the form, and 

not with the function of linguistic elements. 

Form is objective and fully open to observation. But function is subjective 

because it is under the control of the speaker's will. 

The form of Inuktitut verb modes is unambiguous. By its very surface 

form, we can classify a verb-mode suffix as main, optative, etc. But we cannot 

always predict how the speaker will use these forms to tag the clauses that 

make up a narrative text. For there is always the possibility that what the observer-linguist 

considers essential is not considered essential by the speaker. 

The same disagreement may arise over classifying clauses along any of the 

three dimensions postulated above. But since in the majority of cases our theory 

does help the observer to predict the speaker's choice, it would be irrational 

to invalidate the theory because of the minority of "doubtful cases" — 

at least until a more widely explanatory theory is offered in its stead. Rather, 

the clear cases should be accepted as typical. The doubtful ones should be 

seen as a source of insight into the differences between the speaker's and the 

observer's strategies for organizing discourse. In the case of clauses 2 and 3, 

for example, the difference between the Inuit speaker's classification and our 

own, if any, may be due to cultural differences in gauging the "unpredictability" 

and hence the importance as new information of such events as polygamy 

or the migration of birds. On the strength of the majority of examples in the 

texts examined, we conclude that the verb-mode suffix in clause 2 tags elaboration 

(rather than development) and that the suffix in clause 3 marks background 

information even in these "doubtful" examples, and that this constitutes 

an insight into a cultural difference between the Inuit way of viewing certain 

events and our own. 

8. Why should differences between the speaker's and the observer's strategies 

for organizing discourse arise? The question has great potential for stimulating 

research into the universals and particulars of language use. It is likely 

that there are three kinds of strategies involved: universal, cultural, and indi-


vidual. 

Universal strategies for organizing discourse are shared by all speakers 

regardless of their language. Simply by virtue of being a human being, the observer 

should have the same strategy as the speaker, even if the speaker 

speaks a language different from the observer. 

Cultural strategies are shared by members of the same culture. The observer 

will be able to predict the speaker's strategy only if he is fully familiar 

with the speaker's culture. 

Finally, individual strategies depend on the individual and can never be 

consistently predicted by the observer. 

We are treading on virgin territory, but a few tentative suggestions can already 

be made on the basis of the data under discussion here. The fact that we 

agree that the "main column" represents the bare bones of a story and the others 

do not points towards the conclusion that the principles of what constitutes 

a story are universal. However, there are some doubtful cases where information 

is to be assigned "elaboration", "background", or "participant focus" status, 

indicating that here cultural and individual strategies play a larger role. 

9. Much work lies ahead on our way to a full understanding of the function of 

linguistic elements in discourse strategies. But the case of verb modes in Inuktitut 

indicates that the theory of functions must differ from the theory of forms 

in important respects. It must admit the impossibility of fully consistent predictions. 

Here we ought to follow the example of another field that has recently 

broadened linguistic horizons. Sociolinguists realize that the sociological 

function of speech acts can consistently be classified only a posteriori (see e.g. 

Sankoff 1972: 49). We should not be surprised if the same is true of a very elementary 

linguistic function: that of recounting a series of events in the form of 

a story. 

NOTES 

1) A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Inuit Conference in Québec in October, 

1978. 

2) This is the opinion of Menovscikov (1976). 

3) The facts stated here apply more-or-less uniformly to all Eskimo languages and dialects, except 

that the form and number of appositionals varies and that in many dialects there is no distinction 

between the main and the participial mode (e.g. in Polar Eskimo — Holtved 1952 — and the 

Yup'ik languages — Reed et al. 1977). The morphological analysis here is basically that of Kalmár 

1979, but is modified under the influence of Dorais, forthcoming.


4) I prefer the term "one-place" to the more common "intransitive". One-place verb forms 

agree with only one argument in form but may figure in semantically transitive clauses; see Kalmár 

1979: sec. 13.3. 

5) The imperative has a second-person form only, so a first person form cannot be given here. 

6) This shows that in Inuktitut we have another example of a language where the essential story 

line is distinguished from the background information by verbal inflection. In Indonesian languages, 

and perhaps all others with morphologically marked aspect, the perfective verbs represent 

the story line while background information is expressed by imperfective verbs (Hopper 1979, Rafferty 

1978). 

7) Perhaps the last dimension has three rather than two terms. It is possible that the participial 

mode expresses participant focus, the other modes express event focus, and the non-clausal elements 

which inject the speaker's evaluation of the events, speaker focus. This solution might be 

considered inelegant because it extends a functional scheme that elsewhere covers only modes to 

non-clausal elements, which are outside the formal system of mode. On the other hand, perhaps the 

participial is not a mode at all but, as some have suggested, a substitute for the main-mode verb. 

The "focus" dimension would then have nothing to do with the function of modes. This problem remains 

to be investigated within a larger framework of a functional theory of Inuktitut. 

8) I am using "predicate" and "argument" in the sense of e.g. Carnap, 1921, ch. A. 

REFERENCES 

Bergsland, Knut. 1955. The Eskimo Language. Ph.D. dissertation, University 

of Olso. IDC, Poststrasse 9, Zug, Switzerland (microfiche). 

Carnap, Rudolf. 1921. Introduction to symbolic logic and its applications. 

New York: Dover Publications. 

Dorais, Louis-Jacques, forthcoming. The language of the Igloolik Inuit. Québec: 

Association Inuksiutiit Katimajiit (Université Laval). 

Egede, Paulo. 1760. Grammatica Grönlandica Danico-Latina. Copenhagen: 

Gottmann. Frid. Kisel. Available on microfiche from IDC, Poststrasse 9, 

Zug, Switzerland. 

Harper, Kenn. 1974. Some aspects of the grammar of the Eskimo dialects of 

Cumberland Peninsula and North Baffin Island. (Canada. National Museum 

of Man, Mercury Series, Ethnology Division, Paper no. 15). Ottawa: 

National Museums of Canada. 

Hopper, Paul. 1979. Aspect and foregrounding in discourse. Syntax and semantics 

vol. 12, Discourse and syntax, ed. by Talmy Givón. New York: Academic 

Press. 

Kalmár, Ivan. 1979. Case and context in Inuktitut (Eskimo). (Canada. National 

Museum of Man, Mercury Series, Ethnology Division, Paper no. 

49.) Ottawa: National Museums of Canada.


Kleinschmidt, Samuel. 1851. Grammatik der Grönlandischen Sprache. Berlin. 

Reproduced by Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, Hildesheim, W. 

Germany, 1968. 

Lehmann, Winfred. 1976. Descriptive linguistics: An introduction. 2nd edition. 

New York: Random House. 

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Structural anthropology. New York: Basic 

Books. 

Lyons, John. 1969. Introduction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge: University 

Press. 

Menovscikov, G.A. 1967. Grammatika iazyka aziatskikh eskimosov. Cast' 

II. Moscow and Leningrad: AN SSSR. 

Paillet, J-P, ms. Elementary Eskimo from a transformational standpoint. 

Rafferty, Ellen. 1978. Studies in the discourse structure of the Indonesian of 

the Chinese of Malang, East Java, Indonesia. Ph.D. dissertation, State 

University of New York at Binghamton. 

Rasmussen, Knud. 1930. Igloolik Eskimo texts. (Report of the Fith Thule Expedition 

1921-24, vol. 7) Copenhagen: Glydendalske Boghandel, Nordisk 

Forlag. 

Rischel, J0rgen. 1974. Topics in West Greenlandic Phonology. Copenhagen: 

Akademisk Forlag. 

Sankoff, Gillian. 1972. Language use in multilingual societies: Some alternative 

approaches. Sociolinguistics: Selected readings, ed. by J.B. Pride and 

Janet Holmes, 33-51. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 

Thalbitzer, William. 1911. Eskimo. Handbook of American Indian languages, 

ed. by Franz Boas, 967-1096. Washington. 

APPENDIX 

The following are Texts 2 and 5 of Rasmussen's Iglulik Eskimo Texts, in the 

original transcription. Text 2 also includes a song following the main text. The 

song is omitted here. 

TEXT 2 

1. nutArqäŋ·c·q qitEqät Atualo ŋmata tama ne quvna'luŋme na u jane. 2. nip 

Artcrc q tama-ne sikume aklume tusA·qät-alEramigit 3. tcruUlätlArpcq: 4. 

"qitiktut pavkuaqo-g/utautUrpait!" tagvale5. qo·g∫u g ∫ aulo-nmata,6. taupkua 

aŋajcrqa·ŋinit quvnaqaukauluk taman-a qu g ∫AtaugaluArLune, 7. nauk


TEXT 5


asuila u gc q 70. kativut. 71. miqiArmät 72. avikaãtlärjmatik ama-nut 73. mitlArpcq, 

sujuapigc-q una: "sakiäk! sakiäk! 74. qutuk-ut pakimin-a!" tagvale 

75. qimäktaukErujoq.

ASPECT IN CONVERSATIONAL INDONESIAN 

ELLEN RAFFERTY 

Department of South Asian Studies 

University of Wisconsin-Madison 


The foregrounding and backgrounding functions of Malay (and Indonesian) 

verbal prefixes NG-(MEN-) and DI- in narrative have been described by 

Hopper (1979) as discourse-conditioned aspect because the NG- verb form is 

associated with imperfective constructions and the DI- verb form with perfective 

constructions. Hopper's analysis is used in this paper as a base from which 

to draw comparisons and contrasts with the functions of these verbal prefixes 

in conversational Indonesian as spoken by the Chinese in East Java today. 1 

Further comparisons are made to contemporary planned, written, Indonesian 

2 in order to distinguish characteristics of foregrounding which are particular 

to narrative from characteristics which obtain in other genres of language. 

The data point out some specific variations in the function of foregrounding 

and backgrounding (or discourse-conditioned aspect) in conversation from 

the schema as presented by Hopper (1979) while strongly supporting his basic 

analysis of the aspectual functions of the verbal prefixes NG- and DI-. (See 

appendix for a definition of the prefixes.) In this paper I will assume a statistical 

correlation between perfective aspect and foregrounding, and imperfective 

aspect and backgrounding while not identifying aspect with focus. 

The purpose of this paper is to show how the encoding of the non-referential, 

aspectual meaning in Indonesian varies across genres of language and to 

suggest that the pragmatic meaning encoded on a grammatical form may 

change over time indicating an interaction between pragmatic meaning and 

grammatical form. 

The analysis presented here is based on the assumption that language is 

one of a set of semiotic systems that make up culture where all the systems are 

mutually supportive and interdependent. It is because of this interdepend-

66 ELLEN RAFFERTY 

ence that the study of language must be set within a cultural context if it is to be 

intelligible. The cultural context that provides the necessary pragmatic information 

in this study, is the text (conversation, drama or narrative). Language, 

like all symbolic systems, has both referential (semantic) meaning and non-referential 

or relational (pragmatic) meaning. The semantico-grammatical 

meaning is definable across contexts, while the pragmatic meaning is specific 

to a context, and thus more dependent upon the discourse and the nonlinguistic 

setting for its meaning. 

The remainder of this paper includes the following sections: (2) definition 

of aspect, (3) aspectual meaning of NG- and DI- verb prefixes in conversation, 

(4) the function of discourse-conditioned aspect in conversation, (5) 

aspect in contemporary narrative and drama, and (6) a summary. 

2. Definition of aspect 

Aspect is a verbal category that defines the perspective from which the 

speaker views a state/event/activity. Hopper (1979) identifies two possible 

perspectives in his discussion of the discourse functions of NG- and DI- verb 

forms in Malay narrative: 1) the perfective aspect which defines a bounded, 

completive event, and 2) the imperfective aspect that defines a durative incomplete 

activity. (See also Comrie 1976 for a similar definition.) Friedrich 

(1974) includes a third category of aspect: the perfect or stative which identifies 

an action or state as currently relevant to the present situation. (See Li, 

Thompson and Thompson 1979 for a discussion of this point.) The concern of 

this paper is to discover the encoding of the perfective and imperfective aspect 

in different genres of Indonesian. The perfect will only be mentioned briefly 

(see page 13). 

The discourse function of aspect is to call the reader's/listener's attention 

to the important points in a story, drama, or conversation and to relate states/ 

events/activities to one another within a unit of discourse by making some 

stand out while others remain in the background. In context, aspectual meanings 

are non-referential, or relational, in the sense that they do not necessarily 

reflect the actual objective duration or boundedness of a state/event/activity 

in the real world, but rather reflect the evaluation of the speaker concerning 

the relationship of one event/state/activity to other events/states/activities in 

the discourse. The retelling of a story can create new relationships, thus making 

a previously unbounded (background) event a bounded (foregrounded) 

one. Aspect in this sense is deictic because it defines the speaker's spatio-temporal 

perspective for viewing the event/state/activity.

ASPECT IN INDONESIAN 67 

Because aspect carries relational or non-referential meaning within a unit 

of discourse it may be referred to as an indexical (Silverstein 1976). This implies 

that aspectual meaning of any one utterance must be derived from the 

whole, the context, not from an isolated sentence. Studies of aspect are thus limited 

to texts (oral and written) but to date work has been done primarily with 

written texts (an exception is Rafferty 1978). Hopper's study of narrative 

(1979) finds that the perfective verbs sequence events chronologically so that 

the activity of each perfective verb must be completed before the activity of 

the next one begins. He also finds that the perfective verbs characteristically 

are dynamic, kinetic events presented in realis mode and are indispensible to 

the narrative; they advance the story line, while the actions of imperfective 

verbs are simultaneous with the actions of other verbs, cover a period of time, 

provide descriptive material, and may be in the irrealis mode. Section three 

shows how the imperfective meaning of the NG- verb and the perfective 

meaning of the DI- verb are realized in conversation, while section four examines 

the discourse function of aspect in conversation. 

3. Aspectual Meaning of NG- and DI- Verb Prefixes in Conversation 

In this section the meanings of the NG- and the DI- verb prefixes in a conversational 

context are presented in order to show the backgrounding function 

of the NG- prefix and the foregrounding function of the DI- prefix. A 

brief discussion of the aspectual meanings available for intransitive verbs 

(which cannot take the verbal prefixes NG- and DI-) is also given at the end of 

this section. 

The NG- verb form is frequently used in both main and non-main clauses 

while the DI- verb form is used primarily in main clauses. See chart below: 

NG-form DI-form Total 

Main verb 106 254 360 

Non-main verb 113 15 128 

Total 219 269 488 

The NG-form is used:48.4% of the time as a main verb. 

51.6% of the time as a non-main verb. 

The DI-form is used: 94.4% of the time as a main verb. 

5.6% of the time as a non-main verb.


A. The NG-Verb 

The discussion below shows that NG- form is used in both main and nonmain 

clauses to describe and support the assertions which are made by the DIform 

of the verb. Several characteristics which are shared by all NG- verb 

clauses are as follows: (1) the agent/actor/experiencer is the grammatical subject 

and the theme of the clause (see appendix for a definition of terms), (2) 

the word order is usually Agent/Verb/Complement, (3) the NG- verb implies 

the existence of an agent, but not of a patient and (4) the patient, if present, is 

usually indefinite. In only 20 utterances (or 9.6%) out of 209 utterances was 

there a definite complement to the NG- verb. The indefinite patient or a total 

lack of a patient is the most distinguishing characteristic of the NG- clause. If 

the NG- verb stands alone without an agent, the agent is understood from the 

context because the NG- prefix implies the existence of the actor as grammatical 

subject. See the examples below: 

1. /m-baung./ 

NG-bark 

The dog is barking.' 

2. /me-mikir-i?l 

NG-think-over 

'Are you worried?' 

On the other hand, if there is no patient in a clause with an NG- verb, the verb 

is interpreted as intransitive. The verb may be grammatically intransitive or 

may merely be used intransitively in the specific sentence. See the examples 

below: 

3. /ya, itu m-laku.l 

yes, that NG-run 

'Yes, that runs.' 

The verb /m-laku/ 'run' is always intransitive. 

4. /yang me-motret ndaq koh min?/ 

one who NG-photograph really brother Min 

'The one who will photograph, is it really brother Min?' 

The verb /me-motret/ 'photograph' is used intransitively here although it can 

take an object. The NG- form of the verb is chosen because the important 

piece of information being communicated is the activity of the verb, not the 

identity of the object. This prefix indicates that the verb is active, but not that 

it is transitive; thus an actor is always implied, but not necessarily a complement.


The NG- main verb usually relates the following: (1) a present continuous 

event, (2) a repeated event, or (3) a description of a general or contingent 

condition; all of which characterize imperfective aspect. Below are some examples 

of the NG- main verbs along with an explanation of the imperfective 

meaning of each: 

5. /pas amblas barangkali m-balèq-no honda/é dèqé/ 

completely disappear probably NG-return-obj. Honda-def. he 

'(He) completely disappeared. He's probably returning the Honda.' 

A man has come into a photographic store and asks for a worker. The woman 

in the store responds with the above sentences. She is explaining why the 

worker is not present by telling what he is doing now. (I will discuss the relationship 

between mode and aspect in section four, page 79). The activity of returning 

the Honda is simultaneous with the present conversation; it has begun, 

but no end is given. The imperfective aspect is appropriate in this situation 

to express the durative quality of the activity of returning and to give simultaneity 

with the conversation between the woman and the customer. 

Another situation in which the imperfective aspect is appropriate is when 

the activity of the verb is repeated. 

6. /baru-baru ini berapa kali meng-ada-kan rapat paq?/ 

new-new now how many times NG-is-obj. meeting Sir 

'Just recently now how many times have we had a meeting Sir?' 

The speaker is annoyed with the number of meetings which have just occurred. 

He wants to emphasize the continuing nature of this state of affairs, 

and he is probably trying to prevent future meetings. To present this situation 

in the perfective aspect would be inappropriate since the calling of meetings 

remains a present state. 

A general condition that is in effect for a period of time is also presented 

in the imperfective aspect. Only when the speaker wants to define one occurrence 

of a condition is the perfective aspect used because the perfective aspect 

implies that the condition is considered as a complete unit, not a continuing 

state. 

7. /m-laku tapi iku pita-é kosong./ 

NG-run but that tape-def. empty. 

'(It) runs but that tape is blank.' 

Sentence 7 reports that although it appears that the machine doesn't work because 

there is no sound, it does work. The problem is that the tape is blank. 

The verb 'run' is durative because the sentence is reporting a condition which 

continues and which is simultaneous with the activity of other verbs in the dis-


course. 

A condition that is contingent upon some other action is often presented 

in the imperfective aspect. 

8. /lèq sembilan puluh cuci-é m-bayar tiga ratus./ 

if 9 10 wash-def. NG-pay 3 100 

'If the wash is 90 then the total bill will be 300.' 

The action of paying is not a realized event, but a condition that is generally 

true, thus the imperfective is used. 

Non-main clauses and phrases use the NG- form of the verb much more 

frequently than the DI- form. Some of the important non-main uses include 

relative clauses, objects of prepositions and complements of verbs. 

In the conversations examined there were 32 occurrences of a relative 

clause containing a prefixed verb; 26 NG- verb forms and 6 DI- verb forms. 

Since the relative clause functions as a definite NP or as a modifier of an NP, it 

is appropriate that the NG- form of the verb be used more frequently because 

the clause presents descriptive presupposed material supporting not asserting 

an event. Indonesian allows relativization only on grammatical subjects, but 

the grammatical subject may be either the complement or the agent of the 

verb. See the examples below: 

9. /seng n-jalan-o kolt, ini putu-é tante./ 

one who NG-drive-obj. bus this grandchild of Aunt 

The one who drives the bus, that is the grandchild of Auntie.' 

10./dosen yang ng-ajar itu sereng ndaq datang./ 

teacher who NG-teach that often not come. 

The teacher who teaches that, often doesn't come. 

ll./Soal-nya yang di-persoal-kan itu dulu itu 

problem-def. that which DI-cause problem that before that 

ruangan-nya/ 

room-def. 

The problem which caused the trouble before was the room.' 

The NG- form of the verb is used to complement a main intransitive verb 

when the grammatical subject of both verbs is the same NP. (See the appendix 

for a definition of grammatical subject.) See examples below: 

12./sdara sdara-ku jangan terlalu susah me-mikir-kan perkara 

sibling sibling-my don't too sad NG-think-obj. matter 

harta benda./ 

wealth thing


'My brothers and sisters don't be too sad worrying about the things of 

the world.' 

13./dia sudah naiq men-jadi pemimpin./ 

He already rise NG-become leader 

'He has already risen to become leader.' 

The NG- verb form can follow the DI- form when the grammatical subjects 

are the same. For example: 

14./dia di-tindis men-delep.l 

He DI-oppress NG-hide 

'He was oppressed and then hid.' 

The subject of the first verb is the patient, and the subject of the second is the 

agent. In this situation a NG- verb may follow a transitive verb (DI). (For a 

more detailed discussion of this relation between verb forms and grammatical 

subjects see Rafferty 1978.) 

The NG- verb form can also be the object of a preposition. See the examples 

below: 

15./ada alat di-situ buat meng-ukur ke-cepet-an./ 

there is instrument at there for NG-measure nom-fast 

'There is an instrument there for measuring the speed.' 

16./koh min untuq m-ajang./ 

brother Min for NG-prepare 

'Brother Min is to make the preparations.' 

A noun does not assert an event and by its nature is durative, thus it is appropriate 

that the NG- form of the verb is used in nominal constructions. This lends 

support to my claim that the NG- prefix marks the imperfective aspect. 

In summary, the NG- verb is used when the activity of the verb is regarded 

as on-going, not complete and when a nominal is required. 

B. The DI- Verb 

The functions of the DI- verb form in discourse are much more limited 

than those of the NG- form. In 94.4% of the occurrences the DI- verb is a main 

verb which asserts an event (of the present, past or future). The word order is 

Verb-Agent-Object when the object is new information and Object-Verb- 

Agent when the object is old information. (See appendix for definitions of 

new and old information.) Below are some examples of the DI- form used to 

assert the main event of an utterance. 

18./itu saq kèkèh-é di-tinggal amblas./ 

that one lot-def. DI-leave disappear 

'He left all that (work), just disappeared.'


19./di-borong dari malang./ 

DI-buy wholesale from Malang 

'(They) will buy (the necessities) wholesale from Malang.' 

The DI- verb is used when the speaker views the events as a complete unit 

which did or will occur and in so doing the speaker requests that the audience 

attend to, and believe in, the event of the DI- verb. In sentence 20 below the 

speaker concludes her directions to a young clerk: 

20./lalu lain-nya seperti kemaren, di-karet-i, nah./ 

then other-def. like yesterday DI-rubber-transitive, now 

'Now then the others, like yesterday's, put a rubber band around 

them.' 

The actions of the traffic police are being related in the next two examples: 

21./nomor-nya di-catet, langsung, telepon muka, sana 

number-def. DI-note down, right away telephone ahead there 

pos di-jaga, ya, di-stop.l 

post DI-guard,yes DI-stop 

'The number was noted down, right away they telephoned ahead, 

there the post was manned, and yes, they stopped (the culprit). 

In summary, the NG- verb is used in both main and subordinate clauses to 

present on-going activities, repeated events and general conditions. In subordinate 

constructions it is used in relative clauses, as objects of prepositions 

and as complements of stem and DI- verbs. In all of these functions the one 

characteristic which is shared is the imperfective aspect. In contrast, the Divert) 

is used to highlight and assert main events which occur almost exclusively 

in main clauses. It is impossible to 'prove' that these prefixes mark aspect 

without textual material where relationships among predicates can be examined. 

The proof of the aspectual nature of the verbal prefixes thus comes from 

the cumulative effect of evidence from many conversations in many situations. 

Intransitive verbs are highlighted in a different manner because they can 

not take the DI- verb prefix. (Only transitive verbs can take the DI- prefix.) 

Hopper (1977) found that the particle -lah was used to foreground verbs in 

classical Malay and most of the verbs highlighted in this manner were intransitive. 

See the examples below: 

22./maka tiba-tiba datang-lah sa-orang orang Melayu./ 

then suddently arrived a person Malay 

'Then suddenly a Malay person arrived.'


23./...lari-lah ia ka-atas./ 

...ran he to up 

'He ran upstairs.' 

24./ hairan-lah semua orang./ 

thus amazed all people 

'Thus all the people were amazed.' 

The word /maka/ frequently precedes the verb-lah construction indicating a 

summary or concluding statement. I suggest that this is the perfect aspect as 

discussed by Li, Thompson, and Thompson (1979), thus the intransitive verb 

which is suffixed with the -lah particle is brought into current relevance. The 

word order in these constructions is Verb-Subject which is the same word 

order which is used in conversations today to emphasize or to show strong 

emotional involvement in an event/activity/state. 3 Supportive evidence for 

the perfect aspect meaning of this word order in conversation is found in two 

facts: 1) the emphatic infix -u- usually appears in Verb-Subject word order 

(see sentence 25) ; and 2) the repetition of information which is being emphasized 

uses Verb-Subject word order (see sentence 26). 

25. /s-u-akit kepala-é./ 

ache very much head-def. 

'My head really aches now.' 

26./pegi koh min-é./ 

go brother min-def. 

'Brother Min has gone.' 

Sentence 26 gives no new information, it merely repeats what is known to let 

the interlocutor know how annoyed the speaker is and how difficult it is for her 

to do all the work alone. 

The highlighting particle -lah which is found in classical Malay is also used 

in formal written Indonesian today (see section five), although it is very rare in 

conversation today. There were only three occurrences of the -lah particle on 

a verb in a concordance of 11,500 words. 

In general, strong support for Hopper's distinction between forerounding 

and backgrounding functions of the DI- and NG- verb forms respectively 

is found in the conversational data examined here. Section four below deals 

with some specific ways in which the functions vary in conversation. 

4. The Function of Discourse-Conditioned Aspect in Conversation 

Aspect in discourse, which may be indicated by word order, morphology, 

inflection or particles, is most easily discovered in narrative because the story


line is marked by the perfective aspect. Each perfective event moves the story 

along forming a sequence of main events. The conversational data discussed 

above creates no single story line; thus, aspect serves a slightly different function. 

The most important difference between conversation and narrative is 

that the latter genre is planned and the former is not, thus allowing conversation 

to be rambling and cyclic. The use of perfectivity in conversation differs in 

several respects from its use in narrative; specifically with respect to the sequencing 

function and the realis mode. These two areas of variation are discussed 

in some detail below. 

Instead of finding a chronological sequencing of events each of which is 

complete before the next event begins, in conversation one finds only very 

short sequences with a unitary purpose and sequentiality. Even these short sequences 

are frequently interrupted by the interlocutor for clarification. Frequently 

there is no long term development of a sequence because the direction 

of the conversation rapidly changes to a new topic or returns to a previously 

discussed one. Thus, the pattern produced by the perfective verbs is circular or 

spiral, not linear. Conversational exchanges check to see if communication 

has occurred or ask for confirmation or agreement. If there has been a misunderstanding, 

information (including the perfective verb form) is restated. 

Conversation has a sensitive feedback mechanism for directing attention, 

checking on the success of communicative acts and redirecting attention 

where necessary. Because of the necessary frequent interaction between at 

least two speakers, conversations do not develop a neat unitary episode clearly 

marked by perfective verbs. The function of the perfective aspect in conversation 

is not primarily to create sequences (although it does do this for short 

sequences) but is rather to point out, or call attention to, the actions that the 

speaker regards as most important at that moment. Thus, perfectivity reflects 

emotional involvement in, belief in, or desire for, the action of the verb. Conversation 

one below demonstrates some of the functions of the perfective 

verb. 

Conversation One 

In the following stretch of conversation the woman storekeeper complains 

about her husband Min who is not working hard and who has suddenly left her 

with all the work. (The perfective verbs are in italics.) (1 = woman storekeeper, 

2 = young man) 

2. Nantiq cuci selesey dah nèq koh Min-é mau. 

Later the developing would be finished if brother Min wanted (to do it).


Pancen kurang ajar, itu. 

Really, he is impolite (inconsiderate). 

Itu saq kèkèh-é di-tinggal amblas. 

All that (work) and he left; disappeared. 

1. Peqi mana? 

Where did he go? 

2. Tadi malem itu, dia anu, pegi anu ulang taun-é arèq arèq itu Iho. 

Last night, he er, went to er, the birthday party of the kids. 

1. O. 

Oh. 

2. Sampèq pulang jam piro nggaq tau, konci-né taq suruh bawaq. Ini tadi 

I don't know when he got home, I told him to take the key. Just now 

sonder di-bangun-i pas amblas, barangkali m-balèq-no honda-é dèqé ini 

without waking me he disappeared, probably he is returning the honda, all 

uaakeh, Nes. Ya, mau apa di-tinggal ini? Tante mosoq isa bilang 

this (work) Nes. Yeah, why did he leave thus? How can Auntie say 

apa apa 

anything? 

The perfective verbs in the stretch of conversation above are: 

1. he left this work 

2. I told him to take the key 

3. he didn't wake me 

4. why did he leave 

The first occurrence of the verb 'leave' reports an action which has just 

taken place, while the second occurrence communicates the annoyance of the 

woman not another departure. The woman does not like being left with all the 

work and thus, summarizes the situation by repeating in the perfective aspect 

the verb 'leave'. The second and third perfective verbs provide a response to 

the young man's question, 'Where did he go?' A sub-plot is introduced and a 

short chronology of last night's events is given to explain what the man is doing 

now. He is returning the Honda which he borrowed last night to go to the birthday 

party. In conversation, as is evidenced in the above, the chronology as indicated 

by the perfective verb is broken in order to respond to questions, and to 

place emphasis on events in which the speaker is emotionally involved. 

Closely connected with this lack of necessary sequentialty is the fact that


the conversations examined do not abide by Grice's Cooperative Principle 

(1975) which states that, with respect to quantity, one should make a contribution 

only as informative as is required but not more than is required by the situation. 

The data investigated here demonstrates that people are frequently 

more informative than is necessary when the interlocutor is not obviously in a 

hurry and/or is a good friend. In many informal situations people converse 

about events totally unrelated to the original purpose of the conversation. I 

suggest that Grice's principle applies only to formal exchanges. The lack of 

adherence to Grice's principle is demonstrated in conversation two below. 

Conversation Two 

The setting is as follows: A young man walks into a photograph store to request 

that some film be developed and some negatives be printed. The woman 

working in the store greets him. (1 = young man, 2 = woman storekeeper) 

(Note that the woman refers to herself as Auntie.) 

2. Slamet pagi, mau afdreq a ... Nes? 

Good morning, do you want to develop (some film), Nes? 

1. Wah, kowé , waduh masaq! 

Oh, wow, you are cooking! 

2. Masaq apa kayaq gini ini? Tante ini lho, kemarin pulang, laq 

What am I cooking like that? Auntie came home yesterday, and 

k-ujan-an a... 

got caught in the rain you know. 

2. Nes, ceq gopoq-é Tante ini, sekarang suaakit kepala-é.... suakit. 

Nes, how much in a hurry Auntie is, now my head really aches....aches. 

2. Nggak karu-karu-an kayaq apa Nes kayaq gini ini? 

Nothing is in order, how can it be that things are like this, Nes? 

Seq baru bangun ada tamu, ya. 

I just got up and a guest arrived, you know. 

2. Duduq-o Nes. 

Sit down, Nes. 

1. Owe... .... memang rupa-nya apa ndaq betah sama hujan? 

Yes...oh....indeed it seems that you can't stand (getting caught in) the 

rain.


2. Iya: endaq betah sama ujan, duduq-o... anu a ... afdreq a... ? 

Yes I can't stand the rain, sit down, er, ah... do you want to develop (the 

film)? 

1. Owe, mau afdreq, Tante. koh Min-é ada? 

Yes, I want to develop (the film), Auntie. Is brother Min here? 

2. Koh Min-é pegi sebentar. 

Brother Min left for a while. 

They continue to discuss the film and then discuss Min's escapades of last night 

and his total negligence on the job. The conversation then presents a detailed 

discussion of plans for the wedding of the woman's nephew and the problems 

encountered. Finally Auntie describes the chaos in the commercial district 

during the 1965 coup. Obviously this conversation is not limited to the information 

necessary for the immediate transaction: the delivery of film to be 

printed. The conversation moves freely from one topic to another without any 

apparent constraint on quantity that Grice's Cooperative Principle predicts 

will exist. Throughout the conversation the perfective verb is used to assert 

important, complete events, but there is no development of one chronological 

sequence of events. Rather there are only short stretches where the perfective 

aspect is used to mark sequencing. 

Conversation Three 

In the next stretch of conversation the same woman, Auntie, discusses her illness 

and the remedies she has tried. Directions for the preparation and use of 

a recommended herbal remedy are then given. Note that the directions given 

in the perfective aspect do not indicate the proper sequence of events. Inquiries 

of the interlocutor use the perfective aspect and thus break the chronological 

sequence. (1 = young man, 2 = woman storekeeper) 

2. Ada orang bilang sum beli saldri, ini taq beliq-no saldri saq on. 

There's one person who told me to buy an herb, just now I bought one 

ounce of the herb. 

1. Oh, lha ada orang bilang pakèq apa? 

Oh, there is a person who says to use what? 

2. Saldri. 

The herb saldri. 

1. Saldri, ya. 

Yes, saldri.


2. Suruh di-tumbuq se-belum-é pagi se-belum-é makan itu di-minum. 

She said to pulverize it, before morning, before eating, drink it. 

1. Suruh di-tim? 

Didn't she say to steam (simmer) it? 

2. Di-tumbuq. 

She said to pulverize it. 

1. Di-tumbuq.... teros...? 

To pulverize... then...? 

2. Teros peros. 

Then squeeze it. 

1. . 

Oh. 

2. Di-ambèq air-é. 

Take the juice. 

1. Laq di-tumbuq biasa. 

Oh, just pulverize in the usual way. 

From the use of the perfective aspect in giving directions in conversation 

three, it appears that one could clearly and orderly give directions if one did 

not have to contend with the interrogation from the addressee. Yet, the presence 

of an audience who can interrupt and demand clarification is precisely 

the distinguishing characteristic of conversation. The conversation begins 

with the woman summarizing the procedure in two perfective verbs: one must 

pulverize and then drink the herb. This explanation is not explicit enough for 

the addressee ; therefore he asks if the herb is not steamed or simmered before 

drinking. He wonders how one can drink pulverized herbs. The woman then 

supplies the information that after pulverising the herb one squeezes out the 

juice. Despite the fact that the speaker returns to an activity already discussed 

in the perfective aspect, the verb remains in the perfective aspect. Even in the 

question (Suruh di-tim?) the perfective aspect is used to indicate that the 

speaker believes his statement is correct. The result is that a simple question 

becomes a negative tag question. 

The perfective aspect in conversation does not sequence activities as it 

does in narrative because the objective of conversation is immediate understanding 

which necessitates interruption and clarification. The perfective aspect 

focuses attention on the one activity which is most important at the moment. 

If communication fails the utterance is repeated. The repeated perfec-


tive verbs are not understood as sequential events (as they are in a narrative) 

but as completive events that are important in the conversation and that define 

the topic/situation under discussion. 

The second difference in function of the perfective aspect in conversation 

that distinguishes it from perfective aspect in narrative is its relationship to 

mode. It has been noted that the perfective verbs in narrative are characteristically 

realis in mode (Hopper 1979), whereas in the conversation examined 

many perfective verbs are irrealis in mode. (See Wallace 1977 for a discussion 

of mode and aspect in Jakarta Malay.) As can be seen in the examples below, 

mode and aspect interact but do not coincide in conversation. Modality expresses 

the speaker's belief in, or desire for, the factuality of the activity of the 

verb and spans a continuum from the certain to the hypothetical. The more 

certain of, or desirous for, the event the more likely it is that the event will be 

in the DI- form. On the other hand, the less certain, or less desirous of the activity, 

the more likely it is that the verb will be in the NG- form. The examples 

below illustrate the interaction of mode and aspect in Indonesian conversation. 

27./seneng-é nèq iso ng-anter-no./ 

happy-def. if able NG-accompany-obj. 

'(I would be) happy if (I) could accompany (my sister).' 

In sentence 27 the speaker uses the NG- form to lament the fact that she is not 

able to accompany her sister to the next city. To emphasize her perception of 

permanency in her condition of immobility, she reports it in the imperfective 

aspect. 

28./nèq di-tuntot mereka bakal berapa angka-nya mesti./ 

If DI-demand they future how much budget-def. must 

Tf they ask us how much our budget is, we must have it ready.' 

In sentence 28 the DI- form is used in a conditional clause in an effort to persuade 

the addressee to draw up a budget for the organization because the 

budget is a prerequisite for obtaining funding for the next year. To add urgency 

and emphasis to the situation the speaker uses the perfective aspect. The 

perfective aspect in conversation calls for the hearer's attention and consideration, 

but does not necessarily reflect the realis mode. 

Another example of when the perfective aspect is used with an irrealis activity 

is given below: 

29./entiq lèq isa taq-kerjaq-no./ 

later if can I-work on-obj. 

'Later if I can I'll work on it.'


Sentence 29 is an answer to a request for help. Even though the verb follows a 

conditional clause it takes the DI- form in order to emphasize the speaker's 

commitment and desire to do the work, if at all possible. It is much more polite 

to respond with the DI- form in this situation than in the NG- form. The perfective 

aspect highlights and foregrounds the activity of the verb, it makes the 

verb more transitive and implies that the action is likely to occur or at least that 

the speaker wants the action to occur. (See Hopper and Thomspon 1980 for a 

discussion of the relationship between perfectivity and transitivity.) One may 

thus predict a statistical correlation between perfective aspect and realis mode 

but there are many exceptions in conversation. 

5. Aspect in Contemporary Narrative and Drama 

The encoding of the perfective aspect in contemporary narrative and drama 

presents a significantly different pattern from the one found in conversation 

and thus provides evidence for change and/or variation in language. Sections 

from a narrative and a drama are given in this section. (See Note two.) 

The aspect in contemporary narrative is presented to show that aspect or 

foregrounding is marked in a similar manner as it was in the classical Malay example 

discussed by Hopper (1977), that is by using the -lah particle and Divert) 

form. Below are some parts of a narrative synopsis of the Chinese folk 

tale Sam Pek Ing Tay. (Foregrounded verbs are in italics.) 

Pada suatu hari di sebuah kota di kerajaan Hancu Kota hidup-lah 

Once upon a time in the city of the kingdom of Hancu Kota there lived 

gadis dengan papanya. Gadis itu bernama Ing Tay. Ing Tay me-rasa sangat 

a girl with her father. This girl was named Ing Tay. Ing Tay felt very 

sedih, dia tidak bisa makan, tidak bisa tidur karena dia ingin melanjutkan 

sad, she could not eat, or sleep because she wanted to continue 

sekolahnya ke Hancu Kota. 

her schooling in Hancu City. 

Later on in the story: 

Tetapi achirnya di-setuju-i juga karena me-lihat Sam ingin sekali 

But in the end they agreed too because they saw that Sam wanted very 

untuk ber-sekolah. berangkat-lah mereka ber-sama sama ke Hancu 

much to go to school. So they set out together for Hancu 

Kota. 

Kota.


Later: 

Pada suatu hari datang-lah guru Sam dan Ing Tay dengan membawa 

Then one day the teacher of Sam and Ing Tay came carrying 

sepucuk surat dari papa Ing Tay yang isinya mengabarkan bahwa Ing 

a letter from Ing Tay's father which related that Ing 

Tay di-suruh pulang karena papa Ing Tay sakit. 

Tay was ordered to come home because the father of Ing Tay was sick. 

berpisah-lah Sam Pek dan Ing Tay. 

Thus Sam and Ing Tay were separated. 

The transitive verbs are foregrounded by taking the DI- verb form; and 

the intransitive verbs by taking the particle -lah and the word order Verb-Actor 

instead of Actor-Verb as is usual for intransitive verbs. In this narrative 

there are 36 foregrounded verbs: 17 are DI- verbs and 19 are verbs with the 

particle -lah. Clearly the intransitive verbs are just as capable of being highlighted 

or made relevant as transitive ones. It is interesting to note that the 

verbs in this narrative are sequential and realis and thus differ from perfective 

and perfect aspect verbs in conversations. 

The drama appears to have similarities with both conversation and narrative. 

Drama is similar to conversation in its lack of sequentiality of perfective 

verbs and its admission of both realis and irrealis mode in perfective verbs. In 

drama, as in conversation, the -lah particle is not used to foreground intransitive 

declarative verbs. Instead the -lah particle is suffixed to the imperative 

verb (transitive and intransitive) and in this form functions as a foregrounded, 

perfective or perfect verb in drama. It is interesting to note that in conversation 

there is an identification between the DI- perfective form for transitive 

verbs and the imperative of transitive verbs which is also the DI- verb form 

with no agent expressed. This imperative form is considered more polite than 

the simple imperative because it is a less direct command (Let it be done rather 

than do it.). The same DI- verb (with no agent) is used in conversation in a 

declarative mood and perfective aspect when the agent is inferrable from the 

context. Thus, the polite imperative and the agentless perfective in conversation 

are homophonous, while in drama the imperative with the -lah particle 

functions as a perfective verb to move the story along. 

In the drama examined there were 40 imperative forms, 13 of which occurred 

with the -lah particle. There were also 36 DI- verbs used to express perfective 

aspect. Perhaps the reason for the frequency of the imperative form in


this drama is a result of the significant differences in social status among the 

actors. The drama concerns guerrilla activity during the war for independence. 

Orders are given by a general with the implication that the orders are 

carried out. Thus, the imperative forms imply completion of the events and 

move the story along. When the narrator reports events he does not use the 

imperative but rather the DI- form as is used in narrative. The encoding of 

perfective aspect thus reflects the speaker's spatio-temporal relation to the 

event and so one would expect style and genre to affect encoding of aspect. 

Another way in which the drama is similar to conversation and dissimilar 

to narrative is in the lack of sequentiality of perfective verbs. The occurrence 

of repetition is based on the oral nature of the drama. Drama must inform 

people of events at different times because all of the actors are not on stage 

throughout the performance, while in conversation the lack of sequentiality is 

a result of lack of understanding or interruptions from the physical and/or social 

environment. Dramas and conversations use oral language and have several 

speakers which necessitates several perspectives. This absence of the single 

omniscent storyteller and the absence of the ever-present reader (in written 

language) means that drama and conversation must shift perspective for 

two reasons: (1) the speakers and interlocutors change, and (2) the audience 

may change, may not be attentive, or may demand further clarification. The 

shifting perspective means that there cannot be one set of sequential events 

that outline the story line. Below are some excerpts from the drama. 

Orang Belanda: Aku telah mendapat kabar bahwa orang orang Gerilya 

Dutchman: I have received news that the guerrillas 

Markas Gerilya 

Guerrilla Camp 

Wijoseno: 

menyusun kekuatannya untuk merobohkan permerintahan 

are arranging their strength to collapse the government of 

Belanda. Dari pada nanti menjalar kedesa lain alangkah 

the Dutch. Rather than later spread to other villages it's 

baiknya saya laporkan kepada Jendral di Batavia. 

better I report to the general of Batavia. 

Anak-anak-ku kalian semua, kau sebagai pejuang, 

My men, all of you, you as fighters, 

korbankan-lah jwa raga-mu demi membela nusa dan 

sacrifice your soul and body for the


Later: 

Harjo: 

bangsa. Jangan gentar menghadapi serangan, maju 

homeland. Don't tremble when facing the battle, go forward. 

terus. Turunkan bendera merah putih biru, dan naikkan 

always. Bring down the red, white and blue flag, and raise 

bendera merah putih lambang bangsa Indonesia. 

the red and white flag the symbol of the Indonesian people. 

pikirlah dulu, kalau memang kamu masih tetap ikut 

So think (it over) first, if indeed you still want to follow 

ikutan seperti orang gerilya tetap hidupmu miskin saja. 

along like a guerrilla then your life will remain in poverty. 

besok antara jam delapan pagi pergi-lah ke Tangsi. 

So tomorrow about eight o'clock in the morning go to the 

camp. 

The examples above show the frequent use of the imperative with and without 

the -lah particle. The imperative reports events in the story just before they 

occur on stage. It moves the story along and thus serves the function of a perfective 

verb. As might be expected, the events may be reported in a DI- form 

verb when a new actor enters. For example, the capture of Yanto is reported 

when it occurs, back at camp, and then again when people of another village 

learn of the news. This repetition of events, which is also characteristic of conversation, 

disallows sequentiality of perfective verbs. 

The illocutionary force of a speech act is not tied to the syntax or morphology 

of the utterance (Austin 1960, Ross 1970), thus it is not surprising to 

find that in different social situations and in different genres of language the 

same utterance may be interpreted differently, i.e. have different pragmatic 

meaning. Both the illocutionary force of an utterance and the aspect of a verb 

are indexicals so that their pragmatic (non-referential) meanings are dependent 

upon context. The DI- form in conversation may be interpreted as a polite 

command or as a perfective statement with an understood agent depending on 

the context of the language. Similarly the imperative may be interpreted as a 

command or as a perfective in drama. In a very real sense language understanding 

must proceed from the broadest to the smallest context; i.e. from 

knowledge of the world, the social context, the genre, the social relations of 

speakers, to the linguistic elements. In order to grasp the meaning of the indi-


vidual element one must first understand the whole of which the language is a 

part. 

The data from narrative and drama show that the perfective aspect is expressed 

by means of different grammatical constructions in different genres of 

language and in each genre it may have different concomitant characteristics. 

The imperative in drama, and perhaps in other social situations, takes on the 

function of the perfective aspect. In other situations, such as conversation, the 

perfective form of the verb is used to express an imperative. It appears that 

there is a natural category which includes imperative mood and perfective aspect 

(i.e., a focusing function). The similarity of these grammatical categories 

may be the definiteness inherent in both categories. (See Hopper 1979:10-13 

for a discussion of the identity of the focusing function of the particle -lah with 

the preterite function of -lah.) 

6. Summary 

The goal of this paper has been the analysis of aspect in conversational Indonesian 

and its variance from aspect as expressed in other genres. It has been 

shown that in conversation no one sequence is marked by the perfective verbs 

and that the irrealis mode is tolerated in the perfective aspect. These characteristics 

were also found to hold true in drama. In conversation perfective aspect 

is indicated by the DI- prefix on transitive verbs and the perfect aspect by 

a Verb-Subject word order with intransitive verbs clauses. In drama perfectivity 

is carried by the imperative as well as the DI- verb form. An interesting 

category is noted in the identity of the imperative mood and perfective aspect 

in both conversation and drama. 

A more general aim of this paper was to demonstrate the important role 

of context in linguistic analysis. For the anthropologist, the area of intersection 

between formal grammar and pragmatics yields highly interesting connections 

and interactions between language and other aspects of social and 

cultural behavior. Through it, valuable material for an understanding of the 

internal structure of language and the external relations with cultural rules of 

the society is provided. 

NOTES 

1) The field research for this paper was conducted in the district of Malang, East Java, Indonesia 

during the years 1975 and 1976 with the financial support from the Social Science Research Council 

and Fulbright Hays. I am grateful to Paul Hopper for comments and suggestions on major sections 

of this paper, but I am solely responsible for the contents of the article.


2) All data expressed in this paper comes from the people of the Malang district of East Java. 

The conversational data comes from a concordance of ten conversations recorded by, and in, the 

Chinese community of Malang. The ten conversations consist of 11,500 lecixal items. The narrative 

data is from a synopsis of a Chinese folk tale written by a woman who worked for me. The drama is 

the creation of a man who worked for me who is also an actor. Perhaps this reflects the structure of 

oral literature more directly than written drama because the man related the play and then transcribed 

it only upon my request. Prior to this time there was no written copy. 

3) The word order is subject-verb when the emphatic particle -pun is attached to the subject. For 

example: 

Tuan Raffles-pun men-dapat-lah bau durian itu. 

Then Mr. Raffles-even NG-got odor durian that 

Then even Mr. Raffles got the odor of that durian/ 

This fact was pointed out to me by Alton Becker. 

Semantic Roles of NPs: 

APPENDIX 

Actor - is the volitional, active, NP of an intransitive verb. 

Agent - is the volitional NP of a transitive verb. An agent causes or initiates 

an activity that affects another NP. 

Experiencer - is one of the arguments of a semi-transitive verb. The experiencer 

is animate, and does not will the event or state signaled by the 

verb, but rather undergoes or experiences it. The absence of volition 

distinguishes the experiencer from the actor. 

Complement - is an object of the verb. It may be the referent or the patient. 

Informational Categories: 

Given - is the information which has been explicitly or implicitly provided 

by the linguistic and/or social context. It is definite and referential. 

New - is the information that has not been defined by the context. It is indefinite. 

Subjects: 

Grammatical subject - is the one obligatory NP of a predicate, it is the NP 

that agrees with the verb or is marked by the verb. It is also the referentially 

prominent NP.


Semantic subject - is a cover term for the animate NP of a predicate. It is 

the actor, agent, or experiencer. 

Referential subject - is the theme (defined below). 

Thematic Structure: 

Theme - is the one obligatory NP of a clause. It is that NP which has the 

least amount of new information, and it is often given information. The 

theme is the topic when the topic and subject are expressed by one lexical 

item. 

Rheme - is the item of an utterance with the most amount of new information. 

It is the predication which is attributed to the theme. 

Prefix Abbreviations: 

NG- is the prefix abbreviation that indicates that the verb is active, that the 

grammatical subject is the semantic subject, and that the aspect is imperfective. 

DI- is the prefix abbreviation for the set proclitic pronouns of transitive 

verbs. The set includes /di-/ he or any inferable person, and /taq-/I, /ku- 

/I, /kau-/ you. The DI prefix indicates that the grammatical subject is 

the complement and that the aspect is perfective. 

Pragmatics - the study of the use of signs in context, the study of indices 

that are only referential when in context. Pragmatic meaning is non-referential 

across contexts. 

Semantics - the study of the signification of signs that is appropriate across 

contexts. This requires the decontextualization of signs. Semantic 

meaning is referential across contexts. 

REFERENCES 

Austin, J.L. 1960. How to Do Things With Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 

Chafe, Wallace L. 1976. Givenness, Contrastiveness, Definiteness, Subjects, 

Topics, and Point of View. In: Subject and Topic. Charles Li (ed.). New 

York: Academic Press. 

Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Friedrich, Paul. 1974. On Aspect Theory and Homeric Aspect. IJAL, 40.4, 

Part 2, memoir 28.


Grice, Paul H. 1975. Logic and Conversation. In: Syntax and Semantics Vol. 

3. Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan (eds.). New York: Academic Press. 

Hopper, Paul J. 1977. Some Observations on the Typology of Focus and Aspect 

in Narrative Language. NUSA, Miscellaneous Studies in Indonesian 

and Languages in Indonesia. Vol. 4, p. 14-25. 

-—. 1979. Aspect and Foregrounding in Discourse. In; T. Givon, ed., The 

Flow of Discourse. New York: Academic Press. 

Hopper, Paul J. and Sandra A. Thompson. 1980. Transitivity in Syntax and 

Discourse. Language 56,2:251-299. 

Keenan, Elinor. 1977. Why Look at Planned and Unplanned Discourse? Unpublished 

paper presented at UCLA Symposium on Discourse and Syntax, 

November, 1977. 

Li, Charles, Sandra Thompson and R.M. Thompson. 1979. The Discourse 

Basis of the Perfect Aspect: The Mandarin particle le. Paper presented at 

Tense/Aspect Symposium, May 4-6,1979 at UCLA. 

Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics, Volumes 1 and 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press. 

Rafferty, Ellen. 1982. Discourse Structures of the Chinese Indonesian of Malang, 

East Java. In: NUSA Linguistic Studies in Indonesian and Languages 

of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia. 

Ross, John R. 1970. On Declarative Sentences. In R. Jacobs and P. Rosenbaum 

(eds.), Readings in English Transformational Grammar. Boston: 

Ginn. 

Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Shifters, Linguistic Categories and Cultural Description. 

In: Meaning in Anthropology. Basso and Selby (eds.). Albuquerque, 

New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press. 

Tyler, Stephen A. 1978. The Said and the Unsaid: Mind, Meaning, and Culture. 

New York: Academic Press. 

Wallace, Stephen. 1977. Voice, Mode, or Aspect? Unpublished paper to appear 

in Frans Van Coetsem and Linda Waugh (eds.). Cornell Contributions 

in Linguistics, Vol. 2.

II. THE CREATION OF TENSE AND ASPECT

UNIVERSALS OF ASPECT AND PARTS OF SPEECH: 

PARALLELS BETWEEN SIGNED AND SPOKEN LANGUAGES 

LLOYD B. ANDERSON 

In this paper I compare grammatical-category systems of signed languages 

and spoken languages. There are of course superficial differences of 

channel (hand-to-eye vs. mouth-to-ear). But once we penetrate beyond this 

surface, we often find identical patterns. It is reasonable to argue that language 

structure is very strongly shaped by universals of the human condition: 

how we think and what we want to talk about. The different channels are secondary, 

l adapted by people to those practical functions. 

There is a tendency in linguistics to prefer elegant and symmetrical analyses. 

This is legitimate if it reflects some kind of psychological reality, the organizing 

habits of the unconscious human mind. But there is the constant 

danger that "elegance" is simply an esthetic judgement of the linguist, that the 

regularities are imposed by the linguist, not found in the data. 

What about the areas where Nature is really not symmetrical? 

In typological comparison of languages, the patterns we discover often 

are not symmetrical. They are confirmed as real by their recurrence in language 

after language. Comparison of spoken and signed languages can be especially 

valuable because the parallels are so surprising at first, and seem so 

automatic and natural after we have worked with them. The challenge of finding 

these parallels produces important insights into the nature of human language 

in general. So we can often learn more by studying a sign language than 

by studying one more spoken language. 

Here we will survey several categories in the areas of verbal aspect and 

the part-of-speech differences between verbs, adjectives, prepositions, and 

nouns. The information from sign languages integrates well with what we already 

know from grammatical typology of spoken languages. It helps us to develop 

a framework of substantive universals of human language. The comparisons 

also help us to write grammars of sign languages, a matter of great practi-

92 LLOYD . ANDERSON 

cal importance to deaf people. 

1. Reduplications: spoken analogs of signed repetition and two-hand-active 

signs 

Spoken languages use a variety of reduplicative forms in word-formation 

and inflectional categories. So do the signed languages we know most about 

(principally American Sign Language, ASL). Comparison reveals correspondences 

in detail. There is a division into two basic types, one expressing meanings 

in the area of verb aspects, the other expressing 'intensive' meanings or 

forming derived verbs. These types differ in their surface forms. There are 

further divisions between different kinds of aspectual meanings. 

We have enough information on the spoken languages of Micronesia to 

undertake a comparison with ASL. For the area of reduplications, dominant 

form-meaning relationships are summarized in Table 1. (data of Jackson, 

Rehg,&Sugital977). 2 

1. Root tang 'to cry' 

2. Continuous CV-Root taa-tang 'to be crying' Gilbertese 

(Progressive-Durative) 

Activity Root liw 'to scold' 

(Intransitivizer) CV-Root 1-liw 'to be angry'Marshallese 

Root tuhlak 'to jerk' 

3. Iterative CVC-Root tuhl-tuhlak 'to jerk repeatedly' 

Kusaien 

4.Perseverative, CVC-CVC-Root roar-roar-roar 'to continue to shudder' 

Prolongational 

Mokilese 

CVV-CVV-Root lai~lai-lait 'to be still fishing' 

Pingilapese 

Table 1. Aspectual uses of reduplication in Micronesian languages 

Similar form-meaning relationships occur in ASL. These aspectual uses 

of reduplication are superimposed on a distinction of inherent (lexical) aspect. 

Many verbs have two basic forms, one punctual (as 'take a look at') and

SIGNED AND SPOKEN LANGUAGES 93 

one durative (as 'be observing/gazing at'). Such a double paradigm is in Figure 

1., where rows numbered (1-2-3-4) correspond to the rows of Table 1.. The 

punctual/durative split was first discussed by Fischer (1973), and later extended 

by Klima and Bellugi (1979:267) and especially by Supalla and Newport 

(cited there). The terminology here is chosen to conform to what is usual 

for spoken languages 3 rather than to Klima and Bellugi. The analysis also differs 

slightly from theirs. 4 

Punctual 

'look-at, 

*take a look' 

(short linear 

movement in 

direction 

fingers point) 

1. 

2. 

Durative 

'look-at, 

*observe, gaze-at' 

(no motion in 

direction 

fingers point; 

set-in-place) 

Uniform Durative 

'gaze-at, *watch' 

(small circles 

at smooth rate) 

Iterative Punctual 

'watch regularly' 

(rapid, nontense 

repetitions) 

3. 

Perseverative Punct 

'look-at again and 

again' 

(tense end-marked 

repetitions, slow 

elliptical return) 

4. 

Perseverative 

Durative 

'look-at for a 

long time' 

(continuous 

elliptical slow 

repetitions) 

© 1978 Ursula Bellugi 

Figure 1. Aspectual paradigm for take-a-look-at (Punctual) 

and gaze-at/observe (Durative)

94 LLOYD B. ANDERSON 

1. Stative 

(derived) 

Uninflected sign meaning 'be sick' 

2. Continuous 

Predispositional aspect (circular modulation) 

3. Iterative 

Punctual 

4. Perseverative 

Durative 

Frequentative aspect (marcato modulation) 

Continuative aspect (elliptical modulation) (three repetitions) 


Figure 2. Temporal contours of some reduplicative aspects in ASL 

(terminology of this paper on the left; 

of Salk Institute on the right) 

The temporal contours of four ASL inflections are in Figure 2.. The Perseverative 

(Durative) form has the longest total time span just as did the Perseverative 

in Micronesian languages (Table 1.). The ASL Perseverative in 

normal form 5 also has three repetitions of the main stroke (with two intervening 

recovery-strokes, see Figure 1.), again like the three repetitions of Micronesian. 

A central point of this paper is that such parallels are not simply 

chance: they are numerous, and result from universais of the human use of 

language. 

Unlike ASL, English is not an aspect-based language, and does not have 

productive reduplicative forms within words. But still we can find parallels. 

The ASL Perseverative has a particular rhythm, with pauses after each main 

stroke. In the forms of Figure 1., the hand returns to the starting point for each 

repetition. In a third form the hand does not return, but the rhythmic structure 

is the same. English expressions of similar meanings show this same 6 

rhythm, as shown in Table 2..


ASL type 

English translation-equivalents 

(a) Return to →/ 'to look at it again, and again, and again' 

starting →/ 'he worked, and worked, and worked (but 

point → still it wasn't finished)' 

(b) Successive → / 'to fly on, and on, and on' 

advances →/ 'to sail on, and on, and on' 

Table 2. Perseverative reduplication rhythms in ASL and in English 

In English, the Perseverative form can be used with nouns as well as 

verbs: 'As they drove on, they came to house after house after house, but 

there was nobody home'. The nouns used this way seem to refer to events in 

time rather than to mere objects. The same is true of ASL (Bellugi, personal 

communication). Like English 'egg, after egg, after egg', the ASL [ egg / egg / 

egg ] with Perseverative rhythm cannot refer to a heap of many eggs present at 

one time in a basket. This confirms the parallel: the Perseverative categories 

of English and ASL are alike in function and in form (rhythm, possibility of 

three repetitions). 

In Micronesian reduplications, the Continuous form had open syllables 

(CV-) while the Iterative and Perseverative had closed syllables (CVC-). This 

may have an analog in ASL, in that the Continuous has no clear division between 

one stroke and the next, while the Iterative and Perseverative Punctual 

clearly complete the motion and stop before returning to repeat. Even in 

the Perseverative Durative, the main strokes move rapidly, the recovery 

strokes more slowly, as seen in the stroboscopic stopped-motion drawings of 

Figure 2. (the main stroke of 'sick' is faster near the forehead, the speed shown 

by wider spacing of the lines). 

Micronesian aspectual reduplications (Table 1.) are expressed by prefixing 

a repeating syllable before the root. Micronesian languages also have 

another kind of reduplication in which a repeating syllable is suffixed after the 

root. This is used as a verb-deriving process and for some Intensives (Table 

3.). This Intensive form can have the Continuous CV- reduplication prefixed 

in addition, conveying meanings like 'always' or 'covered with'.


Verbderivation; 

Intensive 

Root-CVCV 

jiwij 'shoes' Noun Marshallese 

jiwij—wij 'to wear shoes' Verb 

pwirej 'dirt' Noun Mokilese 

pwirej-rej 'dirty' Adjective 

matoa 'hard, firm' Adjective Gilbertese 

matoa—toa 'very hard,firm' Intensive 

Intensive + CV-Root-CVCV ka-kab'aat-at' 'to be always smoking' Marshallese 

Continuous k'- k'ilab-lab 'to be always at the club' 

k- kewel—wel 'to be covered with loose hair' 

Table 3. Intensives and combined uses of reduplication in Micronesian languages 

Like Micronesian languages, ASL distinguishes between aspectual reduplications 

and intensive (and verb-deriving) reduplications. ASL can also 

combine the two much as in the type [CV-Root-CVCV] of Micronesian. The 

closest match seems to be an ASL form with two hands in alternating motion, 

where the smooth cycling corresponds to the Continuous inflection (Micronesian 

prefixai CV-), and the use of two active hands instead of only one corresponds 

to intensive meanings (Micronesian suffixal -CVCV). Note that use of 

two hands is a kind of grammatical "reduplication", but it is not a physical 

"repetition" in time. The overall parallels are shown in Table 4.:


Micronesian languages 

Forms 

Meanings 

American Sign Language 

Forms 

Meanings 

prefixai repetitions aspects (various) 

suffixal repetitions intensives; 

verb-derivation 

repetitions 

two-hand-active 

articulation 

aspects (various) 

intensive 

prefixai Continuous 'always' ; 

4- suffixal repet. 'everywhere' 

Continuous repet. 'always'; 

+ two active 'randomly 

hands 

distributed' 

Table 4. Two types of reduplication in some spoken and signed languages 

In ASL, many one-handed signs (such as 'don't-know') can be given stylistic 

emphasis by adding a second hand, which simultaneously duplicates the 

movement of the dominant hand but is often not raised as high. There are also 

a number of fossilized vocabulary items which normally use two hands instead 

of one: 7 

1 hand active: eat learn tell say take hand-over like dislike 

2 hands active: feed teach answer announce get give interesting horrible 

Table 5. Some two-hand-active 'intensives' is fossilized ASL vocabulary 

The combinations of two-handed forms with repetition are complex, and 

only a partial analysis is offered here. At the present stage of research, glosses 

given for ASL forms must be regarded as approximate. 8 We can compare the 

ASL Continuous Varied 'give different things all the time' (Figure 3.) with the 

Micronesian 'always' (Table 3.), and the Continuous Random 'give things 

away all over the place or undirectedly' (Figure 3.) with the Micronesian 'covered 

with'. In general the meanings do correspond, although the ASL forms 

have a 'distributive' shade of meaning reflecting grammatical uses of space in 

ASL. The simple Continuous has different senses when formed from an inherently 

punctual verb like 'give' ('give-all-the-time-to-X') and from a durative 

verb ('gaze-at' in Figure 1.). This is typologically normal, but it does reveal a 

way in which the ASL Continuous differs from the English Progressive (is giving) 

and the Micronesian.


Continuous 

'give-all-the-time-to-X' 

Continuous Varied 

'give-different-thingsall-the-time' 

Continuous Random 

'give-things-away-allover-the-place, 

or 

undirectedly' 


Figure 3. Continuous, 

Continuous Varied, and 

Continuous Random

Figure 4. Varieties of two-handed Continuous inflection m ASL 

SILLY 

'characteristically foolish' 


MISCHIEVOUS 

'mischief prone' 

QUIET 

'taciturn' or 'reserved' 

WRONG 

'error prone' 

©1978 Ursula Bellugi 

4A. Continuous Doubled inflection 

with agentive subjects 

4B. Continuous Varied (Random?) inflection 

with experiencer subjects


When the Continuous inflection is used with root signs signifying a temporary 

state or event (English often an adjective), the resulting meaning is 

that the subject has the corresponding personality characteristic or predisposition. 

9 Klima and Bellugi (1979:250-1) give four examples with two hands active 

10 (Figure 4.). There seems to be a distinction between simultaneous and 

alternating movement. Simultaneous movement appears where the subject 

exerts more control, is more agentive: 'mischief-prone', 'taciturn/reserved'. 

Alternating movement appears where the subject exerts less control, is closer 

to an experiencer role as judged by evidence from other languages: 'errorprone', 

'characteristically foolish'. These latter generally have a negative 

sense, 11 consistent with a universal pattern that what happens to a subject but 

is not controlled by that subject is felt as undesirable. 

We have established a partial correspondence between the Micronesian 

[-CVCV] suffixal reduplication and the ASL use of two active hands instead 

of one. This correspondence holds for some Intensive uses, and in a combination 

with the Continuous inflection, in meanings like 'always', 'everywhere', 

and 'characteristic habit' (Figures 3. and 4.). But it does not hold for the verbderiving 

uses. 12 For the most part, nouns are derived from verbs rather than 

the reverse (Supalla and Newport 1978). 

There is another combination of an 'intensive' form with a repetition, the 

Uninterrupted Punctual (Figure 5.). This could be a form of Iterative (Figure 

1.) with repetitions smaller because of a co-occurring tense hold. The meaning 

'incessantly' is not far from the 'always' of Micronesian (Table 3.). In the Uninterrupted 

Durative there is only the long tense hold. 

Uninterrupted Punctual 

'look-at incessantly' 

(tense short 

movements) 

Uninterrupted 

Durative 

'stare-at 

uninterruptedly' 

(long tense hold, 

no motion) 


Figure 5. The "Uninterrupted" as a combination 

of Tense with extended time spans


English has a form with very quick repetitions, brought to my attention 

by Edward Klima: 'all he ever does is work-work-work'. This could match the 

ASL Uninterrupted Punctual. Just as for the Perseverative, the rhythms are 

similar in the two languages, and the meanings ('incessantly') reasonably 

close. 

It is clear that the reduplicative categories of a sign language can be quite 

similar to those of spoken languages both in meanings distinguished and in 

their surface forms. We do not yet know enough about sign languages to estimate 

their range of variation in such matters. But there are clear differences. 

In Swedish Sign Language for example, a Continuous form of 'gaze at' has circling 

motion not in the plane of the forearm as in ASL (Figure 1.) but in a 

plane perpendicular to the forearm. Although spoken languages differ greatly 

in their uses of reduplication, there are still common tendencies. Just as Micronesian 

had a distinction between open and closed-syllable reduplications 

(CV- vs. CVC-), so Sanskrit (Whitney 1889) had /Ci-/ in some Present forms 

contrasting with /CaC-/ in the "Intensives/Frequentatives". 

2. Non - redup licative aspects in A SL 

For equivalent areas of vocabulary meanings, ASL makes the same kinds 

of distinctions as other aspect-based languages, between events, processes, 

states, and so on. Only the surface forms differ. In a purely physical sense, every 

sign must involve motion. But variations in rhythm and speed, and additions 

of initial or final holds, permit many distinctions. Using arrow notations 

much like the system of recent European sign dictionaries, we have the examples 

of Table 6.: 

Hands: left right 

right 

a) Unmarked arrive 

b) Processive (slow Vibratory; approach 

slow plain) 

c) Stative (end-hold) near 

d) Emphatic Result-State 

(end-hold + tense becoming) 

e) Change-of-State get-closer 

(holds beginning and end) 

f) Change-in-steps get-closerin-steps 

die, died 

dying 

dead! 

Table 6. Some non-reduplicative aspects in American Sign Language

102 


For forms of the verb 'arrive/approach', the left hand is stationary (represented 

by the vertical bar, a hold) and the right moves towards it. States and 

change-of-state are shown by holds of the right hand (vertical bars). The 

marked Processive 'approach' has a vibratory rotation of the forearm as the 

right hand is slowly moved towards the left hand. For the verb 'die, died' (its 

one-handed form) the right hand palm-down turns over to palm-up. If this 

movement is made very slowly (a more marked articulation) the sign refers to 

the process of dying. If it begins slowly and accelerates to a final sudden hold, 

it is an emphatic form of the result-state. 'dead!'. 

Punctual 

'to become/get sick' 

Iterative Punctual 

'falls sick often' or 

'is often susceptible 

to illness' 

(straight-line motion 

to end contact) 

(brief thrusts; 

four repetitions) 

Stative 

'to be sick' 

Iterative Stative 

'is often sick' 

(repeated short 

motions to contact) 

(straight-line movements 

to end hold; four to 

six at a regular beat)

Tense Punctual Result. (tense ; slow start, 

'become fully/very sick' accelerate to final 

hold) 

Tense Stative 

'be very sick' 

Perseverative Punctual (elliptical slow circles, Perseverative Stative 

'get sick over and over each circle end-marked 'be sick for a long tim 

again, *keep on getting with pause and *on and on, *keep on 

sick' recovery-stroke) being sick' 

©1978 Ursula Bellugi 

Figure 6. Paradigm for get-sick (Punctual) and sick


There are similar rhythms and holds in inflection of a predicate like 'sick' 

(Figure 6.). But a number of details require further research. This verb seems 

to be basically punctual 'to become sick', and the Stative 'to be sick' is derived 

from that with a special kind of repetition. 13 Inflections of the Stative generally 

have an end hold, but it is absent in the Perseverative and Continuous. Inflections 

of the Punctual generally do not have an end hold, even though the 

main strokes are clearly separable one from the next. An asymmetry is the 

Tense Punctual Resultative, with final hold, which also on account of its 

meaning may be not simply a Punctual counterpart to the Tense Stative. The 

special muscular articulation used to produce a final hold is not necessary 

when the motion ends in simple contact (Punctual 'to become sick', and 'to arrive' 

in Table 6a.), and such forms do not convey Stative meanings. 14 

Modern French Sign Language, historically related to ASL, has inflections 

like those of Table 6. (compare the Vibratory Processive in Figure 7.). 

Middle FSL probably had all of these as well. From Lambert's dictionary 

(1865) we have: 15 

a) Unmarked or près-'near' beaucoup 'much' 

c) Stative (end-hold) 

f) Change-in-steps approcher 'approach' augmenter 'increase' peu à peu 

'little by little' 

Table 7. Middle French Sign Language parallels to Table 6.


Grossir 

Basic form 

Augmenter 

Diminuer 

Vibratory Processive forms 

Figure 7. 

© 1974 Pierre Oléron


Swedish Sign Language, more distantly related, shows at least in some signs 

the use of final holds for states and initial with final holds for change-of-state. 

From these patterns we can see that where English distinguishes adjectives 

from verbs as parts-of-speech, some sign languages treat them as different 

aspects of a single vocabulary item (verb). This is not only a peculiarity of 

sign languages. Akkadian, which has a Result-State category, uses it to express 

'near' (qarub) with the same verb root as 'approach' (i-qarrub, i-qrub). 16 

ASL appears to have a single large category of Predicates. Within this, temporary 

states and events allow inflections for aspect, while permanent states 

do not (Klima and Bellugi 1979:252,262). In areas of vocabulary more like 

typical English verbs, there are several further subdivisions for types of pronominal 

agreement with subject, indirect object, and direct object (Fischer 

and Gough 1978), but it is not yet clear if this constitutes a part-of-speech distinction. 

There is a small class of shape-and-size specifiers which often appear 

in noun-phrase descriptions and compounds (Klima and Bellugi 1979:237- 

241), and correspond to some English adjectives. It is quite common in spoken 

language that a separate class of adjectives is small or non-existent (Dixon 

1977). 

The inflections of Table 6. are limited to vocabulary in certain ranges of 

meaning (and possibly to signs of particular phonological forms). This is normal 

for spoken languages (see Gragg 1970). The plain Processive seems productive 

in some ASL signs such as 'lights grow gradually brighter/dimmer', 

opposing the Punctual 'lights go on/off; similarly in 'deflate', 'level go down', 

and a few others. But it cannot be used everywhere (often it would not make 

sense). 

Asymmetries are even stronger in word-formation. ASL has a few intransitive 

statives (adjectives in English translation) derived from transitives or 

non-statives by a special change in the movement. This pattern is totally nonproductive. 

linear motion get-sick disappoint don't-care shame-on-(person) 

forearm rotation sick-of-X bitter, sour boring, bored shy 

Table 8. An unproductive pattern for stative intransitives of attitude in ASL


repeated 

and 

reduced 

movement 

GET 

Derived nominal meaning 'acquisition' 

movement 

in place 

instead of 

translatory 

movement 

MEASURE 

MEASURE[D.nominalization] 

Figure 8. Derived nominais in ASL © 1978 Ursula Beilud 

There is a semi-productive pattern deriving concrete nouns like 'chair' 

from verbs like 'sit' (Supalla and Newport 1978). In each instance the motion 

is reduced and repeated in the noun. This could reflect an aspectual difference, 

since a chair is something people repeatedly sit on, not simply a rock on 

which someone once sat. In fixed vocabulary items there are further phonological 

reductions (Anderson 1978) : use of a lighter articulator (wrist, fingers) 

instead of a heavier one (arm); conversion to symmetrical motion; motion to 

contact rather than away from contact. There are also abstract nominalizations 

which may simply involve repetition with reduced motion, but may involve 

other special movements (Figure 8.). As in English and other languages, 

the systems of derived nouns are very complex. 

ASL is like many languages of Oceania and West Africa and elsewhere in 

using "Prepositional Verbs". For example, the sign glossed 'follow' may also 

be used where English would translate 'according to' or 'as long as'. By com-


parison, English has only a few fossilized examples: 'cross' vs. 'across' is one. 

In many languages the prepositional or conjunction uses lack certain inflections 

present in main-verb uses (Givón 1975:58-9 and many other sources). As 

for derived nouns we may hypothesize a difference in aspect. Details of ASL 

movement need investigation. 

It remains to point out that ASL is a language which expresses plurality of 

objects or subjects in the verb in addition to iterative aspect, by displacing the 

verb across space as it is repeated (Figure 9.). Eulenberg (1970) discusses 

spoken languages where plurality and iterativity interact. ASL has other inflections 

in the number/distributive ranges (Klima and Bellugi 1979 chapter 

12.). 

Conclusions. Categories of aspect seem to be very strongly developed 

in ASL and other sign languages, and this may be characteristic of sign languages 

in general even though there are also spoken languages of this type. 

Among spoken languages, aspect is highly correlated with tense, part-ofspeech, 

individuation/plurality and other categories. We can summarize these 

correlations in Figures 10. and 11., including some of the prominent patterns 

of ASL. 

Number-agreement with receivers: 

Collective 

'give-to-them, 

give-out-to-them' 

(smooth horizontal arc, 

one-handed or two-handed) 

Number-agreement with receivers: 

Distributive 

'give-to-each-of-them' 

Figure 9. 

(movement repeated rapidly 

while traversing a smooth 

horizontal arc) 

Two examples of number agreement 

in American Sign Language 

©1978 Ursula Bellugi


Tenses 

(usual:) ; 

Inflectional 

Aspects 

Traditional J 

Names for 


Meanings of 

Inherent & 

Derivational 


Movements in 

Some Sign 

Languages 

Parts of 

Speech 

Voice of Verb 

Case-Role of 

Subject 

1 2 

Distant Distant 

(Past: Future. Hypothetical) 

(neglecting individual 

objects of transitive 

verb'ate the cake ) 

3 4 

Current Current 

(Present; Simultaneous Past) 

5 

- Current 

, _►. Perfect 

(current relevance 

of prior event) 

"Anti- Passive" 

(pure activity) 

Ms eating' 

Activity-izing 

'is being kind' 

Perfective 

( )←( ) ← 

(treating an extended time span as a single unit with boundaries, a whole) 

Punctual 

Punctual 

Single 

events 

or acts 

(inherently 

indivisible) 

Single 

motion 

(unmarked) 

Quick motion 

(marked) 

[ 

Iterative 

Repeated 

events 

or acts 

(units 

repeated) 

Repeated 

motion 

Verbs Verbs 

(esp. transitive) 

Active Active 

Nominative Nominative 

(Ergative/Agentive/Active) 

Durative 

Durative 

Processes or 

Activities 

(not divided 

but could be) 

Repeated so 

fast that 

inseparable; 

Slow against 

resistance 

Continuous 

(esp. intransitive manner) 

Processes, 

no movement 

(energy output) 

(in principle no 

discrete units) 

Vibratory wristrotations 

Finger-wiggle; 

Smooth uniform 

circles 

Nominative Nominative 

1 

Properties, 

accidental or 

temporary 

Result-state 

shown by 

motion to 

final hold 

6 

Generic 

Property 

'is kind' 

Stative 

Stative 

Properties, 

essential or 

permanent 

Two-handed 

alternating 

(derives 

personality 

characteristic) 

Verbs (intr.) Adjectives 

& Adjectives (& Nouns) 

Middle (some Passives) 

Nominative or Unmarked or 

Experience! Nominative 

Dative-Subject 

Construction 

7 

-- Generic 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 

Categories 

(kinds of 

things; 

taxonomies) 

Repeated 

motion 

reduced 

(derives 

some nouns) 

Nouns 

Unmarked or 

Nominative 

Figure 10. Correlations of Aspects with Tense, Part-of-Speech, Voice, Case, and other categories 

Copyright 1980 Lloyd B. Anders

Copyright © 1980 Lloyd Anderson 

Unproduc- Inflectional 

tive noun noun 

patterns forms 

in ASL in ASL 

Universal categories of 

number 

nouns verbs 

Categories of 

Divisibility & 

Individuation 

Universal 

temporal 

categories 

110 

LLOYD . ANDERSON 

index 

finger 

[G] 

fingers repeated 

spread 

[4,5] 

repeated 

at/towards 

different 

locations 

count (unmarked) 

singular 

count plural 

plural objects 

& actions 

distribu- distributive 

tive 

individual punctual 

(event) 

multiple iterative 

fingers horizontal 

kogether arc, smooth 

[B] sweep 

collective collective 

object 

individuals 

grouped, not 

separated 

durative 

mass, 

liquid 

divisible, but 

in principle 

not 

individuatable 

continuous 

qualities, 

materials 

in principle 

indivisible 

stative 

(includes 

charactertraits) 

group-noun 

(herd of 

buffalo; 

pool of 

water) 

multiple or 

divisible but 

treated as a 

single unit 

perfective 

(time span 

as unit: 

Russian 

po- 'for 

a while') 

Figure 11. Categories of Plurality and Individuation in Noun and Verb Systems


NOTES 

* I am grateful to Marina McIntire for cleaning up my data; to Edward Klima and Ursula Bellugi 

for a couple of points aiding the analysis (cited in the text) ; to them and Pierre Oléron for permission 

to use published illustrations. 

1) It is often assumed, even by well-trained linguists, that sign languages are more "iconic" than 

spoken languages, that more of their vocabulary is directly pictorial (the equivalent of sound-imitative 

words like the cat's miaou in spoken languages). Although mimetic aspects of signs are used in 

sign play and poetry, in other respects the assumption is simply false (see Klima and Bellugi 

1979:26-32). On another level, it is said that sign languages deal with more concrete concepts, or are 

unable to express abstract ones. These arguments are absurd. It is as if one argued that the English 

expression 'to bring up a topic in conversation' is concrete because it is composed of physical motions 

(bringing and upwards). For such examples in spoken languages, we are used to hearing of the 

'richness of metaphor', so why not for signed languages? Simply cultural bias. Once we take seriously 

our obligations as professional linguists, such arguments will disappear. 

I take a very strong position on this matter (a) because I find my own past errors have lain usually 

in seeing iconicity where it was not there for signers, or in missing the parallels in spoken languages; 

(b) because most (linguists included) who utter themselves on iconicity of sign are expressing naive 

reactions not professionally justified conclusions; and (c) because such discussions are used politically 

to oppress deaf people. For hundreds of years, deaf children have been denied deaf adult signing 

role models (to prevent "contamination" of pure oral or pure signed-English etc. methods of 

communication), and this has denied them a fully fluent language in their earliest years. Some have 

survived to do quite well. But both social community and information input are vastly reduced, and 

many have not had full opportunities of conceptual development and personal experiences. 

2) Their study included a very few examples where the forms and meanings did not match in the 

ways shown in Tables 1. and 3.. 

3) The terminology is for the most part as in Comrie (1976). "Perseverative" and "Uninterrupted" 

are not standard terms. 

4) Three of their Punctual/Durative pairs are retained here (marked with asterisks). Their terminology 

is quoted in parentheses. Our scheme follows: 

Basic Punctual ("Inchoative") 

Basic Stative ("Basic") ['sick' is derived] 

Lax Punctual ("Susceptative") 

Lax Stative ("Approximative") 

Tense Punctual Resultative ("Result.") * Tense Stative ("Intensive") 

Iterative Punctual ("Susceptative/ Iterative Stative ("Frequentative") 

Frequentative") 

* Uninterrupted Punctual ("Incessant") * Uninterrupted Stative ("Protractive") 

Continuous Punctual ("Predispositional") Continuous Stative ("Predispositional") 

* Perseverative Punctual ("Iterative") * Perseverative Stative ("Continuative") 

They had paired the "Susceptative" with the "Basic" (the "Approximative" was not included in the 

pairings, and the "Inchoative" was discovered later by Supalla and not yet fully incorporated). 

They had paired the "Susceptative/Frequentative" with the "Predispositional", leaving the "Frequentative" 

out of the paired relations. In the present treatment, the Continuous (their "Predispositional") 

has the same surface form whether formed from basically Punctual or from Durative/Stative 

verbs. 

Another group of inflections are here taken as belonging to the number/distributive categories. 

The Collective and Distributive (their "Multiple" and "Exhaustive") are shown in Figure 9.. Others 

are the "Dual", "Allocative", "Seriated", and "Apportionative".


It is possible to embed some of these inflections inside others. The Distributive can be repeated 

with pauses, embedded in the Perseverative as an outer frame (Klima and Bellugi p. 313). The Continuous 

can be embedded in the Perseverative. In demonstrating this for 'gaze at', Ted Supalla used 

a mouth adverb of smooth-durative meaning [] for each Continuous unit, but not during the 

pauses. This is one of several pieces of evidence that the Perseverative is a periphrastic inflection 

like its English equivalents, almost composed of separate words though not quite. Klima and Bellugi 

(p.312) state that the Perseverative can be embedded inside the Distributive, but in physically 

producing this the Distributive would lose its unity. There are other embeddings which deaf signers 

do not readily accept, so that the case for complex embeddings is probably overstated in Klima and 

Bellugi. 

5) There are grammatical contexts where repetitions are lost or reduced. 

6) There is also English 'keep on Verb-ing', not a reduplication but serving some of the same 

functions as the Perseveratives. 

7) There are grammatical contexts where two-handed signs reduce to one-handed forms, and 

this is often possible stylistically. Most of the forms in Table 5. are not minimal pairs, as there is also 

difference in directionality ('feed', 'teach'), or in handshape ('give') or motion ('get') or objectnumber 

('announce'). 

8) What are translated by different English words are often inflectional forms of a single sign. 

Glosses for inflectional categories require a larger corpus than has so far been used in several instances. 

9) Klima and Bellugi as a result took the name Predispositional. Analysis here suggests that 

meaning is proper to the two-handed forms of the Continuous, not always to the Continuous alone. 

10) They also list two-handed forms 'cruel' (Continuous inflection of base form 'rough') and 

'dirt-prone' (from 'dirty'). Since the first uses the left hand as a base hand, there may be a phonological 

reason why it does not show up as two-hand-active in the predispositional sense. This implies 

surface neutralization of two- vs. one-hand-active forms. It cannot explain 'dirt-prone'. 

We can add a few other examples: 'ambitious' (from one-handed 'proud') and 'sympathetic, tolerant, 

indulgent, understanding' (from one-handed 'understand') are listed in Stokoe etal (1965). 

Repeated motion without two hands alternating, again perhaps for phonological reasons, occurs in 

'changeable' (from 'become'), which has predispositional sense. Repeated motion which is not 

clearly predispositional occurs in 'possible' (from 'can') and in 'aware of, familiar with' (from 

'know') and in several other vocabulary items less systematically. 

11) Three fluent ASL signers in a summer project at Gallaudet (M.-J. Bienvenu, Kitty and Bob 

Dillman) found it much easier to come up with new examples of the form if the content was unfavorable: 

'be-a-bitter-person', 'be-a-cry-baby', 'tend-to-make-mistakes', 'tend-to-misunderstand-everything'. 

It was possible to get it also for 'tell' and 'give' but not as readily. 

12) The Akkadian D-stem with doubled middle consonant has uses as iterative, intensives, and 

lexical causatives/factitives (von Soden 1969 section 88). One example matches Table 5: 'teach' 

from basic stem 'learn'. 

13) It is not clear if this is a systematic process for other inchoatives also. 

14) Supalla and Newport (1978) classified all signs with end-contact as having a "hold". But patterning 

here is more consistent if only specially articulated holds are so classified: it seems only they 

morphologically imply 'state'.


15) Lambert's descriptions are: (p.318) Près, meme signe que pour approcher, mais d'un seul 

trait sec; (p. 115) Approcher ..., rapprocher en deux ou trois temps ...; (p. 131) Beaucoup ..., 

l'elever d'un trait... pour augmenter, l'elever en deux ou trois temps ... ; (p.307) Peu à peu ..., remonter 

par petits coups ... Much of the evidence for genetic relations of sign languages is not yet published, 

but see Woodward (1978), Anderson (1980), Frishberg (1975, 1976). 

16) This verb is especially interesting. Within Akkadian it had three voweling patterns, which to 

judge from other vocabulary should correlate with differences in aspectual meanings (see my other 

contribution to this volume): i-qarrab, i-qrab; i-qarrib, i-qrib; and i-qarrub, i-qrub. We would expect 

the i/i voweling to represent change-of-state or punctual meaning (?'come nearer'), and the u/ 

u voweling to represent durative or 'becoming' as process (?'approach gradually') matching Table 

6(e). vs. 6(b). But no information on meaning differences is provided in my sources, so it may be 

simply a fixed choice of voweling for different dialects and time periods. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY' 

Anderson, Lloyd. 1978. Nouns derived from verbs in American and French 

sign languages. (Section of a grant proposal) 

. 1980. Sign language number systems and the numerical alphabet. In Selected 

Papers of the NATO Advanced Studies Institute: Sign Language 

Research. Special issue of LOGOS, Audiologopedic Research Group, 

Copenhagen University. 

Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect. Cambridge University Press 

Dixon, R.M.W. 1977. Where have all the adjectives gone? Studies in Language 

1.19-80 

Eulenberg, John. 1970. Conjunction reduction and reduplication in African 

languages. In Papers in African Linguistics, eds. Chin-Wu Kim & Herbert 

Stahlke, pp. 71-80. Edmonton and Champaign: Linguistic Research Inc. 

Fischer, Susan. 1973. Two processes of reduplication in the American Sign 

Language. Foundations of Language 9.469-480 

and Bonnie Gough. 1978. Verbs in American Sign Language. Sign Language 

Studies 18.17-48 

Frishberg, Nancy. 1975. Arbitrariness and iconicity: historical change in 

ASL. Language 51.696-719 

. 1976. Some aspects of the Historical Development of Signs in American 

Sign Language. Dissertation, Univ. of Calif., San Diego 

Givón, Talmy. 1975. Serial verbs and syntactic change: Niger-Congo. In 

Word Order and Word Order Change, ed. Charles Li, pp.47-112. Austin, 

Texas: Univ. of Texas Press 

Gragg, Gene. 1970. Overt and covert categories in derivational morphology. 

Papers from the Sixth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society,


pp. 262-269 

Jackson, Rick, Ken Rehg, and Hiroshi Sugita. 1977. Toward a reconstruction 

of Proto-Nuclear Micronesian Reduplication. Paper presented at the Austronesian 

Symposium, Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, 

Honolulu, Hawai'i 

Klima, Edward and Ursula Bellugi. 1979. The Signs of Language. Cambridge, 

Mass.: Harvard University Press 

Lambert, l'Abbé de. 1865. Le langage de la physionomie & du geste. Paris: 

LeCoffre 

von Soden, Wolfram. 1969. Grundriss der Akkadischen Grammatik samt Ergänzungsheft. 

Analecta Orientalia 33 and 47 

Supalla, Ted and Elissa L. Newport. 1978. How many seats in a chair? The 

derivation of nouns and verbs in American Sign Language. In Understanding 

Language through Sign Language Research, ed. Patricia Siple, pp. 91- 

132. New York: Academic Press 

Stokoe, William Jr., Dorothy Casterline, and Carl G. Croneberg. 1965. 

A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles. Washington, 

D.C.: Gallaudet College Press. Second edition 1976. Silver 

Spring, Md.: Linstok Press 

Whitney, William Dwight. 1889. Sanskrit Grammar. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard 

University Press 

Woodward, James. 1978. Historical bases of American Sign Language. In 

Understanding Language through Sign Language Research, ed. Patricia 

Siple, pp.343-348. New York: Academic Press

TENSE-ASPECT-MODALITY: 

THE CREOLE PROTOTYPE AND BEYOND* 

T. GIVÓN 

Department of Linguistics 

University of Oregon, Eugene 

and 

Ute Language Program 

Southern Ute Tribe 

Ignacio, Colorado 


In the current search for universals of human language, Creoles seem to 

occupy a curious, potentially pivotal yet oft perplexing niche. Be the source of 

their speaker-substratum what it may, and regardless of the particular origin 

of the vocabulary, they all seem to exhibit a high degree of identical grammatical 

features, thus reducing the great typological diversity found in non-contact 

human languages into a single coherent type in whatever area of the grammar 

one chooses to investigate. And while a mono-genesis explanation may perhaps 

account for the typological consistency of Creoles in the Atlantic-African-Caribbean 

basin, the identification of the very same grammatical features 

in Hawaii Creole (Bickerton, 1975) rules out the mono-genetic accident as a 

useful explanation and thus opens the way once more to the introduction of 

more systematic universalist hypotheses. 

The attractiveness of Creoles to students of language universals has been 

pointed out in the past few years by Givón (1973a), Kay and Sankoff (1974), 

Bickerton (1975), Bickerton and Givón (1976), Slobin (1977) and Traugott 

(1977), among others. What seems to make the Creole grammatical system so 

unique may be traced down to its short — indeed instantaneous—diachronic/ 

ontogenetic history l , rising within one short generation of native-speaking 

children out of its precursor/input Pidgin communicative system. 2 Briefly, 3 

Pidgin is the original 'contact-language', created by adults attempting to mas-

116 T. GIVÓN 

ter a foreign linguistic code, under socio-cultural circumstances normally involving 

considerable disruption of the social and communicative network. 

The grammar of many pidgins never quite stabilizes. That is, both within the 

individual speaker and across the Pidgin-speaking community, extreme variability 

in the communicative code and total lack of categorial syntax remain the 

rule, above and beyond the normal range of variation encountered in the normal 

non-contact language community. 

When such a "decayed", non-categorial output as the Pidgin is presented 

as primary linguistic input to the first generation of children growing in the 

Pidgin-speaking community, it apparently proves to be too chaotic for the 

children to either imitate or extract categorial 'grammar' generalizations out 

of. The obvious exception is the lexicon with its reasonably coherent soundmeaning 

correlations. Thus, while learning the input Pidgin vocabulary, the 

children apparently proceed to "invent the grammar". Presumably, having 

despaired of the chaotic and non-categorial input, they crank-up their universal 

language-creating capacity, arriving in due course at a highly specific set of 

pragmatic, semantic and syntactic categories and structures. Those categories 

and structure must, in the absence of any other cogent explanation, be a reflection 

of the universal language-creating capacity of the human organism, at 

least in its infancy. Whether that capacity is a mere automatic reflection of innate 

genetic pre-wiring of "specific linguistic structures", as Chomsky or 

Bickerton (1975) seem to suggest, is indeed wide open. It is entirely possible 

that the innate specificity involves learning strategies and communicative-behavioral 

schemata that are general-cognitive rather than language-specific in 

nature. Be that as it may, the resulting Creole grammatical-semantic-pragmatic 

system could be likened to a universal human linguistic prototype, since 

in some sense it must reflect — more than non-contact languages which are acquired 

from a highly-specific, non-decayed input — 'primordial' or 'unmarked' 

features, having been spared the vagaries of the two most powerful 

specificity-creating processes in language: 

(a) Acquisition via a highly-specific input, and 

(b) The ravages of protracted diachronic change. 

The notion of 'linguistic prototype' that I am proposing to investigate 

here, however, requires a considerable amount of further elaboration. Taken 

literally, the Creole grammatical system is, empirically speaking, almost the 

antithesis of a universal prototype. To begin with, it has sprung up under unusual 

circumstances which bear little resemblance to the acquisition of language 

within the normal non-contact language community. Further, in a 'mature',

TENSE-ASPECT-MODALITY IN CREOLE 117 

'diachronically-recycled' non-contact language, grammatical sub-systems 

and their attendant inflectional morphologies ('coding devices'): 

(i) arise when the specific communicative need arises, normally when the 

older system coding a particular function has eroded beyond a certain 

threshold of communicative coherence ('transparency'); and when a potential 

source for re-coding the function is available, i.e. it is relatively 

'unloaded' with other functions; and finally, when alternative potential 

sources for re-coding are either less-available or less-attractive. 4 

(ii) decay when their communicative efficacy ('transparency') has eroded, for 

phonological or other reasons, beyond a certain threshold ; when more attractive 

coding alternatives are available and yet unloaded by other — 

more urgent — communicative functions. 

In other words, the diachronic rise of a new grammatical sub-system is subject, 

to quite an extent, to unpredictable interaction with many other sub-systems 

in the grammar, and could only take place when both need and opportunity 

happen to coincide. The grammar of a non-contact language is thus, over its 

protracted history, subject to a great number of more or less fortuitous tugsof-war 

and inter-dependencies between its component parts. 

On the other hand, the Creole grammatical system arises "at ground zero", 

with its entire grammar "at phase", having been subjected to relatively 

little prior reshaping by either elaborative or assimilatory diachronic change. 5 

Thus, for example, the newly-minted Creole grammatical morphology (articles, 

subordinators, tense-aspect-modals) bears a transparent relationship to 

its lexical point of origin, so much so that linguists often overlook its evolving, 

crypto-inflectional, rapidly-cliticizing nature in terms of function (grammatical 

vs. lexical), semantics (bleaching toward more generic, classificatory, 

'functional' categories) and phonology (de-stressing, bleaching and cliticization). 

A 'mature' non-contact language is never at such a 'ground-zero point' 

across its entire grammar. 

In spite of such crucial differences, there is indeed a sense in which the 

Creole grammatical system is a human-universal linguistic prototype. To begin 

with, the features found in Creole grammar — at least in terms of semantics 

and pragmatics — tend to be the most common ones found in non-contact languages. 

Due to the impact of diachronic change on the latter, those features 

may not be present all at the same time in any individual language the way one 

finds them in Creoles, but they are the most common ones found cross-linguistically 

nonetheless. Next, the way individual grammatical features arise in the 

Creole, in terms of diachronic/ontogenetic source, 6 tends to recapitulate the

118 T. GIVÓN 

most common ways the same features arise in non-contact languages. Finally, 

once the Creole system is established as a viable, rich communicative code in a 

community of native speakers, it becomes subject to the very same diachronic 

processes found in non-contact languages. As the Creole proceeds via those 

processes to become just as 'averagely marked' or 'optimally complex' as other 

'mature' natural languages, one recognizes in the Creole grammar the very 

same specific changes, occurring in much the same way, as one has recognized 

before in non-contact languages. When we discuss Creole grammar as a linguistic 

prototype, then, we must bear in mind the considerable amount of complexity 

which such usage may entail. 

I will divide this paper in the following way. First, I will describe briefly 

the universal Creole tense-aspect-modal (henceforth ) system first 

traced by Bickerton (1975). I will next compare the Creole prototype to 

a number of TAM-systems found in non-contact languages and will comment 

on both similarities and divergences. I will then discuss parallels between the 

diachronic/ontogenic rise of the Creole system and the rise of systems 

in non-contact natural languages. I will also compare some post-Creole 

changes in the prototype system with similar diachronic developments found 

elsewhere. I will finally return to the notion of the Creole as a universal linguistic 

'prototype' and the extent to which such a notion may be still validly entertained. 

2. The Creole tense-aspect-modal system 

The discussion in this section is based upon the Hawaii-Creole data given 

in Bickerton (1975), his discussion of those data, and further Hawaii-Creole 

transcripts from Bickerton's collection of Hawaii-Creole speech. Bickerton's 

characterization of the Creole system is done in terms of sentence-level 

semantics. This will necessitate, primarily with respect to one feature/opposition, 

a translation into discourse-pragmatic terms as well as the justification of 

such necessity. 

As Bickerton points out, all known Creole systems exhibit the 

same three-member inventory of pre-verbal elements marking the same semantic 

(and, it turns out, also pragmatic) functions. Those elements all contrast 

with the unmarked (zero) form of the verb which carries its own specific function(s) 

. In Table 1., below, I have summarized briefly the semantic function of 

the markers as given in Bickerton (1975, pp. 7-8). I have altered slightly the interpretation 

of one marker ('anterior') and have added brief comments on the 

discourse-pragmatic use of the markers in narrative. 7


TABLE 1.: Creole TAM-markers 

marker semantic function pragmatic function in narrative 

0 past-action, foreground/main-line of action in narrative ; 

present-state events in natural sequence of occurrence ; 

'stay' non-punctual, background materials in side-trips in the 

continuous, narrative ; describe habitual or short-term 

habitual, 

states which form the temporal and explicatory 

iterative background for the main events ; 

'go' 

future, conditional, used as probabilistic statements in side-trip 

irrealis, imperative portions where action-continuity is broken ; 

appears very frequently in quoted/reported 

speech of story participants ; 

'bin' anterior, perfect, appears as 'look-back' function in side-trip/ 

plu-perfect background portions of the narrative ; reverses 

the actual temporal order of events ; very frequent 

in presupposed/embedded clauses, such 

as V-complements, REL-clauses and ADVclauses; 

2.1 The Creole TAM-markers in isolation 

In this sub-section I will discuss the Creole TAM-markers in isolation, 

that is, when they do not combine with each other. 

2.1.1 The ø form 

Bickerton (1975) says that this form codes "... simple past for action 

verbs and non-past for state verbs... " (p. 7). While this is true with high statistical 

probability for narrative texts detailing actions/events/stories from the 

past, the semantic characterization given by Bickerton is incomplete. To begin 

with, it coincides with an overwhelming discourse-pragmatic fact, namely 

that the 0 form is used to mark the verbs in clauses which carry the backbone 

of the action narrative (as against lacunae, side-trips, background information, 

stable states etc.). Thus, consider the following narrative where a man 

describes how he used to take care of a neighbor-woman's dog: 8

120 T. GIVÓN 

(1) a. ...I go out of the way, 

b. I fix that dog up... 

that dog bin come nice 'n fat, 

d. all the hair bin grow... 

e. I spray-im with malathion 'n all, 

f. I bring-im down the beach special... 

'...So I went out of my way, I fixed that dog up...the dog had become 

nice and fat, all his hair had grown back... I sprayed him with malathion, 

I brought him down to the beach specially. 

The main line/backbone of the story in the same temporal sequence as it 

occurred, given in clauses (la,b,e,f), is marked by the 0 form of the verb. The 

look-back digression/parenthetical interjection in clauses (lc,d) is marked by 

the anterior marker 'bin' (see discussion below). The ordering in-sequence of 

the main-line action clauses is characteristic of the use of the 0-form. What is 

more, the continuation of the same subject/topic is also characteristic of this 

form. Thus, clauses (lc,d), the look-back digression, also switch the subject/ 

topic to the dog or his hair, but when the main-line story is resumed in (le,f), 

the subject/topic switches back to the narrator, as before the digression. 

Another fact, not emphasized in Bickerton (1975) but noted in Bickerton 

(1975a), is that the 0-form may be used in clauses that may not be easily interpreted 

as either past-action or backbone-of-narrative. Most of those are either 

habitual clauses or modal-irrealis clauses. Thus, consider the following examples: 

9 

(2) .. .so I figure I need - hundred something yard... 

'...So I figured that I needed about one-hundred yards or so...' 

In (2), 'need' appears in a subordinate clause that may in fact be direct-quoted, 

and thus better rendered as (3) below. But 'need' is, even more than its superordinate 

'figure', the main point in the backbone-sequence of information 

in(2). 10 

(3) '.. .so I figured: "I need one hundred yards or so..."...' 

The 0 form may be also found coding 'future' clauses, as in: 9 

(3') ... he no tell me; he stay tell me : 

"oh, next week, next week". 

he come in, he come in... 

'... (but the Mexican guy), he didn't tell me (about that thing); he kept


saying: "Next week, next week"; he would come in, he would come in 

(he kept telling me)...' 

It may also be found in if-clauses, as in: 

(4) ...well, if he ask for downpayment like that's allright, but... 

'...well, if he was asking/asked/asks / had asked for a downpayment 

like that, it would have been alright (with me), but...' 

The characterization of the 0-form semantically as 'past' (for action verbs) is 

thus insufficient, though its characterization as "marking the in-sequence portion 

of main clauses of backbone-narrative" is reasonably intact. Having said 

this, one must concede that there are good reasons, grounded in the dynamics 

of narrative as a discourse style, why most of the backbone-foreground 

clauses may be easily interpreted as "past": Narratives are largely told about 

events that occurred in the past. So even in a language where the TAM-system 

is largely aspectual and discourse-pragmatic in nature, the translation coincidence 

between "backbone-clauses" and "past" — as long as one analyzes narrative 

texts — is statistically very high. It is precisely when one finds modal/irrealis 

or habitual lacunae within the narrative text, that one observes that 

coincidence dissolving. 

2.1.2 The anterior marker 'bin 

Here again Bickerton (1975) gives a largely semantic characterization of 

the meaning/function of this marker: "...past-before-past for action verbs and 

simple-past for state verbs..." (p. 7). This observation, while inherently correct, 

must be supplemented by the discourse-pragmatic characterization of 

the function of the anterior, observing that it marks out-of-sequence clauses in 

the narrative, specifically those which 'look-back' and relate events that occurred 

earlier than the preceding clause in the narrative. One may characterize 

this function schematically as (see Givón, 1977): 

(5) Actual sequence of events'. A,B,C,D 

Order of reporting in narrative'. A,C,B,D 

In the Creole-type system, clauses A,C,D in the narrative will be marked by 

the 0-form, since they do not violate the actual sequence of events. Clause , 

on the other hand, will be marked by the anterior 'bin', since it appears in the 

narrative after but occurred actually before it. 

As an example of this usage, consider (1) above, as well as: 9

122 T. GIVÓN 

(6) . ...so he tell me: "What vinile?" 

b. The guy, bugger, he never even know, 

He [the Mexican] never even tell — bin tell-im before... 

'...so (that other guy) told me: "What vinile?" 

The guy (the other) hadn't even known about it, (the Mexican) had never 

told him (about our deal)... ' 

There are several interesting features in this narrative fragment: 

(a) In Hawaii Creole 'never' codes the anterior 'bin' in negative clauses, so 

that clause (6b), although properly a 'look-back' clause, does not show 

the morpheme 'bin' on the surface; 

(b) In clause (6 c), the narrator corrects himself to the use of the anterior 'bin', 

which clearly relates an (expected) event that was supposed to occur long 

before the events in (6a,b). 

(c) Finally, in the portion of the narrative directly preceding (6), the narrator 

relates his dealings with the lumber-yard salesman. In (6c), however, he 

switches to another subject/topic, the Mexican (who figures prominently 

in the entire story). Topic-switch and out-of-sequence look-back again 

seem to coincide. 

While the anterior 'bin' appears to mark out-of-sequence main clauses, it is 

very common to find it in presupposed, look-back subordinate clauses, as in 

the V-complement clause below: 9 

(7) ...main thing, I get some receipt, eh, 

showing that I bin pay-im... 

'...the main thing is, I did get some receipt, 

showing that I had paid him 

Similarly, in adverbial-subordinate or relative clauses, one may find the 'lookback' 

anterior, as in: 9 

(8) ...because, you know, the time I bin go borrow money... 

'...because you know, that time when I went/had gone to borrow 

money...' 

2.1.3. The irrealis/modal marker 'go' 

Bickerton (1975) defines this as "...a marker of irrealis aspect indicating 

'unreal time' (=future, conditional, subjunctive, etc.)..." (p. 7). This definition 

is inherently correct, again as far as a semantic definition goes. Thus, consider 

the use of 'go'/'gon'/'gonna' in the following examples: 9


(9) ...the guy say he gon fix me up with, da-kine, vinile floor... 

'...The guy said he was going to fix me up with that vinile flooring...' 

(10) ...I figure I need... hundred something yard, 

that's two hundred something dollar I can save 

if he gon get-im for me... 

'...I figured I need(ed)...a hundred yard or so, 

that's two hundred dollars or so I could save then, 

if he were going to get it for me...' 

(11) ...so I say: "When you go get-im for me then?..."... 

'...So I asked him: "When are you going to get it for me then?"...' 

Many occurrences of 'go' are found in the 'go-do' imperative 11 , as in: 9 

(12) ...but the guy tell the Mexican boy: 

"Go ask the guy for downpayment"... 

'...but the guy told the mexican boy: "(go) ask the guy for a downpayment"...' 

While Bickerton's semantic characterization may or may not hold, 12 it 

may be enhanced by the discourse-pragmatic observation that the overwhelming 

majority of the tokens of 'go' (and probably of most irrealis categories 

in general in narrative) occur inside quoted speech (or complements of 

'think' verbs). Thus, in counting 5 pages of Bickerton's transcripts 13 , of the total 

of 27 tokens of the auxiliary use of go (n), 22 appeared inside quoted speech 

or quoted musings, and only 5 in non-quoted contexts. This is indeed a characteristic 

distribution of irrealis modalities in narrative, where the backbone of 

the action-line is given in a certainty mode and the narrator is conceded to be 

omniscient. 14 When the narrator quotes the speech of the narrative's participants, 

on the other hand, he 'defers' his omniscience, and in the quoted dialogue 

most of the irrealis-marked verbs appear. 

2.1.4 The non-punctual marker'stay' 

Bickerton (1975) correctly observes: "... a marker of non-punctual aspects 

indicates durative or iterative aspect for action verbs, and is indifferent 

to the non-past/past distinction; this marker cannot normally occur with state 

verbs..." (p. 7). To this one may add the discourse-pragmatic characterization, 

i.e. that the non-punctual aspect tends to occur overwhelmingly in sidetrip, 

back-ground, lacunae in narrative, rather than in the mainline/backbone 

description of the events (see also Givón, 1977 and Hopper, 1979, among oth-

124 T. GIVÓN 

ers). Thus, in past-oriented narrative, it is only natural that the non-punctual 

be translated as past-progressive ('he was kicking the mule'), past-habitual 

('he used to kick his mule') or past-iterative ('he kept coming back again and 

again'), but this is simply the consequence of embedding inside a narrative 

with a past-time axis. As typical examples, consider: 9 

(13) ...I don' know, he stay come in... 

'.. don't know, he kept coming in...' 

(14) ..so the guy bin like downpayment, because he don' know me... 

I no blame him, tho, he stay in business, eh?... 

'...so the guy had wanted a downpayment, because he didn't know me... 

I don't blame him though, he's in business, eh?...' 

(15) ...so I bump into him, he tell me: 

"yeah, stay coming, stay coming..."...' 

'...so then I bumped into him, so he told me: 

"Yeah, it's coming, it's coming..."...' 

(16) ...so the mexican guy, he stay work for me... 

'...so the mexican guy, he was/kept working for me...' 

In example (14), 'stay' is used as the main verb 'be', a rather typical Hawaii- 

Creole lexical usage. The time-tense of that line may be interpreted as either 

'past' or 'habitual'. 

2.2 Combinatorial possibilities of the Creole TAM-markers 

In terms of the combinatorial possibilities of the three TAM-markers of 

Creoles, Bickerton (1975) points out that they are quite rigid and may be summarized 

as in (17) below: 

(17) (ANTERIOR)(MODAL)(NON-PUNCT) V 

Or, for Hawaii-Creole: 

(18) (bin) (go) (stay) V 

Any combinations which do not violate this rigid ordering statement are permissible, 

and we will briefly discuss them in this section. 

2.2.1. 'go'-'stay'-V 

This combination codes an irrealis/future non-punctual event, as in: 15 

(19) Whatever I save from the house rent, I go stay pay-pay... 

'Whatever I save from the house rent, I will keep paying on...'


2.2.2. 'bin'-'stay'-V 

This combination codes a habitual ('used to do'), iterative ('kept doing') 

or continuous ('was doing') action in the past, according to Bickerton. Its discourse-pragmatic 

value is again an anterior, look-back, perfect/pluperfect 

one. Most commonly, much like other uses of 'bin', it is found in subordinate, 

presupposed clauses. Thus consider: 15 

(20) you know where we bin stay go before... 

'... You know where we used to go before...' 

2.2.3. 'bin'-'go'-V 

According to Bickerton (1975), this combination signifies unrealized situations, 

such as: 9 

(21) ....the guy say he gon...he gon fix me up with da-kine vinile floor... 

you know, from... OK? 

ah, I say... I bin go order, see... 

from da-kine Honolulu Roofing, yeah... 

'The guy said he was going to fix me up with that vinile flooring... 

you know, from, OK?... ah, so I said I had been aiming to order it, see... 

from that Honolulu Roofing, yeah...' 

Bickerton translates the relevant passage as: 

(22) '...I would have ordered... [but in fact didn't]...' 

Since the clause in question is inside a complement of 'say', it is an open question 

whether one should consider it "counterfact/unrealized" and thus 'relativize' 

it to the knowledge of the narrator at the time of telling the story, or alternatively 

'relativize' it to the time of 'say' and thus consider it "irrealis/future/hypothetical/still-possible", 

as my gloss in (21) would have it. But regardless 

of this distinction, the clause is (i) interjected as a break in the narrative 

sequence, and (ii) it describes an action that occurred before the preceding 

clause; and finally (iii) note that here again the use of 'bin' coincides with 

changing the subject/topic (from the Mexican to the narrator himself). 

One may as well mention that in the speech of the very same speaker that 

contributed the passage in (21), one may find clear instances of "counterfactunrealized 

conditional" clauses without any trace of 'bin', as in: 

(23) .... but the meanwhile is, why the Mexican guy never tell me that the guy 

like downpayment. 

I go give-im downpayment...

126 T. GIVÓN 

'... But in the meantime, the Mexican guy never told me that the (other) 

man wanted a down-payment. I would have given him a downpayment 

[had I known that]...' 

The entire passage is a digression, a 'side-trip'. But within it, the counterfact 

clause does not violate the sequence. If anything, 'tell', 'like', and 'go-give' are 

in some sense related in the right sequence. Again, while the semantic definition 

of the use of the anterior 'bin' does not necessarily hold, the discoursepragmatic 

definition does. 

2.2.4. 'bin'-'go'-'stay'-V 

The value of this combination, as Bickerton (1975) points out, is similar 

to that of 'bin'-'go'-V, above, except that it relates a habitual, iterative or continuous 

action. Thus consider: 15 

(24) ...no, shit, I bin go stay figure only about twenty-five thousand... 

'...no, shit, I had been figuring on only about twenty-five thousand...' 

Here again, while Bickerton glosses the clause as "counterfact-unrealized": 

(25) '... would have been figuring... ' 

the meaning of the passage strongly suggests the non-counterfact translation 

in (24) above as the correct one. In other words, the 'modal/intentional' value 

of 'go' is there, the non-punctual value of 'stay' is there, but the 'bin-go' combination 

does not produce a counterfact clause, since the speaker has indeed 

been figuring on building the house that cheaply and, according to Bickerton 

(1975, p. 12): "has just found out that a house he is building for himself is going 

to cost him in the region of forty thousand dollars..." 

On the other hand, the clause—together with a number of adjacent clauses — 

is part of an interruption in the narrative sequence, relating events that happened 

before the last in-sequence clause. The use of 'bin' is thus again quite 

consistent, from the point of view of discourse-pragmatics. 

2.3 An interim summary 

It is hard to find a human language in which the three semantic/pragmatic 

oppositions found in Creoles do not form the very backbone of the T-A-M system: 

(26) unmarked vs. marked 

in-sequence 

anterior 

punctual 

non-punctual 

realis 

irrealis


The unmarked member of those oppositions — the Creole morphological zero 

— is always used to relate clauses that are foreground, backbone and action-highlight 

of narratives. The marked members, on the other hand, are largely 

used in clauses which break narrative continuity, present background 

material or otherwise digress from the narrative main-line. 16 While in Creoles 

the unmarked members of these oppositions are also morphologically unmarked, 

this is not always the case with non-contact languages, and the discrepancies 

are largely due to diachronic change. 17 

The relative order of the Creole T-A-M markers may also have some universal 

significance. This rigid order was given by Bickerton (1975) as: 

(27) (ANTERIOR) (MODAL) (NON-PUNCTUAL) V 

It seems to clearly correspond to a scope gradation: The non-punctual aspect 

has only the verb under its semantic scope. The modal operator has the 

larger proposition/sentence scope, while the anterior has the widest, discourse 

scope. Again, such a close fit between semantic/pragmatic and syntactic scope 

is rarely to be found in diachronically-mature non-contact languages, and 

again the culprit is diachronic change, via cliticization and eventual erosion of 

bound morphology. 

3. The prototype in situ 

In this section I will survey the T-A-M systems of four languages of widely 

different typological, genetic and diachronic-historical characteristics. I will 

attempt to show how in each one, the Creole prototype functions as the core of 

the T-A-M system, how further semantic and pragmatic elaborations interact 

with the prototype features, and how the ravages of diachronic change introduce 

morphological and morphotactic features that are at variance with the 

Creole prototype. 

3.1. English 

The T-A-M system of English is remarkably close to the Creole prototype 

in its general, major features, with an added tense phenomenon seemingly 

grafted upon the three prototype aspectuals. The core of the system may be 

thus summarized as: 

(28) (TENSE) (MODAL) (ANTERIOR) (NON-PUNCTUAL) V 

Further, there is a style/dialect level of English which dispenses with "tense", 

to yield a system yet closer to the Creole prototype: 

(29) (MODAL) (ANTERIOR) (NON-PUNCTUAL) V

128 T. GIVÓN 

The roles of the "modal", "anterior" and "non-punctual" features in English 

discourse reflects closely their role in the Creole prototype. In the more 'formal' 

style summarized in (28), the Creole zero-form is marked by the ('past') 

tense and carries the foreground-backbone of the narrative. In the 'less-formal' 

style, the same function is performed by the zero-form of the verb, just 

like in Creoles. In order to substantiate this identical discourse function, let us 

consider the following two passages taken from same story in a magazine. 17 ' 

The backbone-foreground function of the zero-form (with and without 

"tense") is italicized. The "anterior" (with and without "tense") is marked in 

square brackets. 

(28') "...He entered the Star's marble lobby; passed a glass case that displayed 

old newspapers...; exchanged greetings with the security guard; and 

took an elevator to the third floor. He unlocked his office; he went in, 

hung up his coat, tie and Stetson, and gave the morning mail a quick 

glance. He cackled with pleasure at an abusive anonymous letter. "I get 

at least one of these a day" he told his companion... Oliphant [had portrayed] 

a petulant Henry Kissinger in full papal attire..." 

(29') "...The man enters, and begins examining the pictures in sequence, reading 

the notes beneath each one — standing close, standing back, moving 

in again. Occasionally, he makes a comment to his companion, "Pen and 

water-color over chalk" he remarks... At a picture labeled "Crayon and 

watercolors heightened with gouache" he tries to figure out where the 

gouache [has been] applied; it is hard to decide. "That's nice" he says 

about the next one... "The first smoking-bomb cartoon!" exclaims the 

man, laughing delightedly. He looks closer. "Except it doesn't say 'The 

World' on the bomb". When he [has seen] all the pictures, he adjusts his 

Stetson and departs..." 

Where the TAM-system of English begins to diverge sharply from the 

Creole prototype is in morphemic and morphotactic properties which arise 

from particular accidents of diachronic change. These may be summarized as 

follows: 

(i) 

(ii) 

The suffix -ed 'preterit' has replaced the stem-internal Germanic preterit 

in most verb stems, where it also collapsed with the old anterior/perfect 

-en; 

The more recent 'anterior' aspectual marker have coexists with the 

older anterior/perfect -en;


(iii) Similarly, the 'non-punctual' aspectual marker be coexists with the initially 

nominal/participial suffix -ing; 

(iv) A great number of modals occupy the 'irrealis' slot, marking future, ability, 

possibility, probability, necessity, obligation etc. This sub-system is 

open and still evolving (Garcia, 1968); 

(v) Morphotactically, leaving the old suffixes aside for the moment, the 

English invariant order for the TAM-markers is IRREALIS-ANTE 

RIOR-NON-PUNCTUAL, while the Creole prototype order is ANTE- 

RIOR-IRREALIS-NON-PUNCTUAL. Further, there are grounds for 

believing that the English order merely represents the accidental diachronic 

order in which the aspectuals were added to the system, 'have' 

first, the modals later (Robert Stockwell, personal communication). 

It is thus primarily in the diachronically-related details of morphology (old 

suffixes) and morpho-tactics that English exhibits the greatest divergence 

from the Creole prototype. 

3.2. Early Biblical Hebrew 

In semantic-pragmatic terms, and for the moment puting the morphology 

aside, the TAM-system of Early Biblical Hebrew (henceforth EBH) is inherently 

the same as the Creole prototype. I will recapitulate the details of this 

system below, and for further detail see Givón (1977). 

The major opposition in the use of TAM-markers in the EHB narrative is 

between the 'imperfect' , 18 which is the in-sequence, realis, punctual aspect responsible 

for carrying the main-line ('backbone') of the story, and three other 

aspects which code the 'background', 'side-trips' : 

(a) The 'perfect' 18 which carries the anterior function 

(b) The 'participle' which carries the non-punctual function 

(c) The 'imperative', 'jussive' and other morphological categories which carry 

the various irrealis functions. 

A brief description of these aspects follows. 

3.2.1. The IN-SEQUENCE 'imperfect' 

While marking the verbs in clauses which constitute the main-line, backbone 

of the narrative, the 'imperfect' also marks a number of irrealis sub-categories 

. 19 . Events in sequence are rendered most commonly by the 'imperfect', 

and normally such rendition also involves continuation of the same subject/ 

topic. As an illustration consider:

130 T. GIVÓN 

(30) ...va-yis'u me-rfidim, va-yavo'u midbar Sinay (Exodus, 19.2) 

and-traveled-they from-Rfidim and-came-they desert Sinai 

'...so then they traveled from Rfidim and entered the Sinai desert, 

va-yahanu sham ba-midbar, va-yahen sham Yisra'el neged ha-har... 

and-camped-they there in-the-desert and-camped there Israel against 

the-mountain 

and they camped there in the desert, so Israel camped there near the 

mountain...' 

3.2.2. The ANTERIOR 'perfect' 

This aspect marks out-of-sequence clauses which in real time had preceded 

the preceding clause(s) in the narrative. It is also the main avenue for introducing 

a new subject/topic in narrative. Thus, EBH exhibits a characteristic 

discourse strategy, of 'fishing the new topic out of previously-mentioned 

clauses within the narrative sequence'. As an example consider the following 

passage, which directly follows (30) above: 

(31) u-Moshe 'alah 'el ha-'elohim, va-yikra' 'elav YHWH... (Exodus, 19.3) 

and-Moses climbed-PERF toward the-God and-called-IMP to-him 

YHWH 

'...and Moses had gone up toward God; so then God called to him... ' 

Moses' ascent toward God in Sinai had preceded, in real time, the camping 

near the mountain told with the 'imperfect' in the preceding clause (30). The 

second clause in (31), however, resumes the interrupted in-sequence description 

of (30), and thus reverts to using the 'imperfect'. Further, Moses is being 

re-introduced into the narrative in (31), after 'the people' and 'Israel' occupied 

the subject/topic position in the preceding clauses. This re-introduction, as 

well as new introductions, always appear in anterior-marked clauses, i.e. with 

the verb in the 'perfect'. 20 

Most typically, the anterior/'perfect' is found in subordinate-presupposed 

clauses, such as V-complements: 

(32) ...va-yar' ve-hineh harvu pney ha-'adamah... (Genesis, 8.13) 

and-saw and-lo dried-up-PERF face-of the-earth 

'...and he saw that the surf -of the earth had dried up...' 

Similarly, the anterior/'perfect' is found in relative clauses, as in:


(33) ...va-yivra' 'elohim 'et...kol ha-haya ha-romeset 'asher shartsu hamayim... 

and-created God ACC.all the-animal the crawling that spawned- 

PERF the-water 

'...and God created all the crawling creaures that had spawned in 

the water...' (Genesis, 1.21) 

The use of the anterior/'perfect' in EBH thus closely parallels the use of the 

anterior in Creoles, but has nothing to do with the distinction past/non-past 

per se. The 'imperfect' in EBH, on the other hand, closely parallels the creole 

0-form. 

3.2.3. The NON-PUNCTUAL 'participle' 

As noted in Givón (1977), the EBH participial-stative form of the verb 

still performs a number of nominal functions, being of nominal origin. That is, 

it characterizes permanent states ('nouns') rather than changing states (temporary 

adjectives, stative verbs). 21 However, the non-punctual use of the participle 

is already envolving in EBH, seen primarily as the habitual (rather than 

the short-duration 'progressive'). 22 Thus, consider: 

(34) ...deshe' 'esev mazria' zera', 'ets pri 'oseh pri... (Genesis, 1.11) 

lawn-of grass seeding seed tree-of fruit making fruit 

'...(all) grasses that seed themselves, (all) fruit-trees that make fruit. 

Occasionally, one already finds the 'progressive' use of the participle in EBH, 

as in: 

(35) ...va-yishme'u 'et qol ha-elohim mithalex ba-gan... (Genesis, 3.7) 

and-heard-they ACC voice-of the-God walking in-the-garden 

'...and they heard the voice of God as he was walking in the garden... ' 

While still envolving, the EBH 'participle' is unmistakably moving toward 

covering the non-punctual function of the Creole prototype. 23 

3.2.4. The coding of IRREALIS in EBH 

In EBH the category irrealis is not covered by a single marker, nor is it — 

as we have seen in section 2. above — covered by a single marked (go) in Hawaii-Creole. 

In BH, one finds a number diachronic sources which have joined 

to cover this category, and a number of those are still, during the EBH period, 

in the midst of diachronic evolution. I will discuss them priefly. 

3.2.4.1. The 'imperative' 

As expected, this form is used in direct-quoted speech, as in:

132 T. GIVÓN 

(Genesis, 3.7) 

(36) ...va-yo'mer elohim 'el Ya'aqov: "qum, 'aleh le-xa..."... 

and said God to Jacob get-op-IMP rise-IMP DAT-you 

'...and God said to Jacob: "Get up and ascend..."...' 

3.2.4.2. The 'imperfect' 

Perhaps because of a historical merger between the 'jussive'/'subjunctive' 

and the 'imperfect', both similar prefixai conjugation in EBH, one finds a 

widespread use of the 'imperfect' in exhortative contexts, as in: 

(Genesis, 35.2-4) 

(37) a. ...va-yo'mer Ya'aqov 'el bet-o ve-'el kol 'asher 'it-o: 

and-said Jacob to house-his and-to all that with-him 

'...and Jacob told his household and all the people with him: 

b. "hasiru 'et 'elohey ha-nexar 'asher be-toxa-xem ve-hittaharu, 

remove-PL-IMPER ACC gods-of the-foreign that in-inside-you andpurify-PL-IMPER 

"Cast away the foreign gods from inside you, and purify yourselves, 

ve-hahalifu 'et simlotey-xem; ve-naqumah ve-na'aleh Bet-'el, 

and-change-PL-IMPER ACC robes-your and-let's-rise-IMP and-let'sclimb-IMPB.E. 

and change your robes; and lef s all get up and go to Betel, 

d. ve-'a'aseh sham mizbeah la-'el ha-'oneh 'ot-i be-yom tsarat-i, 

and-I-do-IMP there sacrifice to-god that-answers ACC-me in-day-of 

trouble-my 

and I shall/let me make there sacrifice to the god who answers my 

prayers when I am in trouble, 

e. va-yhi 'imad-i ba-derex 'asher halaxti... " 

and-may-he-be-IMP with-me on-the-way that I-walk-PERF 

so that he shall be with me in whatever way I may walk..."...' 

In the context of second-person exhortation, in lines (37b,c), the 'imperative' 

is used. In switching to first-person and third-person exhortation in lines 

(37c,d,e), the 'imperfect'is used. Finally, in the irrealis relative-clause in line 

(37e), the 'perfect' is used (see discussion below). 

It is also possible to show many irrealis uses of the 'imperfect' in ifclauses, 

as in:

TENSE- ASPECT-MOD ALITY IN CREOLE 133 

(38) ...ve-xiyihyeh 'ish sone' le-re'e-hu... (Deuteronomy, 19.11) 

and-if there-shall-be man hating to-friend-his 

'.. .and if there shall be a man who hates his friend...' 

'...and if a man hates his friend...' 

In such a use, taken out of a codex where all statements are 'timeless' or 'habitual', 

the distinction between 'future-irrealis' and 'habitual-timeless' indeed 

neutralizes. And indeed, the habitual has been noted (Givón, 1973b) as a 

'swing-category', sharing both the properties of Irrealis and non-punctual. 

Both the 'habitual' and 'if-clause' use of the EBH 'imperfect' closely parallel 

what we have seen about the Hawaii-Creole 0-form. They thus do not, per se, 

violate the Creole prototype. One may as well note, however, that the habitual 

function of the 'imperfect' shifted by Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH) to the 

'participle', which has thus assumed the entire non-punctual range. The 'imperfect' 

went on to cede its main discourse function, that of carrying the backbone 

of the in-sequence narrative, to the 'perfect'; with the latter becoming 

both past and anterior. The 'imperfect' in LBH then assumed the Irrealis functions 

of both future and future-possible 'if-clause'. 

3.2.4.3. The 'perfect' 

The 'perfect'-anterior in EBH is clearly used as the counterfact-unrealized 

category, something which conforms to the Creole prototype. However, 

the "counter-factivity" of statements given by use of the 'perfect' is not logically 

absolute, but rather it imparts relatively low probability. And one may 

thus argue that in the EBH exhortative style, one considers dire-warnings, 

bleak predictions etc. to be a sufficient deterrent to the hearer so as to reduce 

the probability of non-compliance (and therefore of the dire result.. ) down to 

a point of unthinkability that begins to approximate 'counter-fact'. 24 Let us 

reproduce the last line of example (37), which illustrates this point: 

(39) ...va-yhi 'imad-i ba-derex 'asher halaxti... (Genesis, 35.4) 

and-he-may-be-IMP with-me in-the-way that I-may-go-PERF 

'...so that he may be with me in whatever road I chose... ' 

The use of the "past" in English to impart counterfact is well known, but much 

like EBH it is also used for still-possible future-oriented clauses that are considered 

highly undesirable. Thus consider: 

(40) I'd be real pissed if he went and did that... 

The use of the 'perfect' in EBH for a considerable portion of the probability

134 T. GIVÓN 

scale, way above counterfact, is thus not an isolated aberration but, I think, a 

systematic phenomenon. 

In the next example, the chain of 'undesired events' begins with the 'imperfect', 

then shifts to the 'perfect': 

(41) ...pen yishlah yad-o (Genesis, 3.22) 

lest he-sent-IMP hand-his 

'...lest he extended his hand 

ve-laqah me-'ets ha-hayim 

and-took-PERF from-three-of the-life 

and took (fruit) from the tree of life 

ve-'axal ve-hay l-'olam... 

and-ate-PERF and-lived-PERF to-world 

and ate it and lived forever... ' 

In many passages of EBH, the use of the 'perfect' and 'imperfect' in such contexts 

is just about interchangeable, even in the clearly-not-counterfact portions 

of narrative, as in the codex uses below: 

(42) ...ve-xi yihyeh 'ish sone' le-re'e-hu (Deuteronomy, 19.11) 

...and-if there-be-IMP man hating to-friends-his 

'...and if there be a case of a man hating his friend, 

ve-'arav lo ve-qam 'alav ve-hika-hu nefesh va-met... 

and-ambushed-PERF to-him and-rose-PERF and-hit-PERF-him andhe-died-PERF 

so that he ambushed him and rose upon him and hit him and that man 

died...' 

(43) ...va-'asitem lo ka-'asher zamam la-'asot le-'ah-iv (Deut., 19.19) 

and-thou-shall-do-PERF to-him like-that he-conspired to-do to-brother-his 

'...and you shall do unto him the way he planned to do unto his brother, 

u-vi'arta 'et ha-ra' mi-qirbe-xa 

and-thou-shall-expell-PERF ACC the-evil from-inside-you 

and you shall expelí the evil (ones) from amongst you, 

ve-ha-nish'arim yishme'u ve-yir'u ve-lo' yosifu la'asot... 

and-the-survivors shall-hear-IMP and-see-IMP and-not continue-IMP 

to-do 

and so the survivers will hear and see and not continue to do... '


3.2.5 Combinatorial possibilities in the EBH TAM-system 

As we have seen above, the semantic-pragmatic system underlying the 

EBH tense-aspect-modality system is essentially the same as that of the 

Creole prototype. What is clearly not identical, however, is the morphology 

and morphotactics. All the 'markers' here are old, considerably-eroded inflections, 

with either a suffixal or prefixai subject-agreement conjugation to 

set them apart as well as complex stem-internal vocalization and consonantgemination 

changes. 25 The markers are thus neither separable from their 

stems nor combinable with each other, and the question of permissible combinations 

is thus to quite an extent moot. 

There is some evidence that when two TAM-features are combined quafeatures 

rather than qua morphemes, the combination yields the prototypical 

result. Thus, for example, the 'perfect'-anterior, when put in an irrealis semantic 

environment, tends to yield (among other things) also the counterfactunrealized. 

This semantic-pragmatic possibility eventually develops, in Mishnaic 

and Modern Hebrew, into a combination of the verb 'be' in the 'perfect' 

plus the main verb in the 'participle' — which by then covers also the habitual 

— to code the counterfact-unrealized, as in: 

(44) 'im hu haya 'ose 'et ze, 'az hu haya matsliah 

if he were-PERF does ACC this the he were-PERF succeeds 

'If he had done it, he would have succeeded' 

A combination reminiscent of (44) may already be found in EBH. Except that 

there the combination is between 'be'-'perfect' and V-'imperfect', as in: 

(45) . .ve-haya ki tavo'' 'el ha-'arets (Deuteronomy, 26.1) 

and-be-PERF that you-come-IMP to the-land 

'... and now, if you happen to come into the land... ' 

Other combinations are simply unobtainable in EBH. 

3.3 Bemba 

Bemba, a core-Bantu language spoken in Zambia's Northern Province, 

exhibits an extremely complex tense-aspect system, even for a Bantu language. 

On the tense side of the system, one finds four time-categories — with 

respect to the time-axis/time-of-speech — in both the past and the future: 26 

(i) Within a few hours from the time-axis; 

(ii) Within the same day ('earlier today', 'later today') ;

136 T. GIVÓN 

(iii) Within one more day ('yesterday', 'tomorrow') ; 

(iv) Beyond one more day ('day before yesterday', 'day after tomorrow'); 

Even the two time-adverbs relevant to these divisions function on both sides 

of the time-axis: 

(46) mailo 'yesterday', 'tomorrow' 

bulya-bushiku 'day before yesterday', 'day after tomorrow' 

In addition, the language also has the 'present-progressive' and the 'habitual' 

categories, and although they are somewhat less-marked in terms of semantic 

and distributional constraints than the 'past' and 'future', they should be 

considered 'tense categories' on their own. 

This tense grid is intersected by a number of aspectual features whose distribution 

through the various tense-categories is skewed by two independent 

factors: 

(a) The vagaries of accidental diachronic change, and 

(b) Some universally observed distributional tendencies. 

The aspectual features found in Bemba are the following: 

3.3.1 The punctual/non-punctual distinction 

This is the most prevalent aspectual distinction in the TAM-system of 

Bemba, foundin almost all the time-divisions of both 'past' and 'future'. However, 

it does not intersect with other aspectual features which are found largely 

in the 'past' division. In the 'past' and 'future' this aspect may be interpreted 

as either 'progressive/continuous', 'iterative' or 'habitual', thus conforming to 

the Creole prototype. In discourse-pragmatics it is used primarily in background/side-trip 

portions of narratives. Morphologically, it is almost always 

marked by the prefix Aáá- or léé-, which is in turn derived historically from 

the verb 'sleep', 'stay', 'continue' (-láála-/-lééle). 

3.3.2 The perfective/lingering/anterior aspect 

Both semantically and pragmatically, this aspect in Bemba corresponds 

to the Creole anterior, and is found only in the 'past' time divisions. It was historically 

marked by the 'perfective' suffix -ile//-ele (MB), but eventually the 

situation shifted, so that now in most cases the -MB suffix marks action in-sequence, 

non-anterior, while the unsuffixed form (formally thus "lessmarked") 

marks the anterior, out-of-sequence, lookback clauses. 27 Pragmatically, 

the non-anterior, punctual, realis TAM-markers marked by the -MB


suffix (in most though not all 'past' divisions) perform the narrative-backbone, 

in-sequence, repeating-subject/topic function in Bemba. Thus, for example, 

consider the following passage from an old historical chronicle: 28 

(47) .. .imfumu nkalaamba yaa-bo yaa-ntaanshi a-lí ni Chinawezi Kantanje; 

chief great of-them of-first he-be beC. K. 

'.. .Their first great chief was Cinawezi Kantanje; 

na-ye a-à-fyeele Mwaku; Mwakuna-ye a-à-fyeele Iyala noand-he 

he-PAST-sire-MB M.M. and-he he-PAST-sire-MB andomuanakashi 

Kabindi; 

girl K. 

he then sired Mwaku; and Mwaku then sired Iyala and the girl Kabindi; 

Iyala a-á-fyeele abaana batatu: Matiti,Sakalendena Nkonde-a- 

Matiti; 

I. he-PAST-sire-MB children three M. S. and Nkonde-a- 

Matiti 

and Iyala sired three children: Matiti, Sakalende and Nkonde-a-Matiti; 

na-ye Nkonde-a-Matiti a-h-fyeele abaana banne... 

and-he N. -a-M. he-PAST-sire-MB children four 

and Nkonde-a-Matiti then sired four children...' 

The semantic value of the 'perfect'/'lingering'-anterior forms in Bemba is substantially 

the same as that of the Creole anterior. For active verbs, the 'lingering' 

aspect implies an action performed during whatever time-division the 

tense-marking indicates, but whose consequences are relevant to the time-ofspeech, 

in other words, they linger. For active verbs, thus, what 'lingers' to the 

time-of-speech is some "consequence" of the act. In other word, in terms of 

the discourse topic, that information is relevant at the time-axis: 

(48) Context: Is Joe still working? 

Response: a-à-boomba 'He's already worked the day before yesterday' 

he-PAST-work-ANT 

For stative verbs, on the other hand, what 'lingers' is the state itself. Thus, 

since the "present-progressive" with the prefix -léé- is barred from stative 

verbs, a 'lingering' past tense is normally used to render those states in the 

present, as in: 

(49) a-à-shipa 'He is brave' (and has been so since long ago) 

he-PAST-brave

138 T. GIVÓN 

This is of course reminiscent of Bickerton's (1975) description of the anterior 

in Creoles, marking "time before another time" for active verbs but "time-axis" 

for stative verbs. When, as in (50), a non-narrative situation is at issue and 

the time-axis is time-of-speech, that means "past with present-consequences" 

for active verbs and "present state" (which must have started earlier) for state 

verbs. But if one deals with narrative, where the time-axis is always given by 

the preceding clause, the interpretation is an exact match for Bickerton's definition: 

"past before past for active verbs and simple-past for state verbs". 

Thus, consider: 

(50) ...n-á-ti-ile n-ci-isa, John elyo na-o a-à-ya 

I-PAST-AUX-MB I-AUX-come John then and-he he-PAST-leave 

'...I came (long ago), and by then John had already left (long before)...., ' 

'...when I came, he had already left... ' 

The first clause in (50) is marked by the sequential (non-anterior) -MB suffix, 

and establishes the time-axis "before yesterday". The second is given in the 

anterior/'lingering' form of the verb and 'looks-back' to "before the preceding 

day" with respect to the established time-axis. 

When the 'lingering'/anterior aspect is used with a state verb in narrative, it 

predictably produces the effect of 'simple past', i.e. "then", but the clause remains 

'out-of-sequence' nontheless, since the narrative backbone normally 

involves the concatenation of actions in sequence. In fact, when the -MB suffix 

is used with state verbs, they become part of the narrative-backbone, fit into 

the time-sequence, and their interpretation changes from "be" to "become". 

Thus consider: 

(51) ...n-à-ti-ile n-ci-isa, John elyo na-o -ä-shipa (anterior) 

I-PAST-AUX-MB I-AUX-come John then and-he he-PAST-brave 

'... I came, and John was brave 

(52) ....n-à-ish-ile, John na-o a-ä-ship-ile (in-sequence) 

I-PAST-come-MB John and-he he-PAST-brave-MB 

'...I came, and then John became brave...' 

All this underscores the fact that the anterior per-se does not mark "past", but 

rather "antecedence", in the Creole as well as elsewhere. 

3.3.3 The 'focus ' aspect 

This distinction, though most wide-spread in Bemba (seven minimal 

pairs throughout the TAM-system), is also found in Rwanda and Zulu (Giv-


on, 1975) as well as in some West-African languages (Hyman, 1979). It involves 

the scope of the assertion made by the sentence, more specifically 

whether the verb is included in or excluded from the scope of new information. 

Thus, for each minimal pair coding this contrast in Bemba, one finds one 

member signifying that the asserted portion of the sentence is the entire VP, 

while the other member signifies that the asserted portion is only the complement, 

excluding the verb itself. Let us first illustrate this general possibility by 

an example from English. Given sentence (53a) below, one may consider it as 

either the answer to the question (53b) (VP-scope) or (53c) (COMP-scope): 

(53) a. He went to the village. 

b. What did he do then? (VP-scope) 

c. Where did he go then? (COMP-scope) 

In English, (53a) may be pronounced with slightly varying stress/intonation 

patterns which may, to some extent, disambiguate the scope 'ambiguity'. But 

in Bemba the answers to (53a) will involve two sentences with different focusaspect 

marking, (54a) (VP-scope) and (54b) (COMP-scope), respectively: 

(54) a. a-à-lí-iile ku-mushi (VP-scope) 

he-PAST-FOC-go-MB to-village 

'He went to the village' 

b. a-à-iile ku-mushi (COMP-scope) 

he-PAST-go-MB to-village 

'He went to the village' 

There are a number of additional facts that should be mentioned about 

this contrast. To begin with, the VP-scope member of these contrasting pairs 

cannot appear in relative clauses, cleft sentences, WH-questions, adverbial 

clauses or negative sentences. In other words, all presuppositional or 'moretopical' 

29 environments in discourse in Bemba behave as if the information 

coded by the verb itself is presupposed. When the entire proposition is 'topical', 

the verb certainly could not be new information. 30 In addition, one may 

note that in discourse it is the COMP-focus member of the pair which is used in 

the in-sequence, narrative-backbone clauses. Thus in the narrative in (47), 

composed entirely of backbone-clauses, only this member is used (a-à-fyeele) 

rather than its corresponding VP-focus (a-à-li-fyeele), even though the option 

does exist to use the latter. In Givón (1975) I suggested a substantive explanation 

(or 'interpretation') of these facts, namely that the normal strategy of releasing 

new information in human language — at least in narrative genre — is

140 T. GIVÓN 

to release one bit at a time, so that if a sentence has an object/complement, 

then that complement must be the only bit of new information within that 

sentence (unless the sentence it presupposed/topical, in which case nothing is 

strictly new). The facts of the Bemba discourse strategy in (47) certainly support 

this suggestion, although I believe it also has universal validity. 

3.3.4 Irrealis/modal categories 

There is no morphemic unity to the expression of 'irrealis' in Bemba. 

Rather, there is a vast plethora of specific morphological/semantic sub-categories: 

(i) Many future-tense markers (in four time-divisions, intersecting with the 

non-punctual/punctual aspect) 

(ii) Five morphemic combinations marking the subjunctive of manipulation 

(in three time divisions and with an intersection of the non-punctual/ 

punctual aspect) 

(iii) A subjunctive of uncertainty marked for the non-punctual/punctual aspectual 

distinction 

(iv) An imperative 

(v) A counterfact / unrealized conditional 

Finally, the hypothetical-conditional makes use of some future tense plus a 

subordinator that is not formally within the tense-aspect morphology. 

There is also no morphotactic unity for the various irrealis markers, with 

the diachronically-older ones (subjunctive of manipulation, negative, imperative) 

being suffixal, the rest being prefixai. The irrealis system has no more 

unity here than it has in Hawaii-Creole, reflecting largely layers of diachronic 

development. 31 

3.3.5 Combinatorial possibilities 

The Bemba system is a rich mesh of markers, the older ones being suffixes 

and all the more recent ones, including ongoing innovations, being prefixai 

with often a transparent relation to extant verbs. The morphotactics are 

completely rigid, with the order determined mostly by the principle: 

(55) "Last to be innovated will be added up at the end of the prefix chain, just 

next to the verb stem". 

In the past time-divisions, "anterior" and "focus" may intersect, but "nonpunctual" 

shies away from either. Irrealis categories intersect only with one 

aspect, the punctual/non-punctual distinction. The present-progressive is obligatorily 

"non-punctual", and the habitual shows one aspectual distinction,


that of "focus". 

3.4 Where the prototype is less typical: Chuave 32 

I have chosen to discuss this language here because from the point of view 

of strategies of information processing it is a distinct type that at first glance 

bears little resemblance to the examples we have seen thus far. In spite of its 

strangeness, however, the Chuave mode of "clause-chaining" reflects in an interesting 

way on the Creole prototype and, paradoxically, by its very exceptionality 

reaffirms the general principles which underlie the prototype. 

Chuave, a New Guinea language, is a "clause-chaining" language. Information 

is presented in potentially-long chains of clauses, of which only the last 

member is marked for mood (declarative, question, command) and tense (future 

vs. non-future). The 'chain' may of course be made of only a single clause, 

but that is rare. When it is made of two clauses, the final clause is always asserted, 

but a non-final clause may be either asserted or topical/presupposed. 29 

That topic clause may, in appropriate contexts, be translated into English as 

distinct grammatical construction types: 

(56) ADV-clauses: 'because', 'before', 'if', 'when', 'while', 'inspite of, 

'though', 'once', 'just as' 

Conjoined topic clause:Without any particular subordinator-value in 

English 

Relative clause: I.e., supplying a definite description for a participant 

given in a subsequent clause 

Verb complement clause: Obviously of the presupposed type, following 

verbs of cognition 

The actual interpretation (i.e. "translation to English") of these topic clauses 

is only inferred from the context, but not further marked. 

The topic-clauses must be marked for being either simultaneous (-i-) or 

non-simultaneous (-a-) with the following assertion/comment. And while 

non-simultaneity is statistically overwhelming in texts, simultaneity is possible, 

with translations such as "while", "at the same time that" etc., pending on 

the context. 

Let me illustrate the major translations the topic-assertion chain may find 

in English: 

(57) ADV-clause: ne iki-num moi-n-g-i (TOPIC)(SIMULTANEOUS) 

you house-your be-your-TOP-SIM 

'While you are in the house,

142 T. GIVÓN 

(58) 

tei u-na-y-e 

there come-FUT-I-DECL 

I will come there' 

kan-i-k-a-i 

see-I-TOP-NONSIM-that 

'When I looked, 

kiapu guwai-nom-i muruwo furuwai-bei 

officer things-their-that all strew-do 

(ASSERTED) 

(TOPIC)(NON-SIMUL.) 

de-0-im-ie 

(ASSERTED) 

leave-NON-FUT-they-DECL 

they were strewing all the officer's things about' 

(59) Topic clause: koma du-pun-g-a-rai (TOPIC) 

before say-we-TOP-NONSIM-that 

'Concerning our talking before, 

niki do-0-m-e 

bad be-NONFUT-it-DECL 

it was no good' 

(ASSERTED) 

(60) Relative clause: gan moi-n-g-u-a (TOPIC) 

child be-he-TOP-him-NONSIM 

'The child who is here, 

Gomia tei awi d-i 

Gomia there send leave-IMP 

send (him) to Gomia!' 

(COMMAND) 

(61) V-complement: kasu di-in-g-a (TOPIC) 

lie-say-there-TOP-NONSIM 

'that they told a lie 

fai-ke-0-m-a 

right-NEG-NONFUT-it-EMPH 

is not right' 

(ASSERTED) 

The topic-assertion/command/question relation allows reiteration according 

to the following rules: 

(62) a. The first clause in the chain, if it is a topic clause, serves as the topic/ 

background for the entire succeeding part; 

b. But if the assertion has more than one clause, then its first clause in 

turn could be either asserted or topical with respect to the rest;


We thus have here the possibility of topicality hierarchy among the clauses, 

with a successive chain of embeddings. To illustrate this possibility, consider 

the following two examples. In the first, only the first sentence is a topicclause, 

while the other two are equally asserted: 

(61') kan-i-k-a-i 



(TOPICi) 

(ASSERTED, MEDIAL) 

kiapu guwai-nom-i muro furuwai bei de-in-goro 

officer things-their-that all strew do leave-they-DS 

they were strewing about all the officers' belongings 

niki-de fi-ø-y-e 

bad-be think-NONFUT-I-DECL 

and I got angry' 

(ASSERTED, FINAL) 

In the second example, the second sentence — of the very same propositional 

contents, is the secondary topic vis-a-vis the third: 

(62') kan-i-k-a-i 



(TOPIQ) 

kiapu guwai-nom-i muruwo furuwai bei de-in-g-a TOPICii) 

officer thing-their-that all strew do leave-they-TOP-NONSIM 

then because they were strewing about all the officers' belongings, 

niki-de fi-0-y-e 

bad-be thing-NONFUT-I-DECL 

I got angry' 

(ASSERTED) 

With respect to the first clause in both (61') and (62'), the second clause is part 

of the 'comment'/'foreground'. But with respect to the last clause, in (61') the 

second clause is equally asserted, while in (62') it is 'topic'/'background'. 

An irrealis-hypothetical 'if-clause' is marked like a non-simultaneous 

'when' or 'because' clause, except that the tense-aspect-modal marking on the 

main (final) verb in the chain is 'future' rather than non-future. Thus compare 

(63) below to the 'while'-clause in (57) and the 'because'-clause in (58): 

(63) ne iki-num moi-n-g-a-i (TOPIC, NON-SIMULTANEOUS) 

you house-your be-you-TOP-NONSIM-that 

'If/when you'll be in your house,

144 T. GIVÓN 

tei u-na-y-e 

there come-FUT-I-DECL 

I will come there' 

(ASSERTED) 

The actual interpretation of the ADV-clause thus depends, in addition to the 

real-world and immediate-context pragmatics, on the 'simultaneous'/'non-simultaneous' 

marking of the TOP-clause and on the 'future'/'non-future' 

marking of the final clause. 

One last feature of this clause-chaining strategy of processing information 

concerns medial asserted clauses: All of them must be obligatorily marked 

as to whether the following clause maintains the same subject (SS) or switches 

to a different sub ject (DS). The latter case may be seen in (6) above. A longer 

chain of asserted clauses may be seen in: 

(64) a....meina i ne-ro 

money get eat-SS 

'... (I) took the money 

b. ena tekoi u-re 

then again come-SS 

then (I) came back 

iki moi-i-koro 

house be-I-DS 

and stayed home, 

d. tekoi u boi-n-goro 

again call out-he-DS 

so then he sent for me again, 

e. inako de-ro 

return leave-SS 

and so (I) came back 

f. fu-i-goro 

go-I-DS 

and went (there), 

g. tokoi numba lin-lin numba-i naro-0-m-e 

again number one-one number-that give-me-NONFUT-he-DECL 

and again he made me foreman of the work-line'. 

The major features of the Chuave information-processing system may be


now summarized as follows: 

(i) Main line of narrative sequence: Asserted clauses can only come in their 

natural sequence. 33 where subject/topic changes are regulated by 

markers; 

(ii) Topical/presupposed/background clauses: These 'lacunae' can 

(a) Come only before the assertion/foreground pertaining to them, and 

(b) Contain only events which preceded or were simultaneous with the 

asserted clause(s); 

(iii) Anterior: So long as one deals with the realis 33 mode in the narrative, the 

phenomenon of anterior/perfect does not, strictly speaking, exist in 

Chuave. If an event preceded in time, it cannot be mentioned after an asserted 

event that followed it in real time within the same chain; 

(iv) Non-punctual: This semantic feature may appear in either topical or asserted 

clauses and is marked by the verb 'be' (moi); 

(v) Speech-act value: The illocutionary force for the entire non-topical portion 

of the chain is given by the last clause of the chain; 

(vi) Irrealis: The 'future' and 'conditional', including 'purpose clauses' and 

clauses under the scope of modality-inducing verbs 34 , is marked by a special 

marker, while 'past' and 'present' —i.e. realis — are unmarked (0); 

'imperative' is marked, like 'interrogative', by the manipulative speech 

act suffix (-o) ; in which case any additional irrealis marking would be superfluous. 

To what extent does the Chuave TAM-system reflect the Creole prototype? 

This question may be answered as follows: 

(i) 

(ii) 

Main line of narrative: Chuave certainly has an unmarked (0), punctual, 

realis, in-sequence clause-type which codes the asserted main line of the 

narrative. This is certainly an overwhelming fact about narrative structure 

in Creole and elsewhere; 

Non-punctual: An auxiliary verb 'be' (moi) marks verbs as non-punctual, 

and may appear in either asserted or presupposed clauses, so long as 

it abides by their specific restrictions on sequentiality. Obviously, at the 

text-frequency level, the majority of asserted/in-sequence clauses are 

bound to be punctual, as is the case in Creole and elsewhere. But nonpunctual 

clauses in Chuave that are also background/topic clauses may 

not be interspersed within a clause-chain, and must be relegated exclusively 

to the beginning of the chain, where all topical/background material 

is deposited. While this is not a categorial rule in Creole and else-

146 T. GIVÓN 

where, it does nontheless reflect the universal human-language tendency 

to put topical/presupposed/background materials before the asserted 

information. Chuave merely makes this 'tendency' into a categorial rule; 

(iii) Irrealis: Two separate markers are resposible for this category, the manipulative 

speech-act suffix -o and the future/conditional/purpose aspectual 

suffix (-na,-wa). This separation is very common, as we have seen 

above, and may be also found — diachronically and so to some extent also 

synchronically — in Hawaii Creole (see fn. 30, above); 

(iv) Anterior: Chuave simply does not allow an anterior / perfect situation to 

arise, by consigning all prior/presupposed/topical/relative-clause/adverb-clause 

materials to the beginning of the clause-chain. This is certainly 

an extreme strategy, but it reflects at the categorial level what is 

certainly true in all languages at the text-frequency level. Indeed, the rule 

of information-sequencing in human language is "follow the natural 

event sequence", while anterior/perfect, which breaks the sequence, is 

an exception. One may thus conclude that Chuave, and other languages 

like it, do not have a special anterior marker because they practice at the 

categorial level what all human languages practice at the overwhelming 

text-frequency level. 35 The exception, a seeming deviation from the 

Creole prototype, thus turns out to confirm a universal rule of human 

communication structure rather than violate it; 

(v) Combinatorial possibilities: The non-punctual and the future, the only 

marked aspectual morphemes in Chuave, can certainly combine with 

each other, but the absence of the anterior makes all other combinatorial 

possibilities a moot question. 

4. The Creole prototype and diachronic change 

In the preceding sections I have assessed the validity of considering the 

Creole TAM-system as a language-universal prototype in terms of synchronic 

data. In this section I will try, albeit more briefly, to compare diachronic processes 

associated with both the rise and fall of the Creole TAM-system with 

those attested in the rise and fall of TAM-systems elsewhere. 

4.1. The rise of TAM-systems 

In this sub-section I will consider similarities and divergences between 

the etymological sources which give rise to the Creole TAM-markers, and 

those which give rise to semantically and pragmatically similar TAM-markers 

in non-contact languages.


4.1.1. The etymological sources of Creole TAM-markers 

In Table 2., below, the markers for six Creoles are listed, together — 

whenever possible — with their etymological sources in the lexicon-donor 

language. 

TABLE 2: Creoles T-A-M markers and their sources 36 

ANTERIOR 

language marker source 

Sranan ben 'been' (E.) or 

'ven'(P. 'come') 

Guayanese bin 'been'(E.) or 

'ven'(P. 'come') 

Haitan té eté(F. 'was'/ 

'been') 

NON-PUNCTUAL 

marker 

e 

IRREALIS 

source marker 

de/da/ne/le go 

(W.Afr.'be'or sa 

na (P. 'in'/'at') 

source 

'go' 

'shall'? (E.) 

a (same) go 'go'(E-) 

sa 'shall'? (E.) 

ap(ré) aprés(F.'after') avá va('go'F.) 

Hawaii-Cr. bin 'been'(E.) stay 'stay'(E.) go(n) 'go' (E.) 

Juba-Arabic 

kan(a) kana(A. 

'was'/'been') 

Krio bin 'been'(E.) or 

ven (P. 'come') 

g/gi/ 

ge/gad 

de 

ga'ad 

(A. 'sit') 

de/le (W. Afr. 

'be') or na (P. 

'in'/'at') 

bi- 

go 

bidd 

('want' A.) 

'go'(E.) 

While in several instances the etymological source of the markers is not 

one-hundred percent firm, the following generalizations may be made: 

(i) 

Anterior: In general, it seems that the Creole — via the Pidgin — generalized 

on an existing anterior-past construction. However, it is not the actual 

anterior auxiliary that was pressed into service to mark the Creole 

anterior. Rather, the non-punctual ('stative') auxiliary following an anterior 

auxiliary got re-interpreted as an anterior marker. The reason for 

this is in part obvious: The anterior auxiliary itself is an unstressed, reduced 

form with too much morpho-phonemic variation. The Pidgin 'filter' 

via which the data was passed on to the Creole routinely zeroes-out 

such forms. The next-best was pressed into service then, the rather stable, 

phonologically larger form of 'be' in an anterior environment 

('been', 'été' etc.). Only in Juba-Arabic, where the lexical source has no

148 T. GIVÓN 

auxiliary for the anterior, but rather an inflected form of 'be' that is not 

de-stressed, did the actual anterior form find its way into the Creole. The 

mediation by the Pidgin speakers thus plays a significant role in filtering 

the lexifier-language forms down to the Creole. 

(ii) Non-punctual: The most common source for the markers here is a verb 

of being in location ('stay', 'sit' 'be-at'), or otherwise related prepositional/adverbial 

expressions such as 'there' or the Portuguese 'in/at' (if the 

etymologies are indeed firm). The exception here is the Haitian apré 

('after'), but perhaps it may have been a re-interpretation of 'stay later', 

'continue later', 'continue onward' etc. 

(iii) Irrealis: A borrowing of an existing future modal/auxiliary ('shall') is 

likely for at least the Caribbean sa (Sranan, Guayanese). Otherwise, 

either 'go' or 'want' tend to be innovated by the Creole as future/imperative/irrealis 

markers. But this again may already reflect an existing innovation 

in the lexifier-donor language. Thus, for example, 'want' is already 

used as a future marker in spoken Arabic dialects, certainly in colloquial 

Sudanese. 37 'Go' is used as an immediate-future marker in colloquial 

English, as well as in French. 

While the etymological sources of the Creole T-A-M markers look impressively 

'natural' and 'universal', it is clear that the universality here may 

not be a Creole-specific phenomenon, but rather related to universal possibilities 

manifesting themselves through the donor language. What we actually 

see is a great amount of accidentality in the Creole choice of T-A-M markers, 

choosing — via the Pidgin mediation — the most viable, phonologically-unambiguous 

marker available in the donor language. Only occasionally does 

one find an unmistakable, previously unattested (in the donor) innovation, 

such as the Hawaii-Creole 'stay', or perhaps the Krio de ('there' or 'be there'). 

And again, the fact that a Creole chooses to innovate at that point may be 

simply due to total lack of any unambiguous, diachronically un-decayed 

marker in the donor language at that particular point in time; i.e. once again 

due to diachronic accidents. The diachronic rise of the Creole T-A-M markers 

is thus, to quite an extent, mediated by the lexifier-donor language — as perceived 

by the Pidgin speakers. 

4.1.2 The etymological source of TAM-markers in non-contact language 

In this sub-section I will briefly list the most common sources for the 

markers of the three Creole-prototype TAM-features. 38


(i) Anterior: One finds here most commonly 'have' (English, French, Spanish, 

German, North-Persian dialect (Anderson, 1977)) and 'finish' 

(Swahili) and for state and motion/transition verbs also 'be' (French, 

German). The use of be ('been) go ('gone') and do ('done') is most commonly 

observed in forms that are already inflected for the anterior feature. 

The main semantic/ pragmatic feature involved seems to be "termination 

of a process at the time-axis", i.e. at the point of relevance. The 

anteriority and out-of-sequence features derive as an inference: 

"What is relevant to the time-axis and terminates there must have started 

to occur at a prior time". 

Since the time-axis is normally established by another clause that is given 

in-sequence, a "prior to the time-axis initiation" of the 'relevant' 39 clause 

automatically makes it anterior and out-of-sequence. 

(ii) Non-punctual: Most commonly languages use verbs of "being in location", 

such as 'be' (English, Amharic, Sherpa), 'stay' (Hawaii-Creole), 

'be-there' (Krio), 'sit' (Siluyana [Bantu]), 'sleep'/'spend-the-night7 

'continue' (Bemba[Bantu]), 'be with' (Swahili [Bantu]), 'lie-down' or 

'stand'. The relevant semantic feature seems to be "being in a prolonged 

state". 

(iii) Irrealis: Here I think one should consider a number of sources: 

(a) 'be going to do': I.e. the progressive use of 'go', as in English, 

French, Spanish, Israeli Hebrew, Palestinian Arabic and Creoles; 

(b) The imperative 'go-do': As attested sporadically in colloquial usage 

in many, perhaps most languages, but certainly in Pidgin-Creole. In 

a non-contact language the form of 'go' used should be already inflected 

by an imperative/jussive modality; 

(c) 'start': As in Siluyana (Bantu); 

(d) 'have': As in various Romance languages, but with an irrealis/imperative 

inflection (see Benveniste, 1968); 

(e) 'want': As in Swahili, Colloquial Arabic, English, German; 

Putting aside forms which come only with future/irrealis inflection 

('have', 'go-do'), the most common verbal sources are 'go', 'want' and to 

a lesser extent 'start'. The particular usages of these verbs as main verbs 

are all intentional or future-projecting (see Givón, 1973c.) 

To sum up, then, an etymological investigation of the sources of Creoles and 

non-contact-languages TAM-markers does not put Creoles in any privileged 

position with respect to linguistic universals.

150 T. GIVÓN 

4.2 Changes in TA M systems 

In the preceding sub-sections I discusses the diachronic rise of TAMmarkers 

responsible for coding the Creole-prototype in both Creoles and 

non-contact languages. In this section I will show what happens to the prototype 

TAM-features once they have been established, i.e. the kind of mutations 

and changes observed. 

4.2.1 Mutation of the'anterior'/'perfect' 

The most common mutation is from an anterior/sequential aspectual system 

toward a past/non-past tense system. This may be currently seen in Krio, 

an English-based West-African Creole created around the 1860's. The bin 

'anterior' marker has become almost obligatory in paragraph-opening contexts 

in the narrative, in situations involving no out-of-sequence clauses, as in 

the following story-initial passage: 40 

(65) Wan titi bin dç, wo bin dç wit im-pípul-dêe; 

one girl PAST be who PAST live with her-parents-DEM 

There was once a girl, who lived with her parents; 

dem bin ge ós na tík-tík búsh... 

they PAST have house in thick-thick forest 

they had a house in the thick forest...' 

Similar changes may be seen in French, Spanish, German, Late Biblical Hebrew 

(Givón, 1977) and probably many others. In Krio, in the mean time, 

another marker, doy 'finish' (*'done') is slowly establishing itself as the perfect/anterior 

marker most likely to replace bin, as in: 

(66) baydi tém we a kám,i bin doŋ) léf 

by the time when I came he PAST ANT leave 

'By the time I came, he had already left' 

The functional separation between bin = 'past' and dor) = 'anterior' may 

be also seen in the following passage: 

(67) wan pikin bin de, we ol-tęm i kin pis na będ; 

one boy PAST be who all-time he HABIT piss in bed 

'There was once a boy who always wetted his bed; 

iŋ-papá doŋ bit-am tęę ... 

his-father ANT beat-him hard 

his father would beat/had beaten him hard, (but he couldn't stop)...'


Here doŋ) is used to mark the second clause as out-of-sequence, since it points 

back to events happening in the middle of the preceding clause, rather than at 

its end. One finds the shifting of the bin anterior function to dog also in counterfact-unrealized 

clauses, as in the split usage in: 

(68) a bin fo gó na Wáshington, if Jími Káta go doŋ léf dé 

I PAST IRREAL go to Washington, if Jimmy Carter FUT ANT leave 

there 

T would have gone to Washington if J. had left 

In the first clause, the 'anterior/past' bin is used with the 'irrealis' marker fo 

(*'for'), while in the second, equally counterfact, the new 'anterior' dor) is 

used in combination with the 'future' marker go, but in the REVERSE order 

normally found in Creoles (Bickerton, 1975). The order reversal is most interesting, 

and may be explained as follows: The Krio dor) is the completive/perfective 

verb 'finish', used as a serial verb, as in: 

(69) i bin wók dor) 

he PAST work finish 

'He has finished working', 'He has worked and finished' 

The post-verbal position of dor) thus determines its post-'irrealis' position after 

go in (69) ; it is the result of the peculiar position of 'finish' in Krio syntax (as 

well as in many Niger-Congo languages). It has nothing to do with Creole universal, 

and is a post-Creole development that is influenced by the diachronic 

accidents and chance availabilities of contributory sources for further innovations 

within the TAM-system. 

Post-Creole developments in Krio thus reflects two highly-universal processes: 

(i) The change ANTERIOR (ASPECT) ⇒ PAST (TENSE) 

(ii) The change FINISH (VERB) ⇒ ANTERIOR (ASPECT) 

These changes are not Creole-specific, but occur in the post-Creole continuum 

just like they would occur in a non-contact language. 

Finally, the change from ASPECT/ANTERIOR to TENSE/PAST is also 

reported in child language acquisition (Antinucci and Miller, 1976), where 

children were found to first develop an aspectual/perfective feature and only 

later convert it (perhaps under pressure from the adult input) into a tense/past 

feature. The Creole prototype, and its subsequent mutation via de-Creolization, 

thus seem to reflect a developmental universal tendency of human language 

, one which is in turn reflected in both diachronic change and ontogenetic 

development.

152 T. GIVÓN 

4.2.2 Mutations of 'irrealis 

In Krio, all evidence suggests that the category 'irrealis' was never unified, 

and was split into at least four coding sub-systems all along. 

(a) Imperative: This was probably, at least originally, coded by the 0-form of 

the verb, without any trace of 'go', as in: 

(70) shát yu mót! 

shut your mouth 

'Shut up!' 

(b) The future: This was originally and is still covered by 'go', as in: 

(71) i go rén dis nét 

it FUT rain this night 

'It's going to rain tonight' 

(c) Conditional-if clauses: This function was marked again by the 0-form, as 

in: 

(72) if i kám, a go léf 

'If he comes, I'll leave' 

(d) Complements of modal and manipulative verbs: This function, including 

the coding of purpose clauses, is marked by fo (*'for'), as in: 

(73) a wán fo wók 

I want IRREAL work 

T want to work' 

(74) i tél mi fo kamót 

he told me IRREAL come-out 

'He told me to come out' 

(75) i wók fo gé moní 

he worked IRREAL get/have money 

'He worked in order to have money' 

The most interesting changes in the 'irrealis' category in Krio have occured 

with the marker fo . To begin with, there is a good indication that its 

spreading into the complements of modality verb is relatively recent, since 

one may still get those complements without it, as in: 

(76) a wán gó na mi ós 

I want go to my house 

T want to go to my house'


Further, (76) is the pattern found in all Creoles. There are also indications 

that the pattern originated in purpose clauses (as in (75) above) and then 

spread first to complements of manipulative verbs (74) and only much later to 

complements of modality verbs (73), where it is not yet obligatory. What is 

more, from embedded 'obligation'/'manipulation' clauses (as in (74) above) 

the pattern has already spread into unembedded 'must'/'should' obligation 

expressions, as in: 

(77) olú, yu fo gó na mákit! 

Olu you IRREAL go to market 

'Olu, you (should) go to the market!' 

The marker fo is thus close to becoming an 'imperative' marker. And of the 

three possibilities for irrealis marking in Krio, 0, go, and fo, it seems that the 

latter has the widest — and most expanding — range. This conforms to our 

earlier observation of Hawaii-Creole, namely that while the 'future' marker 

gon(na) has not expanded to other contexts, the imperative marker go has. 41 

4.2.3 Changes in the 'non-punctual category 

Here again, observing post-Creole processes in Krio is of some interest. 

Initially, the marker de (when unstressed) functioned as the non-punctual 

marker for both 'continuous' and 'habitual' (with 'iterative' being indicated 

by verb-reduplication). But a portion of the 'habitual' scale has been covered 

more recently by kin (*'can'), leaving de to cover the rest. Thus consider: 

(78) i de smók ol tem 

'He smokes all the time' 

(79) ęni tęm węn jáman mán ęn itálian mán kin fęt, jaman mán kin wn 

any time when German man and Italian man HAB fight German man 

HAB win 

'Any time when an Italian and a German fight, the German wins' 

While it is hard to specify the difference exactly, interchanging kin and dę in 

(78) and (79) will render the sentences unacceptable. It seems that while dę 

covers a "more realis ," portion of 'habitual', i.e. events that certainly take 

place habitually, kin covers the "more hypothetical" portion, i.e. events that 

may happen. But this is only natural in view of the modal/irrealis nature of 

'can' itself. 42 

The second interesting change is a shift in the function of dę itself, to assume 

some "near-future" coverage. Thus consider:

154 T. GIVÓN 

(80) i dę smók bokú we i gé moni 

he FUT smoke a lot when he have/get mony 

'He's going to smoke a lot when he gets some money' 

Here it seems that dę is slowly assuming the function of close, certain future, 

while go retains the more-distant, less-certain future. Thus contrast: 

(81) i dę ręn dis nét 


'It's going to rain tonight' (closer, more certain) 

(82) i go rçn dis nét 


'It will (probably) rain tonight' (distant, uncertain) 

The two changes observed in post-Creole Krio have clear equivalents 

elsewhere. Thus, the change "possible" "habitual" is well attested in English 

with the -able derivational suffix, where "can be V-ed" is easily interpreted 

as "does habitually get V-ed". In Swahili, the 'continuous' marker na 

(*'have', 'be with') was initially a perfect aspect, then shifted to present-progressive 

(Wald, 1973). But in Luganda one finds the very same na(a) as the 

near-future marker (Ashton et al, 1954). In Bemba the 'continuous' marker - 

léé- has very recently become also the 'within one day' future marker. In both 

English and Spanish one may use the present (progressive) for marking the 

near future, as in: 

(83) ya voy! 

already go-I 

I' m coming right away !' 

(84) el viene mañana 

he come-he tomorrow 

'He is coming tomorrow!' 

Both post-Creole developments in Krio thus represent regular inferential 

channels by which 'ability' is reinterpreted as 'habituality' and 'being in the 

middle of happening right now' is stretched toward 'still occuring in the (very) 

near future'. There is, thus, nothing specifically Creole-like about all these 

changes, they merely illustrate that once a Creole language has emerged, it is 

subject to the very same universal diachronic processes that are found in human 

language elsewhere.


5. Conclusion 

5.1. The synchronic status of the Creole prototype 

In regard to the semantic-pragmatic features underlying the Creole 

TAM-system, one finds indeed that they are the ones most commonly found 

in non-contact languages. The special marking for out-of-sequence, nonpunctual 

and irrealis merely underscores the fact that in discourse — at least in 

the narrative style — they are conceptually and in frequency the marked case. 

That is, we do tend to talk about events in-sequence, events as actions and 

events that did happen. 

In regard to morpho-tactics, however, the status of the Creole prototype 

is somewhat peculiar. It is clear that the overt morphemic expression of the 

semantic-pragmatic features is to quite an extent dependent upon the vagaries 

of particular diachronic events, prevailing stages and available contributory 

etyma in non-contact languages. While each of these has its own causes and 

natural explanation, in combination they tend to creat a great number of accidental 

f acts about the language, at any particular time in its history. 43 We are 

thus faced with a peculier situation, where the morphemics of Creoles are in 

some definite sense prototypical/universal, but are nevertheless not likely to 

be found in most human languages in the same form, except in a most piecemeal 

manner. 

The Creole system as inherently aspectual is again a case in point. As was 

mentioned above, this seems to be the case also of child language. Here, I suspect, 

the cross-language distribution of 'tense' tends to be exaggerated, no 

doubt due to certain Eurocentric and Western cultural-linguistic biases. 

While the evidence is far from being complete or unambiguous, I suspect the 

majority of the world's languages, particularly of pre-literate cultures, do not 

have a tense system but are primarily aspectual. 

5.2. The inadequacy of an "innateness" explanation 

The title of Bickerton (1975) is: "Creolization, linguistic universals, natural 

semantax and the brain". In that paper Bickerton observes, I think correctly, 

that the three marked features of the Creole TAM-system are founded 

upon three general perceptual-cognitive capabilities: (a) knowing the temporal 

order of occurrence of past events; (b) being able to distinguish between sensory 

input and one's own imagination (i.e. between fact an irrealis); and (c) 

being able to tell whether an event occurred once or has protracted itself, 

without interruption ('continuous') or with interruption ('iterative'). All this 

is indeed correct. However, Bickerton goes on to infer that specific brain

156 T. GIVÓN 

structures are involved in governing the particular features of the Creole-human 

universal TAM-system. To wit: "...(the) anterior-first surface ordering 

seems never to be violated, and some day we may know enough about the 

workings of the brain to be able to say why..." (1975, ms, p. 21). To my mind, 

this easy inference seems both unwarranted and undesirable. First, it is unwarranted 

because there are a great number of "objective" features about actions, 

events and their segmentation in time and reality which we are both 

neurologically capable of observing and indeed do observe. For example, we 

are capable of observing if actions are performed on or off the ground, near or 

far from the subject/agent, visible or invisible, in direction to or from the subject/ 

agent, three or two days before the time of speech (or any other time-axis), 

intentionally or accidentally etc. etc. etc. But somehow these particular features 

— while on occasion attested in the verb morphology of a language here 

and there — nevertheless are not universally attested as the three marked 

Creole-TAM features, nor do they ever appear in Creoles, nor do they appear 

at the earlier stages of children acquiring a language — any language. One 

may of course argue that these features may either be "perceptually more 

opaque" or "cognitively more complex", but I think it would be rather difficult 

to make such an argument in a non-circular fashion. The direct "brain 

structure inference" is thus clearly unwarranted. But it is also undesirable: It 

is most likely that there are communicative-functional reasons for the singling 

out of these particular features as the most important to code in the communicative 

system of humans, as the most pertinent generic observation to be made 

about events: Their sequence, their factuality, their duration. It is also likely 

that there may be practical, survival-related reasons for singling out these particular 

features for prominence in the coded communicative system. It is also 

likely that survival and communicative structure are not fully independent of 

each other, at least phylogenetically/evolutionally. While all these possibilities 

must remain open, the "brain structure inference", à la Chomsky, does 

nothing to advance their investigation, it is simply defers it. 44 

5.3. The diachronic import of the Creole prototype 

In the rise of the Creole TAM-markers, we find two conflicting phenomena: 

First, the semantic-pragmatic import of the TAM-features is always 

the same. But second, the actual markers chosen are often less prototypical, 

and are subject to a considerable amount of diachronic accidentality. In order 

to understand this, one must remind'oneself that the Creole child's choice of 

what element of the donor lexifier-language will be chosen as TAM-markers


is mediated by the Pidgin speaker's choice. That choice, in turn, reflects the 

universality of second language acquisition rather than the "more prototypical" 

or "more pristine" universality of first language acquisition. The Creole 

children will do their prototypical best once lexical items are given them. But 

the choice of lexical items is filtered by the struggling Pidgin speakers, resulting 

in a sample to choose from that may be considerably biased/skewed when 

compared to the sample children receive from non-Pidgin, fluent nativespeaking 

parents. 

Once the Creole exists, any additional diachronic change in the system 

should, and in fact does, reflect normal diachronic tendencies observed 

in non-contact languages. But that is not at all surprising when children 

learn Creole from native-speaking parents, and where those parents are in 

turn fully-proficient users of a communicative instrument that possesses the 

normal range of registers, styles and nuances found in human language. 

5.4. Chuave and the universality of "anterior" 

On the face of it, Chuave and clause-chaining languages like it violate in 

the most flagrant way the Creole prototype. They do not have even a shred of 

the 'anterior' phenomenon, either morphologically or functionally. They thus 

proscribe, within the asserted portion of the narrative, any out-of-sequence 

story-telling. However, out-of-sequence material may be still presented at the 

very beginning of each clause-chain. The overall Chuave narrative thus has the 

following schematic structures(where P stands for 'presupposed clause' and 

for 'asserted clause'): 

(85) P(P)AAAAAAAAAAA; P(PP) AAAAAAA; PAAAAAAAAA; 

Since the presupposed material may appear between asserted chains, and 

since it is also out-of-sequence material, the net result of the Chuave strategy is 

to in fact intersperse out-of-sequence material between chunks of the asserted 

backbone-of-narrative. It thus superficially resembles what "anterior languages" 

do with the 'anterior' marker. There are two potentially important 

differences, however: 

(i) The anterior-marked clauses in "anterior languages" are presumably asserted 

rather than topical/presupposed (unless they appear in relative 

clauses or presupposed V-complements, ADV-clauses etc.); 

(ii) The clause-chain in Chuave is a major thematic unit, something like a 

'paragraph'. But the anterior-marked clauses inside an asserted chain in 

"anterior languages" does not divide the narrative as strongly 45 into major 

thematic units.

158 T. GIVÓN 

We may be thus faced with the existence of two radically different information-processing 

strategies in human language as far as the Creole-prototype 

'anterior' is concerned. However, one must bear in mind that "anterior languages" 

do process 95% of their verbal clauses just as clause-chainin languages 

do, namely in the natural sequence of occurrence. The universal principle 

which underlies the Creole 'anterior' seems thus to be that information is 

processed sequentially, and that on the rare occasion when this principle is violated, 

a special marker must be used. 

NOTES 

*) I have benefited from criticism and helpful suggestions from Dwight Bolinger, Derek Bicket 

ton and one anonymous reviewer, but in several instances have chosen not to follow their advice 

1) While in non-contact natural language one may, at least to some extent, distinguish betweer 

diachronic change and child-acquisition of language, in Creoles the two are one and the same, since 

the only 'history' the Creole ever had was that of its synthesis de novo by the first generation oj 

children-speakers. 

2) It may be argued that the Pidgin system has only 'pragmatic/discourse' rules, but has not pro 

ceeded to 'grammaticalize' them into syntax (Givón, 1979, Ch.5). 

3) For details see Bickerton (1975), (1976), (1977), Bickerton and Odo (1976), Givón (1979, Ch 

5). 

4) The same grammatical sub-system may envolve diachronically from a number of difieren 

sources, and those may be graded according to their relative communicative transparency, syntactic 

proximity to the target-function, as well as the extent to which their existing communicative loac 

will precipitate — when the new function is added — communicative disruption or ambiguity. Diachronic 

change is often the complex product of such considerations. 

5) One of the prime movers in diachronic change is the tug-of-war between alternating elaboralive 

changes motivated by the need for message transparency and creative effect (and thus, in some 

sense, 'hearer oriented') and assimilatory ('facilitative') change, motivated primarily by production-speed 

(and thus to quite an extent 'speaker-oriented'). 

6) See discussion in footnote 1., above, as well as in Slobin (1977) and Givón (1979, Ch.5). 

7) Both the statistical and functional distribution of TAM-markers vary widely according to the 

discourse-type in which they are used. Thus, for example, in live, natural dialog that has rapid, 

short exchanges (and thus no elaborate long stories about events in the past which thus would be reclassified 

as an 'embedded narrative'), there is a very high frequency of irrealis/modal marking of 

the verbs. This corresponds to a high preponderance (as compared to narrative) of manipulative or 

questioning speech acts. Such facts are typical of face-to-face interaction, where what the speaker 

says is open to challenge immediately, and where the speaker is not by convention considered omniscient. 

In narrative one finds such distribution of markers only in quoted/reported dialog, 

and indeed the narrator is conventionally not challenged immediately, is given the stage, and is considered 

omniscient. In expository texts, on the other hand, 'habitual' modalities appear much more 

frequently than normal (in narrative they are confined to early expository passages and to background 

interpolations which interrupt the continuity of the action/narration).

TENSE-ASPECT-MOD ALTTY IN CREOLE 159 

8) Taken from Bickerton's transcript of Hawaii-Creole, tape K-22, side 2. 

9) B-152 group-tape, p. 43 of transcript, Bickerton's Hawaii-Creole transcripts. 

10) There is good grounds for suspecting that uncertainty verbs such as 'think', 'believe', 'suspect' 

, 'guess' etc., while technically main verbs, in fact function as modal/epistemological operators 

within the message unit, so that it is the verb subordinated under them that carries the bulk of 

semantic information coded in the complex clause. 

11) There are strong grounds for believing that the imperative use of 'go' in action and motion 

verb is responsible for, in part, the introduction of 'go' as an irrealis marker in Hawaii-Creole. In 

part, however, it may due to the English future use of 'going-to' or 'gonna', found as 'gon' in the 

Creole. 

12) There is a considerable amount of irrealis, conditional, subjunctive and imperative clauses 

in his transcripts that are marked by the 0-form rather than by 'go', and one may wish to consider 

'go' as a marker which is in the middle of spreading across the irrealis domain in Hawaii-Creole. 

13) B-152 group-tape, pp.43-48, Bickerton's Hawaii-Creole transcripts. 

14) The tacit 'omniscience' convention is acknowledged by the fact of no-challenge or no-interruption 

in continuous narrative. In dialog (embedded in narrative or freely recorded conversation), 

the frequent interruptions and cutting in, the fight for 'turns' etc. is precisely the indication that the 

speaker is not conceded such tacit omnicience. Short-line, alternating conversation is thus open to 

challenge, and the participants acknowledge that by the much higher frequency of their use of irrealis 

modalities. 

15) Bickerton(1975),p.l2. 

16) See Givón (1977), Hopper (1979), Hopper and Thompson (1980). 

17) 'Markedness' must eventually be defined in reference to some substantive property of language, 

although it would also tend to manifest itself in some formal/morphemic fashion. The most 

plausible substantive criteria for judging the markedness of T-A-M features involve discourse structure 

and the definition of which clause-type carries the bulk of new information in discourse (Givón, 

1979, Ch. 2), or is responsible for imparting the backbone ('foreground') of the sequential narrative 

(Hopper, 1979, Givón, 1977, Hopper & Thompson, 1980). 

17') The New Yorker, Dec. 31,1979 "Profiles", pp. 38-39. The two 'styles' in English have obvious 

differences at some level, most likely along the dimension of "immediacy" vs. "remoteness". 

18) The names 'imperfect' and 'perfect' are the traditional Semiticist's terms, and do not necessary 

reflect, in discussion of EBH, any semantic/pragmatic intent. 

19) There are grounds for positing a historical merger between two prefixai conjugation in 

EBH, the 'imperfect' and the 'jussive', thus shifting some of the irrealis function to the 'imperfect', 

see discussion further below. 

20) All counter-sequence anterior clauses are marked by the 'perfect', though new-subject/topic 

is marked by the 'perfect' only when it involves 'look-back' in the narrative, i.e. when it breaks the 

sequence as well. The two functions, 'anterior' and 'new-subject/topic' do not overlap absolutely, 

though statistically they almost do. 

21) For further discussion of this, see Givón (1979, Ch. 8). 

22) It is reasonable to assume that the diachronic development of the 'participle' has gone the 

route: NOMINAL ('permanent state') ⇒ HABITUAL ('long-term state') ⇒ PROGRESSIVE 

('short-term state').

160 T. GIVÓN 

23) Text counts in Givón (1977) show that the purely nominal use of the EBH 'participle' accounts 

for 68% of all tokens counted, while the sentential use — both habitual and progressive, accounts 

for 32% of all tokens counted. 

24) While logicians tend to view 'fact', 'counter-fact' and 'unrealized' as absolute categorial 

points, facts of human language tend to suggest a scale of certainty, with 'counterfact' being the lowest 

point on the scale. For some discussion of this, see Givón and Kimenyi (1974) and Givón (1977). 

25) In the transcription used here I elected not to mark geminated consonants as 'double'. 

26) For more details see Givón (1972, Ch. 4). 

27) This is simply one more instance, as in English, French, Hebrew, Krio and many others, 

where the erstwhile perfective/anterior becomes the in-sequence/past/preterit aspect which carries 

the bulk of the main-line action in the narrative, see discussion further below. 

28) Kazembe(1951). 

29) The relevant notion in natural language is not whether a propositon is logically presupposed, 

but rather whether it has been discussed, contemplated, considered etc. For further discussion of 

this, see Givón (1979, Ch.3). 

30) These distributional facts also confirm the formal 'markedness' way of formulating this feature 

, i. e. "the verb is or isn't new information", rather than "something else is or isn't new information". 

When a complement is present, it must be the new-information focus. 

31) There is a good argument for suspecting that the gon element in Hawaii-Creole came historically 

from the future usage (gonna), while its "free-variant" go came historically from the imperative 

(go do this). Thus, in counting 30 pp. of Bickertons transcripts (B-152 group-tape, pp. 43-72), 

out of 21 total tokens of go, 1 were 'imperative' and 14 'future' or 'conditional'. While all 28 tokens 

of gon were 'future' or 'conditional', and not a single one 'imperative'. Bickerton (in personal communication) 

disagrees with this analysis, pointing out that gon is a much later 'meso-lectal' introduction 

into Hawaii Creole. 

32) The Chuave facts discussed here are taken from Thurman (1978), but the analysis and interpretation 

is, to quite an extent, my own. 

33) The only seeming exception to the sequentiality rule involves subordinate clauses that are 

part of the assertion and have an 'irrealisV'intentional' value, such as purpose clauses, complements 

of modal verbs ('want') or manipulative verbs ('order') as in: 

ne kan-na-ro wi-0-y-e 

you see-FUT-SS come-NONFUT-I-DECL 

T came in order to see you' 

The role of the irrealis/complement clause as part of the assertion is emphasized by the obligatory 

use of the SS/DS markers. A future-projecting complement of a manipulative verb will differ from 

this only in that the complement clause will be marked by the DS suffix. Thus consider: 

ne kan-na-goro di-in-0-m-ie 

you see-FUT-DS say-there-NONFUT-he-DECL 

'He told (me) to see you' 

34) See fn. 33, above, as well as Givón (1973b.). 

35) Most New-Guinea highland languages are of this type. Sherpa and Tibetan (and probably 

other Tibeto-Burmese languages related to them) are of this type. In counting Bickerton's Hawaii-


Creole transcripts (3 pp. of B-152 tape, pp. 13-16), out of a total of 107 tokens of verbs, only 7 were 

used with the anterior bin/wen, 18 with either the non-punctual stay or irrealis (go(n), and the remaining 

82 with the 0-form. The difference between Chuave and Hawaii-Creole is thus the difference 

between 95% and 100% obedience to the same communicative rule. For some discussion of 

the theoretical status of such differences, see Givón (1979, Ch.l). 

36) The data from Sranan, Guayanese, Hawaii Creole and Haitian are from Bickerton (1976). 

The data on Juba-Arabic are from Mshnud (1976 and in personal communication). The Krio data 

are from S. Yilla (in personal communication). 

37) The form bidd- is always inflected by the pronominal conjugation, i.e. bidd-i T want', bidd-a 

'she wants', bidd-na 'we want' etc. And the reduction to bi- is already attested in most colloquial dialects. 

38) For a more extensive discussion and some explanations, see Givón (1973c). 

39) As we have seen above, some languages allow no out-of-sequence anterior clauses at all, 

while most other languages use them rather sparingly in discourse. But where they do use them, one 

must assume that the 'anterior' clause is used because it is relevant at that particular time, i.e. with 

respect to the time-axis established by the preceding clause, or in its absence by the universal convention, 

i.e. time of speech. 

40) All the Krio data in this section are from Sori Yilla (in private communication). 

41) See fn. 31 and related discussion, above, 

42) See Givón (1973c). For the 'mixed' non-punctual/irrealis nature of 'habitual', see Givón 

(1973b). Another example of the "more irrealis" habitual may be seen in: 

dokta kin was in-an fos bifo i opret 

doctor HAB wash his-hand first before he operate 

'A doctor washes his hands first before he operates' 

43) For further discussion of how natural and regular diachrony changes may conspire together 

to yield crazy synchronic states, see Givón (1979, ch. 6). 

44) For further discussions of this in connection with Chomsky's conjectures, see Givón (1979, 

ch. 1). 

45) This must obviously be substantiated empirically. It is unlikely that 'look-back', out-of-sequence 

material will be presented anywhere in the narrative chain. So it may well be that the narrator 

waits for a "major juncture" in the narrative before breaking the sequence. It may well be, however, 

that the narrator uses another principle. For example, he may resort to a 'look-back' when he 

feels he must clarify a portion of the narrative that perhaps hasn't received adequate background. 

Or he may resort to it for the purpose of introducing a new topic — an obviously major juncture (cf. 

Biblical Hebrew). Or he may resort to an 'anterior' strategy in response to some interactional clues 

given by the hearer. 

REFERENCES 

Anderson, S. (1977) "On mechanisms by which languages become ergative", 

in C. Li (ed.) Mechanisms for Syntactic Change, Austin: University of 

Texas Press 

Antinucci, F. and R. Miller (1976) "Flow children talk about what happened" 

Journal of Child Language, 3:167-189

162 T. GIVÓN 

Ashton, E., E.M.K. Mulira, E.G.M. Ndawula and A. N. Tucker (1954) A 

Luganda Grammar, London: Longman, Green & Co. 

Benveniste, E. (1968) "Mutations of linguistic categories", in W.P. Lehmann 

and Y. Malkiel (eds.) Directions for Historical Linguistics, Austin: University 

of Texas Press 

Bickerton, D. (1975) "Creolization, linguistic universals, natural semantax 

and the brain", paper read at the International Conference on Pidgins and 

Creoles, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, January 1975 (ms) 

Bickerton, D. (1975a) Dynamics of a Creole System, Cambridge: Cambridge 

U. Press 

Bickerton, D. (1976) "Creole tense-aspect systems and universal grammar", 

a paper read at the Society of Caribbean Linguists' Conference, Georgetown, 

Guyana, August 1976 (ms) 

Bickerton, D. (1977) Change and Variation in Hawaii English, Vol. 2, NSF 

Report, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Social Science and Linguistics Institute 

Bickerton, D. and T. Givón (1976) "Pidginization and syntactic change: From 

SOV and VSO to SVO", in Papers from the Parasession on Diachronic 

Syntax, Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society 

Bickerton, D. and Odo (1976) Change and Variation in Hawaii English, 

Vol. 1, NSF Report, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Social Science and 

Linguistics Institute 

García, E. (1968) "Auxiliaries and the criterion of simplicity", Language.43: 

853-870 

Givón, T. (1972) Studies in Chibemba and Bantu Grammar, Studies in African 

Linguistics, Supplement #3 

Givón, T. (1973a) "Prolegomena to any sane creology", in B. Heine, M. 

Goodman, E. Polome and I. Hancock (eds) Reading in Pidgins and 

Creoles, Ghent: Story-Scientia [1979] 

Givón, T. (1973b) "Opacity and reference in language: An inquiry into the 

role of modalities", in J. Kimball (ed.) Syntax and Semantics, Vol.2, NY: 

Academic Press 

Givón, T. (1973c) "The time-axis phenomenon", Language, 49.4:890-925 

Givón, T. (1975) "Focus and the scope of assertion: Some Bantu evidence" 

Studies in African Linguistics, 6.2:185-205 

Givón, T. (1977) "The drift from VSO to SVO in Biblical Hebrew: The pragmatics 

of tense-aspect", in C. Li (ed.) Mechanisms for Syntactic Change, 

Austin: University of Texas Press


Givón, T. (1979) On Understanding Grammar, NY: Academic Press 

Givón, T. and A, Kimenyi (1974) "Truth, belief and doubt in KinyaRwanda", 

Studies in African Linguistics, Supplement #5 

Hopper, P. (1979) "Aspect and foregrounding in discourse", in T. Givón 

(ed.) Discourse and Syntax: Syntax and Semantics Vol. 12, NY: Academic 

Press 

Hopper, P. and S. Thompson (1980) "Transitivity in grammar and discourse" 

Language 56.2: 251-299. 

Hyman, L. (1979) "The focus aspect in Niger-Congo", paper read at the Symposium 

on Tense-Aspect, UCLA, May 1979 (ms) 

Kay, P. and G. Sankoff (1974) "A language-universals approach to Pidgins 

and Creoles", in D. DeCamp and I. Hancock (eds) Pidgins and Creoles: 

Current Trends and Prospects, Washington DC: Georgetown University 

Press 

Kazembe, M. (1951) Ifikolwe Fyandi na Bantu Bandi ('My Ancestors and my 

People') London: McMillan & Co., in cooperation with The Publication 

Bureau, Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia 

Mahmud, U. (1976) "New evidence for the natural tense-aspect system of 

Creoles: The case of Arabic Creole (Juba)", Georgetown University, 

School of Languages and Linguistics (ms) 

Slobin, D. (1977) "Language change in childhood and history", in J. Mac- 

Namara (ed.), Language Learning and Thought, NY: Academic Press 

Thurman, R. (1978) Interclausal Relationships in Chuave, MA Thesis, UCLA 

(ms) 

Traugott, E.C. (1977) "Pidginization, creolization and language change", in 

A. Valdman (ed.) Pidgin and Creole Linguistics, Bloomington: Indiana 

University Press 

Wald, . (1973) Variation in the Tense Markers of Mombasa Swahili, PhD dissertation, 

Columbia University (ms)

III. TENSE AND ASPECT AS COGNITIVE CATEGORIES

ASPECT, TRANSITIVITY AND VIEWPOINT 

SCOTT DELANCEY 

University of Oregon, Eugene 

There has been considerable discussion recently (and not so recently) of 

the aspectual split ergative pattern, in which the pattern of morphological 

marking of the relation to a transitive verb of its principal arguments varies 

with the tense or aspect of the sentence. There is only one basic pattern, 

though variations of it occur: patient-oriented — ergative or passive — patterns 

are associated with perfective aspect (or, occasionally, past tense), while 

agent-oriented — active or "anti-passive" — patterns are associated with imperfective 

aspect or future tense. Aspect may determine variation in case 

marking, as in Galgadungu (Queensland — data from Blake 1977): 

1) paa juru incii-manti ucan-ku 'That man is chopping the wood.' 

that man chop-IMPF wood-DAT 

2) pa-i iti-i ucan incii-na That man chopped the wood/ 

that-ERG man-ERG wood chop-PAST 

Note that in the imperfective sentence (1) the agent is in nominative and the 

patient in dative case, while in the past tense sentence (2) the patient is in nominative 

and the agent in ergative case. Aspect may also determine agreement 

of the verb with agent or patient, as in standard written French: 

3) je les lui apporte T am taking them to him/ 

I them him carry-lst singular 

4) je les lui ai apporté-s 'I took them to him/ 

AUX carried-masc. pl. 

Note that in (4) apportés agrees with the plural object. 

Languages exhibiting some variation on this pattern have been surveyed 

recently in Comrie (1978), Dixon (1979), and Hopper and Thomspon 

(1980) (see also Benveniste 1952); they include some Austronesian lan-

168 SCOTT DELANCEY 

guages, several Mayan languages, some Australian languages, at least some 

Tibetan languages, several Caucasian languages, Classical Armenian and a 

number of Iranian and northern Indo-Aryan languages. The geographical 

and genetic range represented in this list is sufficient to preclude any areal or 

genetic explanation for the pattern. l Thus the fact that this and no other logically 

possible pattern (such as the converse, with imperfective aspect associated 

with passive/ergative morphology) occurs requires a theoretical explanation. 

My argument in this paper will be that there is a semantic parallel between 

the structure of aspectual and voice distinctions, involving a category 

which I call viewpoint; I will present an analysis of aspect in terms of this category 

which predicts that the occurring split ergative pattern is natural, and the 

non-occurring converse impossible. 

Viewpoint and motion in space 

In most languages two 2 motion verbs are lexically specified for the direction 

of their motion with respect to the location of the speaker or some contextually 

established location. Verbs like English come and go (at least in their 

most ordinary readings) are synonymous as far as the objective structure of 

the scene they describe is concerned; they differ only in the point of view from 

which the scene is described. The sentences 

5) John went to Los Angeles. 

6) John came to Los Angeles. 

can describe the same event, but from different points of view: (6) is spoken by 

someone who is in Los Angeles, or is taking LA as the viewpoint from which 

to describe John's trip; (5) is spoken by someone who is viewing the trip from 

somewhere else — typically (but not necessarily) the starting point of the trip. 

In English and many other languages, the fixed viewpoint referred to by come 

often has nothing to do with the actual location of the speech act; the speaker 

is relatively free to choose a viewpoint (see Fillmore 1966,1975). The degree 

of freedom and the conditions under which it can be exercised vary considerably 

from one language (and even one speaker) to another. 

The prototypical motional event, and thus the ordinary sentence using a 

motion verb, involves two endpoints, for which I will use Gruber's (1976) 

terms Source and Goal. An oriented verb such as English come or go is 

marked for whether or not the motion reported is oriented toward a reference 

point, prototypically the location of the speech act. In effect, come specifies 

the terminal point of the motional event as the viewpoint from which the event

ASPECT, TRANSITIVITY AND VIEWPOINT 169 

is described. The actual location of the viewpoint is ordinarily identifiable 

from context 3 and is not explicitly identified; the endpoint of the motion vector 

which is not the viewpoint is frequently mentioned and identified as 

Source or Goal. Thus when come, which takes Goal viewpoint, is used, 

Source is usually mentioned in a from phrase. Go tends to occur with a to 

phrase, or sometimes with both from and to, but rarely with only from. 4 (Sentence 

(6) illustrates the fact that in English these tendencies are fairly flexible.) 

Most motion verbs are not oriented. In English, verbs like return, cross, 

leave, enter, approach, arrive can be used without any clear specification of 

viewpoint. Many languages prefer or require such specification. One common 

means of specifying viewpoint for motion verbs is through the use of the 

lexically deictic motion verbs as auxiliaries. In Thai, for example, a nonoriented 

verb such as klap "return" is specified for viewpoint by the verbs pay 

"go" or maa "come": 

7) Somsak klappay leew "Somsak has gone back." 

8) Somsak klap maa leew "Somsak has come back. " 

A number of languages have a morphological mechanism for marking 

viewpoint. In Jinghpaw 5 , as in many Tibeto-Burman languages, there are no 

oriented motion verbs.Compare sentences (9) and (10): 

9) MaNaw gat de' sa wa nu' ai "MaNaw has gone to market." 

market to go 

10) MaNaw gat de' sa wa ru'ai "MaNaw is coming/ 

will come to market." 

The viewpoint reflected in the English translations is provided by the particles 

n- and r- 6 ; the motion verbs sa and wa are deictically neutral. 

Viewpoint and dative/transitive scenes 

It isn't only instances of concrete spatial motion which are oriented in this 

sense. Another obvious case is that of change of possession (which is prototypically, 

but not necessarily, an instance of change of spatial location). The difference 

between give and get parallels that between go and come, or take and 

bring. Give and get evoke the same scene, but describe it from different viewpoints 

(see Fillmore 1977a). A significant difference between the dative and 

the true motion verbs is that the latter (no doubt universally) take the moving 

entity (the Theme) as subject, and assign viewpoint separately to one of the 

spatial endpoints, while change of possession verbs, which describe "motion" 

between two points (not necessarily spatial) defined by (typically) human ac -


tors, take one of those actors rather than the (typically inanimate) Theme as 

subject. Thus the notion of "subject selection" invoked in, for example, Gruber's 

and Fillmore's earlier work as part of the lexical specification of verbs like 

give/get can be given a semantic characterization: these verbs "select" as subject 

the actor whose viewpoint is taken. (This is now Fillmore's view, see Fillmore 

1977a,b). The other participant, if it is mentioned, 7 receives (in English 

and most other languages that I'm familiar with) prepositional Source or Goal 

marking: 

11) I gave my coat to the Salvation Army. 

12) I got my coat from the Salvation Army. 

Note the parallelism with go and come: Source-viewpoint verbs (go, give) 

tend to take an overtly expressed and labelled Goal; Goal-viewpoint verbs 

(come, get) tend to take an overtly mentioned and labelled Source. 8 Most trivalent 

verbs, in many if not most languages, come in Source/Goal-viewpoint 

pairs like give/get. 9 

Like dative scenes, transitive scenes can also be analyzed in terms of 

Source and Goal. The prevalence of syncretic case marking for dative and accusative, 

or allative, dative and accusative, and for ablative and ergative/instrumental, 

is evidence for the linguistic relevance of such an analysis (see J. 

Anderson 1971, 1977, and Diehl 1975 for arguments and documentation.) 

Unlike dative verbs, transitive verbs don't tend to occur in pairs; there is a 

strong tendency, at least in many languages, for the transitive relation to impose 

Source/Agent as the unmarked viewpoint. 10 Languages do have mechanisms 

for switching viewpoint on transitive scenes, but they tend to be grammatical 

rather than lexical. 11 An obvious instance is the passive construction 

in English. Note the syntactic and pragmatic parallels between (14) and (15) 

as compared with (13): 

13) Mary gave Joe a book. 

14) Joe got a book (from Mary). 

15) Joe was given a book (by Mary). 

In both (14) and (15) the recipient (Goal) occupies subject position, and is 

clearly the focus of speaker's empathy (in the sense of Kuno and Kaburaki 

1977); in both mention of the giver is optional, and if she is mentioned, she is 

marked for role with a preposition. There are, of course, semantic and pragmatic 

differences between (14) and (15), but it is clear that there is a common 

factor in the way each differs from (13), and that is that viewpoint has been


placed at Goal rather than Source. 

The differences lightly dismissed in the preceding sentence suggest the 

existence of two levels of what Kuno calls empathy; we see that viewpoint can 

be assigned on two different bases. The choice of get or give specifies viewpoint 

at spatial Goal or Source (as can be seen by the use of from to mark 

Source with get in (14). The choice of active or passive specifies transitive 

Source or Goal as viewpoint, i.e. viewpoint associated with the initiator or recipient 

of the action. 12 The parallelism between viewpoint in motional and in 

dative/transitive sentences is clearly illustrated in conservative dialects of 

Jinghpaw, 13 where the same morphological mechanism is used to express 

both. Compare (9) and (10) above with (16) and (17): 

16) MaNaw MaGam hpe dai jaw' du' ai "MaNaw gave that 

to MaGam." 

OBJ that give 

17) MaNaw MaGam hpe dai jaw' mu' ai MaGam was given 

that by MaNaw." 

where instead of the n- and r- particles marking spatial Source and Goal, we 

have d- and m- marking transitive viewpoint. (See DeLancey 1978, Maran 

1978 for detailed discussion of this mechanism.) 

Space, time and transitivity 

So far I have discussed events characterizable by vectors (i.e. line segments 

specified for direction) connecting concrete points in space, abstract locations 

associated with actors in the scene, or both. Where both are relevant, 

the vectors coincide; in the examples above, giver and Source are colocational 

(are, in a sense, the same location) as are receiver and Goal. The temporal 

structure of an event is obviously also characterizable as a vector extending 

from the onset to the end of the event. (In the limiting case of an instantaneous 

event the time vector has zero magnitude.) This time vector likewise coincides 

with the other vectors characterizing the event. Consider the sentences 

(18) and (19) (describing the same event): 

18) I drove from Bloomington to Philadelphia. 

19) I drove from 8 A.M. till 7 P.M. 

At 8 A.M. I am in Bloomington; at 7 P.M. I am in Philadelphia. The space and 

time vectors are coextensive; for some purposes (including, arguably, description 

of the cognitive structures of young children, see Piaget 1927/1969)


we can consider the trip to define a single vector in four dimensional spacetime 

rather than distinct and temporal vectors. 

We have, then, established three coincident quantities relevant to the 

semantic analysis of an event (and thus of a sentence reporting an event). 

Each is representable as a vector: 

Source .→ . Goal 

Agent .→ . Patient 

Onset .→ . Termination 

I have discussed briefly the specification of one or the other endpoint of the 

first two vectors as viewpoints. I will now suggest that some aspectual distinctions 

may also be interpreted as viewpoint specifications: in particular, that 

the perfective/imperfective distinction (at least in some languages) represents 

a distinction between terminal and non-terminal viewpoint. The main evidence 

for this sugestion comes from patterns of interaction between aspect 

and the transitivity vector such as split ergativity. 

In Kham 14 (Watters 1973) we find evidence for the terminal viewpoint 

analysis of a perfective category. Kham, an SOV language with person-split 

ergative case marking, 15 has a passive construction in which the order of agent 

and patient is switched, and the verb marked for voice. 16 The case marking on 

NPs doesn't change, i.e. case marking functions only to mark semantic role 

(see below): 

20) Ram-e ao be:h jxy-ke-o "Ram made this basket." 

ERG this basket make-Perf-3rd agent 

21) ao be:hRam-e o-jxy-o "This basket was made by Ram." 

3rd Passive 

Kham has four aspects in active voice: progressive -zya, future -ya, perfective 

-ke (as in example (17)) and what Watters calls "terminate past" -e, which 

seems to be a sort of aorist. The passive voice has only two aspects. When unmarked, 

as in (21) above, a passive sentence is automatically interpreted as 

perfective. The passive verb form can also be used with the progressive 

marker -zya, in which case it has a past progressive reading. What is of interest 

here is the fact that the passive carries intrinsic perfective meaning, i.e. that 

terminal viewpoint with respect to the transitivity vector implies terminal 

viewpoint with respect to the time vector. 

A complementary example comes from an earlier stage of Modern English. 

The Modern English passive has never been clearly intrinsically perfec-


tive, but until well into the eighteenth century it was incompatible with the 

progressive construction (Mossé 1938). To take the most popular example, 

sentences like (22) and (23) were possible, but not (24): 

22) He is building (of) a house. 

23) The house has been/is built. 

24) *The/a house is being built. 

If we consider the progressive construction to be a temporal analogue of go in 

that it specifies non-terminal viewpoint, then we can explain the cooccurrence 

restriction as a ban on conflicting viewpoint specifications: the terminal viewpoint 

specified by the passive construction is inconsistent with the explicitly 

non-terminal viewpoint specified by the progressive. 

The account of perfective suggested here provides a natural interpretation 

of the distinction between the categories perfective and perfect (discussed 

in Comrie 1976) as parallel to the difference between a 'loose' and a 

strict interpretation of the orientation of 'come'. Perfective views an event 

from its terminal point, while perfect takes now, the temporal location of the 

speech act, as viewpoint — hence its "present relevance" reading. The paralellism 

of spatial and temporal viewpoint specification is strikingly illustrated 

when we find a 'come' verb used as a marker of perfect, as in Thai: 17 

25) Somsak yuu America m haa ii leew 'Somsak has been in 

stay come five year ASP America for five years 

now.' 

(where leew is a perfective aspect marker). 

On morphology 

Before returning to the subject of split ergativity we must briefly consider 

the function of the morphological mechanisms in which it is reflected. There 

are two mechanisms ordinarily involved in ergative and accusative patterns: 

case marking (including prepositional and postpositional marking) and verb 

agreement patterns. These mechanisms may coincide, in which case we can 

presume that they are filling the same function, or they may operate independently, 

in which case they are usually executing different functions. 

Agreement commonly distinguishes one NP from all others as "subject" ; case 

marking in most languages also distinguishes one NP by leaving it unmarked. 

Often, but not in all languages, agreement and case marking single out the 

same NP. When they don't, we see that two functions are being served (see 

Givon, 1976, for a somewhat broader survey of possible functions of agreement 

than is given here). Compare these Jinghpaw sentences:


26) shingaihpe kayat du? ai "He hit me." 

he I OBJ hit d-3 

27) shingaihpe kayat mi? ai "I was hit by him." 

Here the case marking - hpe marking Patient, Agent unmarked - remains constant, 

but the agreement changes. In (26) the -u? of du? ai is a third person 

agreement marker; the -i of mi? ai in (27) agrees with the first person Patient. 

As we have already seen, the d- of (26) and the m- of (27) are viewpoint 

markers, as reflected in the English translations. Thus it is clear that agreement 

in Jinghpaw follows viewpoint. 18 Where there is a division of function 

between case marking and verb agreement, it seems usually to follow this 

pattern, with case marking indicating semantic role, and agreement marking 

transitivity viewpoint assignment (cf. Comrie 1978 on agreement). 

In English, and many European languages, we find agreement and case 

marking varying in tandem: 

28) John has seen them. 

29) They have been seen by John. 

Here agreement singles out the same NP which is unmarked for case in any 

sentence, but it is viewpoint and not case role which determines which NP is 

singled out. (The choice of case marker depends on semantic role, but the 

choice of which NP is marked depends on viewpoint.) 

Split ergativity in Gujarati 

Gujarati is typical of the aspectual split ergative pattern found in northern 

Indo-Aryan languages. Past tense verbs in Gujarati agree in gender with 

an NP. Imperfectives agree according to the accusative pattern, perfectives 

according to the ergative (examples from Mistry 1976 and Cardona 1965): 

30) Ramesh pen khərid-t-o hə-t-o "Rameshwasbuyingthepen." 

(masc) (fem) buy-Impf-masc AUX masc 

31) Ramesh aw-y-o "Ramesh came." 

come-PF-masc 

32) Sudha aw-y-i "Sudha came." 

(fem) fem 

33) Ramesh-e pen khərid-y-i "Ramesh bought the pen." 

(30) is imperfective; the agent (Ramesh) has no case marking, and the verb is 

marked for agreement with the masculine agent. (33) is perfective; the agent 

is marked with the postposition e, and the verb agrees with the feminine pa-


tient pen. Neither case marking nor verb agreement consistently reflect semantic 

role; this suggests that both reflect viewpoint assignment. If this is the 

case, then in Gujarati speaker's viewpoint is obligatorily with agent in imperfective 

aspect and with patient in perfective. This seems like an odd conclusion, 

but it makes sense if we consider the viewpoint analysis of aspect. If perfective 

aspect is terminal viewpoint, then we we have the same sort of cooccurrence 

restriction suggested for the English example above: Gujarati doesn't 

allow the viewpoint specifications with respect to the transitivity vector and 

the time vector to conflict. 

Split ergativity in Georgian 

Georgian, one of the classic examples of aspectually split ergativity, is particularly 

interesting because it shows an aspectually conditioned three-way 

split in case marking and agreement patterns, rather than the more common 

two-way split, The three aspectual categories are imperfect, aorist and perfect. 

(There are tense distinctions within each which needn't concern us 

here.) If we identify two aspectual categories as onset and termination viewpoint, 

we might a priori suppose the third to be an external, non-oriented 

viewpoint. This seems to be consistent with the semantic content of the aspects; 

Vogt (1938 pp. 123-25) describes the three categories as follows: the imperfect 

represents an action "considérée dans sa durée" ; the aorist is a past, action 

"considérée indépendamment de sa durée, comme action passée pure et 

simple" ; the perfect represents an action "sans considération de durée, menée 

à son terme." In his later (1971) grammar he labels the imperfect as durative 

aspect, the aorist as punctual aspect, and the perfect as resultative aspect. The 

description of the aorist is notionally consistent with an external viewpoint, 

not oriented toward either endpoint. The perfect has, as well, a usual evidentiary 

interpretation; it indicates that the content of the sentence isn't the 

speaker's first hand knowledge, but is inferred from an existing state which 

can be presumed to have resulted from the event described in the sentence. 

This suggests that the perfect differs from the other two aspects in coverage as 

well as viewpoint — the viewpoint is at the terminal point, and the onset point 

isn't even in the picture. The Georgian perfect is thus the temporal equivalent 

of an agentless passive. 19 

There are three cases involved in marking the relevant NPs in a transitive 

sentence: nominative -i, ergative -m(a), and dative/accusative -s. In the imperfect 

tenses, the agent is nominative and the patient dative. In the aorist, 

agent is ergative and patient nominative. In the perfect, agent is dative, patient 

nominative:

176 SCOTTDELANCEY 

Agent 

Patient 

imperfect nom dat 

aorist erg nom 

perfect dat nom 

as in (examples from Boeder 1967): 

34) kaceb-i çer-en çeril-s 'The men are writing 'a letter. " (imperfect) 

men NOM write letter DAT 

35) kaceb-ma daçer-es çeril-i "The man wrote a letter." (aorist) 

ERG 

NOM 

36) kaceb-s u-çer-iat çeril-i "The men have (apparently) written 

DAT 

NOM a letter. " (perfect) 

The agreement system of Georgian is quite complicated; we must consider 

separately two series of person agreement markers and partially independent 

number agreement. In both Old and Modern Georgian, there are two series 

of agreement morphemes, which it is most convenient to label simply series 

I and series II. Series I markers agree with the agent in the imperfect and 

aorist aspects, and with the nominative patient in the perfect. Series II 

markers agree with the dative NP in the imperfect and perfect — i.e. with the 

patient in the imperfect and the agent in the perfect — and with the nominative 

patient in the aorist. I will use Old Georgian examples (from Aronson 

1976) to avoid irrelevant morphological detail: 

37) Imperfect a) 

b) 

38) Aorist a) 

b) 

m-klav-s 

v-x-klav 

m-kl-fl 

v-kal 

"He kills me/us." 

"I kill him/them.' 

"He killed me." 

"I killed him." 

39) Perfect a) x-v-uklav "He has killed me." 

b) mi-klav-s "I/we have killed him. " 

The m- of 37a, 38a, and 39b is series II, first person, agreeing with first person 

patient in 37 and 38 and with first person agent in 39. The v- of 37b, 38b, and 

39a is series I, first person, agreeing with the first person agent in 37 and 38 and 

the patient in 39. The s of 37a and 39b is series I, third person; the aorist has a 

different marker for this slot, the -a of 38a. The x- of 37b and 39a is series II, 

third person, which is not marked in the aorist (thus 38b agrees only with 

agent). We can summarize the pattern as:


Imperfect Aorist Perfect 

Series I (v-,-s) agent agent patient 

Series II (m-,x-) patient patient agent 

Thus on the basis of case marking we have a split system in which the imperfect 

pattern is nominative-accusative, while the aorist and perfect are ergative-absolutive 

(leaving aside the problem of there being two different agent 

cases). Verb agreement, on the other hand, reflects a system in which the ergative 

perfect is opposed to the accusative imperfect and aorist. The overall 

system is: 

Imperfect Aorist 

Perfect 

NP marking Nom-Acc Erg-Abs Erg-Abs 

Verb marking Nom-Acc Nom-Acc Erg-Abs 

This is strikingly consistent with the temporal viewpoint analysis of the aspects: 

the imperfect has both temporal and transitivity onset viewpoint; the 

perfect both temporal and transitive terminal viewpoint; and the aorist, which 

we analyzed as external temporal viewpoint, indicates mixed transitivity 

viewpoint. 

The system of number agreement in modern Georgian is complex. The 

number of a first or second person participant is generally marked for both 

agent and patient in all aspects. Number of a third person participant, however, 

is consistently marked only for agent, again in all three aspects. Factoring 

out person deixis, we can say that the indication of plurality reflects role information, 

while person marking indicates viewpoint. 20 In Old Georgian the system 

is different (Aronson 1976): number is marked for agent in the imperfect 

and patient in the perfect — i.e. the nominative NP in both (the system of case 

marking is the sane in Old and Modern Georgian). Thus number marking follows 

viewpoint, as do the series I person markers. Examples (37) and (39) are 

thus ambiguous; the patient in (37) and the agent in (39) could be singular or 

plural. In the aorist, there is no such ambiguity; number is marked for both 

NPs, as in these examples from Aronson (1976) (recall that third person patient 

is not marked for person in the aorist): 

40) kl-a "He killed him." (-a 3rd singular agent) 

41) kl-n-a "He killed them." (-n- plural patient) 

42) kl-es "They killed him." (-es 3rd plural agent 

Aronson (1976, p.226) describes the situation in Old Georgian with respect to 

number marking as "a type of parity between the agent and the patient in the


aorist series [of tenses], a relationship of coordination rather than sub- and superordination." 

In terms of the present argument we interpret this parity as 

indicative of external, non-oriented viewpoint. 

On the basis of case marking alone, Aronson (1970) has proposed an 

analysis of Modern Georgian much like the one presented here, which he 

sums up (p. 301) in a table (I have altered his headings slightly): 

Aspect Voice type Content 

present 

intransitive- Focus on agent 

middle 

aorist transitive Double focus; major 

focus on agent 

perfect passive Focus on patient 

Aronson doesn't give an explanation of the content of the notion "focus" ; but 

the formal parallelism of my analysis and his is clear. 

Viewpoint in grammar and discourse 

Stephen Wallace, in the precirculated draft of his presentation to this 

conference, says of an analysis which he presents which is essentially equivalent 

to the one presented here: 

I by no means want to claim that this schema is a universal, or even near-universal, 

source of semantic relationships for the morphology and syntax of 

verbs and nouns associated with them. 

I, on the other hand, would want to make precisely that claim — that the association 

of voice or split ergative alternations with aspect is so cognitively natural 

that we should not be surprised to find it overtly manifested in any language. 

That is as strong a claim as it is legitimate to make, at least at present, 

about any grammatical universal. The explanation for recurrent morphological 

and syntactic patterns is to be sought in universals of perception, cognition, 

and cognitive ontogeny. The ability to abstract the time dimension from the 

spatial is a cognitive achievement of which I assume all normal adults are capable, 

but, like other abstractions from physical reality, it must be learned. The 

two sentences: 

18) I drove from Bloomington to Philadephia. 

19) I drove from 8. A.M. till 7 P.M. 

concentrate on two different facets of the same event, but there is a sense in 

which they are inseparable; in the real world it is impossible to move through


space without moving through time. Any transitive event involving a human 

agent likewise defines a non-zero time vector. The physical inseparability of 

the two dimensions is reflected in the fact that all languages show some overlap 

in the coding of time, space and transitivity, frequently in case syncretism 

— the identity of ablative and ergative marking, or dative and accusative, the 

use of ablative, dative and locative (cf. from, to, and at) in temporal expressions, 

and so forth (cf. Anderson 1971, 1973, Diehl 1975, DeLancey, Diehl 

and Maran 1977). Explicit recognition in grammar of the parallelism of space, 

transitivity and time is certainly a linguistic universal; aspectual split ergativity 

is merely a particularly striking example. 

Most of the work which I have seen dealing explicitly with the notion of 

spatial viewpoint has been done as a part of discourse grammar. In such work 

viewpoint is generally treated as a discourse level phenomenon; thus Lawrence 

(1972): "Every narrative has a viewpoint in space with reference to 

which all activities in it are viewed." (emphasis added). 

In our work on Jinghpaw we (LaRaw Maran, Lon Diehl and myself) 

found ourselves forced to develop and extend the idea of viewpoint while 

working on sentence level grammar; not only narratives but individual sentences, 

in Jinghpaw and elsewhere, can be oriented with respect to the three 

vectors. In this sense viewpoint phenomena can be compared to pronominalization 

— the complete interpretation of a sentence may require access to context 

beyond the sentence, but that context needn't be linguistic. A sentence 

like: 

43) Are you coming to the party tomorrow night? 

is perfectly good in linguistic isolation. Indeed, a sentence may provide some 

of its own context — thus if I utter (43), it may come as a surprise to my hearer 

that I am planning to be at the party tomorrow, but it is immediately clear to 

him that that is the case. 

Hopper and Thompson, in their recent (1980) discussion of transitivity, 

suggest that phrasocentric ('sentence-level' or sentence-internal) accounts of 

morpho-syntax can have only a provisional and incomplete validity, and that 

a fully coherent theory of language must begin at (and not merely include) the 

level of discourse motivation for individual sentences. [emphasis added] 

This suggestion is applied to, among other things, the perfective/imperfective 

distinction which, it is suggested, must be considered primarily a mechanism 

for distinguishing foreground and background in discourse. But a framework 

for describing morphosyntax must allow an explanatory account of the onto-


geny of language. Hopper and Thompson's suggestion can hardly stand in the 

light of the readily-observed fact that children's early utterances are seldom, if 

ever, organized into "discourse" except in the miminal form of single answers 

to adult questions or (much later) isolated questions requiring (generally monosentential) 

adult response. Specifically with respect to aspect, it has been 

shown that early use of aspectual distinction marks differences in the structure 

(i.e. completion or incompletion) of individual events as reported in individual 

sentences (Ferreiro and Sinclair 1971, Bronckart and Sinclair 1973). 

It is much more likely that among the determinants of grammatical patterning 

is pragmatic context, and indeed a complete account of grammatically 

relevant discourse factors would map directly into an account of the aspects of 

pragmatic context which are coded in grammar. The roots of grammar lie in 

semantics, which is in turn a direct reflection of (in fact is probably not distinct 

from) a cognitive map of reality. The pervasiveness of mechanisms for specifying 

viewpoint, and a number of phenomena (such as person-split ergativity) 

which suggest limitations on a speaker's ability to shift his linguistic viewpoint 

away from his actual point of view (see DeLancey 1980, ms.) reflect the fact 

that children, as they grow into languages users, are at first tightly bound to 

their own physical viewpoint, and only gradually develop the cognitive (and 

hence the linguistic) ability to take another view of a scene. The ontogenetically 

and conceptually primary function of viewpoint specification is not to 

signal relationships among sentences, but to mark the spatiotemporal relationship 

of the speaker and the space-time location of the speech act to the 

scene being described. 

NOTES 

1) Although, as Peter Hook has pointed out to me, several of these groups — Caucasian, Armenian, 

Indo-Iranian, and Tibetan — do occupy a contiguous area. 

2) Or four, in languages like English which lexicalize the bring/take distinction. 

3) Not necessarily discourse context; see the last section of this paper. 

4) Source alone will be mentioned only if Goal is available from context and Source is not, a situation 

which ordinarily calls for come. 

5) Jinghpaw is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Yunnan and northern Burma. My Jinghpaw 

data was obtained from LaRaw Maran. 

6) The system of which these particles are part is discussed in DeLancey 1980 and Maran 1978. 

7) This is not entirely an optional question; see note (8).


8) As with the motion verbs, Source is more easily omitted with a Goal-viewpoint verb than 

Goal with a non-Goal-viewpoint verb. Compare John came / #John went, I got a raise /?I gave a 

raise. (# implies not ungrammaticahty, but markedness; John went requires considerably more 

context to make it sound likely than does John came. ) 

9) See Gruber 1971,1977 for further arguments for considering all trivalent verbs as analogous 

to motion verbs in the sense discussed here. 

10) This is a considerable oversimplification of the relationship between viewpoint and attention 

flow, discussed in DeLancey(ms.). 

11) Paired transitive verbs do occur in languages where a morphological causative/transitive 

contruction has become lexicalized. 

12) See Anderson 1971, Diehl 1975 for arguments that spatial Source and transitive Agent constitute 

subcategories of a single case category, as do spatial Goal and transitive Patient. 

13) These examples are from the Hprang Hkadung dialect. 

14) Kham is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Nepal. 

15) Discussed in DeLancey (ms.) 

16) In a later study Watters (1975) retracts his earlier (1973) characterization of this construction 

as a passive; it is really an object-oriented participial form of the verb in construction with the copula 

(realized as zero in affirmative sentences). But such a description (except for copula deletion) 

would equally well fit the classic English passive, and Watters' description of the function of the 

construction is compatible with the notion "passive". 

17) The example is from Sarojini Huvanandana, to whom I owe much of what I know about aspect 

in Thai. 

18) The agreement pattern is complicated by a person hierarchy which places some constraints 

on agreement; see DeLancey 1978,1980. 

19) Comrie (1976) cites a number of languages in which perfect constructions have a similar inferential 

interpretation. Slobin and Aksu's contribution to this Symposium presents a detailed discussion 

of such a construction in Turkish. The explanation suggested here for the association of inferential 

reading with perfect is discussed at greater length in DeLancey (ms.). 

20) Aronson (1970) makes this the basis of a definition of subject in modern Georgian. 

REFERENCES 

Anderson, John. 1971. The Grammar of Case: Towards a Localistic Theory. 

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

. 1973. An Essay Concerning Aspect: Some Considerations of a General 

Character Arising from the Abbé Darrigol's Analysis of the Basque Verb. 

The Hague: Mouton. 

. 1977. On Case Grammar: Prolegomena to a Theory of Grammatical Relations. 

London: Croom Helm.


Aronson, Howard. 1970. Towards a Semantic Analysis of Case in Georgian. 

Lingua 25.291-301. 

1976. Grammatical Subject in Old Georgian. Bedi Kartlisi 34.220-231. 

Benviste, Émile. 1952. La construction passive du parfait transitif. Bulletin de 

la société de linguistique de Paris 48.52-62. 

Blake, Barry J. 1977. Case Marking in Australian Languages. Canberra: Australian 

Institute of Aboriginal Studies. 

Boeder, Wilfried. 1967. Über die Versionen des georgischen Verbs. Folia 

Linguistica 2.82-152. 

Bronckart, J.P., and H. Sinclair. 1973. Time, Tense and Aspect. Cognition 

2(1).107-130. 

Cardona, George. 1965. Gujarati Reference Grammar. Philadelphia: University 

of Pennsylvania Press. 

Cole, Peter, and Jerry M. Sadock. 1977. Syntax and Semantics 8: Grammatical 

Relations. New York: Academic Press. 

Cole, Roger. 1977. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. Bloomington: Indiana 

University Press. 

Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect 

and Related Problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

. 1978. Ergativity. in Lehmann, ed., 1978. 

DeLancey, Scott. 1978. Empathy and Jinghpaw Agreement. paper read at the 

53rd Annual (Winter) Meeting of the LSA. 

. 1980. Deictic Categories in the Tibeto-Burman Verb. Indiana University 

dissertation. 

ms. An Interpretation of Split Ergativity. 

Lon Diehl, and LaRaw Maran. 1977. A Localistic Interpretation of Aspect 

in Jinghpaw. University of Michigan Papers in Linguistics. 

Diehl, Lon. 1975. Space Case: Some Principles and their Implications Concerning 

Linear Order in Natural Languages. Working Papers of the Summer 

Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session 19.93- 

150. 

Dixon, R.M.W. 1979. Ergativity. Language 55.59-138. 

Ferreiro, E., and H. Sinclair. 1971. Temporal Relationships in Language. International 

Journal of Psychology 6.39-47. 

Fillmore, Charles. 1966. Deictic Categories in the Semantics of "Come". 

Foundations of Language 2.219-226. 

—~. 1975. The Santa Cruz Lectures on Deixis. Indiana University Linguistics 

Club.


1977a. The Case for Case Reopened. in Cole and Sadock, eds., 1977. 

1977b. Topics in Lexical Semantics. in R. Cole, ed., 1977. 

Givón, Talmy. 1976. Topic, Pronoun and Grammatical Agreement. in Li, 

ed., 1976. 

Gruber, Jeffrey. 1976. Lexical Structures in Syntax and Semantics. Amsterdam: 

North Holland. 

Hale, Austin, ed. 1973. Clause, Sentence and Discourse Patterns in Selected 

Languages of Nepal. Norman: Summer Institute of Linguistics. 

Hopper, Paul, and Sandra A. Thompson. 1980. Transitivity in Grammar and 

Discourse. Language 56,2: 1980, 251-299 

Kuno, Susumu, and Etsuko Kaburaki. 1977. Empathy and Syntax. Linguistic 

Inquiry 8.627-673. 

Lawrence, Helen. 1972. Viewpoint and Location in Oksapmin. Anthropological 

Linguistics 14.311-316. 

Lehmann, Winfred P., ed. 1978. Syntactic Typology: Studies in the Phenomenology 

of Language. Austin: University of Texas Press. 

Li, Charles, ed. 1976. Subject and Topic. New York: Academic Press. 

Maran, LaRaw. 1978. Aspect and Agreement Particles in Jinghpaw. paper 

read at the 11th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan languages and 

Linguistics. 

Mistry, P.J. 1976. Subject in Gujarati: An Examination of Verb-agreement 

Phenomena. in Verma, ed., 1976. 

Mossé, Fernand. 1938. Histoire de la forme périphrastique être + participe 

présent en germanique. Paris: Klincksieck. 

Piaget, Jean. 1969. The Child's Conception of Time. New York: Basic Books. 

Verma, Manindra K., ed. 1976. The Notion of Subjert in South Asian Languages. 

Madison: University of Wisconsin South Asian Studies Publication 

2. 

Vogt, Hans. 1938. Esquisse d'une grammaire du géorgien moderne. Norsk 

Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap 10.1-188. 

-. 1971. Grammaire de la langue géorgienne. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. 

Watters, David. 1973. Clause Patterns in Kham. in Hale, ed., 1973, vol. I. 

. 1975. The Evolution of a Tibeto-Burman Pronominal Verb Morphol 

ogy- 

Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 2.45-80.

TENSE, ASPECT, AND MODALITY 

IN THE USE OF THE TURKISH EVIDENTIAL 1 

Dan I. Slobin and Ayhan A. Aksu 

University of California 

Bogaziçi University 

Berkeley 

Istanbul 

ABSTRACT 

There are two past tense morphemes in Turkish, expressing an obligatory 

grammatical distinction between the report of direct versus indirect experience. 

The particle encoding indirect experience is related historically and 

ontogenetically to the perfect, and, in its participial form, functions to describe 

resultant states. In its use as a past tense morpheme, the particle carries 

modal functions of inference and hearsay, and is pragmatically extended to 

expressions of surprise, irony, and compliments. An attempt is made to account 

for the diversity of tense-aspect-modality functions of this particle in 

terms of an implicit theory of the nature of conscious experience which underlies 

the use of the two past tense morphemes. 

...it is important to emphasize that, 

at the present stage of linguistic theory 

and descriptive practice, it is impossible 

to formulate any very clear 

notion of the distinctions that are 

grammaticalized, within the category 

of mood, throughout the languages 

of the world. The labels that 

are used in standard descriptions of 

particular languages are often misleading 

in that they imply that the

186 DAN I. SLOBIN & AYHAN A. AKSU 

functions of the moods are narrower 

or more specific than they really are. 

This is true, for example, of... the 'inferential' 

as it is applied to Turkish. 

John Lyons (1977:847) 

Verbal expressions have traditionally been discussed in terms of 

tense, aspect, and mood or modality, indicating, roughly, the temporal placement 

of an event relative to the speech act, the temporal contour of the event, 

and the attitude of the speaker towards the event. We wish to argue here that 

in practice, these categories cannot be studied in isolation from one another. 

As a case study we present part of the Turkish verbal system. 

All three of these broad factors intersect in the obligatory distinction in 

the Turkish past tense between reference to directly experienced events and 

what have been variously called 'indirect experience' (Banguoglu 1974, Haarmann 

1970), 'nonevident' (Kononov 1956), 'inferential' (Lewis 1967), 'presumptive' 

(Sebüktekin 1971), 'nonpersonal' (Grunina 1976), and others. Ina 

close examination of the contemporary uses, history, and ontogenesis of these 

forms, however, it has become clear to us that more is at play than this tripartite 

linguistic analysis. In the following discussion we develop the idea that an 

important cognitive factor of the speaker's experiential participation in the referred 

to event accounts for the seemingly heterogeneous range of semantic 

and pragmatic functions of the two basic past tense forms in Turkish. 

The Turkish verb is made up of an invariant root followed by a string of 

affixed particles, agreeing with the root in vowel harmony. For our purposes, 

we need attend only to the basic tense and person particles, omitting discussion 

of the full array of possible affixes (negative, abilitative, necessitative, 

optative, causative, passive, reflexive, reciprocal). For all past tense expressions 

there is an obligatory choice between two suffixes: (1) direct experience 

-di (realized as -dil-dil-dül-dul-til-til-tül-tu) and (2) indirect experience -mi§ 

(realized as -iş/-iş-uş/-uş). For example: 

(1) geldi 

come past of direct experience 

'he/she/it came' 

geldi- 

n 

come past of direct experience 2sg. 

'you came'

TENSE-ASPECT-MODALITY IN TURKISH 187 

(2) gel- miş 

come past of indirect experience 

'he/she/it came (apparently, reportedly)' 

gel- miş sin 

come past of indirect experience 2sg. 

'you came (apparently, reportedly)' 

As indicated in the above examples, person particles are suffixed to the 

past tense particles (marking first and second persons singular and plural and 

third person plural). Other particles may intervene between the verb stem and 

the tense-person inflections. In the present paper we are concerned with the 

second variant, the past of indirect experience {-miş). 

This form is used for a range of functions encoding events to which the 

speaker was not a direct or fully conscious participant. For example, the following 

utterance about a third party, Kemal, could convey inference, hearsay, 

or surprise to the listener: 

(3) Kemal gelmiş 'Kemal came' 

(a) INFERENCE: The speaker sees Kemal's coat hanging in the 

front hall, but has not yet seen Kemal. 

(b) HEARSAY: The speaker has been told that Kemal has arrived, 

but has not yet seen Kemal. 

(c) SURPRISE: The speaker hears someone approach, opens the 

door, and sees Kemal — a totally unexpected visitor. 

In addition to the above everyday uses, the form has a special NARRATIVE 

function, limited to accounts of unreal events outside the regular experience 

of the speech community, such as myths, folktales, dreams, and jokes. (However, 

generally familiar events, such as those related in historical accounts and 

realistic fiction, are usually reported in the past of direct experience.) 

While most treatments of the -miş tense form discuss inference, hearsay, 

and narrative functions, surprise has generally been ignored. Haarmann, in a 

postscript to his monumental work (1970) on indirect experience forms in numerous 

languages, notes that such forms can sometimes be used when the 

consequences of an event present themselves as unexpected to the speaker 

(1971:94). Underhill (1976:199) notes 'that there are cases where the speaker 

may know that the statement he is making is true but uses -mIş to show that the 

information comes as a surprise or was not part of his knowledge previously.' 

Kononov (1965:232) discusses a related pragmatic function of the form to express 

scorn or 'an ironical relation to the carrying out of the action ("ah, so you


think he went!")'. 

Curiously, a form which is used to express such notions as inference, 

hearsay, surprise, and scorn, can also be used to convey compliments — a fact 

which, to our knowledge, has not been noted in any of the many grammars of 

the Turkic languages. The grounds of this pragmatic extension, however, can 

be interpreted in terms of expectation and surprise: if one did not expect an 

experience to be superlative, the expression of surprise, rather than being 

ironical, underlines the degree to which the experience surpasses normal expectation. 

The array of diverse functions for one grammatical form that we have ennumerated 

above seems to go beyond the bounds of what Sapir once characterized 

as the 'sober logic' of Turkish (1921: 124). At best, one might hope for 

a core meaning (e.g. 'indirect experience', 'nonwithnessed event') and a collection 

of separately motivated semantic and pragmatic extensions of that 

core. However, we aim to unite these diverse functions psychologically by 

considering the degree to which the utterance refers to contents at the center 

or periphery of the speaker's immediate consciousness. First, however, it will 

be necessary to characterize the uses of the -miş form in more detail. 

Indirect experience and the perfect 

Historically (Grunina 1976) and ontogenetically (Aksu 1978) inferential 

forms seem to develop from forms expressing the perfect. As Comrie has 

pointed out (1976:110): 'the semantic similarity ... between perfect and inferential 

lies in the fact that both categories present an event not in itself, but via 

its results'. This close relationship is maintained in contemporary Turkish in 

that the same surface morpheme, -miş, also functions to form stative participles 

derived from process verbs. In this adjectival function the element of indirect 

experience is not present. Rather, such adjectives simply 'indicate an 

attribute that has been actualized at a point in the past distant from the hereand-now' 

(Banguoglu 1974:272). For example: 

(4) Adam öl- uş. 

man die 

'A/the man died (apparently, reportedly).' 

(5) öl- müş adam 

die man 

'dead man' [=a man who has become dead]

TENSE-ASPECT-MOD ALITY IN TURKISH 189 

Grammars of Turkish generally treat the participle in its syntactic aspect 

only. However, from a semantic point of view, it is evident that this participle 

can only be used to encode resultant state, rather than a completed process in 

general. That is, the participle focuses on the end state achieved by the patient. 

Oluş adam 'dead man' is possible, because a clear resultant state is inherent 

in the meaning of the verb. However, (6) is not possible, because the 

verb 'learn' refers to a continuing process without a specified end state. 

(6) *ögren-mivş adam 

learn man 

'a man who has learned' 

However, ogrenmiş 'learned' is acceptable if the clause limits the range of the 

process to some achievement, thus implying a resultant state, as in: 

(7) dilbilimi ögren- adam 

linguistics learn man 

'a man who has learned linguistics' 

More generally, the participle is acceptable only if the clause in which it 

occurs specifies all of the semantic roles inherent in the case frame (Fillmore 

1968) of the relevant verb. For simple change of state verbs, like 'die', 'break', 

'fall', only the entity undergoing change need be specified in the adjectival 

clause formed with the past participle. For inherently causative verbs, the passive 

particle must be included because it is the resultant state of the patient 

which is being encoded. Compare (8) and (9): 

(8) * kir- iş bardak 

break glass 

(9) kş- il- bardak 

break passive glass 

'broken glass' 

If the case frame includes, for example, the source of an experience, it must be 

explicitly mentioned in the clause, as in: 

(10) *kork- uş çocuk- lar 

frightened child pl. 

(11) köpek-ten kork- uş çocuk-lar 

dog ablative frightened child pl. 

'children who have been frightened by/of dogs'


It should be noted that the inadmissibility of (10) lies in the fact that the 

past participle must encode both process and resultant state. Because the process 

includes a source, only clauses like (11) are acceptable. However the language 

does provide stative adjectives such as kor 'frightened' to encode 

general states or attributes, without regard to the processes bringing about 

such conditions. The important feature of the participial adjective lies in its 

being a perfect, thereby serving to relate a result to a process. This is also evident 

in such idioms as (12) 

(12) - kadin 

read woman 

'an educated woman' 

Although seemingly inadmissible according to the above discussion, the 

meaning of 'educated' stems from a conception of 'having read to completion', 

that is, having achieved a state of knowledge and social status as a result 

of the process of much reading. 

In short, while completive in meaning, the participial use of the -miş particle 

embraces both process and resultant state in its scope. This is of importance 

in accounting for the development of an inferential past tense form from 

a perspective that is both completive and process-oriented. Both the participial 

and past tense functions of -miş are present in the earliest written monuments 

of the eighth century A.D. (Tekin 1968). It has been suggested (e.g. 

Baskakov 1971) that the participial function was prior, having been extended 

to indicate past tense because of its focus on both process and end state. In historically 

attested time, the perfect -mi§ in Turkish (like related forms in other 

Western Turkic languages) has been extended to a general past tense, losing 

characteristics of a perfect and taking on the modal distinctions described 

above (Grunina 1976). Thus the function of the particle shifted from aspect to 

tense, limiting the modal range of the past tense particle -di to the domain of 

direct experience. The shift to tense was presumably facilitated by the fact 

that observed end states result from past processes. The shift to indirect experience 

modality seems to have been facilitated (1) by the cognitive fact that 

nonwitnessed processes can be inferred from observation of resultant states, 

and (2) by the linguistic fact that the verbal system already provided a potentially 

contrasting past tense form which was neutral in regard to source of experience. 

This presumed historical sequence finds some parallels in the contemporary 

Turkish child's acquisition of the semantic functions of the -miş particle


(Aksu 1978). The particle emerges several months later than the -di particle, 

first being limited to picture descriptions and story telling. The earliest appearances 

are thus limited to descriptions of already existing, perceptible 

states. At this period the -di particle is used to comment on completed processes 

without regard to the speaker's direct or indirect experience of those 

processes. The earliest references to the past are all of this completive character, 

more appropriately described in terms of aspect than tense, and limited to 

change of state verbs encoding situations with immediately perceptible results. 

The -miş particle, from its initial use with process and stative verbs for 

the description of resultant states, moves from a stative to a past tense function. 

At the same time, -di moves from a completive aspectual to a general 

past tense function. As Piaget has pointed out (1927 [1969:284]), temporal 

thought for the very small child is characterized by 'living purely in the present 

and assessing the past exclusively by its results'. It is this conception of the past 

in terms of presently enduring results which first moves the child's cognition to 

past processes. By age three or so the two verb particles have become general 

past tense forms, dividing up the field in terms of witnessed and nonwitnessed 

modalities. 2 The hearsay function of -miş is acquired later by children, as was 

probably the case historically as well. This developmental sequence from aspect 

to tense has also been attested in other languages (French, by Bronckart 

1976, Bronckart & Sinclair 1973; Italian and English, by Antinucci & Miller 

1976; English by Bloom et al. 1980; Greek,b Stephany 1978). The development 

from modality and aspect to tense has also been attested in Greek child 

language by Stephany (1978). Similar claims have been made about the development 

of tense in creoles by Bickerton (1975), and in regard to historical 

sequences by numerous scholars. Thus there seem to be good psychological 

grounds for positing a general development from completive and perfect aspect 

to past tense. What is added in the Turkish case is a modal coloring, perhaps 

based on the implicit cognizance that perception of a resultant state, 

while implying an antecedent process, does not imply that the speaker himself 

was a witness to that process. This situation is perhaps most clear in cases 

where the speaker encounters the physical evidence of a nonwitnessed antecedent 

process, giving rise to the modal subdivision of the perfect past tense 

on the basis of the speaker's direct or indirect experience of the process. While 

the historical evidence is not certain, it is at least clear on ontogenetic grounds 

that the dimension of inference from physical evidence antedates the use of 

the same modal form to indicate indirect experience on the basis of hearsay. 

Accordingly, we examine first the inferential use of the form as a past tense,


considering this use prototypical for the modality. 

Experience and inferentiality 

Inferences encoded by the -miş past tense can be based on any kind of 

sensory evidence of resultant state, provided that no aspect of the antecedent 

process itself has been present to consciousness. That is, use of the particle informs 

the listener that the speaker had no premonitory awareness of experiencing 

the event. Thus the issue is not simply a matter of inference from sensory 

evidence, but inference from sensory evidence which follows and is not 

temporally coexistential with the referred to process. For example, (3) Kemal 

gelmiş 'Kemal came', is appropriate in the context of encountering Kemal's 

coat, but not in the context of hearing the approach of Kemal's car. In both 

cases, the speaker has not SEEN Kemal or his arrival, but in the latter case the 

auditory sensory experience is part of the process of Kemal's arrival, and thus 

the speaker's consciousness was involved in the process before its actualization. 

It is clear that the issue is one of CONSCIOUS involvement, rather than 

simply speaker involvement, because of cases such as 

(13) Uyu- uş- um. 

sleep lsg. 

T must have fallen asleep.' 

said upon awakening over one's books; or 

(14) Dirseg-im- i vur-- um. 

elbow lsg. poss. acc. hit lsg. 

T must have hit my elbow.' 

said upon feeling a bruised elbow. In these cases the process, although predicated 

of the first person, occurred outside of the speaker's awareness. It is this 

externality of the process to awareness which is at the core of all uses of the 

-miş particle, participial as well as tense. 

Inference and hearsay compared 

In the inferential uses of the form, what is external to consciousness is the 

process leading to the end state. However, in the hearsay uses both process 

and end state are external. The nature of inference from evidence limits one to 

assertions about accomplished events, and is thus inherently completive in as-


pect and past in tense. However, reported events are not limited by the nature 

of evidential inference, since a third party can report any kind of event, regardless 

of its aspectual or temporal characteristics. The hearsay use is thus 

purely modal. 

In the case of inference, the speaker's assertion presupposes the event. 

The use of the -miş particle indicates the grounds of the assertion. In Turkish, 

these grounds are limited to inferences of completed processes from end 

states. Thus, in the inferential usage, one cannot say, on seeing a cloudy sky: 

(15) Yagmur yag- - iş. 

rain [noun] rain [verb] fut. 

One must express the inferred EXPECTANCY by use of the future tense and a 

qualifier, such as: 

(16) Yagmur yag- acak herhalde. 

rain [noun] rain [verb] fut. probably 

Tt will probably rain.' 

However in the case of hearsay, the speaker's assertion presupposes the 

REPORT of the event, in whatever tense-aspect-modality expression used by 

the third person making the presupposed assertion. Thus (15) is both grammatical 

and appropriate in predicting rain on the basis of hearsay, such as a 

weather forecast (Tt is reported that it will rain'). Here the use of the -miş particle 

indicates the grounds for the speech act — namely, that the speaker is 

saying what he has heard. 

The -miş particle suffixed to a bare verb root is ambiguous in communicating 

either inference or hearsay, as in (3) Kemal gelmiş 'Kemal came. ' However, 

when suffixed to any stative, existential, and/or tense, aspect, or modal 

particle, -miş can ONLY convey hearsay or surprise, and not inference. For example, 

on hearing 

(17) Selma hura- da- ş. 

Selma here loc. 

'Selma is here.' 

the listener knows that the speaker is conveying hearsay (or perhaps surprise, 

as discussed below) — but not inference, since the language limits inference to 

the predication of processes, and (17) is stative. In similar fashion, all of the 

following, because of their aspectual-modal coloring, cannot be interpreted 

as inferential:


(18) Çok çaliş- lyor- . 

much work pres. 

'(It is said that) he is working a lot.' 

(19) Üc yaş- in- da- yken oku- yabil- miş- im. 

three age poss. loc. when read abilitative lsg. 

'(It is said that) I was able to read when I was three.' 

(20) Araba- si yok- . 

car poss. neg.exis. 

'(It is said that) he doesn't have a car.' 

The list could be expanded through all possible aspectual-modal combinations, 

but the point should be clear from the above. 

It is interesting, however, to note what occurs when the -mi§ particle is 

combined with itself, or with the other past tense particle, -du An event reported 

as having occurred in the past can be transmitted as hearsay: 

(21) Kemal gel- miş- miş. 

Kemal come 

'(It is said that) Kemal had come.' 

In this case, the first -miş is simply the perfect, while the second -miş indicates 

hearsay. If one wishes to specify that a directly experienced event has reached 

completion prior to a past reference point (i.e. past perfect), again -miş functions 

purely as a perfect; suffixed by -di, which carries tense: 

(22) Kemal gel- miş- ti. 

Kemal come 

'Kemal had come.' 

However, geldimiş is not possible because, as Banguoglu has pointed out 

(1974:459): 'transposing something directly known into the plane of something 

indirectly known is a logical conflict'. 

Pragmatic extension 

In both the inferential and hearsay uses, the grounds for stating a proposition 

are indirect, and, of course, such grounds can vary in reliability. This 

had led some grammarians to make the mistake of considering the use of -miş 

to express doubt. Redhouse, for example, called it the 'Dubitative Verb', saying 

that the speaker expresses 'that what he relates is either doubtful, hearsay,


or erroneous assumption' (1884:141). In fact, the form CAN be used ironically 

to cast doubt on a proposition, but it should be clear from the above discussion 

that this is not the central or required meaning of the form. Rather, it is a pragmatic 

extension based on the fact that hearsay has the possibility of being unreliable. 

When uttered with the appropriate intonation, in the appropriate 

context, an utterance like (18), for example ('He is reportedly working a lot') 

can convey not only hearsay, but doubting scorn when predicated of a wellknown 

loafer. 

The possibility of treating hearsay with scorn can be extended to imagined 

hearsay for rhetorical effect. For example, in failing to remember the 

words of a song, one might say: 

(23) Bu şarki- nin söz- ler- i- ni ne de iyi bil- iyorthis 

song gen. word pl. poss. acc. how emph. good know pres. 

uş- um. 

lsg. 

'How well I know the words to this song!' 

What is conveyed is something like the English, 'I'm supposed to know the 

words of this song!', with the ironic assertion that it is general knowledge that I 

do know the words. In the Turkish case, metaphorical reference is made to a 

possible world in which my knowledge of the words has been asserted, and by 

utterance (23) I report that assertion. The utterance is of an ironic nature only 

when juxtaposed to the real world, in which my lack of knowledge of the 

words is painfully apparent. 

We have now come to the first example in which the use of -miş does not 

conform to any of the standard grammatical categories discussed thus far. In a 

sense, one can look upon the extension to a hypothetical assertion reported 

from another possible world as simply a metaphorical extension of the normal 

hearsay function. While we believe this to be true, we also believe that more is 

revealed by this example. What the speaker finds to be true in the real world 

— namely the lack of memory for the words of the song — is contrary to her 

habitual assumptions of the state of her knowledge. Her mind was NOT PRE 

PARED to find this gap. We emphasize the phrase 'not prepared' in the previous 

sentence, because it seems to us that the essence of all uses of -mis is to encode 

situations for which the speaker is not somehow prepared — situations on the 

fringe of consciousness, learned of indirectly, or not immediately assimilable 

to the mental sets of the moment. It is the burden of the remainder of the paper 

to elaborate this notion.


The reader will recall that our first example, (3) Kemal gelmiş 'Kemal 

came', could also be an expression of surprise, uttered in the face of concrete 

physical evidence. Normally, upon opening the door to a visitor, one would 

say Kemal geldi, using the past of direct experience. But it seems that 'normally' 

must be taken to mean 'consonant with the current state of mind of the 

speaker'. Similarly, statives like (17) Selma huradaymis 'Selma is here', can be 

uttered on directly experiencing Selma's presence if the speaker had no mental 

preparation for that situation. Both the inferential and hearsay functions 

have been removed, but what remains is their common core of psychological 

distancing from the event. It is as if the speaker were saying: 'I have just become 

aware of something for which I had no premonitory consciousness.' 

On the other hand, when the speaker's mind is well prepared for an event 

— when he has full premonitory consciousness of an occurrence — even hearsay 

can be reported as direct experience. For example, during an early phase 

of investigating these issues in 1974, our minds were being increasingly prepared 

for Richard Nixon's resignation. When the event finally took place, it 

was quite natural to report it — although it was certainly a matter of hearsay— 

in the past of direct experience, -di: 

(24) Nixon istifa etti. 

Nixon resignation make 

'Nixon resigned.' 

During the same time period, the Turkish premier Bülent Ecevit suddenly resigned. 

There was no way to report this event except in the past of indirect experience, 

-miş, although the source of experience — the mass media — was 

equally indirect in both cases: 

(25) Ecevit istifa et- miş. 

Ecevit resignation make 

'(It is reported that) Ecevit resigned.' 

These are examples of a general phenomenon. Again, the use of -miş implies 

an unprepared mind from the standpoint of the speaker. 

This interpretation casts light on a curious loosening of the obligatory use 

of -miş as the referred to event recedes in time from the moment of speech. 

That which is reported as -miş today may be reported as -di next week or next 

month. In communicative terms, the -miş particle functions to indicate to the 

listener the source of currently relevant information. Psychologically, information 

which has been stored for some time becomes assimilated to one's own 

knowledge, often losing the qualification as to its source. Such information


becomes part of the speaker's general mental set, and can no longer be reported 

as something which has entered an unprepared mind. Thus as Ecevit's resignation 

became familiar recent history, it came to be reported as Ecevit istifa 

etti. Indeed, all history is reported in this form. 

Returning to the dimension of surprise, we are now in a position to account 

for the pragmatic extention of -miş to compliments. Again, the speaker 

is conveying his lack of preparation for the experienced event — in this case, 

his lack of preparation for the high quality of the event on the evaluative plane. 

Thus, to say to a proud mother at the conclusion of her daughter's recital 

(26) Kιz- ιnιz çok iyi piyano çal- ιyor- uş. 

daughter your very good piano play pres. 

'Your daughter plays [-mis] the piano very well.' 

is not to say that one slept through the concert and obtained this information 

second hand, nor to ironically convey that the daughter is reputed to play well 

in some possible world which differs from the current world. In this context, 

the -miş expression is heard as a compliment because it shares with other uses 

of this form the implication of the speaker's distance from the event; but here 

the distance is given a positive interpretation because the setting predisposes 

the listener to assume that the speaker's normal expectations could not accomodate 

the high quality of the experience. 

Unprepared minds and indirect experience 

Although we began the paper with a discussion of 'direct' and 'indirect 

experience', we have been relying more and more on a factor which we have 

varyingly referred to with such terms as 'involvement of the speaker's consciousness', 

'mental sets of the moment', 'premonitory consciousness', and 

'prepared mind'. Clearly, the range of pragmatic extensions just reviewed 

goes well beyond the issue of the speaker's direct or indirect experience of the 

event. A general psychological or phenomenological stance towards experience 

seems to underlie the entire range of functions of the two past tense 

forms. The neutral expectation, encoded by the -di particle, is that experienced 

events can be assimilated to a network of existing assumptions and expectations. 

The normal course of experience is characterized by premonitory 

consciousness of the contents of coming moments. We refer to this neutral, 

background mental set as a 'prepared mind'. In its linguistic reflection, an observed 

process arouses premonitory consciousness of its consequences, allow-


ing for encoding in the past of direct experience. Hearsay assimilable to a prepared 

mind is not really hearsay, because the recipient has had premonitory 

consciousness of the state of affairs leading up to the reported event. Such reports 

are conveyed as 'direct experience'. 

When a mind is unprepared, however, events cannot be immediately assimilated, 

One stands back, saying, in effect: 'It seems that I am experiencingsuch-and-such' 

or 'It seems that such-and-such an event must have taken 

place.' An unprepared mind has not had normal premonitory consciousness 

of the event in question. The event has become apparent through its consequences, 

or through report, or the experienced event is radically different 

from the consciousness that preceded the experience. The speaker thus feels 

distanced from the situation he is describing. Events which enter unprepared 

minds are encoded by the -miş particle. 

There are some kinds of events for which one is always unprepared — 

events which partake of a quality of unreality or otherworldliness. 3 Thus the 

-iş form is always used in such narratives as myths, folktales, and fairy tales, 

and this is the form used for recounting those parts of dreams which are most 

alien to everyday experience. In all of these cases, the speaker is psychologically 

distanced from the event. This dimension of psychological distance is elusive 

. It is not a matter of placement of events on a time line, but rather one of 

relative closeness of events to one's ongoing feeling of participation in the 

here-and-now. Native speakers we have asked share the vague feeling that of 

two events occurring at the same objective point in past time — one related in 

-miş and the other in -di—the one encoded by -miş seems more 'psychologically 

distant' than the one encoded by -di. While this intuition is obviously in 

need of further research, it is consonant with our claim that the central meaning 

of the distinction between the two past tense forms is not so much one of 

the modality of direct versus indirect experience, but rather one of the degree 

to which the speaker's mind has been prepared to assimilate the event in question 

prior to forming an utterance about that event. 

If this approach should prove to be revealing, it would be of interest to 

apply it to the inferential-evidential systems of other language groups. We 

have yet to determine the degree to which human languages embody implicit 

theories of conscious experience such as the one suggested above. It is our 

suggestion that a full description of linguistic phenomena requires attention to 

such theories.


FOOTNOTES 

1 ) We would like to thank Francesco Antinuccl for lengthy and enlightening discussions on some 

of the topics considered here. D.I. Slobin expresses gratitude to Hubert Dreyfus, who will hopefully 

detect some aspect of his skillful presentation of the ideas of Merleau-Ponty. We acknowledge 

support from the W.T. Grant Foundation to the Institute of Human Learning and from NIMH to 

the Language-Behavior Research Laboratory, both at the University of California at Berkeley, 

and from the American Research Institute in Turkey to A. A. Aksu. 

2) It is suggestive that this course of events has not been followed by all Turkic languages in their 

history. While -di is a common and ancient past tense, the perfect is a more recent development 

(varying in morphological realization from language to language), and its evolution into a modality 

of indirect experience is not a general feature of the language group (Grunina 1976). Thus the later 

phases of ontogentic development in Turkish seem to parallel more recent phases in the development 

of that language. 

3) We have omitted from our discussion a puzzling use of -miş in baby talk addressed to infants 

and pets. It is difficult to account for this tendency on the part of Turkish adults in the terms developed 

in this paper, however it could be that attempting to communicate with an inarticulate and 

often unresponsive small creature partakes of a certain unreal or otherworldly quality — at least 

from the point of view of the grounds of normal discourse. The fact that speech in this modality also 

takes place between lovers and is used in recounting dreams suggests its extension to a general 

realm of non-mundane experiences. 

REFERENCES 

Aksu, Ayhan A. 1978. Aspect and modality in the child's acquisition of the 

Turkish past tense. Berkeley: University of California dissertation. 

Antinucci, Francesco, and Ruth Miller. 1976. How children talk about what 

happened. Journal of Child Language 3.169-189. 

Banguoglu, Tahsin. 1975. Türkçenin grameri. Istanbul: Baha Matbaasi. 

Baskakov, N.A. 1971. O kategorijax naklonenija i vremeni v tjurkskixjazykax. 

Struktura i istorija tjurkskix jazykov, 72-80. Moscow: Nauka. 

Bickerton, Derek. 1975. Dynamics of a creole system. Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press. 

Bloom, Lois; Karin Lifter; and Jeremie Hafitz. 1980. Semantics of verbs and 

the development of verb inflection in child language. Language 56.386- 

412. 

Bronckart, Jean-Paul. 1976. Genèse et organisation des formes verbales chez 

l'enfant. Brussels: Dessart et Mardaga. 

-—, and Hermine Sinclair. 1973. Time, tense, and aspect. Cognition 2.107- 

130. 

Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

200 DANI. SLOBIN & AYHAN A. AKSU 

Fillmore, Charles J. 1968. The case for case. Universals in linguistic theory, 

ed. by Emmon Bach and Robert T. Harms, 1-90. New York: Holt, Rinehart 

& Winston. 

Grunina, E. . istorii semanticheskogo razvitija perfekta -mis. Sovetskaja 

tjurkologija 7(1). 12-26. 

Haarman, Harald. 1970. Die indirekte Erlebnisform als grammatische Kategorie. 

Eine eurasische Isoglosse. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. 

1971. Verbale und pronominale Grammatisierung der indirekten Erlebnisform. 

Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher 43.89-99. 

Kononov, A.N. 1956. Grammatika sovremennogo turetskogo Hteraturnogo 

jazyka. Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR. 

Lewis, G.L. 1967. Turkish grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press. 

Piaget, Jean. 1927. Le développement de la notion de temps chez l'enfant. Paris: 

Presses Universitaires de France. (1969. The child's conception of 

time, trans. by A.J. Pomerans. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.) 

Redhouse, J.W. 1884. A simplified grammar of the Ottoman-Turkish language. 

London: Trübner & Co. 

Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. New York: Harcourt Brace. 

Sebüktekin, Hikmet. 1971. Turkish-English contrastive analysis. The Hague: 

Mouton. 

Stephany, Ursula. 1978. The modality constituent — a neglected area in the 

study of first language acquisition. Universität Köln - Institut für Sprachwissenschaft: 

Arbeitspapier Nr. 36. 

Tekin,Talat. 1968. A grammar of Orhon Turkic. Bloomington: Indiana University 

Publications (Ural and Altaic Series Vol. 69). 

Underhill, Robert. 1976. Turkish grammar. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press.

FIGURE AND GROUND: 

THE INTERRELATIONSHIPS OF LINGUISTIC CATEGORIES 

STEPHEN WALLACE 

Houston, Texas 

0. Introduction. This paper addresses three points of the traditional 

way of viewing linguistic categories, with particular reference to categories of 

verbs. l One, linguists have worked with the notion that the usual categories of 

the verb, viz. tense, aspect, mode, voice, and transitivity, are clearly defined 

logical divisions suitable for analyzing the grammar of any language whatever. 

The very title of this symposium suggests that "tense" and "aspect," while 

perhaps closely related enough and sufficiently compatible to share the same 

conferential stage, are areas of discussion isolable from one another and from 

other areas. Two, many analyses of the meaning of verbal categories take the 

clause, or at most the sentence, as the operative domain of the relevant category. 

That linguistic categories contribute significantly to the structure of an 

extrasentential text, indeed, that one does not truly understand the meaning 

of a linguistic category until one comprehends its function in a text, are suggestions 

that mainstream twentieth-century linguistics has all but ignored. 

Three, discussions of the semantics of linguistic categories, whether for a specific 

language or for language in general, typically amount to "extracting" the 

distinctive semantic features of grammatical sets, positing Grund- or Gesamtbedeutungen, 

making lists of the uses of e.g. the optative mode or the ablative 

case, or doing whatever one's favorite analytical trick is, for the most part 

without attempting to achieve some broader perspective on how the posited 

semantic contents or contrasts fit into an overall view of human behavior and 

cognition. In the following sections I aim to show that these three points, which 

I view as shortcomings of usual linguistic approaches, are not unrelated. I 

suggest that the distinction made in perceptual psychology between figure and 

ground provides an interesting and useful parallel which may help to elucidate 

the meanings of linguistic categories and their interrelationships.

202 STEPHEN WALLACE 

1. Verbal categories. Modern linguistic analysis of the semantics of verbal 

categories appears to owe much to the classical Indo-European languages 

which once served as crucial descriptive models. Thus Lyons (1977) has chapters, 

or sections of chapters, on "tense," "aspect," "mood and illocutionary 

force," and "modality." Numerous other works focus on one or another of 

these categories: e.g. Bull, Comrie (1976), Friedrich, Forsyth, and so on. So 

in spite of repeated attempts to break away from the classical exemplars, the 

trivium of tense, mode, and aspect, based of course on the actual inflectional 

categories of older Indo-European languages, persists as a fundamental conceptual 

schema. Lyons (682) aptly sums up the feelings of most of us when he 

says: "A fairly clear distinction can be drawn in the metalanguage of general 

linguistic theory between 'tense,' 'mood' [= my 'mode'], and 'aspect'." The 

problems with the classical trinity, as I shall detail in this section, are two. 

One, it is an arbitrary division of verbal semantics into compartments which 

are not quite as easily separable as one is led to believe. Time, aspectuality, 

and modality — the semantic fields to which the formal categories of tense, aspect, 

and mode are supposed to refer — are almost inextricably scrambled together. 

Two, and perhaps even more significant, the tense-mode-aspect trivium 

has important relationships not only with other verbal categories such as 

voice and transitivity, but extends even further to such nonverbal categories 

as person, number, and definiteness. 

1.1. Time and modality. As Lyons (814ff.) points out, these two semantic 

domains show considerable overlap, especially with regard to future time: 

the future is not nearly as certain as the past or present. The future of Latin 

verbs like faciam T will do' goes back to an Indo-European subjunctive, for 

example (L. Palmer 271). The English "future" auxiliary will in earlier times 

expressed not so much futurity as desire or intention. The French "future" indicates 

not only futurity but also inference: il sera malade 'he will be sick' or 

'he is probably sick'. But "present" and "past" tenses are by no means free 

from meanings traditionally classified as modal. Note the pervasive existence 

of the "historical present" — the "present" tense used to narrate past events 

— in languages such as Greek, Latin, English, French, Georgian, and Bulgarian 

(Comrie 1976: 73-8; Bennett 169; Goodwin 269). The effect of such usage 

is supposedly to make the narrative more "lively" or "vivid" (but see Wolfson). 

Observe further the polite or indirect use of the "past" tense in English 

and French (Leech 11 ; Waugh 1975: 463-5) where one might expect the "present," 

especially with regard to cognition and emotion. In English, for example, 

to say "Did you want me?" with reference to a present desire is more ten-

FIGURE AND GROUND 203 

tative and thus more polite than to say abruptly "Do you want me?". Compare 

also in this regard the wide spread modern western Indo-European tendency 

to use the conditional (etymologically a past tense) for present politeness: I 

would like..., French je voudrais..., German ich hätte gerne..., Spanish querría. 

.. , Dutch ik zou graag..., and so forth. 

The fundamental question therefore is: If "present" and "past" tense do 

not necessarily refer to present and past time, if the "present" can refer to the 

past and the "past" to the present, how are we justified in talking about tense 

and time with regard to these categories? At least to me it would seem that 

when authors talk about the "imaginative use of the tenses" (Babbitt 264) or 

the "illusion of presentness" (Comrie 1976:74), they are no longer talking 

about time but something else. No reasonable person would deny that time is 

an important semantic property of the categories of tense. The moot point is 

whether or not it is a focal, central, nuclear property. One might in fact argue 

that the distinction between "present" and "past" "tense" in the languages 

mentioned is not so much temporal as it is modal: immediate-direct-certain 

"present" mode versus remote-indirect-hesitant "past" mode. I am by no 

means the only person to propose this: see, for example, Joos (120-6), Langacker 

(1978 and this volume), and Waugh (1975:444). Lyons (809-23) has a 

lengthy discussion of tense as modality, including many references to both the 

linguistic and philosophical literature. In fact, one wonders whether a language 

exists in which "tense" refers only to time. 

1.2. Aspectuality and modality. While the formal category usually 

called tense in a given language often has a straightforward deictic temporal 

reference (alongside the more problematical meanings usually labeled as modal) 

, the category of aspect has presented a more challenging field of analysis. 

For even though one can discern certain focal semantic contrasts at work, such 

as punctual vs. durative, completed vs. incompleted, total vs. partial, semelfactive 

vs. iterative, currently relevant vs. currently irrelevant, and the like, 

many difficulties intrude. Not the least problem is the oft-noted intersection 

of aspect and the semantic type of the verb: an English actional verb like eat, 

for example, can readily occur in the "progressive" aspect, while a stative verb 

like own can not. The complex interrelationships of aspect and tense have received 

extensive attention in the literature (e.g. Comrie 1976:66-84; Kury o- 

wicz 1964:90-135) and need no further elaboration here. 

What I would like to discuss, however, are certain neglected interrelationships 

between aspectuality and modality, in particular a recurrent tenden-


to associate imperfective (incompletive, durative) aspectuality with noneventive 

modalities. 2 In classical Greek, for example, some grammarians 

(e.g. Schwyzer 275-80) distinguish a "potential" use of the "imperfect" (past 

imperfective). This seems to occur only with negation, so that the combination 

of the negative and the imperfective can express inability. To use the 

"aorist" (past perfective) with a negative simply denies the fact. The same 

phenomenon occurs in Jakarta Malay (Wallace), where the verb with the 

prefix g-, often indicating general, routine, habitual activity, a sort of imperfective, 

can occur with negation to indicate inability; the unmarked verb, a 

sort of perfective, with negation again just denies the fact. Note also Forsyth's 

(109-12) remarks on Russian in this regard: (1) The negated perfective 

can denote the nonachievement of a result; the negated imperfective, unwillingness 

, refusal, or inability to perform an action. (2) The common use of a negated 

imperfective verb to deny an affirmative perfective verb connotes a 

"general feeling of dissociation from the concrete reality of an action performed 

and completed" and a movement away from "the realm of precision 

and concrete reality into that of vagueness and unreality." In fact, Forsyth 

(349) finds "very widespread use of the imperfective with negation. " For similar 

affinities in French and Homeric Greek, see Reid and Diver (58-9). For a 

final example, we note the tentative use of the "progressive" aspect in English 

with verbs of cognition: "I'm hoping you'll come" is less certain than "I hope 

you'll come." Leech (24-5) suggests that the element of temporariness associated 

with the "progressive" is here extended to the notion of lack of commitment 

or certainty. But what are commitment and certainty if not modalities? 

One might also include here the uses of imperfective forms in numerous 

languages to indicate attempt (the "conative imperfect" of grammarians of 

Latin and Greek). This phenomenon occurs in Greek (Babbitt 266-7), Latin 

(Bennett 169), Russian (Forsyth 71-3), and Jakarta Malay (Wallace). I have 

seen no discussion in the literature as to whether attempt is an aspectual or 

modal notion. On the one hand, one might treat it as a derivative of the incompleted, 

durative character of the imperfective aspect. On the other hand, one 

might just as well treat it as a sort of non-eventive modality, along with desire, 

intent, possibility, hesitance, and the like. In the latter case, here again we 

have a tie between imperfectivity and non-eventiveness. 3 

1.3. Aspectuality and nouns. Not only are there significant relationships 

between aspectuality and modality, but we also find important correlations 

between aspectuality and categories of nouns associated with verbs in


clauses. For classical Greek, for example, Schwyzer (278-9) notes that in Hippocrates' 

account of deaths in an epidemic, the "aorist" (past perfective) of 

the verb (apo)thnéiskö 'I die' occurs when specific individuals are referred 

to: thus 'he died' or 'she died' is apéthane (3 sg. aorist), and 'they died', referring 

to named individuals, is apéthanon (3 pl. aorist). The "imperfect," on 

the other hand, occurs when an indefinite multitude is mentioned: éthnëiskon 

'they died'. Reid's data on the use of the passé simple (past punctual-perfective) 

versus the imparfait (past durative-imperfective) in French narrative 

discourse are especially interesting here. He finds, for instance, a decided statistical 

preference for the passé simple with the following types of sentential 

subjects: first-person, singular, proper, or those designating main characters, 

We can not escape the conclusion that the perfective, at least in these languages, 

connotes greater specificity, selection, and attention, while the imperfective 

is hazier, vaguer, more in the background, and less salient. 

Closely related to the above is the association of aspectuality and transitivity. 

For Russian, Forsyth (91) observes that a potentially transitive verb, 

when used in the past perfective, requires an object expressed or implied. The 

imperfective form of a verb comes under no such restriction. Wallace has 

found a similar phenomenon in Jakarta Malay. Although this sort of correlation 

has to my knowledge not been investigated in a wide range of languages, I 

would not be surprised if further research determined similar intersections of 

aspectuality and transitivity. In particular, the more specific nature of the perfective 

seems to demand that the action of the verb be elaborated by the inclusion 

(or implication) of a goal which specifies the domain of application of the 

action, while the less specific imperfective does not require — but certainly allows 

— such modification. 

1.4. Aspect, voice, and modality : a note. Several writers, reviewing data 

on verbal morphology and syntax in a variety of diverse languages, have 

noted recurrent interrelationships among these three usually separated categories 

(Comrie MSa; DeLancey (this volume); Wallace). In Jakarta Malay, 

for instance, as described by Wallace, a transitive verb marked with a certain 

prefix normally occurs in the active construction; often has overtones of noneventive 

modality, such as potentiality and doubt; and refers to generic, habitual, 

routine activities, being thus a sort of imperfective. An unmarked transitive 

verb, on the other hand, may occur in either active or passive constructions; 

often connotes an eventive modality, such as factuality and certainty; 

and typically designates specific, actual, definite, bounded acts, being thus a


sort of perfective. Comrie, DeLancey, and Wallace have sugested that this 

particular line-up — active, imperfective, and non-eventive on the one hand, 

passive, perfective, and eventive on the other hand — is based on the particular 

viewpoint or orientation in the usual transitive clause of actor acting on a 

goal. When one takes the actor's viewpoint or orientation, one "sees" primarily 

the inception and continuation of the action (imperfective), possibly the intent 

or other internal executive capacity of the actor (non-eventive), and the 

actor as the dominant participant in the scene (active voice). When one takes 

the viewpoint or orientation of the goal, one "sees" primarily the termination 

of the action or its relevance to the current state of the goal (perfective or perfect 

aspectuality), the actual realization of the action as it affects some entity 

(eventive modality), and the goal as the dominant participant in the scene 

(passive voice). 

It would be bold indeed to claim that this sort of schema is a universal, or 

even near-universal, source of semantic relationships for the morphology and 

syntax of verbs and of nouns associated with them. It is difficult to see, for instance, 

what major application it might have to English or many other Indo- 

European languages. On the other hand, even these languages show some 

tendency for perfect (if not perfective) aspectuality to go together with passive 

voice. 4 Consider, for example, the "past participles" of the familiar western 

Indo-European languages, which serve to indicate resultant state (the broken 

window), "perfect" aspect (Susie has broken the window), and passive voice 

(the window was broken by Susie). With the discovery of Hittite, the reconstruction 

of verbal morphology for Proto-Indo-European was rendered somewhat 

uncertain, since a set of suffixes which indicates perfect (resultant state) 

aspect in Greek and Sanskrit was found to be apparently cognate with a set of 

suffixes in Hittite which indicates the preterite medio-passive of certain verbs 

(the "second conjugation;" see Kury=owicz 1932 and 1964, Stang 1932, Watkins 

66-8). One wonders whether the Proto-Indo-European situation resembled 

modern Irish, about which Comrie (MSa: 13) states: "Only in the passive 

is there an explicit perfect; only in the perfect is there an explicit passive. 

It is therefore essentially arbitrary whether one calls it 'passive' or 'perfect' or 

both simultaneously." 

In any case, if the contrast between active, imperfective, and non-eventive 

on the one hand and passive, perfective-perfect, and eventive on the other 

hand is as widespread as the writers mentioned above suggest, then some 

explanation is necessary, just as some explanation is necessary if we find numerous 

and widespread languages in which [k] is palatalized to [c] before front


vowels, even though such palatalization may well be absent in equally numerous 

and widespread languages. As in phonology, we are here dealing with tendencies. 

And although the schema involving "viewpoint" or "orientation" 

may be more appropriate to some languages than to others, I claim that it contributes 

to an understanding of the matters discussed above in section 1.2, especially 

the association of imperfective aspectuality and non-eventive modality, 

and in section 1.3, in particular the relationship between imperfective and 

intransitive constructions. 

1.5. Review. In concluding this section, I would like to reiterate the 

claim stated at the beginning of the section: the traditional conceptualization 

of verbal semantics into the categories of tense, mode, aspect, voice, and transitivity 

fails to capture certain recurrent and apparently widespread interrelationships 

among the semantic domains to which these categories refer: time, 

aspectuality, modality, and noun-verb relations. The facts are such that we 

must agree with Lyons (690) when he says: "... at this point there is not, and 

cannot be, in universal grammar any sharp distinction between tense and aspect, 

on the one hand, or between tense and modality, on the other." Additional 

support for this point of view comes from Waugh (1979:229), who, reviewing 

the semantics of verbal morphology in French, asserts: "All of the 

four tenses studied [present, imperfect, future, and conditional] have uses 

which fall in the domain of tense (temporal uses), of aspect (shape of the 

event), and of mood (subjective evaluation of the speaker): there is no difference 

between tense/aspect/mood — it is all one category." And we need to extend 

these statements by highlighting the pair aspectuality and modality, not 

to mention the role of verbal categories in noun-verb relations. Finally, we 

have seen a schema for relating aspectuality, modality, voice, and transitivity 

into a unified system based on the viewpoint or orientation of the transitive 

situation. For another perspective on verbal categories, nominal categories, 

and their interrelationships, we now look at linguistic structure beyond the 

sentence. 

2. Linguistic categories in discourse. The second point of this paper will 

be to address the broader issue of how verbal categories fit into extended discourse. 

For a fundamental task of linguistics must be to understand and organize 

the facts of the totality of linguistic behavior: not just isolated sentences, 

but whole discourses. I shall emphasize in this section that verbal categories 

are important components in the structure of discourses, and indeed, that one 

does not truly understand "the meaning" of a verbal category in a particular


language unless one understands its place in discourse. I will also point out related 

characteristics of nominal categories. 

2.1. Foreground and background. In analyzing the structure of discourse, 

many analysts (e.g. Grimes 33-100; Hopper and Thompson; Jones 

and Jones; Longacre and Levinsohn) make a fundamental division of the sort 

of information conveyed by a discourse into two kinds: foreground and background. 

5 Included in the foreground, for instance, are the more important 

events of a narrative, the more important steps of a procedure, the central 

points of an exposition, the main characters or entities involved in an episode. 

The background includes events of lesser importance, subsidiary procedures, 

secondary points, descriptions, elaborations, digressions, and minor characters 

or things. This is not to say that background is unessential: merely to say 

Veni, vidi, vici T came, I saw, I conquered' means little unless it is embedded 

in a context which provides the relevant background. It is to say rather that 

people, when producing or comprehending linguistic discourse, lend more 

importance to some information than to other information. 6 In the following 

sections we will then see evidence of how linguistic categories function with 

regard to the distinction between foreground and background. 7 

2.2. Aspect in discourse. Grammarians of Latin and Greek, who have 

produced some of the most detailed grammars in existence, have been long 

aware, especially with regard to narrative discourse, of the role of aspectual 

contrasts in providing different sorts of information in extended texts. They 

point out, for example, that the Latin "perfect" and Greek "aorist" provide 

the basic narration, that is, the presentation of the central sequential events, 

whereas the "imperfect" in these languages is the verb form of description, the 

depiction of attendant circumstances (Bennett 169-70; Goodwin 268-72; 

Moore 74; Schwyzer 277). More recent analyses of aspect in other languages 

make similar judgments about the function of the contrast of perfective vs. imperfective 

in narrative discourse. Consider, for example, what Forsyth (9-10) 

says about verbs in a Russian text: "Each perfective verb denotes an action 

which is a new event, bringing about, or at least marking the transition to, a 

new state of affairs, and thus carrying the narrative forward. The imperfective 

verbs, on the other hand, do not present dynamic changes, but rather facts relating 

to the background..." Completely complementary to this analysis is 

that of Diver for Homeric Greek and Reid for French. 

For an example from a non-Indo-European language, we note Jones and 

Jones's discussion of aspect in Zapotec (Mexico). In the Cajonos variety of


this language, the verb is inflected for four aspects (or mode-aspects): "completive" 

(past time, perfective), "habitual" (general, customary, on-going, 

imperfective), "potential" (ability, future time), and "stative" (non-actional 

states). In analyzing a narrative text from this language, Jones and Jones find 

that the completive aspect marks events which are "important in the plot progression," 

those which constitute the "backbone events" of the narrative. The 

other aspects, however, serve to give "background information" : "less significant 

events," "elaboration or extra information, such as descriptions of scene 

or characters, or minor events concurrent with major events." 

The general conclusion, discussed in some detail by Hopper (1979), is the 

following: If a language has a contrast between a perfective (completive, nondurative, 

punctual) aspect and other aspects, then part of the meaning of the 

perfective aspect, at least in narration, is to specify major, sequential, foregrounded 

events, while part of the meaning of the contrasting non-perfective 

aspects, particularly an imperfective, is to give supportive background information. 

2.3. Mode in discourse. If we assume that the distinction between foreground 

and background is a useful one, then it is not difficult to see that modality 

plays a role here as well. At least under normal circumstances, one 

would expect people to be more interested in what is factual or real. What 

someone asserts as actually happening or having happened is likely to be closer 

to the center of attention — the foreground — than what did not happen, or 

might happen, or could happen, or should happen, or perhaps happened, or 

what someone wants to happen. Grimes (65), who refers to such latter situations 

in (narrative) discourse as "collateral information," explains their function 

as follows: "Collateral information, simply stated, relates non-events to 

events. By providing a range of non-events that might take place, it heightens 

the significance of the real events." Note that a major domain for the occurrence 

of non-eventive modes such as subjunctives and optatives is subordinate 

clauses, which typically contain, according to Townsend and Bever (1-5), 

"less important information," "background information," or the "context or 

setting" for the more important information provided by main clauses. Correlating 

aspectuality and modality with the distinction between foreground and 

background, we can therefore understand more clearly the tendency for nonperfective 

aspectuality and non-eventive modality to go together: they both 

serve to provide background information in discourse. 

2.4. Tense in discourse. The situation with regard to the category of 

"tense" is more complex, since the shifting deictic nature of temporal refer-


ence is involved. In an language such as English, the usual way of referring to 

the present is with the "present tense" (or "immediate" tense-mode), and the 

usual way of referring to the past is with the "past tense" (or "remote" tensemode). 

When a speaker uses the "present" to refer to the past, this has, according 

to many analysts (e.g. Leech 6-8; F. Palmer 44), the effect of making 

an account more "vivid": or, we might say, of bringing it into the immediate 

foreground. Contrariwise, using the "past" to refer to the present has the effect 

of downplaying the certainty, immediacy, or reality of the assertion, that 

is, backgrounding it (cf. the "polite past" and conditional in section 1.1 

above). 

One wonders how widespread such nontemporal uses of "tenses" are in 

the languages of the world. In English, at any rate, their use would appear to 

be quite restricted. Not every speaker of English routinely uses the "historical 

present," nor does everyone routinely use the "polite past" (although polite 

conditionals such as I would like... are quite common). So rather than being 

general foregrounding and backgrounding devices, they would seem to be 

rather special stylistic effects that some speakers are more prone to use than 

others. For languages which have an explicit "future tense," we might further 

hypothesize that verbal form also characteristically belongs to the background, 

since it functions to give predictions, intentions, and desires rather 

than the narration of actual events. 

2.5. Voice in discourse. The situation of voice in discourse is more complex 

still, since languages differ considerably as to how they organize nounverb 

relations. One sort of organization is common among western Indo-European 

languages, both modern and ancient. In these languages, the preferred, 

normal, neutral transitive clause takes the actor (agent or experiencer) 

as subject. In other words, these languages, such as English, German, 

Dutch, French, Greek, and Latin, are actor-oriented (cf. section 1.4). 

As numerous statistical studies (Gonda 347-8; Jespersen 168; Svartvik 141) 

have shown, passive constructions in these languages are less frequent than 

actives, and indeed in most genres of discourse passives tend to occur only 

when the actor is not mentioned. Hopper and Thompson (99) also point out 

that passive constructions tend to occur in backgrounded portions of texts: in 

three English texts which they studied, 12% of backgrounded clauses were 

passive, but only 4% of foregrounded clauses were passive. Assuming that animate 

entities are more likely to be in the foreground of a text than inanimate 

ones (see below), and that eventive modality is more salient and thus part of 

the foreground as well, we find, as Hopper and Thompson point out, a further


tie in English between active as foreground, passive as background: Svartvik's 

(49-50) statistics from a number of English texts show that 27% of active 

clauses have inanimate subjects, while 81% of passive clauses have inanimate 

subjects, and further, that passives are 30% more frequent with modal auxiliaries 

(especially can, could, and may) than without. 

In some Austronesian languages, however, the situation is quite different. 

The Philippine language Tagalog, for instance, has a morphological category 

of the verb called "voice" (Bloomfield 153-5) or "focus" (Schachter and 

Otanes 283ff). 8 The "active" or "actor-focus" occurs when the subject of the 

sentence is the actor (agent or experiencer) and predominantly when the goal 

is indefinite. The "passive" voices or "non-actor-focuses" occur when some 

entity other than the actor is the subject, especially when this other entity is 

definite. As students of Tagalog and other Philippine languages have long 

known (e.g. Bloomfield 153-5), "passive" or "non-actor-focus" constructions 

in these languages are greatly preferred over "active" or "actor-focus" constructions, 

due especially to the function of the "voice" or "focus" system in 

indicating definiteness or indefiniteness of a goal. Because of a greater salience 

of definite entities in discourse, the Tagalog "passives" or "non-actorfocuses" 

tend to occur in foregrounded portions of Tagalog texts, while the 

"active" or "actor-focus" tends to occur in the background (Hopper and 

Thompson 86-93). In contrast to English, then, Tagalog is more goal-oriented. 

We can only conclude that there is no simple widespread relationship between 

voice and discourse strucure as there apparently is for tense, mode, and 

aspect. In short, languages differ in this respect. 

2.6. The salience of linguistic categories. The matter of voice, which essentially 

concerns noun-verb relations, brings us beyond a discussion of verbal 

categories to a discussion of the categories of nominal expressions associated 

with verbs (cf. section 1.3 above). Categories to be considered are 

those such as person, number, animacy, humanness, definiteness, and the 

like. A number of investigators both of intrasentential syntax and of extrasentential 

discourse have stated that the divisions of these categories can be 

ranked according to which division is somehow more prominent or important 

with regard to certain properties of syntax or discourse. From Connie's (MSb) 

"animacy hierarchy," Givón's (152) "topicality hierarchy," Hopper and 

Thompson's "transitivity hierarchy," Reid's distinction of "focus," Silverstein's 

"agency hierarchy," and Timberlake's "individuation hierarchy," we 

can put together a table (Table 1, part A) whereby these nominal categories 

are separated into what I shall call more salient and less salient subcategories.


The importance of what I am calling the division into more and less salient 

in synchronic and diachronic syntax is included in the papers just cited. 

For instance, these differences in salience determine, in numerous languages, 

features of noun-verb agreement, the marking of subjects and objects, potentialities 

of noun phrases' being agents, subjects, or topics, and certain types of 

morphological and syntactic change. As we might expect, this division has a 

major place in discourse study as well. Hopper and Thompson, for instance, 

point out that the categories under the "more salient" column tend to be in 

foregrounded portions of discourse, while categories under the "less salient" 

column tend to be in the background. Reid, using the terms "high focus" (= 

more salient) and "low focus" (= less salient), suggests for nominal categories 

in French discourse essentially the same division. 

TABLE 1 

SALIENCE IN LINGUISTIC CATEGORIES 

MORE SALIENT 

human 

animate 

proper 

singular 

concrete 

definite 

referential 

count 

nonthird person 

B. perfective 

present-immediate 

eventive 

transitive 

actional verb 

deliberate action 

D. main clause 

foreground 

LESS SALIENT 

nonhuman 

inanimate 

common 

nonsingular 

abstract 

indefinite 

nonreferential 

mass 

third person 

nonperfective 

nonpresent-remote 

noneventive 

intransitive 

stative verb 

accidental action 

subordinate clause 

background


The point that I have made in the above sections about the role of verbal 

categories in discourse, complementary to the analysis of Hopper and 

Thompson and to that of Reid, is that verbal categories can also be ranked according 

to salience, namely, as given in Table 1, part . Hopper and Thompson 

further claim that certain other properties of verbs can be ranked according 

to high versus low "transitivity." Translating their labeling into mine of 

more versus less salient, we have further the distinctions in Table 1, part C. 

We can also add to this list the fact that, as Townsend and Bever have determined 

experimentally, main clauses are more salient than subordinate 

clauses. Finally, almost by definition, foreground in discourse is more salient 

than background (Table 1, part D). In the following section I will propose an 

explanation of why Table 1 is as it is. 

3. Figure and ground. Let assume that the particular line-up of linguistic 

categories into "more salient" and "less salient" as outlined in the previous 

section is valid for a wide variety of languages, not only within the bounds of 

the sentence, but also in extended discourse. The authors cited above suggest 

a number of answers as to the source of this organization, including the following: 

(1) People are more interested in other human beings (or at least in animate 

entities); (2) People tend to place themselves at the center of attention; 

(3) Individuated — especially concrete, definite, singular, countable — entities 

are more apt to attract interest than their opposites; (4) The real, the certain, 

the positive, the immediate, the bounded, the completed, and the dynamic 

are more effective in moving a discourse forward, to constitute the foregrounded 

portion of a text, than their respective contrasting properties, which 

form the supportive background. The point of this section is not to deny the 

usefulness of these explanations. What I would rather like to suggest is that 

these explanations are perhaps not general enough, but may be specific cases 

of the innate, universal perceptual distinction between figure and ground. 

The analytical distinction between figure and ground goes back to the 

Gestalt psychologists of the early twentieth century and has continued to receive 

considerable attention in psychological theory. For a concise explanation 

of what is involved in separating figure from ground, I cite the following 

paragraph from a popular modern introductory psychology textbook (Krech, 

Crutchfield, and Livson 264): 

As we look at the parts of any differentiated field, we notice that almost invariably 

one part (the figure) stands out distinctively from the rest (the ground). 

Figure-ground differentiation is the simplest and most primitive form of perceptual 

organization. It seems to be present at the very beginnings of visual


perception. Newborn infants can follow an object (figure) with their eyes as 

it moves across a homogeneous ground. 

But what determines which part of a configuration will "stand out distinctively," 

or, in other words, be the most salient? From a number of works which 

deal with this matter (Krech, Crutchfield, and Livson 264; Rock 253-63; 

Solley and Murphy 262-87; Zusne 113-24), we can make a table (Table 2) of 

properties likely to characterize figures and grounds. Note that the contrasts 

are relative and applied by the cited authors to visual perception. 9 

We are of course making an analytical synaesthetic jump by applying the 

figure-ground distinction to non visual linguistic phenomena. 10 It would be 

strange, however, if this distinction, which Solley and Murphy (285) call "extremely 

fundamental to all perception," had no relevance to how human beings 

use language to communicate experience. The hypothesis which I would 

in fact like to present is that linguistic categories of the sort mentioned above 

function to differentiate linguistic figure from linguistic ground: the speaker 

uses such categories to structure an utterance (of one or more sentences) into 

more or less salient portions, and the listener uses such categories as clues to 

interpreting the speaker's verbal picture. 

TABLE 2 

CHARACTERISTICS OF FIGURES AND GROUNDS 

FIGURE 

thing-like, solid, discrete 

well-defined, tightly organized 

contoured, surrounded, bounded, 

enclosed 

localized 

with distinguishable parts 

small 

near 

above, in front 

more impressive color 

greater contrast 

stable 

symmetric 

"meaningful," familiar 

GROUND 

unformed, diffuse, shapeless, 

continuous, unbroken 

less definite, unstructured, loosely 

organized 

boundless 

unlocalized 

without distinguishable parts 

large 

far 

below, behind 

less impressive color 

lesser contrast 

unstable 

irregular 

"meaningless," unfamiliar


As a first example, consider the domain of aspectuality, in particular the 

distinction between perfective and imperfective. In terms of figure and 

ground, the principles of the Gestalt psychologists would predict that the 

bounded, punctiliar perfective is more figure-like and the unbounded, linear 

imperfective more ground-like. The greater salience of the perfective figure 

in discourse as opposed to the lesser salience of the imperfective ground naturally 

follows from the perceptual principles involved. In similar fashion, the 

figure-ground distinction suggests that "present" tense, referring as it does to 

more immediate events, is more figure-like than the more remote "past" or 

projected "future" tenses, and further that eventive modality — reality, actuality, 

certainty — is more figure-like than the diffuse, boundless, unlocalized 

non-eventive modality of hypotheticality, negation, potentiality, and doubt. 

Likewise, transitive and actional constructions are figures with regard to intransitive 

and stative ones: a transitive situation is, so to speak, bounded by including 

the domain to which the action applies, while the intransitive has no 

such specified limit; a state is, in contrast to an action, typically boundless, 

continuous, and undifferentiated. 

With regard to nominal categories, the figure-ground distinction is particularly 

clear. No justification seems necessary to assert that entities referred 

to by singular, concrete, definite, referential, or count noun phrases would 

tend to be perceived as figures against a ground of entities designated by nonsingular, 

abstract, indefinite, nonreferential, or mass noun phrases. The principle 

of "individuation" invoked by Timberlake and by Hopper and Thompson 

— called "individualization" by Reid — is in fact a prominent feature of 

perceptual figures (cf. Miller and Johnson-Laird 39). And since we as human 

beings are more apt to be interested in our conspecific creatures, or at least in 

animate entities which resemble us or are important to us in various ways, 

then human or animate entities, as more "meaningful" or "familiar," are more 

likely to be figures than nonhuman or inanimate entities. Further, the characteristic 

properties of figure and ground suggest that speaker and addressee 

will be figures against a ground of other entities not directly involved in basic 

face-to-face conversation. We note here the remark of MacWhinney (154) as 

he discusses perceptual factors which influence choice of "starting points" for 

sentences: "It may be that humans perceive themselves as figures with the external 

world as ground. " Going beyond nouns and verbs, Townsend and Bever, 

as well as Talmy, have drawn an explicit parallel between main clauses as 

figures and subordinate clauses as grounds. And beyond the boundaries of the 

sentence, the figure-ground distinction, essentially equivalent as far as I can


tell to the distinction between foreground and background, has received application 

to the study of discourse from Longacre (1968:30-222) and from 

Jones (3). 11 

The evidence and interpretive hypotheses from a number of diverse sources 

are mutually reinforcing and mutually complementary. 

1. Verbal categories blend and associate, and indeed they tend to blend 

and associate in certain ways rather than in others (e.g. imperfective aspectuality 

and non-eventive modality). 

2. Verbal categories and nominal categories are apt to correlate in specific 

ways (e.g. "individuated" entities with perfective, "non-individuated" 

entities with imperfective). 

3. Verbal categories, as well as nominal categories, play important 

roles in foregrounding and backgrounding information in discourse (e.g. perfective 

foreground, imperfective background). 

4. A fundamental organizing principle behind this apparent diversity of 

facts is the figure-ground distinction. Human perceivers do not lend equal 

weight to all incoming sensations, but notice some as more salient figures 

which "stand out distinctively" in front of a less salient ground. Linguistic 

categories such as aspect, mode, person, definiteness, and animacy, along 

with broader divisions of clause, sentence, and discourse, have as at least one 

of their functions the sorting of information conveyed by linguistic means into 

greater and lesser degrees of salience, in other words, figuring and grounding. 

By a simple principle of association, figures tend to go with figures and 

grounds with grounds, resulting in the overlappings and relationships summarized 

in points one through three above. 

Language is of course not so straightforward that the figure-ground difference 

will explain everything perfectly. For one thing, the figure-ground 

distinction is not a simple one, but rather what philosophers of science call a 

"cluster concept": a notion with a number of defining factors, no one of which 

necessarily predominates in any given situation, and some of which may upon 

occasion conflict. Consequently, one should not expect simple all-or-none 

compartmentalization, but prepare to weigh numerous contributing influences. 

12 Many scholars have pointed out relationships, for example, between 

past tense and perfective aspect: a less salient, ground-like category with a 

more salient, figure-like category, contrary to the sort of association one 

might expect from reading the above exposition. Such a relationship doubtless 

arises from a particular discourse genre, namely past narration, when perfective 

verbs specify central sequential events. The deictic nature of tense,


along with the different logical and epistemic statuses of the past, present, and 

future times, together with the incompatibility of certain tenses and aspects 

(cf. Comrie 1976:66-86), render the relations between tense and aspect especially 

complex, to the point that any application of figure and ground as an explanatory 

tool may not here be useful. 

Second, the figure-ground distinction is only one principle of perceptual 

organization. Other major principles include the grouping of sensations together 

according to perceived similarity, the satiation and shift of attention, 

the perception of movement, space, and depth, and the phenomenon of "object 

constancy." Indeed, the Gestalt theory of perception is only one of a 

number of apparently competing, but perhaps actually complementary, approaches 

to perception in current psychology. One particularly problematic 

area is the fact that Gestalt theory makes strong claims about universal innate 

perceptual mechanisms, while acquired individual, social, and cultural dispositions 

clearly play a role in determining, among other things, perceived figures 

and grounds. The implications of such factors for the organization of language 

are profound, as in, for example, the difference in viewpoint or orientation 

discussed in sections 1.4 and 2.5 above. We note further the lack of any 

universal ranking between first- and second-person pronouns (Comrie MSb; 

Silverstein), and the existence of languages in which non-singular number 

ranks above the singular in grammatical salience (Silverstein). Clearly other 

factors are involved here besides the notions of "individuation" or "boundedness" 

which count so importantly in the figure-ground distinction, e.g. factors 

such as markedness, perhaps sociocultural motives for exalting or humbling 

speaker or addressee, and a possible way of viewing a plurality as somehow 

weightier than an individual. As with tense, the deictic, indexical nature of thp 

category of person, especially as this intersects with the category of number, 

does not admit of simple universal schematization (cf. Silverstein: 165-6, note 

9). Languages can and do differ from one another in their grammatical organizations, 

just as individuals differ from one another in the cognitive strategies 

that they employ to solve problems and as groups of individuals differ in their 

cognitive styles. 

What, then, is the usefulness of viewing grammatical organization in 

terms of the figure-ground distinction, if it does not always predict the facts of 

individual languages correctly? Above all, generality is a highly valued property 

of scientific explanations, hypotheses, and theories, even though the 

most general statement sometimes fails to be the most accurate. Now if a certain 

principle explains, at least partially, certain phenomena in two different


domains of inquiry — e.g. visual perception and grammatical organization — 

then it should be more esteemed than a principle which applies only to one domain. 

With certain exceptions, the figure-ground principle appears to underlie 

many of the "hierarchies" which have been proposed to explain the nature 

of linguistic categories in grammar and discourse: e.g. Comrie's "animacy hierarchy," 

Givón's "topicality hierarchy," Hopper and Thompson's "transitivity 

hierarchy," Silverstein's "agency hierarchy," and Timberlake's "individuation 

hierarchy. " The ranking of human over nonhuman, count over mass, animate 

over inanimate, perfective over imperfective, and so on which these 

hierarchies include follows quite well from the criteria which perceptual psychologists 

have claimed to be important in separating visual figure from 

ground. The figure-ground distinction, then, appears to be a very broad sort 

of contrast which applies across traditionally separated areas of human cognition 

and human behavior. It would be foolish, however, to reduce all of linguistic 

structure to this contrast, just as it would be overly simplistic to reduce 

all of visual perception to it. The goal of this paper is therefore not to promote 

the figure-ground distinction as the principle of grammatical organization, but 

to call attention to it as a principle which may work alongside others (and 

which may conflict with others) in determining why human languages are as 

they are. The point is not to close doors, but to open doors in the continuing 

search to explain the nature of language. 

NOTES 

1 ) The present work is an abbreviated and revised version of a paper circulated to participants of 

the tense-aspect symposium in April, 1979.I am grateful to the following participants of the symposium 

for their incisive and perceptive comments: Lloyd Anderson, Wallace Chafe, Bernard Comrie, 

Talmy Givón, Dan Slobin, and Sandra Thompson. Other useful criticisms have come from Robert 

Longacre, Larry and Linda Jones, Charles Hockett, and Linda Waugh. Travel funds to allow 

me to attend the symposium were kindly arranged by William Baker (Vice-President for Academic 

Affairs) and Bob Perkins (Dean of the Graduate School) of the University of Texas at Arlington, 

where I was teaching when I wrote this article. 

2) I use "eventive modality" to refer to what is asserted as actually happening or having happened 

(positive, certain assertion of an actual event), "non-eventive modality" to refer to the opposite 

(negative, potential, possible, hypothetical, contrafactual, dubious action). This contrast 

seems to be equivalent to that of "realis" and "irrealis" which is common in the current literature. 

3) In a number of languages of eastern Europe and western Asia, there is a close formal similarity, 

if not sometimes identity, between perfect aspect and "inferential mode" (Comrie 1976:108-10; 

see Slobin (this volume) for an extended example from Turkish). The notion of "current relevance" 

inherent in the perfect aspect apparently can involve a great amount of subjective judgment on the 

part of the speaker, leading to its extension in a number of semantic directions (cf. Slobin, and Li


and Thompson, both in this volume). Many of these directions do indicate non-eventive modalities 

(e.g. inference), but the role of the perfect in verbal systems is so special and so complex that I will 

exclude it from systematic treatment here. 

4) The perfect and perfective at least share the semantic feature of completion, which appears to 

be most important here. 

5) In actual fact, Grimes's (51-70) use of the term "background" is more restricted than that of 

the other authors. For Grimes, "background" is only one sort of non-primary information in discourse, 

the others being "setting," "evaluations," and "collateral." I am here using the term "background" 

to subsume all of these four sorts. Longacre and Levinsohn, and Longacre (1979, MS), distinguish 

"backbone" (= my "foreground") from "backgound." 

6) The distinction between foreground and background is not necessarily binary. Some authors 

(e.g. Jones and Jones) find different levels of foreground and background. Cf. Diver's four degrees 

of "relevance" in discourse. Without denying the usefulness of such gradient categorization, I will 

for the sake of simplicity use only the basic two-way division. 

7) I include here primarily the use of linguistic categories in narrative discourse. For some indication 

of the complex intersection of linguistic categories and discourse genre, see Longacre (1979, 

MS). 

8) Bloomfield does not actually use the term "voice," but by using the terms "active" and "passive" 

strongly implies a voice-like contrast. 

9) For a convenient bibliography of psychological work on figure-ground perception, see Zusne 

(412-6). 

10) But note that other terminology for discussing certain features of linguistic structure stems 

from visual analogies: "point of view" (e.g. in a novel), "focus" (used in a number of different ways 

in linguistics), not to mention the term "aspect." Cf. also the term "viewpoint" in DeLancey (this 

volume). 

11) For other parallels between the figure-ground distinction and linguistic structure, see: Carroll, 

Hockett, MacWhinney. Correlations of figure-ground with markedness (differing from the 

view expressed in this paper, and perhaps deserving further exploration): Greenberg (60-1), 

Waugh (MS), van Schooneveld. 

12) "Cluster concept" in the philosophy of science: Achinstein (1-66), Suppe (73ff.). For a recent 

application to linguistics of the notion of "cluster concept," see Keenan (312). 

REFERENCES 

Achinstein, Peter. 1968. Concepts of science. A philosophical analysis. Baltimore: 

The Johns Hopkins Press. 

Babbitt, Frank Cole. 1902. A grammar of Attic and Ionic Greek. New York: 

American Book Company. 

Bennnett, Charles E. 1913. A Latin grammar. Revised edition. Boston: Allyn 

and Bacon.


Bloomfield, Leonard. 1917. Tagalog texts with grammatical analysis. University 

of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, vol. 3, nos. 2-4. 

Bull, William E. 1968. Time, tense, and the verb. A study of theoretical and 

applied linguistics, with particular attention to Spanish. University of California 

Publications in Linguistics 19. Berkeley: University of California 

Press. 

Carroll, John B. 1958. Process and content in psycholinguistics. Current 

trends in the description and analysis of behavior, ed. by Robert A. Patton, 

175-200. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 

Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect. An introduction to the study of verbal aspect 

and related problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

. MSa. Aspect and voice. Some reflections. Mimeo. University of Southern 

California. 

MSb. Agreement, animacy, and voice. Ditto. Unpublished paper given 

at LSA, December, 1978. University of Southern California. 

Diver, William. 1969. The system of relevance of the Homeric verb. Acta Linguistica 

Hafniensia 12.45-68. 

Forsyth, James. 1970. A grammar of aspect. Usage and meaning in the Russian 

verb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Friedrich, Paul. 1974. On aspect theory and Homeric aspect. International 

Journal of American Linguistics Memoir 28. Chicago : University of Chicago 

Press. 

Givón, Talmy. 1976. Topic, pronoun, and grammatical agreement. In Li 

(ed.) 1976,149-88. 

Gonda, J. 1949. Over Indonesische werkwoordsvormen. Bijdragen tot de 

Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 105.333-422. 

Goodwin, William W. 1955. A Greek grammar. New edition. London: Macmillan&Co. 

Ltd. 

Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. Language universals. The Hague: Mouton. 

Grimes, Joseph E. 1975. The thread of discourse. The Hague: Mouton. 

Hockett, Charles F. 1978. In search of Jove's brow. American Speech 53.243- 

313. 

Hopper, Paul J. 1979. Aspect and foregrounding in discourse. Discourse and 

syntax, ed. by Talmy Givón, 213-60. Syntax and Semantics 12. New York: 

Academic Press. 

, and Sandra A. Thompson. MS. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. 

Language 56:251-299. 

Jespersen, Otto. 1924. The philosophy of grammar. Norton Library edition,


1965. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 

Jones, Larry ., and Linda K. Jones. 1979. Multiple levels of information in 

discourse. Discourse studies in Meso-American languages, vol. 1 (Discussion), 

ed. by Linda K. Jones, 3-28. Dallas and Arlington: The Summer Institute 

of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington. 

Jones, Linda K. 1977. Theme in English expository discourse. Edward Sapir 

Monograph Series in Language, Culture, and Cognition 2. Lake Bluff, Illinois: 

Jupiter Press. 

Joos, Martin. 1964. The English verb. Form and meanings. Madison: The 

University of Wisconsin Press. 

Keenan, Edward L. 1976. Towards a universal definition of "subject." In Li 

(ed.) 1976, 303-34. 

Krech, David, Richard S. Crutchfield, and Norman Livson. 1974. Elements 

of psychology. Third edition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 

Kurylowicz, Jerzy. 1932. Les désinences moyennes de l'indo-européen et du 

hittite. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 33.1-4. 

. 1964. The inflectional categories of Indo-European. Heidelberg: Carl 

Winter Universitätsverlag. 

Langacker, Ronald W. 1978. The form and meaning of the English auxiliary. 

Language 54.853-82. 

Leech, Geoffrey N. 1971. Meaning and the English verb. London: Longman. 

Li, Charles N. (ed.) 1976. Subject and topic. New York: Academic Press. 

Longacre, Robert E. 1968. Discourse, paragraph, and sentence structure in 

selected Philippine languages. Vol. 1. Discourse and paragraph strucure. 

Santa Ana, California: The Summer Institute of Linguistics. 

. 1976. An anatomy of speech notions. Lisse: Peter de Ridder Press. 

. 1979. Texts and text linguistics. Text vs. sentence, Basic questions of text 

linguistics, First part, ed. by János S. Petöfi, 258-71. Papers in Text Linguistics 

20,1. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. 

. MS. The warp and woof of discourse. Prepublication mimeo. The University 

of Texas at Arlington. 

, and Stephen Levinsohn. 1978. Field analysis of discourse. Current 

trends in textlinguistics, ed. by Wolfgang U. Dressier, 103-22. Berlin: Walter 

de Gruyter. 

Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press. 

MacWhinney, Brian. 1977. Starting points. Language 53.152-68. 

Miller, George A., and Phillip N. Johnson-Laird. 1976. Language and per-


ception. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 

Moore, R.W. 1962. Comparative Greek and Latin syntax. London: G. Bell 

and Sons, Ltd. 

Palmer, F.R. 1974. The English verb. London: Longman. 

Palmer, L.R. 1966. The Latin language. London: Faber and Faber Limited. 

Reid, Wallis. 1977. The quantitative validation of a grammatical hypothesis. 

The passé simple and the imparfait. Proceedings of the Seventh Annual 

Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 

ed. by Judy Anne Kegl et al., 315-33. Cambridge: North East Linguistic 

Society. 

Rock, Irvin. 1975. An introduction to perception. New York: Macmillan 

Publishing Co., Inc. 

Schachter, Paul, and Fe Otanes. 1972. A Tagalog reference grammar. Berkeley: 

University of California Press. 

Schwyzer, Eduard. 1950. Griechische Grammatik. Auf der Grundlage von 

Karl Brugmanns Griechischer Grammatik. Zweiter Band. Syntax und Stylistik. 

Vervollständigt und herausgegeben von Albert Debrunner. München: 

C.H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. 

Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Hierarchy of features and ergativity. Grammatical 

categories in Australian languages, ed. by R.M.W. Dixon, 112-71. Canberra: 

Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. 

Solley, Charles M., and Gardner Murphy. 1960. Development of the perceptual 

world. New York: Basic Books. 

Stang, Chr. S. 1932. Perfektum und Medium. Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap 

6.29-39. 

Suppe, Frederick. 1974. The search for philosophic understanding of scientific 

theories. The structure of scientific theories, ed. by Frederick Suppe, 3- 

241. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 

Svartvik, Jan. 1966. On voice in the English verb. The Hague: Mouton. 

Talmy, Leonard. 1978. Figure and ground in complex sentences. Universals 

of human language, ed. by Joseph H. Greenberg, vol. 4,625-49. Stanford: 

Stanford University Press. 

Timberlake, Alan. 1977. Reanalysis and actualization in syntactic change. 

Mechanisms of syntactic change, ed. by Charles N. Li, 142-77. Austin: 

University of Texas Press. 

Townsend, David J., and Thompas G. Bever. 1977. Main and subordinate 

clauses. A study in figure and ground. Mimeo. Bloomington: Indiana University 

Linguistics Club.


van Schooneveld, C.H. 1978. Semantic transmutations. Bloomington: Physsardt 

Publications. 

Wallace, Stephen. 1979. Voice, mode, or aspect? The semantics of verbal prefixes 

in Jakarta Malay. In Waugh and van Coetsem (eds.) 1979,151-78. 

Watkins, Calvert. 1969. Geschichte der indogermanischen Verbalflexion. Indogermanische 

Grammatik, herausgegeben von Jerzy Kury lowicz, Band 

III (Formenlehre), 1. Teil. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag. 

Waugh, Linda R. 1975. A semantic analysis of the French tense system. Orbis 

24.436-85. 

. 1979. The context-sensitive meaning of the French subjunctive. In 

Waugh and van Coetsem (eds.) 1979,179-238. 

. MS. Marked and unmarked. A choice between unequals in semiotic 

structure. Prepublication typescript. Cornell University. 

, and Frans van Coetsem (eds.) 1979. Contributions to grammatical studies. 

Semantics and syntax. Leiden: E.J. Brill. 

Wolfson, Nessa. 1979. The conversational historical present alternation. Language 

55.168-82. 

Zusne, Leonard. 1970. Visual perception of form. New York: Academic 

Press.

IV. TENSE AND ASPECT AS 

SEMANTIC AND GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES

THE "PERFECT" AS A UNIVERSAL 

AND AS A LANGUAGE-SPECIFIC CATEGORY* 


Introduction. A grammatical category, such as the "Perfect", will not 

have exactly the same range of uses in one language as it does in another. Given 

that this is true, why are linguists willing to use the same name for the category 

in two different languages? How can we sensibly compare languages? 

Comparison is fairly straightforward when we have an external criterion 

of meaning similarity. The dimensions of color space can be defined in advance 

in terms such as wavelength/hue and brightness. So Berlin and Kay 

(1969) could use a fixed "map" of color space as a standard, locating on it the 

color terms of each language and establishing their limits of use. Similarly, 

Labov (1973) could objectively define height and width and then "map" the 

ranges of use of terms like 'cup', 'bowl', 'mug' (other factors were also involved). 

For more abstract vocabulary, and especially for grammatical categories, 

this approach is not possible. Linguists disagree among themselves on what 

the meanings really are, so we do not know the dimensions of our space in advance. 

But there is another method. We can develop grammar/meaning spaces 

inductively, finding a "map" which works consistently for many languages, 

as follows: 

1. We can determine "similarity" of meaning typologically. If two particular 

meanings are often expressed by the same surface form (across a random 

sample of languages), then we can assume that the two meanings are 

"similar" to the human mind. This is a heuristic. For example, a person receiving 

a gift and a person psychologically affected are often marked in the same 

ways. English uses the verb give in both 'give him a book' and 'give him a 

thrill'. Some languages use one Dative case-form for both these 'receiver-dative' 

and 'affective-dative' meanings. Rather than assuming these are accidental 

homonyms, we will assume that the two meanings are "similar": the com-


mon surface forms are the consequence of this similarity. 

2. From "similarities" it is a short step to maps of grammar/meaning 

space. We arrange different meanings on a map so that "similar" meanings are 

close together, non-similar meanings farther apart. It is of course an empirical 

question whether a single such map can work consistently for all languages. I 

believe that it can, 1 based on my own attempts, and on successes of the traditional 

typology of grammatical categories in discovering universals. The advantage 

of a map is that it integrates large amounts of knowledge in a form we 

can use as a standard reference. Once we have internalized its parts, it will 

quickly remind us of relevant meaning relationships. Whatever our own focus 

of interest, we can see neighboring areas. 

If we have successfully constructed such a universal map, most grammatical 

categories or words will have a single range of uses (that is, they are not ambiguous). 

That range will be a compact contiguous area on the map. We can 

see how this works by starting simply, putting only two languages on a map together. 

In practice, several languages are used as sources of data before drawing 

a map. 

Part 1. Comparing English, Turkish, and Mandarin Chinese 

The English Perfect has a range of uses, as has long been recognized (see 

extensive bibliography in McCoard 1978). Major ones are in (1). 

(1) (a) "experiential": Have you (ever) been to Japan? 

(b) "current relevance 

of anterior" : He has studied the whole book. (so he can help) 

(c) "new situation": Io has just erupted! (discovery of volcanos on 

("hot news") 

one of Jupiter's moons) 

(d) "result-state": He has gone. (or) He is gone. (is not here) 

(e) "continuous" : I have been standing here for three hours. (still 

here) 

(in the analysis here called 'anterior continuing') 

(f) "anterior" : John thought Mary had left./Mary will have left 

by then. 

Since these messages are expressed using the same surface form, we will assume 

that the meanings are in some way "similar" to each other. This is simply 

the heuristic explained in the Introduction. Thus, on a "map" of grammarspace 

these meanings should be placed close together. Two different arrangements 

are in Figures 1A. and 1B.. There the solid-lined oval represents the 

English category boundary, enclosing the uses of (1). (In reality the boundary 

is fuzzy.)

Figure 1A. A correct alignment of English and Mandarin Perfects 

Figure IB. An incorrect alignment of English and Mandarin Perfects 

The English Perfect is enclosed in a solid-line oval, 

Mandarin categories are enclosed in dashed-line ovals 

C-R = 'current relevance'; ANT. = 'anterior' 

Copyright © 1980 Lloyd B. Anderson


For a single language there are many ways to arrange meanings consistent 

with convex oval category boundaries. But when we try to satisfy such requirements 

for another language at the same time, the possible solutions 

quickly become limited. Three Mandarin categories overlap the English Perfect, 

and they are enclosed by dashed-line ovals in Figure 1.. The arrangement 

of meanings 1A. yields compact category ranges for Mandarin (convex ovals). 

But the arrangement of Figure 1B. does not comfortably accomodate 

Mandarin. One category is grossly deformed (non-convex). Another, including 

'anterior perfective' and 'past perfective', would be equally deformed or 

even discontinuous, and is not outlined. Still following our heuristic, we argue 

that Figure 1A. is a better candidate for a "universal grammar-space" in the 

area of the Perfect. In fact it was developed using several languages, and is 

part of a larger map which we will be using throughout this paper. 

In our typological comparisons we focus on category USES (as Ferguson 

1970, de Groot 1956). In one traditional theory, uses are partly independent, 

yet the cateory holds together because they are similar in meaning. In another 

theory, a category only has one GENERAL MEANING. USES are what 

speakers intend and hearers infer in particular contexts. Both theories can be 

partly correct. The English Perfect has a GENERAL MEANING 'current 

relevance of an anterior (earlier) event' with main-clause verbs 2 (but merely 

'anterior' in certain subordinate contexts). 

I will now consider three English categories which are neighbors of the 

Perfect. One neighbor is the Preterite (-ed), placed at the bottom right in Figure 

2.. (The placement is justified by meaning similarity and by data of other 

languages.) We use the Preterite to describe a specific past event for its own 

sake (the essence of true narrative 3 ). We use the Perfect to convey current 

relevance, but with the Perfect we normally are not focusing on a specific 4 

event in the past. 

(2) Preterite: I went to Japan in 1963.(while there I did X,Y,Z) 

Perfect: I have been to Japan. (so I am familiar with it) 

odd 

X I have been to Japan in 1963. 

OK I have been to Japan, (it was) in 1963. 

(OK as afterthought) 

A second neighbor of the Perfect is the "dative-subject" construction, 

meanings expressed in English with have or an affective-dative or ethical-dative 

pronoun. (Masica 1976 map 6 surveys such forms typologically across Eurasia.) 

Here events are 'relevant to' or 'affect' what is semantically some kind 

of dative object of the main verb, and in English we do not use the Perfect.' 5

A semantic space for grammatical categories of 'current relevance' (C-R) and 'anterior' (ANT.) 

Copyright © 1980 Lloyd B. Anderson 

Figure 2. The English Perfect: 'current relevance of anterior' 

THE "PERFECT" 231


(3) (a) I had something wonderful happen tome today, "ethical-dative" 

Something wonderful happened to me today. 

(b) I had the guests come early on me. 

The guests came early on me. 

(c) I had/got a real surprise. (I have/got a headache.) "dative-subject" 

That gave me a real surprise. (It gave me a headache.) 

(d) I got stopped and searched by the police. "affective passive" 

(e) I had my pockets gone through by the police. 

The police went through my pockets (on me). 

Temporary possession (T have a Norfolk Pine.') also has surface Dative form 

in many languages. This area borders on the Perfect in the lower left part of 

Figure 2.. For an adequate treatment it needs to be expanded into a full map 

in its own right. 

The third borderline shows an overlap of the 'current relevance' Perfect 

with the active (intransitive) 6 use of the 'result-state' Perfect. This is at the top 

of Figure 2.. At one time English had a contrast between 'Arthur has departed' 

and 'Arthur is departed', but in modern English this is almost dead. 

Only a few relics preserve it optionally (4ab) : 

(4) (a) The sun is set. (or: has set) 

(b) He is gone to market (and is there now). 

(or: has gone) 

(c) He has gone to market (and come back already). (BAD: x is gone) 

In Figure 2. we show the relic forms (is Verb-en) using a dashed outline, and 

the category whose use has extended over that area (has Verb-en) by solid 

lines. 

It is important to note that the English Perfect does not directly signal a 

result-state in 'He has left', since we can say 'He has left three times already — 

why is he still here?' with no contradiction. But the Perfect can be USED to 

convey the MESSAGE that he is not here, since 'He has left' will normally 

have that interpretation unless there are conflicting cues. 

Category boundaries in maps like Figure 2. are drawn so as to include all 

the normal USES of each category. It is a separate task to specify the COM 

MON MEANING valid for all uses of a category (Gesamtbedeutung). It is also 

an empirical question whether each category has such a single meaning. 

Hankamer (1977, esp. pp.604-5) suggests it will not always. Though most uses 

of the English Perfect fit the meaning 'current relevance of anterior event/situation', 

a few do not and no better common meaning has been suggested. 7

THE "PERFECT' 233 

A corresponding map for Turkish (Figure 3.) is based on the discussion 

by Slobin and Aksu (this volume). It is reasonably clear that the form -misrepresents 

at least two distinct categories with uses 'anterior' and 'hearsay'. 

For the two combine in that order in Kemalgel-mis-mis '(It is said that) Kemal 

had come', contrasting with Kemal gel-mis-ti (-ti



process of 

'becoming' 

event inchoative, 

ingressive 

state 

change 

passive 


affective 

passive 

middle 

voice 

affective 

dative 

ethical 

dative 

dativesubject 

construction 

temporary 

possession 

[have] 

Figure 3. The Turkish Perfect, a result of category splits

THE "PERFECT" 235 

Comparing the English and Turkish maps (Figures 2. and 3.), we see that 

the Turkish has developed its Perfect with more emphasis on present states 

and the present generally. This is also true of Mandarin (Figure 4.). 

Mandarin has a clause-final particle le with a GENERAL MEANING 

(Gesamtbedeutung) 'current relevance' or 'CR of new situation'. This has 

been established by Li et al (this volume). 10 We will consider the range of 

USES of this le. Many of them are already familiar from the discussions of 

English and Turkish; we will give examples for others, and again a map for 

comparison (Figure 4.). 

An index (5) gives example numbers from Li et al. This sub-classification 

of USES is an aid to typological comparison. It does not necessarily imply that 

Mandarin le is a multiply ambiguous morpheme. For details see their article. 

(5) (a) CR-change i) ethical-dative ##39B,40B,59B1,59B2 

(see (9) here) 

(middle voice) ii) separative ##59B3,24,25,65B 

(see (10) here) 

(b) CR-attained-state i) result-state ##61B,41B,46,47,48,49,52,54 

('now') 

ii) present immanence or plan (of future action) 

##42,53,75B,26 ('about to', 'going to') 

iii) (negative context) # #43B ,44B ,45B ,50 

('not anymore') 

(c) CR-unprepared-mind ##55,56,57,58 (#28B in 'discovery' sense) 

(d) CR-emphatic i) correcting a wrong assumption ##27,62B,63,64, 

65,66,67 

(other simple affirmation, ##28B,71) ('indeed') 

ii) closing a statement ##77,78B,79A,80 

(e) CR-anterior(-perfective) ##68,69,70,73,74 (##71,72 not marked 

perfective) 

(f) CR-anterior-continuing ##38 etc. (see (8) here) 

In comparison with English or even with Turkish, the Mandarin Perfect 

le does not emphasize anteriority of the event, but only current relevance (CR 

of a new situation). By Gricean principles of conversation, this may involve 

contrast between the up-to-now and the from-now-on, so le can be USED to 

convey relative anterior, but also relative future as in #44B 'I'm not going to 

eat anymore' (either I've had enough food or I've changed my mind, in either 

case a new situation); or #43B 'We've run out' - 'We don't have any more'.

hearsay 

liao 

'finish' 

action 

(perfective) 

process of 

'becoming' 

event inchoative, 

ingressive 

state lai 

'come' 

change 

passive 


affective 

passive 

middle 

voice 

affective 

dative 

ethical 

dative 

dative 

subject 

construction 

temporary 

possession 

[have] 

guo 

'pass by' 

past 



Figure 4. The Mandarin Perfect: 'current relevance (of new situation)'


The pivotal status of English anymore between past and future is explored in 

Labov (1972), Hindle and Sag (1975). 

The English 'experiential perfect' meanings (la) are not expressed in 

Mandarin using le. There is instead an 'experiential' form Verb-guo. 

Mandarin distinguishes 'experiential' from 'currently relevant experiential', 

the latter expressed by the combination of Verb-guo with le. Here English 

translations use already for le. (Examples marked #* were in the pre-publication 

version of Li et al. ) 

(6) (a) Pure 'experiential' ~guo: 

#* T have been to China' 

#* 'I've eaten papaya' (had the experience) 

#* 'We've been to Disneyland' (had the experience) 

(b) -guo plus 'current relevance' le: 

#* I've had (my) papaya' (so please don't keep asking me to 

have more food now) 

#* 'We've been to Disneyland' (and that's why we don't want to 

go there with you this afternoon) 

Mandarin le is translated by English already also in some other contexts: with 

certain perfectives marked by Verb-le (not related to Perfect le) (7a); and by 

Yiddish-English already in emphasis or irritation (7b): 

(7) (a) # * 'I've already eaten a youtiaou this morning' (please don't keep 

asking me to have anything more now) 

(b) #64 'I'm bringing it already' 

Perhaps we can explain why Mandarin le is not used for the pure experiential 

of (6a). The English Perfect includes a reference to an unspecified anterior 

time which may be long ago, thus 'Have you (ever, even once) been to 

China?' is possible. The Mandarin le is much more closely tied to the present. 

It has emphatic uses (5cd) and uses translated by 'now' and the future (5b). 

Thus it would not be appropriately used of the mere existence of an experience 

far in the past. 

Mandarin le can be used with 'CR-anterior-continuing' messages (5f, 

8a). These contrast with 'CR-anterior-perfective' messages (5e, 8b): 

(8) (a) Verbs not marked perfectively Verb-le (unmarked, or marked duratively) 

#* T haven't seen a movie for a month' 

#* 'I'd been watching this guy for a long time'


#38 'At that time, I was already 8 months pregnant with my second 

child' 

(verb marked duratively: huái-zhe 'bear'-DUR) 

(b) Verbs marked perfectively with Verb-le? 

#73 'I've finished washing the clothes' 

#68 'I have memorized half of the Three Hundred Tang Poems so 

far' 

(c) Verbs marked perfectively (Verb-le) for completion of a definite 

time span 

#* T have taught for 30 years' 

#69 T have lived there for two months now' 

#70 'that woman is eight months pregnant' (huái-le 'bear'-PFV) 

Because continuous activity over a bounded time span can easily be viewed 

either imperfectively or perfectively, we get a contrast between (8a) and (8c). 

For (8c) we may suggest translations like T have now completed 30 years at 

teaching'. Languages differ here in surface forms. Russian can treat even an 

indefinite time span as perfective: po-chitaf 'read for a while'. In English the 

'anterior continuing' T have been living here for two months' contrasts with 

#69 in (8c). German would not use the Perfect at all, but say T live here since 

two months'. 

Some changes yield a highly 'relevant' new situation or result-state, as 

#61B 'the soup is now hot', and typically have le in Mandarin (5b). Other 

changes do not yield a result-state, but are highly 'relevant' to the person in 

whom the change occurs. These are traditionally called 'middle voice' (5a). 

Although Mandarin le does not directly signal middle voice, its meaning includes 

two components (newness and relevance) which are close to two components 

of middle voice (change and ethical-dative). So le can be USED to 

convey some of the same MESSAGES as a grammatical category whose core 

meaning is closer to middle voice. 

(9) (a) without le: #39A 'She knows about that piece of news' 

#40A 'I know' 

(b) with le: #39B 'She knows about that piece of news now' 

#40B 'Now I know' ('I have learned', a change) 

#59B1 'She's gotten married' 

#59B2 'She's been expelled (from school)' 

#* 'She's gotten pregnant' 

#* 'How old are you?' 

#* 'It's your turn'


Many of the examples in (9) would require ethical-dative or so-called "reflexive" 

pronouns in languages like French or Russian, or a dative-subject construction 

such as 'How many years do you have?' or 'How many to-you years?' 

(Cohen 1955:245-7). 

Another typologically common use of middle-voice forms is for "separative" 

motion. Here also there are numerous examples with Mandarin le, compare 

(l0abc): 

(10) (a) Mandarin le: #59B3 'She's gone back to her country' 

#24 'He's gone shopping' 

#65B 'But aren't you going back to Japan right 

away?' 

#* 'You can go to bed' (if you want) 

#* 'Yesterday I went to the beach with a classmate 

to play volleyball' 

(b) French "reflexive" pronouns: aller 'to go' 

s'en aller 'to leave' (self from-there 

go) 

(c) Akkadian -t-infix (ethical-dative alak-um 'to go' 

and Perfect, see Part 2.) 

atluk-um 'to go away' 

On the basis of such data, and because the meaning-components we analyze 

for le are close to those of middle voice, it is reasonable to say that one of the 

USES of Mandarin le is to convey middle-voice MESSAGES. That is to say, it 

is no accident that several examples chosen by Li et al to illustrate 'current 

relevance' are in just these semantic ranges (9,10a). It is to be expected. 

Some historical notes are again of interest. Experiential -guo is from a 

verb 'to pass by' which is still used separately. Perfective Verb-le comes from a 

verb, present-day liao 'finish'. (On uses of Perfective Verb-le see Comrie 

1976:81-2, and Li et al in this volume, note 6.) Perfect le, our topic here, is apparently 

from a verb, present-day lai 'come', though this is not universally 

agreed-upon. These historical shifts are marked with arrows in Figure 4.. A 

shift from a meaning 'come' to a function marking current relevance would 

not be unique to Chinese. In some languages, verbs obligatorily contain a 

morpheme 'toward' vs. 'away' from older 'come' vs. 'go'. The 'toward' form is 

sometimes used to mark effect on a participant, like the 'current relevance' 

and ethical dative uses of the map (examples fairly close to these usages are in 

the paper by DeLancey, this volume).


unexpected 

affective 

dative 

antenor 

perfective 

perfective 

past 

Figure 5A. A summary view of the meaning space of the Perfect and 

its neighbors ('C-R' = 'current relevance') 

This figure is to be viewed in three dimensions: 

C-R result and C-R anterior are closer to he viewer, 

near an area of meaning space relating to aspect and tense; 

C-R experience and C-R new situation are farther from the viewer, 

near an area of meaning space relating to voice and mood; 

the whole forms a tetrahedron or pyramid.




Figure 5B. A hypothetical universal space, with some common historical category shifts


To summarize: We have compared the semantic area of the "Perfect" in 

three unrelated languages, with implicit reference to others. There seem to be 

at least four identifiable kinds of 'current relevance' involved. These are close 

in semantic space, and overlap considerably in their range of uses (Figure 

5A.). Uses of the English Perfect center around CR-anterior and CR-experience. 

The Turkish Perfect is now split into two or three categories, one is 

moving off to the right of the map, the other(s) express CR-result and CR-anterior. 

The Mandarin Perfect centers around CR-new-situation. In Part 2. we 

will examine Semitic Perfects which center around CR-result/anterior and 

around CR-experience/anterior. 

We cannot yet frame a universal definition of "Perfect", except arbitrarily. 

Berlin and Kay (1969) found that focal (ideal) colors were universal, not 

culturally varying but fixed. Perhaps the cause is physiological/neurological, 

depending on the cones in the retina of the eye. But we are not yet able to say 

that the four varieties of CR in Figure 5A. are universal foci, nor that there is a 

single focus, "pure CR". Perhaps the human experience does provide such 

universal foci for grammar, and more careful use of data and maps can reveal 

them. 

However, we can say that maps of semantic space, which typologists use 

implicitly throughout grammar, and which we have made explicit in one area, 

seem to have much universal validity. The relationships of meanings to each 

other, represented by the space itself, are at least to a great degree independent 

of the formal categories in particular languages. A grammatical category 

may sometimes have sufficient gravitational strength to distort the space near 

it. But this remains only a metaphor like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis until we 

can quantify distances in our space. 

Figure 5A. is intended to show a spherical region in a space of many dimensions, 

with a web of interconnections to neighboring regions in many directions. 

In different parts of meaning space, the dimensions themselves will 

change, the axes will have different names. When we choose to focus on a different 

part of the space, we will be looking from a different angle. We can also 

magnify part of the space, considering more detailed gradients of intermediate 

meanings. 11 

If we are to use our map as a "universal" standard of reference, summarizing 

our knowledge from many languages, then we should include historical 

changes on the base map. This appears as Figure 5B., incorporating results 

from Part 2..


Part 2. Dynamic shifts of category boundaries: the Semitic language family 

In the Semitic languages the Perfect has played an important role. East 

Semitic (Akkadian) and West Semitic (the other languages) each created a 

new Perfect, but they did it in different ways. These were linked in interactions 

with other parts of the verb system, and we can see category splits and 

chain shifts. Within the area of the Perfect we also discover some deep asymmetries 

of meaning. These forces prevent full unity of the range of Perfect 

uses and constantly threaten to tear such a category apart. 12 

The historical developments can be seen step by step in maps. In Proto- 

Semitic there were two categories which were poised to shift towards Perfect 

uses (Figure 6A.). One was a result-stative somewhat like the archaic English 

uses of examples (4) above. The other carried the meaning 'relevance of experience'. 

It was an ethical-dative form with infixed -t-. In Akkadian it was this 

last which actually did shift (Figure 6B. ). 13 

As the uses of -t- spread, the category became large and split into parts 

(Figure 6C). The Perfect -t- could combine with the ethical-dative and passive 

uses of -t- to yield -ta-t(a)-, just as in Turkish we had a split and recombination 

{-mis-mis). The new Perfect shifted more and more towards a past perfective, 

then simply affirmative past (Figure 6D.). The older Semitic Preterite 

(type of Akkadian i-prus) was fully alive in Old Akkadian, but later was more 

and more limited to special uses as negative past and optative ("PRECA- 

TIVE"). 14 

This retreat of the Preterite and advance of the Perfect is observed quite 

commonly. Modern French has lost its Preterite completely. German has 

gone far in that direction, so that Ich habe geschrieben translates not only T 

have written' but also many uses of T wrote'. English has not gone so far. But 

where modern English requires the "continuous Perfect" (le), Chaucer used 

the Perfect for positive senses, the Preterite for negative senses. 15 This asymmetry 

may be the same one we have seen for Semitic, and links current relevance 

with the emphatic assertion of positive Perfects. Such typological parallels 

should be catalogued in detail. (Compare Mandarin and Turkish emphatic 

uses?)




Figure 6A. Two potential origins of new Perfects in Proto-Semitic

A semantic space for grammatical categories of 'current relevance' (C-R) and' 'anterior' (ANT.) 

Copyright © 1980 Lloyd . An 


Figure 6B. Proto-Akkadian: the expansion of the infixed -t- forms




Figure 6c. Old Akkadian: Category split and the origin of the -t-Perfect


Copyright © 1980 Lloyd B. Anderson' 

Figure 6D. Later Akkadian, Babylonian, etc. : the restriction of the old Preterite 

THE "PERFECT" 247


In West Semitic the other competitor won out. The old result-state form 

shifted to a range of anterior (perfective) meanings (Figure 7A.). When we 

see it, it has already limited the ancient Preterite just as in later Akkadian 

(Figure 7B.). (Uses of the Arabic PERFECT are illustrated in Comrie 

1976:78-81; Hebrew preserves result-state senses more than Arabic, Kurylowicz 

1973:86; Arabic uses qad + PERFECT to convey a sense 'already' and in 

the Past Perfect). 

In the West Semitic (Arabic) system, the primary division is between 

change-of-state verbs (11abc) and action verbs (11def). 

(11) Arabic PERFECT Akkadian STATIVE 

(anterior perfective) (result-state) 

change- a) middle volun- HI labisa 'got dressed' /i/ labis 'is 

of- tary dressed' 

state b)middle involun- /i/ bahija 'rejoiced' 

or 

tary 

change c) objective HI balita 'was cut off' /i/ paris 'is decided' 

action d)passive /u-i/ kutiba 'was written' /u/ sa-prus (derived 

stems, Assyrian) 

e)active transitive/a/ kataba 'wrote' 

f) active intransi- /a/ haraba 'fled' /i/ tebi 'is standtive 

ing' (has stood up) 

alik 'knows the 

way' (has gone the way) 

The old Semitic result-state form used primarily the vowel /i/ between second 

and third consonants of the root, and with most transitive verbs the sense was 

passive. In West Semitic there is a new form with /a/voweling to convey the active 

PERFECT of action verbs, not only transitives but also intransitives 

which were not change-of-state and thus had no generally-used result-stative. 

A stative like alik 'knows the way' from 'to go, come' was exceptional in Akkadian 

(von Soden 1952 section 77f). (See footnote 8.) 

In Arabic, the passive PERFECT /u-i/ is a productive inflectional category 

of transitive verbs, while the objective-change-of-state in /i/ was limited to 

vocabulary in a fixed range of meanings close to what is called 'middle' voice.

THE "PERFECT 249 

There were certain verbs whose meaning content allowed them to be 

used either way, focusing on the change-of-state of the object or on the action 

of the agent. These were borderline in the new system and therefore had two 

different patterns. Lists of such verbs are in Aro (1964:65-6) and Kurylowicz 

(1973:68). 

(12) PERFECT IMPERFECT PERF IMPERF 

Lexical action-sense dakasa ya-dkus-u -a- -upattern 

'to heap up' 

(11c) change-of-state sense dakisa ya-dkas-u -i- -a- 

'to be heaped up' 

Inflectional action-sense kataba ya-ktub-u -a- -upattern 

'to write' 

(11e,11d) passive sense kutiba yu-ktab-u -u-i- -u-a- 

'to be written' 

The division between change-of-state and action verbs is not a division 

between intransitive and transitive, as seen in (12). The same division can be 

found in French and German where the Perfect is formed by combining the 

past participle with an auxiliary, either 'be' or 'have'. The auxiliary is 'to be' 

for state-passives and some intransitives, especially change-of-state/location. 

Corresponding to the earlier Arabic examples 'he rejoiced' and 'he got 

dressed' are French forms il s'est réjoui and il s'est habillé, which form their 

Perfects using est 'is'. Cohen (1955:245-7) had noted the parallel of French 

"reflexive" verbs with Semitic "deponent" verbs, lexical middle-voice. Other 

types of verbs, transitives and most intransitives which are not change-ofstate, 

use the auxiliary 'to have': il a parlé 'he spoke'. 

In English, where the Perfect has not replaced the Preterite, the have- 

Perfect has moved in the opposite direction, eliminating the be-Perfect. We 

might conclude that a single category of Perfect cannot include all three kinds 

at the same time (C-R, change-of-state-of-subject, and perfective anterior), 

but it can link any two of these. At least that is a hypothesis for the future to 

test. The distinction between 'be' and 'have' Perfects can be relatively stable. 

So these may really be two categories not one. Even the combination of 

change-of-state with perfective anterior may be impossible to fully unify in a 

single category of Perfect (compare the Turkish of Figure 3. ).


Copyright © 1980 Lloyd B. Anderson . 


Figure 7A. Pre-Arabic: Origin of an active Perfect distinct from change-of-state Perfect



Figure 7B. Arabic after restriction of the old Preterite by the PERFECT and the IMPERFECT 

THE "PERFECT" 251


A counterargument is that the difference is fossilized and on the surface 

only, that it is controlled by particular verbs not by the meanings expressed by 

those verbs. But the meaning distinctions at the borderline (between dakisa 

and dakasa in (12)) match with the difference between the vocabulary of 

(11abc) and (11ef) in general. So most verbs have a single form only, fossilized 

because their only or by far most common meaning uses are of that kind. 

Modern German shows a rather similar kind of distinction at the borderline, 

but among a different group of verbs, those of motion: Er hat geklettert 'He 

has climbed' contrasts with Er ist auf den Baum geklettert 'He is climbed into 

the tree'. The first is action with 'have', the second is a temporary change-oflocation 

with 'be'. Older French also allowed this distinction. 16 

Instead of a map, we can use a scaling method to identify the core area of 

the change-of-state Perfects while comparing languages (13): 

(13) Akkadian Arabic French German 

PRES/PRET PF/IMPF 

most intransitive actions i/i a/u 'have' 'have' 

most intransitive motions i/i a/u 'have' 'have' 

change-of-position i/i a/u 'be' 'be' 

change-of-state objective i/i i/a 'be' 'be'(passive) 

change middle i/i(a) i/a 'be'(reflex.) 'have'(reflex.) 

punctuals active intransitive i/i a/i 'have' 'have' 

punctuals active transitive i/i(a/i) a/i 'have' 'have' 

transitive non-punctuals a/u a/u 'have' 'have' 

The Arabic, French, and German Perfects reflect much the same deep asymmetry 

of meanings. To the question "one category or two?" we can answer 

"96%/50%/35% unified", for categories do merge and split historically, there 

are intermediates. 

The active Perfect type kataba (11ef) has been a puzzle to Semiticists. It is 

a suffix-conjugation form like the Akkadian STATIVE, but the vowel /a/ is 

not normal in the STATIVE. The /a/ is found in many Akkadian PRESENTS, 

but this PRESENT is a prefix-conjugation form derived from an original intensive-iterative-durative 

with doubled middle consonant: type i-parras. A 

solution emerges from a full reconstruction of Semitic vowel patterns in verbs. 17 

The vowels between the second and third root consonant have primarily aspectual 

meanings (14):


(14) /i/ perfective inherently punctual, some change-of-state (Akkadian 

wider use as some middles, & intransitive 

actions) 

/a/ unmarked but also action or change viewed as a whole, 

unspecified in aspect 

a) anterior PERFECT active of Arabic (distanced 

view) 

b) middle-passive (i-sterns in many languages) 

c) iterative-duratives (and new PRESENT of Akkadian) 

/u/ imperfective a) non-punctual accomplishments 

b) iteratives (esp. Akkadian) 

c) duratives and states (esp. Arabic; new IMPER 

FECT) 

d) 'becoming' slowly by degrees; passives 

Detailed distributions for Akkadian and Arabic are in Figures 8. and 9.. Remember 

the Akkadian PRESENT and Arabic PERFECT are not directly related 

(their vowel is given first in (13) and in Figures 8.-9.). The Akkadian Preterite 

is related to the Arabic IMPERFECT (their vowel is second). The new 

IMPERFECT of Arabic used suffixal -, and Arabic shows more lexical uses 

of/u/as well. 

Earlier we established that change-of-state Perfects and action Perfects 

differed in the kinds of verb meanings for which they were appropriate (1lab 

vs. 11ef with French and German parallels). These different meanings also 

differ in their preferred aspects. Contrast the pseudo-English change-of-state 

'I am swum across the lake' (am now on the other side, single occasion, completed 

result) with the action Perfects T have swum across the lake' (may be 

several occasions) or T have been swimming in the lake' (anterior but not perfective) 

. The difference in vowels between the two PERFECT types of Arabic 

(/i/ vs. /a/) nicely matches what we found about aspectual uses from the other 

forms of both Arabic and Akkadian (14). An anterior Perfect views the event 

as a whole from a distance, so we might expect it to neutralize aspect (use /a/ 

according to (14)).


A space of verb aspects applied to voweling patterns of Semitic verbs 


Figure 8. Arabic vowelings in the order PERFECT/IMPERFECT


A space of verb aspects applied to voweling patterns of Semitic verbs 


Figure 9. Akkadian vowelings in the order PRESENT/PRETERITE/STATIVE 

Patterns marked [*...] are attested oldest forms later changed


It may also be that non-punctual transitive accomplishments are more 

often used imperfectively than are intransitive accomplishments. Perhaps the 

transitive ones involve more activities before the goal is accomplished. At 

least, that hypothesis is sugested by the use of/u/ in the Preterite transitive but 

HI in the intransitive in Akkadian (Arabic both /u/). These questions seem to 

be matters of degree, with borderline areas. It is at least clear that asymmetries 

of meaning can be important. 

We need to tie together some loose ends on the infixed -t- forms and the 

D-stems of Akkadian. The -t- forms have four uses which can all plausibly be 

seen as descendants from a original ethical-dative meaning (15): 

(15) -t- ethical dative (basic Gt-stems, lexical St-stems, rarely factitive 

Dt-stems) 

-t- Perfect 

(all stems) 

-t- passive (with factitive D-stems and causative S- 

stems) 

-t- habitual-iterative (distinguished from the original iterativedurative 

meaning of Proto-*D-stems, and 

with N-stems 18 ) 

The Perfect of all stems is identical with the Preterite of the corresponding 

ethical-dative -t-stem, 18 and the meaning 'relevance of experience' {-t-) plus 

'past' (the Preterite) yields a Perfect just as the English have (dative-subject) 

plus past participle did. So there is nothing more to say about this. Among passives, 

it is a typological universal that inanimate objects are more often fully 

changed, while human objects are merely affected. This asymmetry correlates 

with the Akkadian difference between TV-passives 19 of basic stems and -tpassives 

of causative stems, since causatives more often have a human object. 

There are languages where this human is treated as an indirect object in surface 

form: 'X made to to act'. There are also languages where definite human 

objects in general are marked as if indirect objects (Spanish a 'to' with human 

direct object). So the -¿-passive of causative stems can be seen relatively 

and statistically as an 'affective' passive, and thus would be related to the affective-dative 

and ethical-dative uses of the -t-. 

The original factitive-intensive-iterative D-stems with doubled middle 

consonant show interesting category splits, and further illustrate the difference 

between perfective /i/ and neutral /a/, as well as habitual uses of infixed -f-


(16) PRESENT PRETERITE 

D-stem →durative PRESENT of all stems (exc. Š-) i-parras 

→factitive D-stem (marked as S- with u-) u-parras u-parris 

→habitual-iterative (marked -t-: "Gtn") i-p-tana-rras i-p-ta-rras 

N-stem→habitual-iterative (marked-t-: "Ntn") ittana-pras itta-pras 

*inta- 

The forms with /a/ became the durative-PRESENT of most stems, a new inflectional 

form, contrasting with the /i/ of the factitive Preterite, just what we 

would expect from the aspectual differences. (The factitive D-stems were distinguished 

from the original form by an additional prefixed or infixed u-. 20 ) 

The habitual-iterative stems also show /a/ as we would expect since they 

are not perfective, not even in past time. These stems have previously been 

analyzed as containing -tan- because of their PRESENT forms, the /n/ assimilated 

to a following consonant otherwise. This is probably incorrect since it led 

von Soden to a contradiction with the data. 21 If instead we assume addition of 

-na- to form the PRESENT, we are left with -t- added to an original iterative 

stem or an N-stem. The role of the -t- now becomes clear: repeated actions 

(the D-stem) are attributed to a person as character-trait or habit (ethical-dative 

-t-). For the Nt-stem we can translate in the non-voluntary sense 'it happens 

(occasionally) to a person that' much as French il arrive que ... means it 

sometimes happens that... ' 22 

Both the -t-stems and the D-stems underwent a several-way split in pre- 

Akkadian. It is interesting that they preserved their independent uses instead 

of shifting as a unitary category. This seems to be a rather common event in 

historical change, and is one reason for the focus in this paper on USES of a 

category beyond any simple COMMON or GENERAL MEANING signaled 

by the category. Grammars of speakers may very well contain "redundant" 

rules linking each of the uses of a category individually to its surface form. We 

must strive always to understand both the unity and the splintered character of 

surface categories. (On typological comparison of category USES see Ferguson 

(1970) and de Groot (1956).) 

Conclusions. The methods illustrated in this paper should be applicable to 

most grammatical categories and ranges of vocabulary in natural languages. 

They are an extension to many dimensions of methods of implicational scaling 

used to discover gradient patterns in data. One of the limitations is of course 

arbitrary, that to two-dimensional paper. 

The maps offered here 23 specifically represent kinds of meanings in the


heads of language users. They do not represent classes of vocabulary items or 

real-world situations. This difference is clear for a verb such as 'fall', which 

can be used as a punctual ('fall off a ledge', the moment of losing one's balance) 

or as a durative ('while he was falling through the air the people 

screamed continuously') or as an accomplishment ('fell to the ground'). 24 

These uses are very different aspectually and would appear at different places 

on a map of aspects. They are unified by a single vocabulary item because they 

tend to co-occur in the real world, linked by something like 'not being in control 

of one's posture or position' or 'ceasing to have such control', and its results. 

I hope that these methods can encourage a more precise integration of 

our accumulated typological knowledge of languages. It would be nice to have 

a set of them for many areas, a handbook for linguists like the Handbook of 

Chemical and Physical Constants. Researchers wishing to use the maps presented 

here should request written permission from the author, which will normally 

be given. Blank base maps are available for those wishing to try them 

out on new languages. 

One area of application could be especially important. In second-language 

teaching, we can observe which USE of a new category is learned first, 

and how this generalizes to neighboring uses in the meaning/grammar space. 

Comparing learners we may discover that certain uses are better starting 

points, helping learners quickly to infer the general SIGNAL MEANING or 

to acquire the correct range of uses of the category. We may learn much about 

whether there are archetypal meanings universal to the human condition. 

NOTES 

*) I am grateful to the organizers of the symposium for their encouragement. Ideas expressed informally 

at that time have developed into the present paper. Discussions with Sandy Thompson 

have been very valuable in clarifying my ideas about Mandarin and in general. I am exceedingly 

grateful to Dee Holisky for helping me make clear and comprehensible the first part of this paper. I 

have benefited much from the work of J.R. Ross on "squishes" (1972,1974, and many others) and 

of Talmy Givón on typology, and from their personal encouragement. Gragg (1970) made clear to 

me the role of asymmetries of meaning in grammatical structures. Thanks to Ann Travis for stimulating 

my interest in asymmetries of meanings expressed in Arabic verb stems, and to McCawley 

(1971) for the English "Perfect". 

1) In this paper I will for the most part avoid all difficulties connected with representation of multi-dimensional 

space on two-dimensional paper. This is of course merely a practical, not a theoretical 

problem.


2) McCoard (1978) propounds another view. His book is very valuable and convincing on the 

point that particular USES of the Perfect communicate much that is inferred from context. Much 

less MEANING is inherent in the Perfect form itself. His collections of examples are structured to 

reveal many details of context which favor and disfavor the Perfect. This is good analysis of human 

psychology interacting with linguistic symbols. His survey of earlier work is extensive. But it appears 

to me that certain gaps in logic lead him to false conclusions. 

McCoard believes (p.73) that "the meaning of the perfect is to be defined solely in terms of temporal 

properties". Within that framework, he provides evidence on what the temporal properties 

could be. But he provides no sound argumentation that would exclude non-temporal properties. In 

fact he proposes them himself (see note 7. below on "psychological proximity"). 

There seems to be a logical leap, common among linguists, from a claim about methodology (a 

hypothesized meaning is hard to establish as true or false) to an empirical claim about the Perfect 

(the hypothesis is unacceptable). Thus McCoard states (personal communication) that if "the perfect 

cannot be 'boiled down' entirely within the set of basic temporal/aspectual signals ... then we 

begin to tread upon very uncertain ground, analytically....". He rejects an "abstract" meaning of 

'current relevance' as too vague (p. 145), "vacuous" (p.65 fn.l quote from Bazell). This I find odd, 

because a major point of his book is that the GENERAL MEANING of the Perfect is less specific 

than each of its USES. On the other hand, he tends to equate 'current relevance' (CR) with a particular 

one of its concrete uses, 'result-state' (p.211 fn.16; p.190). The best CR-theorists distinguish 

clearly between USES and MEANING (as does McCoard), and they attribute to the Perfect only 

abstract CR-MEANING as in 'I've knocked on the door' (so someone should be coming soon / but 

no one seems to be home). I do not find this "vacuous". See note 7.. 

I have found an emphasis on temporal and concrete meanings to be a trademark of logicians' analyses, 

of how people 'ought to' think rather than how people do think and use language. Our meanings 

are more subtle and complex than logic. 

3) Recent work by Sandra Thompson and Paul Hopper explores relations of aspects with narrative 

structure. 

4) Darden (1968:15) phrases this nicely: "in the simple past the action is localized at a past time, 

while in the perfect the action is treated as prior to but somehow relevant in the present... the reference 

to the time of the action is limited to one of priorness." McCoard (1968 esp. pp.96-110) argues 

that in some frameworks [before present] and [past] collapse unless we distinguish them by "definiteness". 

And he asserts that "definiteness" will not work because discussing a [prior] event requires 

that there have been a "definite" time. That is not the point. The speaker need not be thinking 

of any specific time, and the language can specify priorness without referring to particular times. 

(What is at stake here is really specificity rather than definiteness, as these terms are normally distinguished.) 

Again the logician, discussing what is true of the real world, seems to have eclipsed the 

psychologist, discussing what people think and mean and say. 

5) The 'current relevance' of the Perfect is normally to the subject of the sentence (1-abde) or to 

the speaker or listener (1-bc). CR and Dative-subject can combine as in 'I've had the guests come 

early before, but this is ridiculous.' or 'Nothing wonderful has ever happened to me' (examples 

courtesy of McCoard). 

6) On passive uses from transitive verbs, see the discussion of Semitic in Part 2., and the English 

state-passive type 'the house is all painted now'. 

7) Aside from mere 'anterior' uses (1-f), the "continuous" uses are perhaps non-anterior as suggested 

later in the discussion of Mandarin. Even the result-state uses may retain a separateness despite 

common surface form (see Part 2.). McCoard's suggestion (1978:123ff) 'prior event included


within extended present time span' sounds physical-temporal. But he is forced to redefine it (p. 137 

top) as the "attribution of psychological proximity". I find this virtually equivalent to the "attribution 

of current relevance". Both show connections to "here" and "now" rather that "there" and 

"then"; both are in their essence psychological not objective temporal-spatial relations. I believe 

McCoard was forced back to the CR reality which other careful investigators before him have 

found. That does not diminish the value of his book in other respects (see note 1.). It merely means 

he has in fact not produced a novel theory. 

8) There are special usages of similar vocabulary items in many languages. "Young Babylonian" 

lamd-ü 'know' is a STATIVE from a verb meaning 'learn', that is 'to have learned'. Sanskrit veda 

meant both T have seen' and 'I know', the result sense manifest also elsewhere in Indo-European. 

Old Babylonian (Mari) kasd-ü 'hold in the hand' is from 'to have grasped'. English I've got means T 

have' but derives from 'I have gotten'. Akkadian examples are from von Soden (1952 sections 

77def).See also(ll) alik.. 

9) The languages are Albanian, Kazakh, Altaj, and Kirgiz. The last three (Turkic) use a participle 

in -ip or -ip-tir, where -tir is possibly from a verb 'stand', thus a result-state Perfect originally. 

Haarmann lists many Turkic languages with only modal uses like 'hearsay' and 'uncertainty'. These 

are synchronically not typical Perfects, but are relevant in historical studies because they are often 

composed of parts like the result-state forms just mentioned. See also fn.11. 

10) Identifying this general meaning is an important achievement by Li et al. It will be very interesting 

to see if such a theoretical finding can have applications in second-language learning and 

teaching. The same remark applies to the work of Slobin and Aksu on Turkish. 

11) Such gradients should often appear in gradual historical change, dialect differences, implicational 

scales in typology, generalization of a category in child language and second-language learning. 

The English Perfect for example developed gradually by restructuring of [have the fish caught], 

apparently first with psychological verbs where the difference in meaning between result-state and 

prior event was slight: [have it understood] vs. [have understood it]. This arrow appears in Figure 

5B. (see Benveniste 1968, McCoard 1978:247 fn.l). Friedman (1976) discusses a gradient across dialects 

of the new Macedonian 'have'-Perfect, which developed first with transitives and animate 

subjects, later with intransitives, still later with inanimate subjects, and finally as the Perfect of auxiliary 

verbs as well. At the same time an older 'be'-Perfect retreated or became an 'inferential'. For 

this last feature it might be possible to find a similar gradient across Turkic languages (note 9.). See 

also Part 2. for Semitic. 

12) Later we will see examples where a category splits up, but individual USES survive and move 

off independently of each other (Semitic D-stems, -t-stems). 

13) Von Soden (1952 section 80a) is unsure that the various -¿-forms are all related. We will 

argue the affirmative later. His 1965 article suggests perhaps Sumerian influence on the development 

of the Akkadian -t-Perfect. This article and Maloney (1979) should be used to explore an alternative 

hypothesis, that the -t-Perfect originated not as an ethical dative but rather as an emphatic-event 

marker (original auxiliary verb?). Kurylowicz (1973:61) considers that for a single -t-form 

to have given rise both to Passive and to Perfect categories, "its original value ... must be redefined 

as the expression of state (resulting from a previous action)". Such examples are known, but are not 

the only possibility. Our discussion shows an ethical-dative origin will better fit the known uses of 

the -t-form. 

14) Von Soden (1952 section 80f). On functions of the Old Babylonian Perfect see also Maloney 

(1979), possible parallels to the Mandarin uses of (5d-ii) or clues to an alternative analysis (see 

fn.13).


15) See McCoard (1978) p.233 and the examples p.224. 

16) McCoard (1978) p.228 and p.252 fn.ll. 

17) This reconstruction will be published elsewhere. It is based on a regrouping into finer semantic 

categories of verbs, using the extensive material in Aro (1964), and in Kurylowicz (1973) and 

Kienast (1968). The summary Figures 8. and 9. use much more general groupings. 

Most treatments of Semitic vowel-classes have focused on a simple distinction like transitive-intransitive 

(Kienast 1969) or divide intransitives into active and state-verbs (Aro 1964). Although 

they note the durativity of -u-, and that the Arabic a/i-class (Akkadian i/i-class) contains verbs 

whose meanings are more violent and punctual than the a/u-class, they do not follow up these hints 

that aspect is primary. Many smaller groups of verbs are treated in isolation. (As we have seen 

above, transitivity is probably not the important distinction among the Perfects.) See Pulleyblank 

(1965) for some typological parallels. 

18) The N-stem Perfect equals the Nt-stem preterite only when it is seen that what Von Soden 

analyzed as "Ntn"-stem is really an Nt-stem with special Present form. This is discussed later. 

19) The original meaning of the N-formative was reconstructed in Anderson (1975b) as 'reach, 

attain'. 

20) The various /u/-vowelings of Semitic have not yet received a satisfactory analysis. Kienast 

(1975:105) rejects connection of the prefixed/infixed u- of Akkadian and Arabic causative and factitive 

stems with the common Semitic intransitive-passive /u/ vowelings becaue the meanings are so 

different. But a typological parallel shows this logic to be invalid. Finnish suffixal -utta 'cause an 

event' is composed of -tal-tta 'causative' and -u 'reflexive, becoming, passive' (this last once showing 

up as -pu after a liquid in el-py-ä 'be enlivened, revived'). Akkadian causatives have the u- prefixed 

in prefix-conjugation forms like Pronoun-u-sa-pris, but infixed in suffix-conjugation forms 

sa-prus-Vronoun (the archaic Assyrian form). Perhaps this was from a suffixal auxiliary originally: 

*sa-prVs-u-Pronoun. There are also verbs expressing 'involuntary events' with initial root consonant 

w- (von Soden 1952 section 103b). All of these meanings could easily go back to an auxiliary 

verb meaning 'become, be'. Akkadian has two verbs /hwi/ and /bsi/ meaning 'become, be' (Aro 

1964:41) which, given other patterns in Semitic vocabulary could be reconstructible as /h-wVx/ and 

/wVx-h/. In external comparison (Anderson 1975b) we would consider Indo-European *bheu(H)- 

and the Turkic result-state participles -mis- and -pi (see note 8.). 

21) Von Soden (1952 section 91). In the causative of four-consonant roots, his theory would require 

the infinitive *su-tan-blkut-u(m), with the *n-b assimilating to give geminate /bb/ and syllabic 

liquid (see section 110c). The actual form is su-ta-blakkut-u(m), contradicting the theory. The geminate 

is however where we would expect it if this was a type of D-stem with -t-. See note 25. 

22) In fact, the N-formative of Semitic is reconstructed back in Anderson (1975b) to almost exactly 

the same meaning as in the French idiom: 'reach, attain'. 

23) My own earlier work on maps appears in Anderson (1975a) and elsewhere. Those interested 

in the meaning-spaces of particular vocabulary items rather than of grammar should certainly see 

Labov (1973), and for language comparison clearly Matisoff (1978). There is also much material 

available from contrastive analysis of vocabulary relating to second-language learning. 

24) Thanks to Cochrane (1977) for bringing this example to my attention. Her dissertation is 

very valuable in making fine-grained distinctions among verbs in terms of their primary aspectual 

uses. Holisky (1980) is similarly valuable. 

25) Since this paper was completed, Peter Daniels has brought to my attention a paper by Gerd


Steiner, containing much further evidence that the Akkadian tan-stems require a different analysis 

than the now-traditional one. Steiner's reanalysis differs from the one here, but details must be discussed 

elsewhere. See "Die sog. tan-Stämme des akkadischen Verbums und ihre semitischen 

Grundlagen", Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft 131.1 (1981) pp. 9-27. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Anderson, Lloyd . 1974. The part-whole squish ... In Papers from the Tenth 

Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society, pp. 1-16 

1975a. Uniting three traditions: the classical study of grammatical-category 

space, the gradient data of meaning shifts, and lexical decomposition 

in generative semantics. In Analyzing Variation in English, eds. Ralph Fasold 

and Roger Shuy, pp.241-268. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University 

Press 

. 1975b. Grammar-meaning universals and proto-language reconstruction. 

In Papers from the Eleventh Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic 

Society, pp. 15-36. 

Aro, Jussi. 1964. Die Vokalisierung des Grundstammes im semitischen Verbum. 

Studia Orientalia Fennica 31. 208pp. [with additions from Bibliotheca 

Orientalis 24.310ff (1967)] 

Benveniste, Emile. 1968. Mutations of linguistic categories. In Directions for 

Historical Linguistics, eds. W. Lehmann and Y. Malkiel, pp.85-94. Austin: 

University of Texas Press 

Berlin, Brent and Paul Kay. 1969. Basic Color Terms, their Universality and 

Evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press. 178pp. 

Bolinger, Dwight. 1973. Essence and accident: English analogs of hispanic 

ser-estar. In Issues in Linguistics, Papers in Honor of Henry and Renee Kahane, 

eds. B. Kachru and others, pp.58-69. Urbana, Illinois: University of 

Illinois Press. 

Cochrane, Nancy J. 1977. Verbal Aspect and the Semantic Classification of 

Verbs in Serbo-Croatian. Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin. 

195pp. 

Cohen, Marcel. 1929. Verbes déponents internes (ou verbes adhérents) en 

sémitique. Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 23.225-248. 

Reprinted in Cinquante Années de Recherches (1955) pp.227-247. 

Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect. Cambridge University Press. 142pp. 

Darden, Bill. 1968. Is the English perfect an embedded past? — a statement 

from the devil's advocate. In Papers from the Fourth Regional Meeting,


Chicago Linguistic Society, pp. 14-21. 

Ferguson, Charles A. 1970. Grammatical categories in data collection. Working 

Papers on Language Universals no.4 pp. F1-F15. Stanford, California: 

Stanford University Dept. of Linguistics 

Friedman, Victor. 1976. Dialectal synchrony and diachronic syntax: the Macedonian 

Perfect. Papers from the Parasession on Diachronic Syntax, Chicago 

Linguistic Society, pp.96-104 

—-. 1978. On the semantic and morphological influence of Turkish on Balkan 

Slavic. In Papers from the Fourteenth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic 

Society, pp. 108-118 

. 1979. Toward a typology of status: Georgian and other non-Slavic languages 

of the Soviet Union. In Papers from the Conference on Non-Slavic 

Languages of the USSR, Chicago Linguistic Society, pp.339-350 

. forthcoming. Admirativity in Bulgarian, Albanian, and Turkish. to appear 

in Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Bulgarian 

Studies. Sofia: Bulgarska Akademija na Naukite. 

Garcia, Erica C. 1975. The Role of Theory in Linguistic Analysis. The Spanish 

Pronoun System. Amsterdam: North holland. 522pp. 

Gragg, Gene B. 1970. Overt and covert categories in derivational morphology. 

In Papers from the Sixth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society, 

pp. 262-269 

de Groot, A. Willem. 1956. Classification of the uses of a case illustrated on 

the genitive in Latin. Lingua 6.8-65. 

Haarmann, Harald. 1970. Die indirekte Erlebnisform als grammatische 

Kategorie. Eine eurasische Isoglosse. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 92pp. 

Hankamer, Jorge. 1977. Multiple analyses. In Mechanisms of Syntactic 

Change, ed. Charles N. Li, pp. 583-607. Austin: University of Texas Press. 

Hindle, Don and Ivan Sag. 1975. Some more on anymore. In Analyzing Variation 

in Language, eds. Roger Shuy and Ralph Fasold, pp.89-110. Washington, 

D.C.: Georgetown University Press 

Holisky, Dee. 1980. A Contribution to the Semantics of Aspect: Georgian 

Medial Verbs. Dissertation, University of Chicago. 

Kienast, Burkhart. 1957. Der Präfixvokal u im Kausitiv und im D-stamm des 

Semitischen. Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 11.104-108 

——. 1967. Zu den Vokalklassen beim akkadischen Verbum. In Heidelberger 

Studien zum alten Orient, ed. D.O. Edzard, pp.63-85. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 

Kurylowicz, Jerzy, 1973. Studies in Semitic Grammar and Metrics. Polska


Akademia Nauk, Prace Jçzykoznawcze 67. 190pp. 

Labov, William. 1972. Where do grammars stop? In Monograph Series on 

Languages and Linguistics no.25, ed. Roger Shuy, pp.43-88. Washington, 

D. . : Georgetown University Press 

. 1973. The boundaries of words and their meanings. In New Ways of 

Analyzing Variation in English, eds., C.-J. Bailey and Roger Shuy, 

pp.340-373. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press 

Maloney, John. 1979. The function of the perfect in Old Babylonian letters. 

Paper read at Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, Los Angeles. 

10pp. 

Masica, Colin P. 1976. Defining a Linguistic Area: South Asia. Chicago: University 

of Chicago Press. 234pp. 

McCawley, James D. 1971. Tense and time in English. In Charles Fillmore 

and D. Terrence Langendoen, eds., Studies in Linguistic Semantics, pp. 96- 

113. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 

McCoard, Robert W. 1978. The English Perfect: Tense Choice and Pragmatic 

Inferences. Amsterdam: North Holland* 279pp. 

Matisoff, James A. 1978. Variational Semantics in Tibeto-Burman: The 'Organic' 

Approach to Linguistic Comparison. (Occasional Papers of the 

Wolfenden Society on Tibeto-Burman Linguistics, 6.) Philadelphia: Institute 

for the Study of Human Issues. 331pp. 

Pulleyblank, E.G. 1965. Close/open ablaut in Sino-Tibetan. Lingua 14.230- 

240. 

Ross, J.R. 1972. The category squish: Endstation Hauptwort. In Papers from 

the Eighth Retional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society, pp.316-328. 

1974. The center. Lectures at the summer institute of the Linguistic Society 

of America, Amherst, Massachusetts, and at the third conference on 

New Ways of Analyzing Variation Etc., Georgetown University, Washington, 

D.C.. 

Rössler, Otto. 1950. Verbalbau und Verbalflexion in den semito-hamitischen 

Sprachen. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 

100.461-514 

Sag, Ivan. 1973. Happenstance 'have'. Paper read at linguistic Society of 

America summer meeting, Ann Arbor. Handout 3pp. 

Von Soden, Wolfram. 1952 and 1969. Grundriss der Akkadischen Grammatik 

samt Ergänzungsheft. Analecta Orientalia 33 and 47. 

. 1965. Das akkadische ¿-Perfekt in Haupt- und Nebensätzen und sumerische 

Verbalformen mit den Präfixen ba-, imma- und u-. Assyriological 

Studies 16.103ff. Chicago: Oriental Institute

REMARKS ON ENGLISH ASPECT 

RONALD W. LANGACKER 

UCSD 

This paper examines various aspectual phenomena of English from the 

perspective of what I call "space grammar". It builds and elaborates on two 

earlier works (Langacker 1978, 1979), familiarity with which will be helpful 

though not indispensable. Space grammar at present is best characterized as a 

loosely coherent body of concepts, approaches, and assumptions, and it 

would be impossible here either to give a comprehensive description of this 

framework or to argue in any detail for specific features of it. While the following 

account of English aspect emerges directly from this framework and finds 

natural expression in it, there is no claim that the analysis is necessarily incompatible 

with other theories — the paper is primarily about aspect, and only secondarily 

about space grammar. The discussion is selective rather than comprehensive, 

and it takes up in turn two domains in which aspectual phenomena 

are of central importance: the inherent semantic value of content predicates 

("main verbs"), and the effect of auxiliary elements on their aspectual 

value. 

Content Predicates 

It is both traditional and useful in discussions of tense and aspect to represent 

the passage of time by means of a line. Given the general notion of a 

straight line, there are three natural sub-cases to consider: (1) a full line, extending 

indefinitely far in either direction; (2) a line segment, with boundaries 

and finite length; and (3) a point, the limiting case of a line segment, with zero 

length. These correspond to three natural and fundamental aspectual classes 

for the verbal predicates of English and possibly all languages. In my terminology, 

these predicates are said to describe "imperfective processes", "perfective 

processes", and "states", respectively.

266 RONALD W. LANGACKER 

Figure 1 

IMPERFECTIVE PROCESS 

PERFECTIVE PROCESS 

STATE 

Figure 1 orders and represents these aspectual classes in terms of temporal 

duration alone. There is a second and equally important way of representing 

them, one that makes crucial use of the notion "trajectory". In this 

scheme, given in Figure 2, perfective predicates are primary in the sense that 

they imply a "full trajectory" of some kind, while the trajectories of imperfecr 

tive and stative predicates are degenerate in ways to be described. It should be 

emphasized that these two ways of characterizing the aspectual classes do not 

conflict and are not mutually exclusive — we will see that they represent two 

sides of the same coin. 

Figure 2 

PERFECTIVE PROCESS 

IMPERFECTIVE PROCESS 

STATE 

Let us now consider these three classes of predicates, starting with perfectives. 

A perfective process is one that describes a full trajectory of some 

kind. A full trajectory is one that involves a change through time, hence it implies 

both a non-zero temporal extension and multiple values with respect to 

some other dimension(s) ; the distribution of these values through time is what 

we recognize as change. We will begin by considering verbs of overt physical 

activity, which are generally taken as prototypical and which illustrate relevant 

concepts most clearly. Then we will consider the extension of these notions 

to non-prototypical cases.

ENGLISH ASPECT 267 

Figure 3 sketches the conceptual content of the proposition X HIT Y. 

HIT 

/ \ 

X Y 

SPACE 

TIME 

Figure 3 

In the basic sense of HIT, X HIT Y designates the motion of X through physical 

space resulting in the ultimate (and relatively forceful) contact of X and Y. 

To say that X moves through space is to say that X occupies a continuous sequence 

of distinct points in space correlated with the passage of time — X 

therefore follows a trajectory with non-zero extension in both temporal and 

non-temporal dimensions. Since HIT describes a transition, from non-contact 

to contact, it must have a positive temporal profile. The non-temporal dimensions 

involved are spatial; the trajectory has multiple values in the spatial dimensions 

because it includes different positions of X relative to Y, distributed 

through time. Because the trajectory of HIT has positive profiles in regard to 

both time and space, it is a full trajectory and HIT is a perfective predicate. 

I will assume without question that the notion "subject" can be equated 

with the notion "trajector". Thus the subject X in X HIT Y is depicted in Figure 

3 as the entity that moves — it occupies a succession of points in space calculated 

with reference to the object Y, which is not accorded any movement. 

Motion of course is relative, and X HIT Y does not preclude the possibility 

that Y is in motion, but this proposition nevertheless imposes a certain perspective 

on the scene and portrays X as being in motion relative to Y, which is 

taken as stationary so far as explicit linguistic coding is concerned. It will be 

observed that X is given in boldface in Figure 3. Boldface is the device I will 

use here to indicate the figure in a figure-ground relationship. I take the subject 

(trajector) to be the figure in the subject-verb-(object) configuration, as 

one of the numerous instantiations of the figure-ground relation in natural 

language (cf. Talmy 1978 and Langacker 1979). The subject is portrayed as 

being in motion against the backdrop specified by the verb and object. Other-


wise put, the verb and object specify a trajectory through which the subject 

passes. 

While the notion of a trajectory and the identification of the trajector 

seem clear enough in certain cases of overt physical movement, like HIT, various 

subtleties enter the picture when we turn to other types of examples. At 

least three kinds of considerations arise in generalizing the full trajectory notion 

to all perfective processes. 

First, perfective predicates differ in the manner in which they specify the 

point or framework of reference relative to which the trajectory is laid out. 

HIT lays out the trajectory relative to an object distinct from the trajector and 

given separate, explicit status in a sentence as the direct object nominal. In 

other cases, such as TRIP, an object is brought into the scene that figures in 

the definition of the trajectory but need not be overtly cited {He tripped); reference 

to this object is sublexical, and if it is to be mentioned explicitly this is 

done by means of a supplementary, oblique predication {He tripped over my 

cat). The trajectory need not be given by discrete objects at all; some predicates, 

such as FALL, merely specify change of position along a dimension, 

this dimension being provided as part of the lexical content of the verb. Finally, 

the trajectory can be "reflexive", involving the motion relative to one 

another of different parts of the trajector, as in BLINK or BREAK. These 

various possibilities are not mutually exclusive. 

Second, the trajectory can be covert or not directly observable in cases of 

motion in physical space, and more importantly, it often pertains to more abstract 

dimensions, so that we can talk of motion only in an extended, metaphorical 

sense. PURR, for instance, involves physical motion as an intrinsic 

component, but the spatial aspects of this vibration are often beyond our perception 

and we grasp the content of PURR primarily through its auditory 

value. EXAMINE may designate an activity including obvious overt movement 

{They examined the building for termites), but more central to its meaning 

is the less overt motion of perceptual scanning {She examined my face) ; 

even this can be stripped away, leaving only the metaphorical kind of "activity" 

involved in cognition {She critically examined my assumptions). Other examples 

of trajectories in abstract domains include DECIDE, TURN 

(COLD), DIGEST, OBEY, CALCULATE, etc. 

Third, the trajectory of a perfective predicate is often complex, comprising 

two or more partially separable components. WALK, for example, combines 

a reflexive trajectory, specifying the motion of body parts relative to one 

another, with an external trajectory (that can be left unspecified), namely the


motion of the subject relative to its external environment resulting from the 

motions of the reflexive trajectory. Some verbs, such as PUSH, GUIDE, 

CARRY, RECEIVE, or the transitive BREAK, imply motion on the part of 

both the subject and the direct object; even though the motion of the object 

may equal or even exceed that of the subject in terms of level of physical activity 

(note RECEIVE), these verbs foreground the subject's trajectory at the expense 

of the object's, making the subject the primary trajector and overall figure. 

1 Yet another sense in which the trajectory of a perfective process can be 

complex relates to levels of organization. On one level of organization, 

WALK is repetitive and describes a sequence of essentially identical cycles or 

"pulses" of activity. A single pulse consists of one leg being swung in front of 

the other, or alternatively, of each leg in turn executing its own sub-trajectory 

in proper sequence (consider centipedes). On a higher level of organization, 

walking is viewed as an internally homogeneous activity (consisting of indefinitely 

many indistinguishable lower-level pulses) having a vague canonical 

duration. We do not conceive of walking as something that tends to go on and 

on, but rather as something that occurs in distinct and limited episodes, each 

episode involving the initiation of movement from rest, traversing the distance 

between two points, and the cessation of movement upon reaching the 

goal. When I say He walked, therefore, I am most likely suggesting at least two 

simultaneous trajectories, one a repetitive reflexive trajectory with pulses of 

short duration, and the other a single-pulse affair of longer duration involving 

such phases as initiation, continuation toward goal, and cessation: 2 

Figure 4 

These comments should reveal the degree of abstraction involved in 

schematizing the trajectory of a perfective predicate by means of the notation 

in Figure 2 or 5(a). The trajectory may comprise numerous coordinated components 

(one thinks of the decomposition of a complex sound into sine 

waves), each of which could be spelled out in more detail along the lines of 

Figure 3, with indications of the successive positions of the trajector, the dimensions 

and reference points for the sub-trajectory, and whatever other detail 

is required. It is convenient and fully sufficient for many purposes to talk


about the trajectory of a perfective process predicate as a single, simple entity, 

but the degree and nature of the simplification should be kept at least in the 

back of one's mind. 

(a) 

(b) 

(c) 

TRAJECTORY OF PERFECTIVE PROCESS 

DURATION OF PERFECTIVE PROCESS 

BOUNDING BY TRAJECTORY 

Figure 5 

Now we are ready to consider the relation between the two schematic 

representations given earlier for perfective processes, repeated in Figure 5. 

5(b) pertains to the temporal extension of such a process, indicating simply 

that it is bounded in time. 5(a) emphasizes the non-temporal, and schematizes 

the successive positions through time of the trajector in regard to spatial or 

other non-temporal dimensions. 5(c) indicates how the existence of a non-zero 

trajectory imposes temporal bounding on a process. A trajectory extends 

through time, and to the extent that the trajectory is defined by a limited 

number of phases, changes in direction, etc. —so that it is possible to trace the 

subject through this trajectory and recognize its position within it — the limits 

of the trajectory impose corresponding limits on its temporal profile. 3 In this 

way temporal bounding and a non-zero trajectory can be seen as two sides of 

the same coin. 

This is perhaps more evident when perfective processes are contrasted 

with imperfective ones. Imperfective processes resemble perfectives in having 

positive temporal extension, but they are degenerate in regard to the nontemporal 

dimensions. Specifically, the non-temporal configuration described 

is portrayed as constant through time rather than changing through time, 

hence the trajectory is degenerate rather than full. Because the configuration 

is constant through time, any point in the process is taken as functionally 

equivalent to any other; there are no discernible phases, no changes in direction 

by means of which to chart the progress of the subject, and as a consequence 

there is no identifiable beginning or end. Thus the process extends indefinitely 

far in either direction. An imperfective represents the limiting case 

of a process: while a perfective process describes the evolution of a configuration 

through time, an imperfective process describes the mere perpetuation or


continuation of a configuration through time without essential change. 

(a) 

(b) 

TRAJECTORY OF IMPERFECTIVE PROCESS 

DURATION OF IMPERFECTIVE PROCESS 

Figure 6 

I would like to draw a serious parallel between count nouns and perfective 

processes on the one hand, and mass nouns and imperfective processes on 

the other. A prototypical count noun (DOG) is bounded in physical space the 

way a perfective process is bounded in time, with a shape specification for a 

count noun being equivalent to the trajectory for a perfective process. Bounding 

implies replicability, hence the possibility of pluralization for count nouns 

and repetitive aspect for perfective processes. True mass nouns (BLOOD) 

contrast with count nouns in all these respects: there is no shape specification, 

they are not intrinsically bounded, and they cannot be pluralized. Instead of 

discreteness and functionally different parts, there is homogeneity: any subportion 

is regarded as a valid instantiation of the category and functionally 

equivalent to any other; BLOOD, for instance, is an appropriate designation 

for all blood in actual or potential existence, for a minuscule sample, or for any 

intermediate quantity. In each respect an imperfective process (e.g. HAVE) 

resembles a mass noun. It has a zero trajectory through time (i.e. lacks a shape 

specification), is temporally unbounded, and does not take repetitive aspect. 

There is homogeneity (constancy of the configuation through time), so that 

any sub-portion of the process is taken as a valid instantiation of the category, 

however long or short its temporal duration. This last point will be of some importance 

to us later. 

Some examples of imperfective process predicates are HAVE, HATE, 

KNOW, RESEMBLE, COST, CONTAIN, OCCUPY, and WANT. 4 In contrast 

to a perfective predicate like HIT, which summarizes more than one configuration 

(e.g. non-contact and contact) in a single trajectory and therefore 

implies change through time, an imperfective predicate like RESEMBLE involves 

only one configuration constant through time, as I have tried to indicate 

in Figure 7(a).


The temporal profile of 7(a) is of indefinite duration, but for any point in this 

profile the relative position of X and Y along the scale of similarity is the same 

— contrast this with the changing configuration for X HIT Y in Figure 3. X, as 

the subject and figure, is given in boldface; Y serves as point of reference 

(ground), and is thus located in 7(a) at the end-point of the scale of increasing 

similarity as a kind of abstract goal. To say that X resembles Y is to say that X 

is located beyond a certain threshold along this scale. 

An imperfective process can be viewed as a temporally extended state. A 

stative predicate describes a configuration that can be characterized with respect 

to a single point in time, hence it has a zero temporal profile. Just as an 

imperfective process can be viewed as the limiting case of a perfective process, 

the special case where the change through time is zero, so a state can be regarded 

as the limiting case of an imperfective process, the special case where 

the temporal profile is zero (a single point). The trajectory of a stative predicate 

is therefore degenerate with respect to both the temporal and the nontemporal 

dimensions, as seen in Figure 2. A perfective predicate describes the 

change of a configuration through time; an imperfective predicate describes 

the constancy of a configuration through time; and a stative predicate simply 

describes a configuration. 

This means that if we take a cross-section of an imperfective process at 

any arbitrarily selected point in its duration the result is a state, the same situa-


tion viewed atemporally. This is illustrated in Figure 7 by the relation between 

RESEMBLE (X resembles Y) and LIKE (X is like Y). The difference between 

these two predicates is primarily aspectual, RESEMBLE simply extending 

the LIKE configuration through time. 

It is important to be clear about just what is being claimed when I say that 

such predicates as LIKE, ON, TALL, RED, etc. are stative — there are several 

points of potential confusion. First, the claim pertains to these predicates 

alone, not to larger expressions containing them. While X LIKE Y is stative, 

the expression X is like Y represents an imperfective process, for it involves 

the semantic content of LIKE as modified by the predicate BE, which imperfectivizes 

it; X resembles Y and X is like are basically equivalent, then, even 

though RESEMBLE is imperfective and LIKE stative. Second, what is at 

issue is not the actual or conceived real-time duration of a situation, but rather 

the time span required to satisfy all the specifications of a predicate. To say 

that X ON Y is stative is not to say that the speaker conceives of the ON relation 

as coming into existence only for an instant and then disappearing immediately 

— how long it exists is irrelevant. What is relevant is that an atemporal 

view, for instance the static view captured in a photograph, is sufficient to establish 

or fully represent it. 

Finally, we must make allowances for the plasticity of human conceptualization 

and the abstractness of much of the imagery of semantic structure. 

Consider stative predicates such as SMART, STUPID, INTELLIGENT, 

etc. 5 Assessing a person's intelligence is not something that can be done in an 

instant, for it summarizes a level of mental ability over a considerable span of 

time as manifested in many specific activities. But while such predicates are 

therefore non-prototypical as statives, this does not per se make them processual. 

Our conceptual plasticity allows us to construe them as states, just as it 

allows us to transform these states into abstract entities treated as mass-like 

objects for purposes of linguistic expression (intelligence, stupidity). More 

specifically, we can reasonably attribute to speakers the concept of an abstract 

scale of intelligence, much like the scale of similarity in Figure 7. Predicates 

such as STUPID and INTELLIGENT specify locations along this scale. Location 

is a stative notion, so once we recognize these predicates as abstract locatives 

their stative character immediately follows. 

To conclude this section, I must make several comments about the status 

of the aspectual classes I have distinguished for verbal predicates in English. 

First, these are global classes and are not meant to be exhaustive of the 

linguistically relevant categorizations. Finer-grained classifications are possi-


ble, and I will make some reference to them below. Among the perfective 

predicates, for instance, we can distinguish such classes as achievement vs. 

non-achievement, punctual vs. durative, and so on. 

Second, it is well known that these aspectual classes do not impose a rigid 

categorization on the lexicon. Numerous predicates can be used in more than 

one way, their particular aspectual value determined by such factors as the nature 

of their arguments, other elements in the clause, pragmatic considerations 

, etc. 6 To take just one example, SEE can be used imperf ectively when its 

object has sufficient permanence to allow the perceptual contact to extend 

over an indefinite time span, as in (l)(a), but an object limited to a point-like 

temporal extension correspondingly restricts the duration of the perceptual 

process, making SEE perfective in (l)(b), which in turn leads to semantic conflict 

with a simple present-time interpretation, as discussed in the next section. 

(1) (a) He sees the mountain. 

(b) ?He sees the flash. 

While the aspectual classification of SEE is altered in (1) due to properties 

of the object, in other cases two or more aspectually contrasting versions of a 

predicate exist that can be used with the same argument. BELIEVE in (2), for 

instance, can be imperfective, in which case it describes an established opinion 

of the subject having indefinite duration, but it can also be perfective, in 

which case it describes the acceptance of this opinion, the transition from nonbelief 

to belief. 

(2) He believed that the earth was flat. 

Yet another facet of this fluidity of categorization is the possibility of construing 

a perfective predicate as habitual or repetitive without any overt marking 

of this change of status, as in (3), or even playing such tricks as making an imperfective 

into a perfective and then making it repetitive, resulting in a complex 

type of derived imperfective, as in (4), which describes an indefinite series 

of bounded episodes of knowing. 

(3) (a) He sees the flash (every time he presses on his temple). 

(b) He kicked the cat (over and over again). 

(4) I have known that many times (and forgotten it each time). 

Particularly interesting are cases like (5) and (6), where the perfective or 

imperfective character of the predicate depends on the shape of the subject. 

(5) (a) Sally went from Phoenix to Tucson. 

(b) This road goes from Phoenix to Tucson. 

(6) (a) The crowd divided into two groups. 

(b) This artery divides into two main branches.


I would suggest that the paths in space described by the sentences in each set 

are either identical (as in (5)) or fully comparable (as in (6)), but pragmatic 

considerations centered on the nature of the subject determine different distributions 

over time of the points making up these paths, with a resultant difference 

in perfectivity. In (5), go from Phoenix to Tucson describes precisely 

the same spatial path in (a) and (b), but the subjects Sally and road have different 

spatial properties that affect the time span necessary for the subject to execute 

the spatial trajectory. Because Sally is small relative to the distance between 

Phoenix and Tucson, the only way this trajector can occupy all the 

points on the trajectory is by occupying them successively through time; go 

from Phoenix to Tucson is therefore perfective in (5)(a), since the specifications 

of the trajectory are not satisfied at any single point in time, but only by 

summarizing over a bounded time span. In (5)(b), on the other hand, the subject 

road is such that it can occupy all of the points on the path simultaneously; 

for any point in time, some part of the road occupies every part of the path. 

But this makes (5)(b) imperfective by definition, since it describes a configuration 

constant through time and fully instantiated at every point in time. 

Thus the same path in space can define either a trajectory extended through 

time or a static configuration perpetuated through time, depending on how 

many points in time it takes the subject to fully occupy it, with automatic consequences 

for the perfectivity of the expression. 

Comparable remarks can be made for (6). (6)(a) is in fact ambiguous, for 

it can describe both the situation where a crowd splits up through time into two 

groups, in which case the sentence is perfective, and the kind of situation 

where the members of the crowd can be classified (say on the basis of their attitude 

toward homosexuality), in which case the bipartite character of the 

crowd is more abstract and is valid for every point in the time span considered. 

The only natural interpretation of (6)(b) is imperfective, as the artery is presumably 

constant (though complex) in shape through time. Such examples 

point to a certain dissociation between temporal and non-temporal dimensions. 

A non-temporal trajectory such as a path in space must be instantiated 

by the position of objects, but depending on the nature of these objects the 

trajectory can be draped over either an extended time period or an extended 

object at one point in time. 

Given the impressive human conceptual flexibility witnessed by these examples 

and countless others, it should be evident that there is no way to predict 

with certainty just how a particular form will be used or how a particular 

concept will be expressed. The fact that GO can be used both perfectively and


imperfectively depending on the nature of the subject is a matter of linguistic 

convention — it is certainly possible to conceive of a language that would permit 

(5)(a) but not (5)(b). For this reason it is necessary to list the existence of 

the imperfective go of (5)(b) somewhere in the grammar of English as a conventional, 

not wholly predictable fact. This does not, however, mean that two 

fully distinct lexical items are involved or that the phenomena under discussion 

are not basically semantic in character. Similarly, the fact that similarity 

can be coded in English by means of either a process predicate (RESEMBLE) 

or a stative predicate (LIKE) does not follow inexorably from the semantic 

value of the relation; a linguistic system can construe the relation either way 

and code it in alternate ways, but this does not entail that categories like "process" 

and "state" are anything other than semantic categories. It is a central 

tenet of space grammar that grammatical structure is conventionalized semantic 

structure, and I reject the common (and normally implicit) assumption 

that something must be fully universal or predictable before it is considered to 

be semantic in character. 

While I have presented the categories of perfective, imperfective, and 

stative predicates in purely semantic terms and regard these as fundamental 

semantic categories, it is well known that they have grammatical correlates. I 

could perfectly well have posited precisely the same categories on the basis of 

distributional evidence of the sort considered immediately below, and naturally 

I have been guided by such evidence in assigning predicates to one class or 

another. But I distinguish the heuristic device of using grammatical behavior 

to isolate classes and assign members to them from the claim — which I reject 

— that the classes are fundamentally syntactic in character and have only incidental 

and imperfect semantic correlates. Instead I will argue that their 

grammatical behavior is merely symptomatic of their semantic value and follows 

from it in a natural way when the grammatical constructions in question 

are properly characterized. 7 

The principal grammatical correlates of the aspectual classification can 

be quickly summarized. Statives take BE obligatorily when functioning as 

"main verbs", while process predicates take DO, but only when an auxiliary is 

grammatically required and no other one is present. 

(7) (a) He is like our mailman. 

(b) He does not resemble our mailman. 

(c) Did he hit her? 

Perfectives allow the progressive BE+ING construction, while both statives 

and imperfectives preclude it.


(8) (a) He is swimming. 

(b) *He is resembling Harry. 

(c) *He is tailing/being tall. 

In the past tense a perfective implies completion of the process in question, 

while statives and imperfectives do not. Thus (9)(a) implies that the particular 

episode of swimming referred to is over (I exclude as irrelevant the "habituar' 

interpretation), while (b) and (c) leave open the possibility that the tallness or 

resemblance continues through the present. 

(9) (a) He swam (*and he still does). 

(b) He was tall (and he still is). 

(c) He resembled Harry (and he still does). 

Finally, statives (with BE) and imperfectives can both be used in the present 

with no special interpretation required, but perfectives cannot. 

(10) (a) He is tall. 

(b) He resembles Harry. 

(c) *He swims. 

(10)(c) is of course well formed, but it must receive some "special" interpretation 

(habitual, implicit command, play-by-play account, historical present); it 

is deviant as a statement about the present in normal speech if SWIM is given 

its basic aspectual value. 

We will return to this data in the following section. I hope to show that 

these facts, as well as other apparent peculiarities of the English auxiliary system 

, receive a natural explanation in terms of the semantic characterization of 

the elements involved given the overall conception of the auxiliary outlined in 

Langacker 1978. 

The Auxiliary 

The preceding discussion pertained to what I have called "objective content" 

in previous works. It offered a basic aspectual classification of predicates 

that can function as the lexical head in a "verbal" (the verb group of a finite 

clause). The temporal profile of a finite clause is of course determined by 

more than just the inherent aspect of the lexical head. Also relevant are the 

predicates that collectively constitute what is known in English as the verbal 

auxiliary. This section concerns the interaction of the auxiliary predicates 

with the intrinsic aspectual value of the lexical head. 

I will follow with only minor adjustments the basic conception of auxiliary 

organization outlined in Langacker 1978. 8 That conception aligns the 

predicates of the auxiliary in an "epistemic path" leading step by step from the


"ground" (G), representing the position of the speaker and speech situation, 

down to the topmost predicate of objective content, the lexical head of the 

verb group, as illustrated in Figure 8. 

X may be examining Y 

G 

MAY 

BE 

ING 

EXAMINE 

X Y 

GROUND 

EPISTEMIC PREDICATES 

ASPECTUAL PREDICATES 

OBJECTIVE CONTENT 

Figure 8 

The function of the auxiliary is to specify the relation between the objective 

situation under discussion and the speech situation, the point of reference 

symbolized G. Starting from the lexical head, each predicate in turn along the 

epistemic path leading to G effects a conceptual "transformation" of some 

sort on the objective content or the modified content resulting from previous 

steps along the path. The output of the final (topmost) predicate in the chain 

constitutes the speaker's view of the conceptual situation. 

The predicates along the epistemic path of the English auxiliary divide 

naturally into two types, aspectual and epistemic. For the most part, the aspectual 

predicates have a single function: to adjust the temporal profile (and 

hence the aspectual value) of the objective content. These predicates form a 

continuous sequence in the epistemic path adjacent to the level of objective 

content, and they will be our initial and primary concern. The epistemic level 

will enter the picture when we turn to the differential grammatical behavior of 

the aspectual classes treated in the first section. 

In previous works I have characterized BE as a stative existential predicate, 

one that predicates the existence of a state. Here I will rephrase the definition 

and refer to BE as an imperfectivizing predicate. More specifically, BE 

applies to a state and gives it temporal extension, thereby transforming it into 

an imperfective process. In terms of Figure 7, for example, X LIKE Y is a stative 

proposition with zero temporal extension ; BE has the effect of transform-


ing the configuration of 7(b) into the one in 7(a), giving this configuration a 

positive temporal profile and making it an imperfective process by definition. 

Despite the fact that LIKE is stative and RESEMBLE imperfective, X RE 

SEMBLE Y and BE(X LIKE Y) are conceptually equivalent, the specification 

being unitary in the former case and compositional in the latter. I wish to 

emphasize that I have not changed my definition of BE, only rephrased it to 

highlight its aspectual impact. It is perfectly reasonable to equate the existence 

of a situation with its temporal extension ; given this equation, saying that 

BE predicates the existence of a state is fully equivalent to saying that BE 

specifies the temporal extension of a state. 9 

The other two aspectual predicates to be considered are the perfect participial 

morpheme (PERF) and ING. Both are stativizing, transforming a process 

with positive temporal extension into a state with zero profile, but they 

differ in how they do this, and their interaction with other elements introduces 

a number of subtleties. We will begin with PERF. 10 

The discussion of PERF may be reminiscent of that regarding examples 

like (5) and (6) at the end of the last section. In those examples a predicate like 

GO or DIVIDE specifies precisely the same trajectory in each of two sentences, 

but the nature of the trajector (subject) differs, so that in one case the trajectory 

is fully instantiated by the subject at one point in time (making the 

predicate imperfective), while in the other it can be fully instantiated only 

over an extended period of time (making the predicate perfective). In a similar 

way, PERF can be given a uniform characterization, and though it derives 

a state, precisely how it does so depends on the aspectual properties of the 

structure to which it applies. 

The situation is most straightforward with a full or time-bound trajectory, 

i.e. with perfective predicates. The effect of PERF with perfectives is to collapse 

the temporal profile into the end -point of the process — in other words, 

it derives a state defined in terms of the completion of a process, designating 

the point at which the trajectory is fully instantiated (i.e. the point at which the 

trajector has occupied every point in the trajectory) and the motion specified 

by the trajectory ceases. Consider, for instance, the effect of PERF on FALL, 

as in The leaves are fallen. 11 PERF effects the mental transformation sketched 

in Figure 9, reducing the temporal profile from a bounded time span to a single 

point.


Since PERF focuses attention on the end-point of a process, it might be 

expected that it would be inapplicable to imperfective processes, since these 

are unbounded and have no inherent end-point. This is not the case, however, 

as the examples in (11) clearly show. 

(11) (a) I have believed that for some time. 

(b) His temper is well known. 

(c) He has been bald for many years. 

(d) They have been working all night. 

(e) The castle is surrounded by a moat. 

In each case PERF is attached to a verbal expression {believe, know, be X, surround) 

that is used imperfectively. How is this possible? 

The key lies in properly characterizing the effect of PERF on perfective 

predicates: PERF derives a state from a process by focusing on the point at 

which the trajectory is fully instantiated. In the case of perfective processes this 

can only be the end-point, but the situation is very different with respect to imperfective 

processes because of their special character. As was evident in the 

discussion of (5) and (6), the trajectory specified by an imperfective process is 

instantiated at a single point in time — it defines a configuration stable


through time, and for this reason any point within the imperfective process 

meets the condition for being singled out by PERF. In the case of (11)(e), for 

example, the SURROUND relation between CASTLE and MOAT is fully 

instantiated at a single point in time due to the nature of these objects (just as a 

road can instantaneously instantiate the relation go from Phoenix to Tucson). 

Therefore the derived relation PERF(SURROUND) can designate any arbitrarily 

selected point within the time span of the imperfective process and (in 

contrast to the situation with perfectives) implies neither the completion of 

this process nor any transition from non-instantiation to instantiation. 12 

As an auxiliary element, ING is restricted to perfective predicates and is 

always accompanied by BE. The fact that it takes BE suggests that it is a stativizing 

predicate, and I will so analyze it. The basic characterization can be stated 

something like this: ING focuses attention on a single, arbitrarily selected internal 

point relative to a process. As with PERF, however, this schematic characterization 

interacts with the nature of the predicate to which ING applies 

and subsumes more specific cases that differ considerably in detail. 

Consider first perfective processes covering a substantial time span, such 

as those in (12). 

(12) (a) The inspectors are examining our house. 

(b) Joe is eating his lunch. 

(c) Richard is filling the bathtub with a hose. 

(d) My canary is studying Greek. 

(e) That plane is falling. 

In cases like these there is no particular problem in seeing what it means to focus 

attention on a single, arbitrary internal point in the process. The effect of 

ING is depicted schematically in Figure 10(a), and more fully for FALL in 

10(b). 

Figure 10


ING imposes an internal perspective. With an external perspective, one 

that encompasses an entire perfective process, the contours of the trajectory 

are readily apparent: we note the beginning and end, different phases in the 

process, and so on. But when our attention is focused on a single point within 

such a process, our perception of it is necessarily limited, too limited for its 

contours to be apparent or the precise location of the trajector within it to be 

evident. Although the state is defined relative to a perfective process, therefore, 

from the perspective of that state the process becomes for all practical 

purposes masslike and homogeneous. Within the ultimate constraints imposed 

by the fact that we are dealing with a perfective (hence bounded) process, 

the viewpoint introduced by ING makes this process effectively imperfective, 

with any point functionally equivalent to any other. In this sense it is 

possible for ING to select a point arbitrarily, even though the different points 

in a perfective process (in contrast to those in an imperfective process) are not 

necessarily interchangeable. 13 

But there is another version of ING, as witnessed by progressive constructions 

that imply repetition of an act: 

(13) (a) The inspectors are examining our house more frequently these 

days. 

(b) Sally is blinking. 

(c) The sheet is flapping in the breeze. 

(d) The bubbles are popping. 

(e) Sheila is slapping her little sister. 

The repetitive construal of ING is possible with processes covering an extended 

time period, like examine, but it becomes virtually necessary due to 

pragmatic considerations with "punctual" predicates like those in (b)-(e). Because 

of their punctual character, these perfectives rule out an internal perspective 

— it is difficult to focus one's attention on an arbitrarily selected point 

within one occurrence of the process and view the end-points of the process as 

fading away in the distance. Such a construal is of course possible in extraordinary 

circumstances. We could utter (13)(b) felicitously when watching a slowmotion 

film of a single blink. 

The repetitive version of ING is compatible with the general characterization 

given above and constitutes a special case of it: ING focuses attention 

on a single, arbitrarily selected internal point relative to a process. This special 

case is perhaps less straightforward than the one shown in Figure 10(a), but it 

does not seem particularly problematic. The two versions of ING are schematized, 

using a slightly different notation than before, in Figure 11.


Figure 11 

11(a) is equivalent to 10(a), with the arrow representing the focus of attention 

, or temporal profile, which ÏNG will restrict to a single arbitrary point. 

11(a) shows how this can be done when the perfective process is of sufficient 

duration to permit it; moving to a purely internal perspective suffices, as described 

above .11(b) shows the alternative of replicating the bounded process, 

deriving an imperfective process consisting of an indefinite number of repetitions 

of the perfective trajectory. Just as ING selects an arbitrary point within 

the single trajectory in (a), a narrowing of focus that effectively imperfectivizes 

this process (within the ultimate constraints of the trajectory), in (b) it selects 

an arbitrary point within the imperfective process. (13)(a), for instance, 

is appropriate regardless of whether or not the inspectors are in the midst of 

an episode of examining the house at the time of speaking, and if they happen 

to be the position of this episode within the sequence is immaterial. It can 

therefore be observed that both devices involve the imperfectivization of a 

perfective process and the selection of an arbitrary point within the imperfectivized 

process, though they differ in precisely how they combine these factors. 

14 

The final thing to consider in this survey of the basic aspectual predicates of 

the English auxiliary is their combination with one another. The epistemic 

path leading from the objective content to G may have no aspectual predicates 

in it at all, in which case the inherent temporal profile of the lexical head 

is unaltered, or it may have one or several, in which case each aspectual predicate 

in the sequence adjusts the profile it receives from the predicate below it. 

We will content ourselves with the single illustration X is running, depicted in 

Figure 12.

284 RONALD W. LANG ACKER


Now we are in a position to examine the differential behavior of the different 

aspectual classes noted at the end of the previous section, as well as certain 

apparent irregularities in the auxiliary system. Many of these peculiarities 

can be "explained" in a weak and informal sense of the term given the notions 

I have introduced and certain others. This is not to say that things could not be 

otherwise (after all, not all languages have the English auxiliary system), nor 

that we can necessarily handle them all without special, explicit statements in 

a grammar, only that they are far from arbitrary and have semantic or functional 

rationale. I reiterate my view that grammar is conventionalized semantics, 

and that a phenomenon can properly be regarded as semantic even if it is 

not fully universal or predictable and requires explicit statement. 

Some things fall out directly from the notions already presented. For example, 

PERF does not combine with stative predicates (* tailed, *on(n)ed) because 

it has stativizing function and adding it to statives would be superfluous; 

the same is true for ING (*tailing, *on(n)ing). In similar fashion, BE does not 

occur on process predicates because it serves to give a state temporal extension, 

which process predicates have in any case (*He is swim, *He is resemble 

Harry). The progressive construction, with ING and BE operating in tandem, 

has the overall effect of deriving an imperfective process, which allows us to explain 

the facts in (8). The progressive serves a useful purpose with perfectives 

(He is swimming), but it is naturally not needed for imperfectives (*H is resembling 

Harry, *He is being tall) ; the progressive is avoided with statives (*H 

is tailing, *Supper is onning the table) because there is a simpler way to imperfectivize 

them, namely with BE alone. 

Other phenomena require a somewhat broader perspective than I have 

introduced so far. They will require us to take a brief look at epistemic-level 

elements and to examine more closely such expressions as "speaker viewpoint" 

and "immediacy to G". 

The basic conception of the epistemic level presented in Langacker 1978 

can be quickly summarized. It is assumed that semantic structure is egocentrically 

organized and grounded in G, the speech situation, which is always centered 

on the speaker, conceived by the speaker to be real rather than potential, 

and located at the "leading edge" of reality (i.e. the present — reality also 

extends into the past, in accordance with the remarks in fn. 9). As manifested 

in English, the egocentricity of semantic structure is such that when a finite 

clause has zero for the epistemic stratum in the epistemic path constituting the 

auxiliary, the objective content (as modified by aspectual predicates) is being 

presented by the speaker as an accepted part of his conception of present real-


ity. This immediacy to G can be cancelled by either or both of two devices: the 

presence of a modal predicate, or the presence of the "past tense" or "distal" 

predicate (DIST). A modal removes the objective predication from reality, 

where it otherwise lies, and places it in the domain of potentiality. The distal 

predicate dissociates the objective predication from G, whether this predication 

be real or potential. When there is no modal, the effect of DIST is to remove 

the objective situation from G without removing it from reality, and 

reality dissociated from the present is what we perceive as "past tense". When 

there is a modal, the effect of DIST is generally to enhance the contingency 

specified by the modal; might, for instance, indicates a lower degree of likelihood 

than may. 

The concept of immediacy to G was used in Langacker 1978 to explain the 

incompatibility of perfectives in the zero ("present") form without some special 

interpretation (*He swims for one episode of swimming at the time of 

speaking). G was taken to be a single point in time as a matter of linguistic convention. 

This makes it compatible with imperfectives in the present (He resembles 

Harry) because imperfectives imply constancy of a situation through 

time, and a single point is sufficient to verify the full instantiation (or existence) 

of the process. The trajectory of a perfective, however, is instantiated 

only with the passage of time, the argument goes, so it cannot be verified at a 

single point. The point-like character of G is insufficient to accommodate the 

crucially positive temporal duration of a perfective supposedly immediate to 

it. 

While I think this explanation was very much in the right spirit, I now believe 

it was wrong in specifics and leads to certain problems. For one thing, the 

time of a speech event is not actually a point, but rather a bounded process. If 

it were considered point-like as a matter of linguistic convention, we might expect 

it to be compatible with statives, but this expectation is not borne out 

(*He talls, *Supper ons the table). These and other considerations 16 make it 

appropriate to attempt a refinement of the explanation for the exclusion of 

perfectives from a true simple present interpretation. 

It will first be helpful to clarify the notion "immediate to G". It pertains to 

the relation between two situations that figure implicitly or explicitly in every 

sentence: the speech situation, involving the speaker, hearer, and act of 

speaking; and the objective situation providing the subject matter of the sentence. 

17 In diagrams of propositional structure, like Figure 8, the objective situation 

is specified by the objective content and aspectual strata; the lexical 

head organizes the objective scene and provides it with an initial temporal


profile, and the aspectual predicates adjust this profile and determine the ultimate 

temporal extension of the objective situation as it is viewed by the speaker 

for purposes of linguistic expression. The speech situation is indicated in 

such diagrams by the symbol G, 18 and if no epistemic predicates intervene, the 

two situations are diagrammatically immediate to one another. 

But this describes immediacy in basically diagrammatic terms; what does 

it imply on a conceptual level? There are actually three parameters to consider: 

time, reality, and "objectivity". With respect to time, the speech event (G) 

and objective situation (OS) can be fully coincident, overlapping in various 

ways, or disjoint; we can use the horizontal dimension to show these relations, 

as in Figure 13(a). With respect to the reality parameter, the basic distinction 

is between reality (indicated by the lack of a modal) and potentiality (indicated 

by a modal), corresponding to whether or not the objective situation is portrayed 

by the speaker as an accepted part of his present conception of reality. 

For a given temporal relation, we can represent the speaker's acceptance of 

the objective situation as real by means of adjacency along the vertical dimension, 

as seen in 13(b); potentiality is given by non-adjacency. 

Figure 13 

By objectivity, I mean the question of whether or not the speech event and the


objective event are identical. Normally they are not, in which case the viewpoint 

on OS from G can be said to be "objective". But sometimes they coincide, 

in which case the speech event is auto-referential or performative: 

(14) (a) I promise to take you to the zoo soon. 

(b) I swear that I never saw her before. 

(c) I say to you, ladies and gentlemen, that our leaders are incompetent. 

Along each of the three parameters, the first category in Figure 13 represents 

the immediacy of OS to G: temporal coincidence (as opposed to full or 

partial disjunction) ; reality (as opposed to potentiality) ; and auto-referentiality 

(as opposed to objectivity). Auto-referentiality clearly represents the 

strongest possible version of immediacy, namely full identity, since it also implies 

reality and temporal coincidence — the speech event is always taken as 

real, and temporal coincidence is necessary because the speech event is the 

same as the objective event. The time and reality parameters are partially independent. 

If something is real, it may or may not show temporal coincidence 

with G (present vs. past). If something is potential, the same is generally true, 

but here the choice is between present and future; She may like him can describe 

the potentiality of either a present or a future situation. It is important 

to note that the epistemic elements, DIST and modals, do not affect the temporal 

profile of the objective situation (as aspectual predicates do), but simply 

locate this profile in relation to that of the speech event. DIST leaves the time 

span of the objective situation unaffected while divorcing it from that of the 

speech event. Modals are transparent to the objective temporal profile while 

situating it in the domain of potentiality; thus She may jump, with a perfective 

predicate, still produces aspectual conflict if it is taken as describing the potentiality 

of a present situation. 

Our problem now is to explain this deviance that results when perfectives 

are used in the zero form with a simple present interpretation intended (*He 

swims). But perfectives are not always excluded with a present interpretation 

— they are permitted in cases of auto-referentiality. The sentences in (14) are 

all well formed despite the fact that the main verb is in each case perfective. 

This suggests the following natural hypothesis: a true "present" interpretation 

requires full temporal coincidence of G and OS. This is normally precluded 

with perfectives, because exact synchronization of G and OS usually cannot 

be presumed. It can however be presumed in cases of auto-referentiality, because 

there G and OS are identical. Let us now see how this hypothesis works 

and how far it takes us.


The temporal profile of G, the speech event, is positive, bounded, and 

variable (depending on how long it takes to utter the sentence). The hypothesis 

immediately predicts the deviance of a bare Stative in the present (*He 

talls, *He besides her), for a stative has no temporal extension and cannot coincide 

with the positive duration of G. It predicts the occurrence of a bare perfective 

in cases of auto-referentiality, as we have seen. It remains to see how 

the hypothesis handles imperfectives and perfectives used objectively. 

Apart from auto-referentiality, true presents are always imperfective. 

Various sorts of examples are given in (15). 

(15) (a) Jack resembles his mother. 

(b) Jack is tall. 

(c) Jack is swimming. 

(d) Jack walks to school (every day). 

The verb in (15)(a) is inherently imperfective. In (b) and (c) the imperfectivity 

is due to aspectual predicates, deriving an imperfective from a stative base in 

(b) and a perfective one in (c). In (d) the imperfectivity results from a habitual 

construal of the perfective WALK; (d) describes an unbounded sequence of 

episodes of walking, and while each episode is bounded and perfective, the 

overall sequence is imperfective. 

Imperfectives might appear to pose a problem for the hypothesis, for an 

imperfective process, viewed as unbounded, does not precisely coincide with 

G; rather there is a kind of overlap, with the time of the speech event included 

in the time of the objective situation but not exhaustive of it. This is not a true 

problem, but it does force us to sharpen our interpretation of the hypothesis. 

Recall that imperfective processes are akin to mass nouns. The configuration 

described by an imperfective expression is fully instantiated at every point in 

its duration, and the process is internally homogeneous, any sub-portion being 

equivalent to any other. Just as any quantity of a true mass noun (e.g. 

BLOOD) is taken as a valid instantiation of the category, so any stretch of an 

imperfective process is taken as a valid instance of it. For this reason an imperfective 

process can always be regarded as synchronous with the time of speaking 

so long as its actual duration includes this time span. Whatever the duration 

of the speech event, full instantiation of the trajectory and synchrony of 

this instantiation with the speech event are assured. 

In the case of perfectives, however, full instantiation is achieved only as 

the subject completes the full trajectory with the passage of time, and there is 

no automatic assurance that the speech trajectory will dovetail temporally 

with the objective trajectory, apart from auto-referential speech where this is


true by definition. There are probably several factors involved in the general 

lack of synchrony. For one thing, objective events are usually not controlled 

by speech and have temporal requirements not dictated by the length of utterances; 

by the same token, the rate of speech falls within a certain range, which 

means that it is not easily adjustable to accommodate the temporal variety of 

external events. There is also the question of how useful speech synchronized 

with objective events would be, since in most cases something apparent to the 

speaker as he talks would also be apparent to the hearer. In addition there is a 

built-in epistemic problem. Synchrony requires the speaker to begin his utterance 

as soon as the objective event begins, and terminate it as the event terminates, 

but in the case of perfective trajectories full instantiation of the category 

is achieved only as the event terminates — the speaker must therefore begin 

to report on the perfective trajectory before it has been fully instantiated, and 

once it is fully instantiated the report has already been finished. 

None of these problems is insurmountable, given the conceptual plasticity 

of speakers, but collectively they may help to explain why bare perfectives 

with a simple present interpretation are at best highly atypical. But this may 

be stating things wrongly. Bare perfectives in the present are in fact very common, 

even leaving performatives aside — we use them whenever circumstances 

permit the problems just cited to be overcome. 

One type of situation where circumstances permit is the play-by-play account 

, for example in the broadcast of a baseball game. Here the very purpose 

of the speech is to report on what happens approximately as it happens, and 

either the hearer would not know of the events otherwise (with a radio broadcast, 

say), or the speaker is presumed able to give a fuller or more accurate account. 

The problems of synchrony are alleviated in several ways. First, the 

events are normally quite stereotyped, so the speaker can feel confident in beginning 

his report of a perfective event before it is fully instantiated. 19 Second, 

part of a broadcaster's skill is being able to shadow events verbally quite closely, 

coding the action linguistically more quickly and efficiently than an average 

speaker might be able to. Finally, expectations are relaxed. Though the 

broadcaster reports things as if they were unfolding concurrent with the flow 

of speech, he does not actually expect full congruence between the two sets of 

events, nor does the listener. A certain brief time lag is allowed as part of a 

conventional fiction that permits the communicative process to succeed. 

This type of "conventional fiction" is much more pronounced in other 

types of speech that use bare perfectives, such as the historical present or the 

future present, illustrated in (16)(a) and (b) respectively.


(16) (a) This man comes up to me and introduces himself. We chat for a 

whole hour. Then he reveals that he is an escaped convict. 

(b) My mother arrives tomorrow at noon. 

I will hardly be the first when I suggest that the speaker makes his portrayal of 

the objective situation more "vivid" in these modes of speech by presenting it 

as if it were unfolding concurrently with the time of speaking, by making OS 

immediate to G, as sketched in Figure 14. 

Figure 14 

These modes of speech displace the actual objective situation in time, viewing 

a past or future event as if it were temporally immediate to G and coding it accordingly. 

The speaker either reviews the objective event or previews it, but in 

either case he verbally takes the hearer through it as if it were immediate. It is 

a kind of metaphor, with OS' corresponding to the literal value of an expression 

and OS the figurative value, and I expect to be able to handle it in space 

grammar by the same device adopted to handle metaphors at the level of lexicon. 

Be that as it may, the conventional fiction frees the speaker from the necessity 

to bring about the actual coincidence of two events. He does not have 

to synchronize his speech with the actual occurrence of an objective event, but 

only with his review or preview of it, and in (p)review the process can be as 

long or short as required to describe it, expanded or contracted at will (note 

We chat for a whole hour). The epistemic problem is solved, for the speaker is 

not dependent on the immediate occurrence of the objective event for his 

knowledge or conception of it (he knows OS' is a convenient fiction, standing 

for OS), and OS may in fact be new information for the hearer even though it 

is reported as if the speaker were presently observing it. 

The hypothesis that a present interpretation requires full temporal coincidence 

of G and OS therefore fits the facts quite well, if certain other moves 

are considered legitimate. Statives are precluded because they lack temporal 

extension, while imperfectives are always allowed because their mass-like 

character, with full instantiation of their constant configuration at every 

point, always permits them to coincide temporally with G when there is any 

overlap at all. Perfectives present problems of synchronization, whether OS is


located in reality or potentiality. In the latter case (with a modal), a perfective 

is given a future rather than a present construal. In cases of reality, the problem 

of synchronization is solved automatically with auto-referential sentences 

due to the identity of G and OS. When OS is objective, the problem can be 

side-stepped by the conventional fiction of special modes of speech, in which a 

metaphorical component enters or standards of synchronization are relaxed 

to permit communication that closely shadows events. Only when all the escape 

routes are sealed (modality, auto-referentiality, imperfective construal, 

conventional fiction) does an actual conflict in synchronization arise and 

cause deviance under an intended interpretation. This is why it is such an 

oversimplification to speak of sentences like *He jumps as being deviant. 

If this is accepted as a plausible account of the "deviance" of such sentences, 

we can proceed now to consider some of the other ways in which perfectives, 

imperfectives, and statives differ in their behavior. One way, observed 

previously in (9), is that the past tense (or distal) form implies completion of a 

process with perfectives, but not with imperfectives or statives: 

(17) (a) He swam (*and he still does). [a single episode of swimming] 

(b) He resembled Harry (and he still does). 

(c) He was tall (and he still is). 

(d) *He tailed. 

Examples (c) and (d) show that our statement of the problem has to be refined 

somewhat — simple statives do not occur in the past tense, but only statives 

imperfectivized with BE. Our actual problem, then, is to explain why perfectives 

imply completion in the distal form but imperfectives do not, and the deviance 

of (d) is a subsidiary problem. 

The key to understanding the difference is the notion of full instantiation, 

which we have just seen to be relevant in the problem of perfectives in the 

present. Full instantiation (traversal by the trajector subject) of the perfective 

trajectory requires the passage of time and defines the end-point or completion 

of the perfective process. To the extent that we can talk of a non-zero trajectory 

for imperfectives, on the other hand, we are referring to the configuration, 

definable with respect to a single point in time, that is perpetuated 

through time as the imperfective process. Any point in an imperfective process 

therefore suffices for full instantiation of its trajectory, while every point 

of a perfective process is required. If we now interpret the distal predication to 

mean that full instantiation of the trajectory is to be found in disjunction from 

the speech event, as in the last diagram of Figure 13(a), the facts fall out immediately. 

Full instantiation of a perfective trajectory implies the completion of


the process, so full instantiation prior to the speech event implies its completion 

before the time of speaking. But full instantiation of an imperfective trajectory 

is achieved at any point during its indefinite temporal extension, so the 

existence of full instantiation dissociated from G does not imply cessation of 

the process at that point; it is conceivable that the defining configuration is 

maintained even through the speech event. 

Now we must take up the deviance of (17)(d). Previously I explained the 

deviance of a stative in the present (*He talls) as resulting from the impossibility 

of synchronizing an objective state (having zero temporal profile) with the 

perfective speech event; while I still regard this explanation as correct, we see 

from (17)(d) that some more general phenomenon is probably involved. This 

phenomenon is of considerable importance for English grammar and goes 

right to the heart of the nature and functional organization of finite clauses. It 

can be stated roughly as follows: within a finite clause, there must be exactly one 

positive temporal profile; this is provided by the verbal lexical head as modified 

by the aspectual predicates of the auxiliary. Full discussion of this claim is not 

possible here, but we can see how it accounts for various grammatical phenomena 

related to auxiliary elements. 20 

What the claim is intended to mean, more precisely, is that the verbal lexical 

head — in conjunction with the aspectual stratum of the auxiliary — is required 

to furnish the finite clause with a positive temporal extension, while no 

other elements may do so. The aspectually qualified verbal head therefore 

cannot be stative, but all other elements in the clause must be stative, for statives 

are the only aspectual category to lack temporal extension. The "other 

elements" to consider include such things as nouns and noun modifiers, adverbial 

expressions (including prepositional phrases), and the particle in verbparticle 

constructions, and I would argue that all are stative. 21 In (18), for example, 

the aspectually qualified verbal head is the imperfective BE(ING- 

(PUSH)), and this particular predicational group has special status in two 

ways: it is the only verbal group taking an epistemic predicate, and it is the only 

sequence of predicates with non-stative overall value. The single positive 

temporal profile within a finite clause is always the one selected by epistemic 

predications (modals and DIST, or zero in cases of immediacy); it is the one 

for which epistemic status (relative to G) is directly specified. My conception 

of the propositional structure (18) is outlined in Figure 15. 

(18) A tall woman was slowly pushing open the heavy door for the old 

man with a cane.


G 

DIST 

SLOW(LY) FOR THE OLD WITH A 

MAN 

CANE 

WOMAN 

DOOR 

HEAVY 

Figure 15 

If it is true for English that a finite clause must contain exactly one non-zero 

temporal profile, provided by the verbal lexical head, the behavior of statives 

can immediately be explained. 

(19) (a) *He tails/tailed. 

(b) He is/was tall. 

(c) A tall man entered. 

(d) * A be/is/was tall man entered. 

When a stative functions as lexical head, it must be imperfectivized by BE to 

satisfy the constraint. When it functions as a noun modifier, it must be stative, 

so BE is neither necessary nor possible. 

The constraint allows us to explain other things as well. One of them is the 

distribution of ING, as illustrated in (20). 

(20) (a) Jan is falling down the stairs. 

(b) *Jan is resembling Sally. 

(c) *Jan is tailing. 

(d) The girl falling down the stairs wasn't very careful. 

(e) The girl resembling Sally went to school with my mother. 

(f) *The girl tailing likes to play basketball.


The progressive BE-f ING construction was considered previously; ING was 

attributed stativizing value, and the state so derived was said to be imperfectivized 

(given temporal extension) by BE. The progressive serves a positive 

function with perfectives, as in (a), among other things permitting temporal 

coincidence with G. The progressive is not used with imperfectives because it 

would be superfluous given its imperfectivizing function, hence the exclusion 

of (b). With statives, as in (c), the stativizing ING predication is superfluous, 

and a stative predicate can be imperfectivized in the role of verbal head by BE 

alone (Jan is tall). 

In (d)-(f) we see what appears to be a discrepancy between the progressive 

use of ING and its use in deriving noun modifiers, for in the case of noun 

modifiers ING can go on either perfectives or imperfectives, though not on 

statives. This has often been taken as distributional evidence against equating 

the two kinds of -ing and considering them to be the same morpheme. It 

should be apparent, though, that this distribution is automatic given the concepts 

presented here and is fully consistent with the claim that the same ING 

functions in both constructions with the same semantic value. The progressive 

construction involves verbal heads, which must normally be imperfective, 

with the distribution in (a)-(c) explained as above; a noun modifier, by contrast, 

must be stative rather than imperfective, and this alters the outcome in 

predictable fashion. Example (f) is ruled out because TALL is inherently stative, 

hence the stativizing ING would be superfluous. It is not superfluous 

with either perfectives or imperfectives, however, hence the acceptability of 

both (d) and (e). I think this example illustrates very nicely the danger of relying 

too heavily on distributional evidence without a full appreciation of all the 

interacting factors that may be involved. 

The constraint also allows us to come to grips with the differential behavior 

of BE and DO. I argued in Langacker 1975 and 1978 that BE predicates the 

existence of a state, and (the auxiliary) DO the existence of a process. I posited 

one or the other of these existential predicates for the propositional structure 

of every sentence (perhaps with marginal exceptions), suggesting that 

DO could be omitted unless required for grammatical or emphatic purposes; 

since there is only a two-way contrast, one member can be left implicit without 

loss of information. 

I still support the essentials of this conception, but now we are in a position 

to refine it and account for the differential behavior of BE and DO in a 

less ad hoc way. The basis for this difference is the constraint that the verbal 

head have positive temporal extension. If the lexical head is stative, BE is obli-


gatory, for otherwise this constraint cannot be met; BE specifies the temporal 

extension of a state (i.e. its existence through time), stretching it out into an 

imperfective process. With a process predicate as lexical head, on the other 

hand, DO is not really necessary; a process has intrinsic temporal extension 

(existence through time). I would still maintain that DO is meaningful and 

predicates the existence of a process, but this predication adds nothing not already 

implicit in the choice of a processual predicate as lexical head, and it can 

therefore be dispensed with (omitted from propositional structure altogether) 

unless grammatical factors require an auxiliary verb not otherwise provided 

or unless the speaker has reason to place special emphasis on the existence or 

reality of the process: 

(21) (a) A: Jan isn't tall. B: Yes, she IS tall. 

(b) A: Jan didn't fall. B: Yes, she DID fall. 

Our final topic will be subject-verb agreement in English, which shows a 

number of apparent peculiarities. The first of these is that agreement is restricted 

to "present tense" forms. 22 Second, there is variation as to which verb 

agrees; if there is an auxiliary sequence, the first auxiliary verb in the sequence 

is the one chosen, and the main verb agrees only if no auxiliary verb is present. 

Finally, the agreement of modals is not reflected by any change in form. 

Ways of accounting for subject-verb agreement vary, but several recurrent 

facets of the analyses proposed in recent linguistic tradition can be noted. 

For one thing, it is generally assumed that agreement is registered on modals 

(though there is no surface evidence to this effect) to permit a general statement 

of the agreement rule; presumably it is not manifested because modals 

are morphologically defective. For another, agreement is generally taken as a 

mechanical syntactic process, having no semantic basis, though it does function 

as a means (largely superfluous in English) of keeping straight the grammatical 

roles of nominais. 23 The assumption that a verb mechanically agrees 

with the subject has led to two alternate ways of accounting for the fact that 

auxiliaries usurp the position of the main verb in this regard whenever they are 

present. On one account, agreement is simply registered on the first verb in 

the linear sequence within the verb group. On the other account, subject raising 

applies successively at each level in the auxiliary, resulting in a derived 

subject relation between the raised nominal and the highest auxiliary verb; 

subject-verb agreement then applies within derived subject-verb pairs, regardless 

of any considerations of linear order. 

I would like to suggest an alternative conception that rationalizes the apparent 

peculiarities noted above, treats agreement as a phenomenon with


semantic significance, and avoids the need for subject raising in getting the 

proper verb to agree. To find such an account of agreement, we must direct 

our attention away from tree-like "propositional representations" such as Figures 

8 and 15, which depict separately the elements involved in linguistic coding 

and make it appear that the subject and agreeing verb (e.g. WOMAN and 

BE in Figure 15) are distant. Instead we must concentrate on "conceptual representations" 

like Figures 10 and 12, which attempt to sketch, however 

crudely, the conceptual content conveyed by propositional linguistic coding. 

Conceptual representations permit the formulation of a unifying conception 

of subject-verb agreement in English: agreement is a matter of speaker 

perspective on the objective situation; it tracks the clause trajector (subject) 

through that portion of its overall trajectory that is brought into focus as the temporal 

profile of the clause when this profile is immediate to G. Agreement, in 

other words, unites a subject and verb only in cases where the scene portrayed 

is immediate to the speaker along the parameters of time and reality, as seen 

in Figure 16. Moreover, the elements selected to participate in the agreement 

are those determining the figure in the figure-ground organization of this 

scene. 

The relevance of the notion figure (trajector) can be illustrated by Figure 

17. If only the lexical head is present, in a sentence of the form X falls (in a 

play-by-play description, for instance), agreement is between the subject and 

the head, for these are the relevant figure elements, the ones in boldface in 

17(a). X is the trajector, and the entire trajectory of FALL is immediate to G 

and constitutes the temporal profile of the clause. Figure 17(b) shows the profile-modifying 

effect of the progressive construction (cf. Figure 12). The trajector 

is still the subject X, but in contrast to the former situation only that 

portion of the overall trajectory specified by BE constitutes the temporal profile 

of the clause, and only this portion is immediate to G. It is consequently 

BE that agrees with X rather than FALL (X is f ailing).


Observe that no special rules (such as subject raisning) need be invoked 

to make this analysis work. The crucial notions are trajector, trajectory, and 

temporal profile, notions which are fundamental to my overall conception of 

aspect and were invoked for reasons completely independent of subject-verb 

agreement. 

It remains to show in detail how this account explains in some measure 

the various apparent idiosyncrasies of English verb agreement. Agreement is 

restricted to "present tense" forms due to its function of bracketing the elements 

that determine the figure in the figure-ground organization imposed by 

speaker perspective on the objective event; it is reasonable to suppose that 

when the objective situation is not immediate to speaker viewpoint, because 

of either a distal or modal predication (Figure 16), the salience of figureground 

relationships is somehow diminished. 24 It follows from the hypothesis 

presented that verb agreement is always manifested on the highest aspectual 

predicate when such a predicate is present, for it is the highest aspectual predicate 

(BE, DO, or HAVE) that determines the overall temporal profile of the 

clause. When no aspectual predicate is present, the main verb alone determines 

this temporal profile, so it is the one that agrees. Modals do not reflect 

any change in form when they agree, because modals simply do not agree with


the subject in English. 25 Modals are transparent to the temporal profile, as 

noted earlier, so they do not participate in this marking to single out profile 

elements. The occurrence of a modal does however block other predicates 

from agreeing, as does the distal morpheme, because it removes the objective 

situation from immediacy to speaker viewpoint. 

Though lengthy, this paper has been selective in coverage and necessarily 

succinct. It introduces numerous concepts that the reader may find difficult to 

assimilate or be reluctant to accept without much more extended discussion, 

and it gives little idea of the overall framework into which these concepts all fit 

and in which this conception of aspectual phenomena can conveniently be expressed. 

I have mostly restricted my attention to simple sentences, without 

discussing how the analysis can be extended to complementation or to finite 

clauses other than the main clause in a sentence. Moreover I have given little 

indication of how much of this description is specific to English and how much 

potentially universal. Despite all these limitations and others, I hope to have 

brought out certain fundamental properties of the English aspectual system 

and to have shown that it is much more coherent and rational than it is sometimes 

given credit for being. In more general terms, I hope to have supported 

more firmly than before the notion of form-meaning congruence. It is useful, 

at least as a heuristic device, to assume that overt elements of form correspond 

to the semantic units needed to account for the meaning of an expression, that 

their arrangement reflects their semantic grouping, and that elements identical 

in form may very well prove identical in meaning when allowances are 

made for all the other factors that intervene. The degree of form-meaning 

congruence, and the status of my broad (and vague) claim that grammatical 

structure is best regarded as conventionalized semantic structure, are matters 

that must await much more extensive analysis and argumentation. 

FOOTNOTES 

1 ) There are various indications of this difference in status of the two trajectories. On a gross intuitive 

level, while X CARRY Y certainly implies that both X and Y move, there is no doubt that 

the verb is primarily about an activity of X, with the motion of Y only corollary. More tangible is the 

behavior of verbs, like PUSH, that allow prepositional complements in lieu of direct objects: He 

pushed on the door. In this prepositional-complement construction the motion of the subject is preserved, 

while that of the object is suspended, suggesting the primacy of the former. Another piece 

of evidence is this: to the extent that the trajectories of the subject and object can be dissociated in 

time, aspectual predications affect the temporal profile of the subject's trajectory instead of the object's. 

Suppose somebody heaves a stack of dishes over a balcony, with the natural result that they


smash when they hit the ground below, and consider the sentence He is breaking the dishes with respect 

to this context. This sentence can be uttered appropriately while the subject is in the midst of 

his trajectory, casting the dishes outward over the balcony, even before any dish hits the ground and 

breaks. Once the subject's trajectory has been completed, however, the sentence is no longer felicitous. 

If the subject is standing motionless above while the dishes hit the ground below one by one 

and break, it is inappropriate to say He is breaking the dishes. 

This work was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, which is gratefully acknowledged. 

2) There is a natural relation between the one-pulse episode and the external trajectory (i.e. 

path) referred to above, since a canonical episode involves covering the path between two points. 

The canonical episode idea is perhaps clearer with respect to predicates like SLEEP and WEAR 

(A SWEATER). These have reasonably clear (though imprecise) canonical durations, and we can 

also recognize distinct phases within a typical episode (falling asleep, donning a sweater). The notion 

of a canonical episode helps explain why these are typically used as perfective predicates in 

English even though they might at first blush appear to describe a situation constant through time 

(hence imperfective). Precisely how processes like these are to be viewed is a matter of linguistic 

convention — either a perfective or an imperfective construal is plausible, and we can expect more 

fluctuation than with a prototypical action verb like JUMP or HIT. 

3) The temporal limits are flexible, for the trajectory may generally be stretched out over longer 

or shorter periods of time. 

4) There is of course no rigid division between perfective and imperfective processes, and many 

predicates can be used in either way. This is discussed more fully below. 

5) I ignore here the possible decomposition of INTELLIGENT, which certainly has a unit sense 

even if it maintains some vestige of synchronic analyzability. The reader should note that my use of 

the term "predicate" is idiosyncratic: I define it as the semantic representation of a morpheme (see 

Langacker 1979 for some elaboration of this). 

6) Hopper and Thompson 1980 make a similar point about transitivity. 

7) Note that this claim pertains only to the aspectual classification at hand; I am making no 

sweeping claim to the effect that semantically arbitrary classes of grammatical significance never 

arise. I also realize that terms like "fundamentally syntactic" and "basically semantic" have little 

content in isolation and will need to be considerably sharpened in the context of an articulated theoretical 

perspective before the issue alluded to becomes an empirical one. These comments are only 

meant to elaborate somewhat on the general direction of my thinking. 

8) Because I will be emphasing the aspectual rather than the existential side of BE, I will group 

this with other aspectual predicates to form an aspectual stratum, instead of positing a seperate existential 

stratum. This is not a substantive change, for the strata are introduced mainly for expository 

purposes (though the epistemic stratum has some significance and is unchanged here). The other 

adjustment concerns the treatment of DO, considered below. What I call "ground" (G) here and in 

Langacker 1978 was labeled S (for "speaker" or "speech situation") in Langacker 1979 to avoid 

confusion with the term "ground" as it pertains to the figure-ground relation. 

9) More generally, time and reality are relativistic in that we can either view reality as unfolding 

through time or define time in terms of the flow of reality. 

The aspectual predicate HAVE will be mentioned only in passing here. For all relevant purposes 

it is equivalent to BE, predicating the existence of a state, though it has additional semantic nuances 

that make it more complex.


10) Grammatical morphemes, like lexical morphemes, are often extended to a variety of related 

uses, with the result that numerous versions of them exist with divergent though overlapping 

senses. In the case of the perfect participle, I will confine my attention to the stativizing version, 

leaving aside the processual version used in canonical English passives. BE, similarly, has certain 

uses not considered here, including its passive use (Frajzyngier 1978 is certainly correct that Langacker 

and Munro 1975 erred in calling the passive BE stative for English) and its use in such expressions 

as be a nuisance, be careful, be naughty, etc. The nominalizing use of ING will be left aside 

(though Langacker 1979 offers some preliminary comments on its relation to the versions considered 

here), as will its role in complementation. 

11 ) This example, somewhat marginal in English, is chosen mostly for its diagrammatic simplicity 

given the notations adopted here. It is harder to draw concise pictures for common examples like 

broken, burned, melted, etc. 

12) Thus the sentence The solar system is surrounded by the vastness of outer space does not commit 

one to the position that there was a time when this was not true, despite the presence of the perfect 

participle. With a perfective predicate PERF does imply transition from non-instantiation to 

instantiation (this is the same as completion). 

We will not be concerned with the change in grammatical relations accompanying PERF in 

(11)(b) and (e). It might however be noted for future reference that each of the perfect expressions 

in (11) is accompanied by the imperfectivizing BE or HAVE. 

13) The importance of the notion of an arbitrarily selected point is brought out by the effect of 

ING on achievement verbs, where one particular point is singled out as pivotal by the very nature of 

the predicate ; this pivotal point is excluded from consideration as the one singled out by ING. In He 

is winning the race, for instance, win the race is a perfective process involving a long preliminary 

phase and a single critical point at the end, and the sentence necessarily describes a span of time of 

indefinite duration (due to BE) that derives from an arbitrary point within the preliminary phase— 

it cannot describe the perpetuation through time of the pivotal point where victory is actually 

achieved. This does not result from any general prohibition against states being extended through 

time (cf. He has won the race). 

14) As an alternative to the schema in 11(b), it might be suggested that a higher-order, singlepulse 

perfective trajectory is first formed, consisting of indefinitely many lower-order occurrences 

of the perfective event (cf. Figure 4) ; the schema in 11(a) then applies to this higher-order trajectory. 

Under this alternative, They are examining us often differs from They examine us often by the 

presence of this higher-order perfective trajectory, lending the first expression a sense of overall 

bounding lacking in the second. 

15) Recall that I have outlined only part of the system here, excluding the passive versions of BE 

and PERF and touching on HAVE only indirectly. 

16) Analyzing G as a point does not generalize well to an account of the relation between main 

and subordinate clauses in complementation, though this is beyond the scope of the present paper. 

It also leads to what seems an excessively complex description of the play-by-play account mode of 

speech, requiring two layers of conventional linguistic fiction: first, the actually non-punctual time 

of speaking is conventionally regarded as a single point; and second, in play-by-play accounts this 

point is regarded as being stretched out and put in synchrony with the action being described. Dispensing 

altogether with the conception of G as a point permits a simpler, more direct characterization. 

17) The two situations may overlap, e.g. by sharing participants (I don't like you), but in such


cases we can still distinguish them. This overlap merely means that the speaker and hearer can participate 

in other relations besides the communicative one, and that they have a sufficiently objective 

conception of themselves to permit self-reference parallel to references to external objects and 

individuals. 

18) Although it is convenient for expository purposes to include G in diagrams of propositional 

structure, this should not be read as implying a performative clause analysis. Unlike the other nodes 

in these tree structures, G is not regarded as a predicate or a propositional configuration — no linguistically 

coded structure is deleted or omitted. Instead this symbol is mnemonic for the fact that 

the speech situation provides a point of reference for calculating the status in time and reality of the 

objective situation. Properly speaking, then, G does not belong to propositional structure, reflecting 

the linguistic coding of a conceived situation, but rather is part of a broader conceived situation 

that includes the circumstances of the speech event and the relation of the objective situation to this 

event. Normally only the objective situation is cast in propositional form and coded linguistically, 

but this is not exhaustive of the conceptual configuration giving rise to the expression. (Cf. the discussion 

of "base" and "profile" in Langacker 1979.) 

19) A broadcaster can therefore begin saying Winfield hits a ground ball to short before the ball 

gets anywhere near the shortstop. Observe that when something very atypical happens the broadcaster 

can be expected to abandon the play-by-play mode of speech. The scoreboard goes up in 

flames! would be surprising both for its content and linguistically — an announcer would more likely 

say The scoreboard has just gone up inflames! (with imperfective HAVE), not being in a position 

to anticipate the event before its full instantiation. 

20) When one finite clause is embedded to another, for instance a that-clause in relativization or 

complementation, the embedded clause has its own temporal profile, which might be taken as the 

defining feature of a finite clause; the claim is not meant to preclude this. Non-finite clauses in complementation 

(He tried to run, He saw her fall(ing)) have their own lexical head, but I would argue 

that they do not furnish the overall expression with a separate temporal profile; precisely how and 

why this is so must remain beyond the scope of the discussion, however. One possible exception to 

the claim is sentences like We should go (and) eat, where both go and eat have positive temporal extension 

not cancelled by other factors in any obvious way. If this is indeed a "double profile" construction, 

this is might help explain some of its peculiarities, for instance the requirement that the 

two heads receive parallel temporal and aspectual specifications (We went and ate, We have gone 

and eaten, * We went (and) eat, *We have gone (and) eat). Cf. Carden and Pesetsky 1977. 

21) Nouns, adjectives, and prepositional phrases all take BE when they themselves function as 

the verbal lexical head, consistent with the claim that they are stative. Adverbial expressions often 

consist of prepositional phrases, and most others are closely related to adjectives. Particles are 

closely allied to adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions, and they function in the verb-particle construction 

to specify the state resulting from the action of the verb (this resultative relation is given ad 

hocly by the dotted line in Figure 15). 

Recall from our previous discussion of statives that the actual time duration is not the crucial factor; 

with a cane is stative not because it is suggested that the man has the cane only for an instant, but 

rather because the configuration in question can be fully instantiated at a single point in time. Slowly 

is like intelligent, considered earlier; though it pertains to something that can be judged and manifested 

only over a period of time, it is construed linguistically as an abstract locative and is therefore 

stative. 

22) The sole exception is BE, which also agrees in the past tense. I have no explanation for this 

exception and will ignore it in the discussion which follows, which paraphrases the analysis offered 

in Langacker 1979.


23) Morgan 1972 is one paper that challenges the conception of verb agreement as a simple, mechanical 

process. This paper centers on the problem of determining which nominal a verb agrees 

with, a problem I ignore here in favor of trying to determine why the nominal agrees with the verb it 

does. I think the notion "figure" will prove equally relevant for both questions. 

24) This of course is far from being an "explanation" for the restriction in any strong sense of the 

term; at best it hints at why a language might evolve the way English has, why immediacy in time 

and reality might favor the retention of agreement over cases of non-immediacy, but at worst it 

simply restates the facts (agreement only in the "present" without modals) and fares no better or 

worse than the traditional account. 

While it is clear that agreement with the subject is what is involved in form contrasts like am/are/ 

is and run/runs, and that there is no reason to posit a present tense morpheme, the restriction of this 

agreement to cases of immediacy makes it a de facto marker of immediacy when the form is not 

identical to the bare verb stem. A comparable situation is found in Cupeño (Uto-Aztecan), where 

subject marking occurs only in past tense forms (for historical reasons) and thus helps to identify 

these forms as past tense (see Hill 1969, Jacobs 1975). 

25) This is similar to the argument in Langacker 1978 that the modal must does not change in the 

distal form because must has no distal form at all ; its semantic value is such that the distal predication 

would conflict with its raison d'être, even though logically one could compute a meaning for such a 

structure. None of my "explanations" here is of the character that universal semantic considerations 

make it impossible for a language to be organized any other way, or that the facts are fully predictable 

in logical terms and hence escape all need for explicit statement in the grammar of English. 

A much lower level of explanation is attempted, to the effect that the array of conventional semantic 

structures we call "grammar" is much more coherent and functionally rational than might appear 

to be the case on the basis of cursory examination. I take this to be a worthy and realistic level 

of explanation to seek for natural language. 

REFERENCES 

Carden, Guy, and David Pesetsky. 1977. 'Double-Verb Constructions, 

Markedness, and a Fake Co-ordination'. CLS 13.82-92. 

Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 1978. 'An Analysis of BE-Passives'. Lingua 46.133- 

156. 

Hill, Jane H. 1969. 'Volitional and Non-Volitional Verbs in Cupeño'. LS 

5.348-356. 

Hopper, Paul J., and Sandra A. Thompson. 1980. 'Transitivity in Grammar 

and Discourse'. Language 56.251-299. 

Jacobs, Roderick A. 1975. Syntactic Change: A Cupan (Uto-Aztecan) Case 

Study. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. UCPL 

79. 

Langacker, Ronald W. 1975. 'Functional Stratigraphy', in Robin Grossman et 

al. (eds.), Papers from the Parasession on Functionalism, p.351-397. Chicago: 

Chicago Linguistic Society.


. 1978. 'The Form and Meaning of the English Auxiliary'. Language 

54.853-882. 

. 1979. 'Grammar as Image'. Linguistic Notes from La Jolla 6.88-126. 

Langacker, Ronald W., and Pamela Munro. 1975. 'Passives and their Meaning'. 

Language 51.789-830. 

Morgan, J.L. 1972. 'Verb Agreement as a Rule of English'. CLS 8.278-286. 

Talmy, Leonard. 1978. 'Figure and Ground in Complex Sentences', in Joseph 

Greenberg, Charles Ferguson, and Edith Moravcsik (eds.), Universals of 

Human Language, vol. 4, Syntax, p.625-649. Stanford, California: Stanford 

University Press.

INVARIANCE AND THE SYNTAX OF RUSSIAN ASPECT 

ALAN TIMBERLAKE 

University of California, Los Angeles 

1. Introduction. Verbs in Russian belong to one of two aspect categories, 

the perfective or the imperf ective. Although there is some variation in their 

morphological expression, these categories can be described as morphologically 

encoded aspect. They are used to express a number of partially distinct 

semantic features such as durativity, iterativity, progressivity, completion, 

and the like. Each use of a particular aspect to express one of these semantic 

features defines a contextual variant of that aspect. 

The central concern in structuralist aspectology of Russian has been the 

formulation of an invariant meaning for the two morphological categories. 

Minimally the invariant is supposed to cover all the semantic features (or contextual 

variants) that are encoded as a given morphological aspect. Beyond 

this, the status of the invariant is not entirely clear, but it seems to be assumed 

that it is in some sense the central organizing principle of aspect, and that the 

formulation of an invariant definition is the goal of description. 

This paper attempts to test the centrality of the invariant. This test of the 

structuralist analysis of Russian aspect is of general interest because the concern 

with an invariant definition surfaces in discussions of aspect in other languages 

(see, for example, Friedrich (1974) on Greek; Friedman (1977) on Macedonian; 

Li, Thompson, and Thompson (this volume) and Li and Thompson 

(1981) on Chinese; or Langacker (this volume) on English). 

2. Stalking the Wild Invariant. Following the assumption that there is a close 

correlation between form and meaning (an assumption encapsulated in the 

slogan 'one form, one meaning'), structuralist studies usually take their task 

to be the formulation of an invariant meaning that covers all the semantic features 

(or contextual variants) that are encoded as a given morphological category. 

Thus, in Forsyth's extensive study of Russian aspect (1970), the invariant 

definition of the perfective as a view of the event as a whole covers the use

306 ALANTIMBERLAKE 

of the perfective to express completed action, action with tangible results, 

positive imperative, and so on; the negative definition of the imperfective as 

no statement about the event as a whole covers the use of the imperfective to 

express incomplete action, iterated action, action in progress, negative imperatives, 

and so on. 

Structuralism assumes that elements of a linguistic subsystem (such as 

morphologically encoded aspect categories) are defined primarily or exclusively 

by their relationship to other elements of the system rather than by their 

relationship to any extra-systemic properties (such as semantic properties of 

aspect). l Consistent with this, structuralism claims that the invariant values of 

categories are central and primary, while the semantic properties these categories 

encode are peripheral and secondary. The invariant is then a primitive 

element of grammar ; it is not merely a descriptive summary of contextual variation. 

Despite the considerable emphasis on invariance in structuralist studies, 

it is not clear what consequences this view of morphological categories (and of 

aspect in particular) is intended to have. There are, however, two consequences 

it could be expected to have, at least in the strongest form of the claim. 

First, if the invariant is primary and the contextual variants secondary, 

then the mapping relationship between semantic properties and morphological 

aspect categories could be expected to be direct and automatic; one might 

expect to be able to deduce contextual variants from the invariant. This seems 

to be the claim of Forsyth (1970), although his discussion of the relationship 

between the invariant and the contextual variants is somewhat confusing. On 

the one hand, Forsyth claims (p. 11): 

The use of the perfective is dictated by the speaker's need to express the action 

concerned as a total event, the use of the imperfective by the need to 

avoid the view of the action inherent in the perfective. The system of aspectual 

usage therefore operates entirely on this principle of contrast. 

And also (p. 117): 

All the occurrences of the [perfective and imperfective] past tense can be explained 

satisfactorily only by reference to a basic structural system underlying 

all the other criteria — of presenting the action perfectively as a total 

event, or avoiding this mode of expression. 

Note in these quotes the strong quantifying expressions 'entirely' and 'only'. 

Yet Forsyth also says (p. 118): 

It seems probable that these secondary criteria [contextual variants] are so

INVARIANCE AND RUSSIAN ASPECT 307 

firmly associated with the imperfective that to some extent they act in the 

mind of the Russian speaker as criteria for the positive choice of the imperfective. 

It is therefore somewhat difficult to form a coherent picture of the relationship 

between the invariant and its contextual variants from Forsyth's study. But if 

the claim is that the aspectual system is based entirely on the invariant opposition, 

it could be taken to mean that contextual variants can be deduced from 

the invariant. In any case, to the extent that it is necessary to treat contextual 

variants autonomously, the claim about the primacy of the invariant is undermined. 

Second, this view of aspect could be expected to have consequences in 

the syntax of aspect, where this term is used in the most general sense to mean 

the syntagmatic effect of aspect on other processes of morphological encoding 

that are sensitive to aspect. If the invariant is the central organizing principle 

of grammatical categories, one could expect other encoding processes to be 

sensitive to the invariant value of morphological aspect categories (or equivalently, 

to the same range of semantic properties that are encoded as morphological 

aspect). This prediction is illustrated in (1), where impf 1 and impf 2 denote 

distinct contextual variants of the imperfective, X and other morphological 

categories that are sensitive to aspect, and the symbol → means 'cooccurs 

with'. 

(1) impf, 

{ }→ X 

impf 2 

pf → Y 

In effect, (1) states that it should be possible to state the syntagmatic effect of 

aspect as a function that is continuous over the contextual variants of the imperfective. 

This prediction about the syntagmatic effect of aspect is made reasonably 

explicit in Jakobson (1936:40), which cites the minimal pair bral den'gi '(he) 

took money', with an imperfective verb and an accusative object, vs. vzjal deneg 

'(he) took (some) money', with a suppletive perfective verb and a genitive 

object. The cooccurrence of the genitive with the perfective is motivated in 

terms of the invariant value of the perfective. 2 

Conversely, to the extent that the syntagmatic effect of aspect on other

308 ALAN TIMBERLAKE 

encoding processes has to be stated in terms of the contextual variants of aspect 

categories, the primacy of the invariant is undermined. It is conceivable, 

for example, that one variant of the imperfective could pattern with the perfective 

as opposed to another variant of the imperfective in the encoding of 

some morphological opposition, as diagrammed in (2): 

(2) impf 1 

{ } → X 

impf 2 → Y 

It is also possible that the perfective could be hierarchized in between two variants 

of the imperfective, as diagrammed in (3): 

(2) impf 1 → X 

pf → X ~ Y 

impf 2 → Y 

In both (2) and (3) the function that states the syntagmatic effect of aspect is 

not continuous over contextual variants of the imperfective. Such patterns 

should be precluded by the claim that the invariant is the primary organizing 

principle of morphological categories like aspect. 

In this paper I will argue that the invariant does not have a uniquely central 

or primary status and that, conversely, the semantic properties of aspect 

have to be granted autonomous status in grammar. 

This point can be approached from two directions. First, it can be 

argued that the mapping from semantic properties to morphological aspect is 

not automatic. This argument consists of showing that it is necessary to distinguish 

semantic features systematically in order to have an adequate description 

of the encoding of aspect in morphology. The argument has already been 

undertaken by Bondarko (1971), Haltof (1967, 1968), and Maslov (1973), 

among others; in fact, the rich description in Forsyth's study is good evidence 

in favor of this point, although his intention is the opposite. The discussion of 

semantic properties of aspect is therefore given here in programmatic form as 

a preliminary to the second argument. 

The second argument concerns the syntax of aspect, in the sense of the 

syntagmatic effect of aspect features on other processes of morphological en-


coding. This effect must be stated in terms of semantic properties rather than 

in terms of the invariant values of the perfective and imperfective; the effect is 

as in (2) or (3) above, rather than as in (1). 

Some preliminaries. The examples below were tested with up to six native 

speakers in extensive textual contexts. 3 Their responses are reported in 

terms of the gradation in (4): 

(4) acceptable, preferred/most frequent 

acceptable, not preferred/frequent 

marginal/infrequent 

unacceptable/rare 

No mark on either of two competing forms means that they are equal in acceptability. 

In Russian examples morphological forms are presented in the order 

perfective/imperfective; present/past; and nominative/instrumental. 

3. Aspect Parameters. This section presents a set of semantic parameters 

for the description of the morphological encoding of aspect in Russian and potentially 

other languages. To a large extent these parameters are modifications 

of features proposed in the general literature on aspect and in the literature 

on Russian aspect in particular, although there are differences in detail as 

well as organization; the set of parameters here is closest to Haltof (1967, 

1968) and Maslov (1973). I assume that the parameters are in principle combinatory, 

in contradistinction to the descriptive practice in Comrie (1976:25), 

where the contextual variants of the imperfective are presented disjunctively 

in a branching diagram. The quasi-mathematical terminology was chosen 

primarily as a metaphor for description, but it is also intended to suggest the 

possibility that the framework could eventually be made more formal. 

In discussing aspect in terms of parameters it becomes apparent that the 

same (or comparable) parameters characterize different levels of semantic 

structure. To take a simple example, some predicates denote events that are 

inherently cyclical or iterative ('blink', 'knock', 'jab'), others denote events 

that are not inherently iterative ('fall', 'catch sight of). In addition, however, 

events can be characterized as iterative in a given proposition, regardless of 

whether they are inherently iterative or not, as in 'she usually blinks when she 

falls down'. 

To describe such phenomena, I make two assumptions. First, the semantic 

structure of events consists of a number of nested levels: base (inherent 

semantics of the lexical base) ; verb (base plus semantic operations like incep-


tion or stativization); predicate (verb plus its major syntactic arguments, including 

subject and objects); proposition (predicate plus its position in temporal 

and modal space); and narrative (proposition plus its relationship to 

other events in a narrative text). In practice it is not necessary (or easy) to distinguish 

all these levels rigorously. It is generally sufficient to refer to two macrolevels 

of semantic structure, which may be termed the lexical (including 

base, verb, predicate) and the propositional (including proposition in the 

strict sense and narrative). 

Second, each aspect parameter can be understood as having a value potentially 

at each level of semantic structure. This amounts to saying that the 

parameters have the formal property of scope. In describing the morphological 

encoding of aspect, it is important to distinguish the scope of a given aspect 

parameter, such as the scope of iterativity at the lexical vs. propositional level 

in the example cited above. (The fact that aspect parameters have scope could 

be taken as an indication that they are semantic operators rather that static 

properties, but I will not pursue this idea here.) 

One further word is necessary about the propositional level in particular. 

A crucial property of aspect at this level is that it refers not only to an event per 

se but to some point of perspective on the temporal axis; the event is evaluated 

aspectually from this point of perspective. In the following, the point of perspective 

will be termed the aspect locus. The aspect locus may be established 

by explicit temporal adverbs ('at that time', 'yesterday', 'while a') or it may be 

only implicit in the narrative context. As the discussion below should indicate, 

without such a concept it is impossible to discuss morphologically encoded aspects 

such as the Russian perfective/imperfective or the English progressive/ 

nonprogressive. 4 

The model for aspect parameters below assumes a speaker-oriented, encoding 

view of grammar, in which a multidimensional semantic space is 

mapped into a restricted set of morphological options. An event can be represented 

as a geometric figure that is located in a larger space on axes of tense 

and mood (and possibly others). As a geometric figure, the event is represented 

minimally in terms of two dimensions, one of them the temporal axis; the 

other can be termed the activity dimension, in that it represents abstractly the 

change, of activity, of an event. 

The aspect parameters described below divide into two classes according 

to whether they characterize topological or metrical (quantitative) properties 

of the event.


3.1 Dynamicity. Events can exhibit more or less change in the activity dimension 

over time. At the lexical level, a stative is an event that has a uniform 

value on the activity dimension; typical stative predicates include those that 

express inherent properties or psychological conditions. A dynamic event, or 

process, is one that exhibits some change on the activity dimension. 

At the propositional level, an event can be evaluated as stative or dynamic 

with respect to the aspect locus for the event. 

This suggests an interpretation of the progressive (in the sense of a distinct 

morphological category) along the following lines. The progressive expresses 

minimally that the event includes the aspect locus as an interior point. 

In addition, however, a morphologically encoded progressive ordinarily cannot 

be formed from lexical statives, even though statives have temporal extension, 

and could include (or not include) an aspect locus. This suggests that the 

progressive requires change on the activity dimension. The progressive, then, 

expresses dynamicity with respect to the aspect locus at the propositional level. 

5 

3.2. Closure. A topological figure can be characterized as closed, when it 

includes its limit, or open, when it does not. This distinction can be applied to 

dynamic events at both the lexical and the propositional levels. On the lexical 

level, a given predicate may have an inherent limit (it is telic) or it may lack 

such a limit (it is atelic). On the propositional level, closure of an event is evaluated 

with respect to the aspect locus. If a telic event actually reaches its limit 

by the aspect locus (the locus may in fact be the limit), it is closed on the propositional 

level; if it does not reach its limit (for example, when the locus is an interior 

point of the event interval), then it is open. It is important to emphasize 

that the aspectually significant limit is the limit on the activity dimension rather 

than on the temporal dimension. Any event, including a stative event, that 

was going on in the past but is no longer in progress at the time of the speech 

event has a temporal limit before the speech event, and could be said to be 

closed along the temporal dimension. It is only closure on the activity dimension 

that is given distinct morphological expression in Russian. 

3.3. Aspect Encoding of Topological Parameters. The two parameters of 

stative vs. dynamic and (for dynamic events only) open vs. closed can be used 

to give a preliminary statement of aspect encoding in Russian. 

Inherent statives expressed by lexical verbs are imperfective, as in (5):


(5) Veterennikov molcal. 

'Veterennikov was silent .' 

(6) Sirokij rot pridaval ego licu dovol'noe vyrazenie. 

'His wide mouth imparted a contented expression to his 

face.' 

(7) Srednjaja skola No. 13 otkryvalas' na ulice Lenina. 

'Middle School 13 opened onto Lenin Street.' 

Many predicates have both a stative and a process sense, such as 'impart' in (6) 

and 'open' in (7). Although it is not clear how to state the relationship between 

stative and active senses of such verbs, it is clear that the imperfective must be 

used for the stative sense. If the perfective were used, it could only have an inceptive 

sense (for example, 'began to impart' in (6)). 

Lexically atelic processes (typically expressed by unprefixed verbs in 

Russian) necessarily belong to the imperfective category, such as delaf 'do' or 

citaf 'read'. 

Lexically telic verbs may be expressed in either the perfective or imperfective, 

depending on whether the limit is actually reached by the time of the 

aspect locus. In (8) below the event is no longer in progress at the aspect locus, 

but a simplex imperfective is used because the event was attempted but not 

completed. In (9) the perfective 'when' clause establishes an aspect locus for 

the telic event of the matrix clause. If this locus is internal to the matrix event, 

the imperfective is used. 

(8) Kalif bagdadskij rubil emu golovu, a on vse-taki ziv. 

'The Caliph of Bagdad (tried to) cut off his head, but he is still 

alive.' 

(9) Kogda Nasreddin podosel nemu, on raz zapisyval. 

'When Nasreddin went up to him, he was just then writing 

something down.' 

If the locus is not interior to the interval of the matrix event, the latter can be 

evaluated as closed with respect to the locus if it is closed anterior ((10)) or 

posterior ((H)) to the locus. 

(10) Kogda otgremeli poslednie vystrely, gruppa uze pokinula rajon. 

'When the last shots died down , the group had already abandoned 

the region.'


(11) Kogda tanki dostigli kanala, fasisty vzorvali most. 

'When the tanks reached the canal, the Fascists blew up the 

bridge.' 

For lexically telic events, then, the main criterion for aspect encoding is 

the relationship of the aspect locus to the event: if the locus is interior to the 

event, it cannot be closed (and hence not perfective); if the locus is exterior, it 

may be closed (and may be perfective). This relationship can ultimately be 

used to account for the well known observation that 'background' information 

at the narrative level is expressed by the imperfective, while 'foreground' 

information is expressed by the perfective (Forsyth 1970:9-10, Hopper 1979); 

in particular, events occurring in temporal sequence are typically expressed in 

the perfective (Bondarko 1971:13, Maslov 1973). 

In some cases there appears to be some latitude in evaluating the relative 

importance of process vs. closure, even when the aspect locus can be understood 

to be exterior to the event. In (12) the middle event is sequentialized between 

two or other events that are closed and expressed by the perfective; the 

imperfective, however, is required by the phrase s kazdoj sekundoj 'with each 

second', which emphasizes the process of the event as opposed to its limit. In 

(13) the semantically weaker adverb postepenno 'gradually' allows either aspect, 

depending on whether the speaker intends to emphasize the graduality 

of the process (imperfective) or its eventual result (perfective). 

(12) Minonoscy obosli vokrug transporta. Naprjazenie *naroslo/narastalo 

s kazdoj sekundoj. My sobralis' na palube. 

'The mine carriers surrounded the transport ship. Tension 

mounted with each second. We gathered on the 

deck.' 

(13) Postepenno telo opjat' priobrelo/priobretalo gibkost'. 

'Gradually his body again acquired its limberness. ' 

3.4. Durativity. The two parameters described above characterize what 

appear to be topological properties of the event: dynamicity characterizes 

one-dimensional (stative) vs. two-dimensional (dynamic) events, and closure 

characterizes open/atelic vs. closed/telic events. The remaining two parameters 

characterize quantitative, or metrical, properties of the event. 

Events can be measured for their extent along the temporal axis, that is, 

for duration. Durativity at the lexical level seems to have little effect on aspect 

encoding in Russian. When duration is explicitly specified at the propositional

314 ALANTIMBERLAKE 

level (by means of temporal adverbial phrases), the imperfective is required. 

Note that in (14) the event is embedded in a sequence of perfective events and, 

except for the specification of duration, might be presumed to be closed: 

(14) Rogov vzjal sariki i dolgo *razgljadel/razgljadyval, daze ponjuxal. 

'Rogov took the balls and looked at them for a long 

time, and he even sniffed them.' 

Durativity has traditionally been evaluated as an important feature of aspect 

both in the study of Russian and in the study of other languages. In part 

this may be simply a question of terminology; durativity seems to be used as a 

cover term for other semantic parameters, in particular for iterativity and 

progressivity (Friedrich 1974, Friedman 1977). For many events it is true that 

these features are related, so that, for instance, iterativity typically implies durativity. 

Still, there are cases where such implications do not hold, so that durativity 

must be distinguished from other parameters. 

An event can be iterative but not durative over the modal axis, when the 

notion of temporal duration is not relevant (see (21) below); such examples 

argue that iterativity is distinct from durativity. 

The attempt to reduce progressivity to durativity seems to be based on 

the assumption that an event must have some positive duration in order to include 

the aspect locus as an interior point. While this assumption makes a certain 

amount of sense, it involves a confusion between duration (extension 

along the temporal axis) with dynamicity (change along the activity dimension). 

A distinction is suggested by two considerations. First, states can have 

considerable temporal duration, but do not ordinarily form progressives; 

when they do, as in English examples like you're being silly, it is under the implication 

of a temporary rather than a durative state of affairs. Conversely, 

progressives of processes often carry the implication of imminent cessation, as 

in the progressive of an achievement verb like he was just reaching the top 

when we spotted him (see Macaulay (1971) for both observations). Second, it 

is possible to show a difference between durativity and progressivity in the encoding 

of certain 'procedural' verbs that are preferentially perfective (Forsyth 

1970:19ff.). As shown by Merrill (in preparation), procedurals can be used in 

the imperfective in a progressive sense with a least some degree of acceptability 

((15)), but not in a strictly durative sense ((16)): 

(15) f on zasmatrivalsja na devusku, ukrali ego sapku. 

'While he was getting-carried-away-looking-at the girl, his 

hat was stolen.'


(16) *On sidel na skamejke i dolgo zasmatrivalsja na devusku. 

'He sat on the bench and for a long time got-carried-away-lookingat 

the girl.' 

These considerations argue that the metrical parameter of durativity must be 

distinguished from the topological parameter of progressivity. 

3.5. Cardinality. An event can be unique or multiple, that is, composed of 

a number of discrete and equivalent subevents. The best known type of multiple 

event is one that is iterated over time, but an event can also be distributed 

over subject or object participants (that is, multiple at the predicate level) or 

multiple over possible histories of the event (that is, multiple over the modal 

axis). The distinction of unique vs. multiple can be described as the cardinality 

of the event. 

By its nature an iterative event has a complex structure, in the sense that 

it is composed of individual subevents that go together to form a collective, 

iterated macroevent. In order to determine the encoding of aspect for an iterative 

event, it is necessary to consider the scope of aspect parameters, that is, 

to evaluate the aspect parameters at the level both of the sube vent and the macroevent. 

Each level contributes to the selection of morphological aspect. 

If the individual subevents are themselves not closed (for example, if they 

are attempted but not completed), the imperfective must be used, even when 

the number of subevents is delimited (so that the macroevent is low in cardinality): 

(17) On dvazdy nam *dokazal/dokazyval obstojatel'no, cto on zertva 

slucaja. 

Twice he (tried to) prove in detail that he was the victim 

of circumstance.' 

If the subevents are closed, the macroevent can be evaluated for closure. For a 

limited number of subevents (low cardinality of the macroevent), the macroevent 

may be evaluated as either open or closed. In (18) the macroevent is open 

in that the subevents are distributed over a large temporal interval, so the imperfective 

is preferred; in (19) the macroevent is closed in that the subevents 

occur in a delimited temporal interval and form a collective unit, so that the 

perfective is preferred: 

(18) Vmeste trizdy ?prorvalis'/proryvalis' iz okruzenija letom sorok pervogo 

goda.


'Together they three times broke out


An imperfective infinitive is permissible under this governing verb only if the 

events are iterated, as in (24). In the context of this governing verb, then, the 

use of a perfective infinitive is 'unmarked', so that an imperfective infinitive 

specifically expresses iteration. 

3.6. Summary of Aspect Parameters. The parameters outlined above can be 

used to provide a reasonably explicit account of aspect encoding, or at least 

could in principle be extended to give such an account. There are in fact some 

traditionally recognized properties of aspect encoding that are not discussed 

here. These include the use of the perfective for representative subevents of 

iterative macroevents (the so-called nagljadno-primernoe znacenie 'meaning 

of ostensive example') ; the interaction of aspect with modality, and the interaction 

of aspect with presupposition (including the use of the imperfective for 

konstatacija fakta 'assertion of the fact (of an event)'); and the possible distinction 

between an aoristic variant of the perfective (when the aspect locus is 

itself the limit of the event) and a perfect variant (when the aspect locus is disjoint 

from the event). 

Returning to the parameters discussed above, one can observe that it is 

possible to formulate a general constraint on the encoding of morphological 

aspect in Russian. An event can be encoded as perfective only if it is closed at 

the propositional level (that is, with respect to the aspect locus for that event). 

The ways in which an event can fail to be closed can then be named explicitly: 

in terms of topological parameters, an event fails to be perfective if it is (i) Stative, 

(ii) an atelic process, (iii) a telic process that is attempted but not completed, 

or (iv) a telic process that is open by virtue of including the aspect locus 

as an interior point. In terms of metrical parameters, an event fails to be perfective 

if it is (i) durative or (ii) multiple (high in cardinality). 

Not surprisingly, this general formulation of aspect encoding gives essentially 

the same extensional results as an invariant characterization, such as 

Forsyth's claim that 'a perfective verb expresses the action as a total event 

summed up with reference to a single specific juncture' (1970:8). It differs 

primarily in that it gives a more explicit account of the encoding of aspect, specifically 

in the ways that an event can fail to be closed. 

In order to show that aspect parameters are a necessary part of the description 

of aspect, it is appropriate to examine the effect of aspect parameters 

on two processes of morphological encoding that are sensitive to aspectual 

considerations; these are tense selection for object complement clauses and 

case selection for predicate nominais. For each I will give background infor-


mation to establish a general principle governing the selection of morphology ; 

then I will examine the interaction of aspect with each process. 

An examination of the syntagmatic effect of aspect on other processes 

can be pursued to varying degrees of fineness. In order to argue that is necessary 

to state syntagmatic effects in terms of aspect parameters, however, it will 

be sufficient to pursue the analysis to a minimal degree of fineness. A finer examination 

would no doubt yield a more complex picture, but such complexity 

would only be further evidence that the syntagmatic effect of aspect cannot be 

described without reference to aspect parameters and contextual variants. 

In the following I will consider only two of the parameters above, and accordingly 

two contextual variant of the imperfective: first, events that are open 

with respect to the aspect locus; this may be termed the 'simultaneous' variant. 

Second, iteratives. As implied above, these two parameters are not necessarily 

mutually exclusive, so that, for example, each subevent of an iterative 

event could be in progress or not in progress with respect to multiple occurrences 

of an aspect locus. For the argument below, however, the most interesting 

subtype of iterative is that in which each subevent is closed while the macroevent 

is open; the subevents are closet perfectives, in the sense that the perfective 

would be used if the event were not iterated. The perfective will be treated 

as a unified category, despite the probable necessity of distinguishing a perfect 

from a nonperfect (aoristic) variant. 

4. Aspect and Tense Selection. The first example of the syntagmatic effect 

of aspect is the selection of tense morphology in finite embedded clauses. In 

general there are two possible strategies for assigning tense morphology in 

such clauses. These are traditionally described in terms of a choice of different 

temporal reference points: the 'relative' tense strategy chooses the matrix 

event as the reference; the 'absolute' strategy uses the speech event. 

In many of the possible syntactic constructions and possible temporal 

combinations there is little variation, and hence little of interest. The most interesting 

case is object complement clauses with a past tense matrix verb and 

an imperfective embedded verb that is simultaneous in temporal reference 

with the matrix verb; the discussion here is further limited to clauses introduced 

by the complementizer cto 'that' with matrix verbs of perception. 

Under these conditions there is a choice between relative tense (present 

morphology, given that the events are simultaneous) and absolute tense (past 

morphology, given that the matrix event is past with respect to the speech 

event and the embedded event is simultaneous with it), but relative tense is


generally preferred. The choice between the two is governed by a number of 

distinct but partially overlapping conditions (see Boeck 1957, 1958, Brecht 

1979). An important subclass of these conditions deals with what may be 

termed synchronization, the extent to which the embedded and matrix events 

line up, or synchronize, in their temporal reference, particularly on the upper 

limits of the two event intervals (see Boeck 1958:221-222). Even for situations 

where the embedded event is simultaneous with the matrix event, there 

can be differences in degree of synchronization. 

The degree of synchronization affects the extent to which the temporal 

reference of the embedded event can be defined through the matrix event 

with respect to the speech event, which in turn affects the choice in tense strategy. 

If the embedded event is not synchronized with respect to the matrix 

event (especially on the upper limit), its temporal relation to the speech event 

is obscure; under this condition relative tense is used. If, on the other hand, 

the embedded event is highly synchronized with respect to the matrix event, 

its temporal relation to the speech event can be defined indirectly by the temporal 

reference of the matrix event; an embedded event that is synchronized 

with a past matrix event is also past with respect to the speech event. Under a 

high degree of synchronization absolute tense is more possible. Before looking 

at the effect of aspect on tense selection, it will be useful to look at two cases of 

synchronization. 

One is the use of explicit temporal adverbs. In the neutral case with no adverb, 

the relative tense strategy (present morphology) is strongly preferred 

((25)). When a deictic temporal adverb (such as v ètot moment 'at that moment') 

explicitly synchronizes the embedded event with the matrix event, the 

absolute tense strategy (past morphology) is more permissible ((26)): 

(25) On ponjal, cto Petrov ne slusaet/?slusal ego. 

'He understood that Petrov was not listening to him.' 

(26) On ponjal, cto v étot moment Petrov ne slusaet/slusal ego. 

'He understood that at that moment Petrov was not listening to him.' 

(Proskurin: slusal ) 

Strictly speaking, such an adverb does not prevent the embedded event from 

continuing beyond the matrix event, but it does focus attention on the simultaneity 

of the two events, in this way synchronizing them. 

A second case of synchronization involves stativity. As discussed above, 

statives lack the change on the activity dimension that is characteristic of pro-


cesses. The means that statives are relatively harder to synchronize on the upper 

limit with a matrix event. (Another way to say this is that states can be presumed 

to continue more or less indefinitely beyond the matrix event, while 

processes can weakly be presumed to be approaching an end.) As a consequence, 

statives require relative tense ((27)), while processes allow absolute 

tense to some extent ((25-26) above) (see Boeck 1958:215). 

(27) On dumal torn, cto zizn' nikogda ne ostavljaet/*ostavljala celoveka 

bez zabot. 

'He thought about the fact that life never leaves a person 

without cares.' 

(Stadnjuk: ostavljaet ) 

These two condition are summarized in (28): 

(28) metafeature nonsynchronized synchronized 

temporal adverb neutral explicit 

dynamicity stative process 

morphology 

The two individual conditions can be characterized in terms of a more general 

condition of synchronization, such that the individual conditions are internally 

consistent in their effect on tense selection. In relative terms, nonsynchronization 

favors relative tense, synchronization favors absolute tense. 

The effect of the aspect of the matrix verb on tense selection can also be 

described in terms of synchronization. The basic effect is as follows. A matrix 

imperfective used in the simultaneous function strongly prefers relative tense 

(present morphology, under the condition of simultaneity between embedded 

and matrix events). In (29) the event 'notice' is imperfective because it 

is simultaneous with the preceding imperfective verb, which establishes a past 

aspect locus; the simultaneous embedded verb strongly prefers present tense: 

(29) Sejcas ona xlopotala u peci. Pavlik zamecal, cto pleci vzdragivajut/?vzdragivali. 

'Now she was fussing at the stove. Pavlik noticed that 

her shoulders were trembling .' 

(Stadnjuk: vzdragivajut ) 

Likewise, a matrix perfective verb strongly prefers relative tense, as in (30), 

although absolute (past) tense is attested:


(30) Dokija izdali zametila, cto tol'ko truba nad xatoj grustit/?grustila 

bez dyma. 

'Dokija noticed from afar that only the chimney above her 

house was being mournful without smoke.' 

(Stadnjuk: grustila ) 

A priori one might expect a matrix perfective to allow for greater synchronization, 

inasmuch as the perfective is necessarily closed on its upper temporal 

limit, and therefore to allow absolute tense more than a simultaneous imperfective. 

Thus far no consistent differentiation has emerged in my work with 

native speakers, but some substantive evidence is given by Boeck (1958:220). 

That evidence is based on text counts of tense selection in the context where 

the superordinate predicate is an adverbial participle, either imperfective (for 

example, zamecaja 'noticing') or perfective (for example, zametiv 'having noticed'). 

In this context a morphological imperfective is virtually always simultaneous 

in function. 6 According to Boeck, an imperfective adverbial participle 

tends to condition relative (present) tense in a further embedded verb, 

while a perfective tends to condition absolute (past) tense. In this context, 

then, perfective allows absolute tense more than the simultaneous imperfective. 

In contrast to both the simultaneous imperfective and the perfective, an 

iterative imperfective quite readily allows absolute tense (past morphology, 

under the conditions specified here): 

(31) Ona podcas porazalas', cto pri Todoske u nee otkuda-to berutsja/ 

bralis' ostrye slovca. 

'She was occasionally surprised that around Todoska sharp 

words issued from her.' 

(Stadnjuk: bralis' ) 

(32) Inogda zaxodil Sasa. On s vosxisceniem posmatrival na Natalku, i 

Serega zamecal, cto ona pri ètom f opuskaet/opuskala glaza. 

'Sometimes Sasa dropped in. He looked with rapture at Natalka, 

and Serega noticed that at this she lowered her 

eyes.' 

(Stadnjuk: opuskala ) 

Note that the same morphological imperfective is used for the simultaneous 

function in (29) and for the iterative function here in (32). 

In these iterative examples each distinct subevent of the matrix macroe-


vent is correlated with a distinct subevent of the embedded event; this implies 

that each embedded subevent comes to an end before the next matrix subevent. 

As a result, there is a high degree of synchronization between embedded 

and matrix subevents, and absolute (past) tense is fully acceptable, or 

even slightly preferred. 7 

The effect of the aspect of the matrix verb on tense selection is summarized 

in (33): 

(33) metafeature nonsynchronized synchronized 

aspect impf . pf impf. 

r 

sim 

it 

morphology prs prs prs 

?pst ?pst pst 

Interpreted in terms of synchronization, the effect of aspect on tense selection 

is consistent with the two conditions given above. 

Independent of this interpretation, however, the facts presented above 

are interesting from the point of view of invariance. In the choice between relative 

and absolute tense strategies, one variant of the imperfective (the simultaneous 

variant) patterns with the perfective as opposed to the iterative variant 

of the imperfective. The choice between tense strategies, then, is a case 

where the syntagmatic effect of aspect does not line up with the morphological 

categories of perfective and imperfective. 

5. Aspect and Case Selection for Predicate Nominais. The second process of 

morphology that is sensitive to aspect is the selection of case for nominais 

(substantives, adjectives, participles) in a predicate relation. The discussion 

below, including the basic observation about the influence of aspect on case 

(as well as a few of the examples), is based on an extensive study of these constructions 

by Nichols (1981). 

For inflected nominais there are in principle two choices of case in predicate 

position, one the case of the controlling noun phrase (nominative, accusative, 

etc.), reflecting the operation of an agreement process, and the other 

the instrumental case, reflecting the failure of agreement. The use of the instrumental 

case for predicate nominais may seem somewhat bizarre to non- 

Slavists, but it may seem less so if one keeps in mind a contrast like ona agronom 

'she is an agronomist' (with nominative) vs. ona zdes' agronomom 'she is


here (as) an agronomist' (with instrumental). 

The selection of case for predicate nominais is governed by a variety of 

hierarchical factors. Some of these appear to be general properties of rules 

involving a nominal controller and a target, and may be assumed to reflect 

controller strength (subject ≥ object; animate ≥ inanimate; subject of finite 

clause ≥ subject of nonfinite clause) or target accessibility (participle ≥ adjective 

≥ noun). These rule conditions are not relevant below. 

In addition to rule conditions, there is a class of 'propositional' conditions 

involving tense, mood, and aspect. These conditions are related by a metafeature 

of limitation. (The concept is due to Worth (1963), who terms it 'restriction'.) 

A given event may be compared to a greater or lesser extent to other 

possible events. If an event is presented without reference to any other possible 

events, it is unlimited, and the nominative (agreement) is favored. If an 

event is implicitly compared to a set of possible events, it is correspondingly limited, 

and the instrumental (nonagreement) is favored. Before considering 

limitation in aspect, it will be useful to give some examples showing the effect 

of limitation in tense and mood; these examples involve the past tense of the 

copula with predicate nouns. 

If the predicate relationship is temporally unlimited, the nominative can 

easily be used, although the instrumental is possible: 

(34) Emu pripisyvali i mudrost', i vysokoe proisxozdenie, a on sam byl 

prostoj naemnyj kosec/† prostym naemnym koscom. 

'Both wisdom and noble origin were attributed to him, but in fact he 

was an ordinary migrant reaper .' 

(Leonov: kosec ) 

(35) On byl nezaurj adnyj saman/tnezaurjadnym samanom, i ètot dar on 

unasledoval ot otCa. 

'He was an exceptional shaman , a gift he inherited 

from his father.' 

(Arsen'ev: saman ) 

If the predicate relationship is temporally limited — for example, if it held at 

some earlier point in the past but was subsequently cancelled — the instrumental 

is preferred for predicate nouns: 

(36) Do togo slomal nogu, on byl ?zokej/zokeem. 

'Until he broke his leg he had been a jockey


Similarity, limitation on the modal axis favors the instrumental. Compare 

the indicative examples in (34-35) with the counterfactual example in 

(37), in which there is an implicit comparison between the counterfactual 

world, in which the predicate relationship could conceivably hold, and the actual 

world, in which in fact it does not: 

(37) Esli by on byl ?prostoj naemnyj kosec/prostym naemnym koscom, 

emu by ne pripisyvali mudrost'. 

'If he had been an ordinary migrant reaper


(40) Zadumcivyj/?Zadumcivym i grustnyj/?grustnym vozvrascalsja on 

domoj. 

'Thoughtful and morose he returned 

home.' 

(Solov'ev: zadumcivyj , grustnyj ) 

An imperfective in the simultaneous function is relatively infrequent in texts, 

but the five examples I have collected (including (40)) all use the nominative. 

Perfective verbs allow either the nominative or the instrumental case, 

with perhaps a slight preference for the nominative: 

(41) Domoj Platon vozvratilsja pod vecer otjagoscennyj/†otjagoscennym 

trevoznymi cuvstvami. 

'Platon returned home towards evening weighed down by anxious feelings.' 

(Stadnjuk: otjagoscennyj ) 

(42) Stepan, mesjac provaljavsis' v bol'nice, vernulsja zdorovyj/zdorovym. 

'Stephan, having whiled away a month in the hospital, returned 

healthy .' 

(Stadnjuk: zdorovym ) 

In texts the nominative is used with the perfective in 77% (23/30) of the examples 

I have collected. 8 

An imperfective used in an explicitly iterative context prefers the instrumental, 

as in (43-44). In both examples the imperfective represents the unbounded 

repetition of closed subevents; note that the morphological imperfective 

is the same here as for the simultaneous imperfective above in (39-40). 

(43) Petrov (kazdyj den' on uspeval pobyvat' ne na odnom ucastke) 

vozvrascalsja iz vojsk †uspokoennyj/uspokoennym. 

'Petrov (every day he managed to spend time at more than one section) 

returned from the troops calmed down .' 

(Krylov: uspokoennym ) 

(44) Kazdy den' Kalina Ivanovic zaprjagal Malysa i otpravljalsja za produktami. 

Za nim uvjazyvalis' dva-tri kolonista. Vse èti scastlivcy 

obyknovenno vozvrascalis' iz goroda ?sytye/sytymi. 

'Every day Kalina Ivanovic hitched up Marys and set out for food. 

Two or three colonists tagged along behind him. All these lucky 

guys usually returned from the city full


The nominative is used in 56% (5/9) of the examples I have collected from 

texts, but speakers consistently prefer the instrumental. In general, texts appear 

to use the nominative more often than speakers for both the perfective 

and the iterative imperfective, but the relative difference — 77% nominative 

for perfective vs. 56% for iterative imperfective — is still clear. 

The influence of aspect on case for predicate nominais in this construction 

is summarized in (45): 

(45) metafeature unlimited limited 

aspect impf . pf impf. 

sim 

it 

morphology nom nom tnom 

?instr tinstr instr 

The influence of aspect on case selection can be described in terms of limitation, 

if this notion is extended from tense and mood to aspect. A simultaneous 

imperfective expresses an event that includes the aspect locus. From this locus 

a simultaneous imperfective event is unlimited. Consistent with the generalization 

in (38), the nominative is favored. A perfective expresses a closed 

event, and is therefore partially limited; it allows either nominative or instrumental. 

An iterative invokes a comparison of subevents when the event is in 

progress with others when it is not, so iteratives are strongly limited, and prefer 

the instrumental; this is especially clear for iteratives of closed subevents. 

Regardless of this interpretation, however, it is apparent that the imperfective 

does not behave as an invariant, unified category in its effect on case 

selection for predicate nominais. One might expect the simultaneous and iterative 

variants of the imperfective to have similar effects on case selection as 

opposed to the perfective. Instead, the perfective is hierarchized intermediate 

to these two variants of the imperfective. Thus, case selection is sensitive to 

semantic aspect parameters in a way that is not consistent with the encoding of 

these parameters as morphological aspect. 

6. Conclusion. The two processes examined above are sensitive to semantic 

aspect parameters along the hierarchy in (46): 

(46) impf sim (≥) pf ≥impf it 

For tense selection the evidence for distinguishing perfective from simultane-


ous imperfective is somewhat tentative, so (46) can be read in its minimal expansion 

as a hierarchy of two terms. For predicate nominais there is clear evidence 

for a hierarchization with three separate terms (the maximal expansion 

of (46)). 

The hierarchy in (46) shows that the imperfective does not behave as a unified, 

invariant category in its effect on these two processes. Evidently, in 

order to describe the effect of aspect on other processes of morphological encoding 

, it is crucial to refer to semantic parameters—to contextual variants— 

rather than to the invariant value of the morphologically encoded aspect categories. 

This undermines the implicit claim of structuralism that the invariant is 

the central or primary structural principle of aspect. 

For both processes the differentiation of simultaneous imperfective and 

iterative imperfective emerges most clearly for iteratives in which the individual 

subevents are closed. This, however, does not affect the force of the argument. 

A macroevent composed of multiple closed subevents is expressed as 

imperfective rather than perfective; if the syntagmatic effect of aspect were 

correlated directly with the invariant value of the morphological opposition of 

aspect, this property of iterative imperfectives should not be relevant. 

From the structuralist point of view one could object that the invariant is 

not intended to describe the syntagmatic effect of one category (here, aspect) 

on other categories (case in predicate nominais, tense in embedded clauses). 

It is intended rather to describe a paradigmatic regularity, to describe the 

sense in which all contextual variants of a given morphological category are 

unified. According to such a viewpoint, the argument here would not show 

that there is no invariant, only that the invariant cannot be used to predict the 

syntagmatic effect of aspect on other categories. 9 

True enough. If, however, the invariant is a strictly paradigmatic statement 

that cannot predict syntagmatic regularities, it is clearly restricted as a 

structural principle of grammar. To the extent that it is necessary, as argued 

here, to state the syntagmatic effect of aspect in terms of contextual variants, 

the importance of the invariant is correspondingly reduced. 

What then is the status of the invariant? This question can be approached 

by returning to the influence of aspect on tense selection and case for predicate 

nominais. This influence presumably has to be stated explicitly in a grammatical 

description in the form of mapping rules from semantic properties to 

the morphology of case and tense. In addition, it is possible to state higher level 

metafeatures that cover the hierarchies contained in rule-specific statements; 

for tense selection a possible metafeature is 'synchronization', for


predicate nominais limitation'. In any case, it is important to observe that 

such a metafeature cannot be used to predict in any detail what the actual effect 

of aspect (or any other semantic or syntactic properties) will be on a particular 

rule of morphological encoding. It is rather a statement of consistency 

on various specific conditions on the rule. 

Conceivably this interpretation should be adopted with respect to aspect. 

That is, there is a (in principle) a set of highly specific mapping rules that state 

how various combinations of semantic parameters (closure, cardinality, 

etc.) are encoded as perfective or imperfective. In addition, there is a metastatement 

of internal consistency of these subrules. For Russian aspect, a metafeature 

like 'closure of the event with respect to an aspect locus' describes the 

encoding of a certain combination of semantic parameters as perfective. The 

invariant, then, can be understood as a necessary (but probably not sufficient) 

metastatement of internal consistency among the specific rules that map aspect 

parameters into morphological aspect. 

NOTES 

1) 'Each language is regarded as a system of relations the elements of which have no validity independently 

of the relations of equivalence and contrast which hold between them' (Lyons 

1969:50). 

2) The argument is slightly more indirect. In the discussion of case Jakobson claims that the genitive 

can be used 'mit perfektiven Zeitwörtern, da ihr Aspect die absolute Grenze der Handlung 

kennzeichnet' (1936:40). Elsewhere he gives an invariant definition of the perfective: 'Exakter 

könnte man definieren, daß die Perfektiva im Gegensatze zu den Imperfektiva die absolute Grenze 

der Handlung ankündigen' (1932:6). In effect, then, the use of the genitive with perfective verbs is 

explained in terms of the invariant value of the perfective. 

3) I would like to thank Galina Briskina, Emil Draitser, Nejla Dubrovic, Nadezda Mathison, 

Viktor Piljugin, and Larisa Zabolotnaja for their help as native speakers. For the examples in Sections 

4 and 5 all speakers were consulted. The usual breakdown of responses on these examples was 

three of four speakers supporting the claimed differentiation, one or two neutral, and an occasional 

counterpreference. 

4) It seems important to make this point explicit since there is some uncertainty in the aspect literature. 

Hockett's definition (1958:237) is vague on this point ('aspects have to do, not with the location 

of an event in time, but with its temporal distribution or contour'). Lyons (1977:703-718) 

does not mention any temporal point of perspective, except for the relatively obvious case of the 

perfect. Comrie states (1976:5) that aspect and tense 'are concerned with time in very different 

ways. Tense locates situations in time. Aspect is not concerned with relating the time of the situation 

to any other time-point, but rather with the internal temporal constituency of the one situation', 

a statement I find somewhat obscure. 

The concept of a point of perspective figures fairly regularly in the descriptive framework of Rassudova 

(1968), Bondarko (1971), and Maslov (1973). Other aspectologists of Russian are unclear


on this point. Haltof (1968) for some reason accords the status of a distinct feature to the use of the 

imperfective as a progressive specifically in the present tense ; she appears to say nothing about the 

progressive use for other tenses. Forsyth's definition of the perfective (1970:8) mentions the phrase 

'with reference to a single specific juncture', but it is unclear whether the juncture is understood as 

the inherent limit of telic predicates or something like the aspect locus here ; in any case, the concept 

of a 'single specific juncture' hardly appears in the subsequent description. 

5) On this interpretation, a progressive does more than place a one-dimensional temporal interval 

around the aspect locus, as seems to be generally assumed (Reichenbach 1947:290, Vendler 

1957:149, Scott 1970); in order to use the progressive, it must be possible to place a two-dimensional 

neighborhood around the locus. 

6) Boeck does not explicitly distinguish contextual variants of imperfective adverbial participles. 

Adverbial participles that are iterative but not simultaneous can occasionally be expressed as 

imperfective (in recognition of their iterativity) but are much more regularly encoded as perfective 

(in recognition of their sequentiality) (see Forsyth 1970:312-315). This justifies treating imperfective 

adverbial participles as simultaneous in function. 

7) It is appropriate to consider a possible objection (due to R. Rothstein, p.c.) to the treatment 

of iterative imperfectives and tense. For many of the examples of this type it is the case that each distinct 

embedded subevent is completed before the upper bound of the matrix subevent; the subevent 

would be expressed in the past perfective if it were not for iterativity. This observation, however, 

does not affect the overall argument. In these cases the matrix event and the embedded event 

satisfy the condition of simultaneity at the level of macroevents, and hence the relative tense strategy 

is permissible even for these closet perfectives; they are also explicitly encoded as imperfectives 

by virtue of their iterativity. If the syntagmatic effect of aspect on tense distribution were determined 

solely by the invariant value of aspect, one would expect the iterative imperfective to pattern 

with the simultaneous variant. 

8) Comments of native speakers and textual examples suggest that a finer analysis can be 

achieved using the concept of scope. The instrumental seems to be used with a perfective verb if 

there is 'an implicit change of state' in the predicate nominal relation (Nichols 1981:156), that is, if 

the predicate nominal is in the scope of closure. The nominative is used when the predicate nominal 

describes an attendant state rather than change of state, that is, when the predicate nominal is not in 

the scope of closure. This suggestion is consistent with the instrumental in (42) (the predicate nominal 

describes the resulting state after a month in the hospital) and the nominative in (41) (attendant 

state). 

9) As observed by Pettit (1977), Nichols (1979), and H. Kucera (p.c.), the variety of structuralism 

discussed here is essentially a paradigmatic rather than a syntagmatic theory. 

REFERENCES 

Boeck, W. 1957. Zum Tempusgebrauch des Russischen in Objekt- und Subjektsätzen. 

Zeitschrift für Slawistik 2.206-218. 

. 1958. Der Tempusgebrauch in den russischen Objekt- und Subjektsätzen, 

seine historische Entwicklung und sein stilistischer Wert. Zeitschrift 

für Slawistik 3.209-234.


Bondarko, A.V. 1971. Vidi vremjarusskogoglagola. Moscow: Prosvescenie. 

Brecht, R. 1979. Grammatical meaning: tense and temporal specification in 

Russian. MS. 

Comrie, B. 1976. Aspect. An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and 

related problems. Cambridge: University Press. 

Fielder, G. (in preparation). The aspect of the Russian infinitive complement. 

Ph. D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. 

Forsyth, J. 1970. A grammar of aspect. Usage and meaning in the Russian 

verb. Cambridge: University Press. 

Friedman, V. 1977. The grammatical categories of the Macedonian indicative. 

Columbus, OH: Slavica. 

Friedrich, P. 1974. On aspect theory and Homeric aspect. IJAL, Memoir 28. 

Haltof, B. 1967. Die Aspekte des modernen Russischen. Zeitschrift für Slawistik 

12.735-743. 

1968. Ein semantisches Modell zur Aspektdeterminierung im modernen 

Russischen. Probleme der strukturellen Grammatik und Semantik, ed. by 

R. Ruzicka, 132-150. Leipzig: Karl-Marx-Universität. 

Hockett,C. 1958. A course in modern linguistics. New York, NY: Macmillan. 

Hopper, P. 1979. Aspect and foregrounding in discourse. Discourse and syntax, 

ed. by T. Givón, 213-241. (=Syntax and semantics, 12.) New York, 

NY: Academic Press. 

Jakobson, R. 1932. Zur Struktur des russischen Verbums. Charisteria Guilelmo 

quinquagenario ... oblata. (=Jakobson 1971, 3-15). 

. 1936. Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre: Gesamtbedeutungen der russischen 

Kasus. TCLP 6. (=Jakobson 1971, 23-71.) 

1971. Selected writings, 2: Word and language. The Hague/Paris: Mouton. 

Li, . and S. Thompson. 1981. Mandarin Chinese: a functional reference 

grammar. Berkeley, CA: University of California. 

Lyons, J. 1969. Introduction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge: University 

Press. 

-----. 1977. Semantics, 2. Cambridge: University Press. 

Macaulay, R.K.S. 1971. Aspect in English. Ph.D. dissertation, University of 

California, Los Angeles. 

Maslov, Ju. S. 1973. Universal'nye semanticeskie komponenty v soderzanii 

grammaticeskoj kategorii soversennogo/nesoversennogo vida. Sovetskoe 

slavjanovedenie 1973.4.73-83. 

Merrill, P. (in preparation). Verbal aspect and quantification in Russian. Ph.


D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. 

Nichols, J. 1979. The meeting of East and West: Confrontation and convergence 

in contemporary linguistics. Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting 

of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, ed. by C. Chiarello, et al., 261-276. 

Berkeley, CA. 

. 1981. Predicate nominais: A partial surface syntax of Russian. Berkeley, 

CA: University of California. 

Pettit, P. 1975. The concept of structuralism: A critical analysis. Berkeley, 

CA: University of California. 

Rassudova, O.P. 1968. Upotreblenie vidov glagola v russkom jazyke. Moscow: 

Moskovskij universitet. 

Reichenbach, H. 1947. Elements of symbolic logic. New York, NY: Macmillan. 

Scott, D. 1970. Advice on modal logic. Philosophical problems in logic, ed. by 

K. Lambert, 143-173. Dordrecht: Reidel. 

Vendler, Z. 1957. Verbs and times. The Philosophical Review 66.143-160. 

Worth, D.S. 1963. The role of transformations in the definition of syntagmas 

in Russian and other Slavic languages. American contributions to the Fifth 

International Congress of Slavists, 1, 361-383. The Hague: Mouton.

V. AFTERWORD

ON CROSS-LINGUISTIC CATEGORIES AND 

RELATED PROBLEMS 

A Discussant's Notes on the Tense/Aspect Symposium 

UCLA May 4-6,1979 

RANJIT CHATTERJEE 

The University of Chicago 

"Most of language begins where abstract universals leave off." 

--Dell Hymes 

"Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards." 

-Kierkegaard 

Paul Hopper surely echoed the participants' feelings in his concluding remarks 

when he confessed to being more confused about tense/aspect than at 

the beginning of the symposium. The meeting proved linguists not to be lacking 

what Keats called Negative Capability — "that is when man is capable of 

being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after 

fact and reason." An attitude of wonder prevailed. 

This paper is meant to review, and supplement where possible, the other 

papers and discussion at the symposium. To take up each contribution in turn 

would be both tedious and beyond one person's competence, considering the 

range of languages. Instead, I shall set up four disparate poles (or themes), 

and see how lines projected from these intersect with the themes of some other 

papers. Since a philosophical treatment of temporal categories was not attempted 

at the symposium, this method might fill the vacancy with a background-cum-critique. 

Implicit beliefs and aims behind a symposium of this nature 

could then be reconsidered to see how far they are capable of vindication. 

The four poles are: 1. The relativity (or incommensurability) of linguistic

336 RANJIT CHATTERJEE 

categories; 2. Meaning as process in discourse; 3. Temporal categories and 

psychoanalytical theory; and 4. Implicate and explicate order in grammar and 

science. Of these ,1,2, and 4 and the topics of the individual papers penetrate 

each other. My expansion of these themes is often based on authors whom 

other participants have referred to: Whorf, Ricoeur, Bateson, and Wittgenstein. 

In the discussion continuum, context and interpretation were recurring 

terms, reminding one of Wittgenstein's adamant disclaimer: "Elegance is not 

what we are trying for" (The Blue Book, p. 19). Three axes running through 

the paper are synchrony vs. diachrony, morpho-semanticsvs. discourse-pragmatics, 

and psycho-cognitive-empirical vs. philosophically relativist. Delancey's 

position derives from a cognitive psychology background, as does Slobin's, 

although with a weaker commitment to the linking of psychology of perception 

with human languages (p. 26). Thompson, Thompson and Li, and 

Rafferty, represent the discourse school. Anderson's championing of the natural 

language status of ASL distracts attention from his rich conceptualizing 

and taxonomic talents. Wallace uses the Gestalt concepts of figure and ground 

in exploring the expression of tense, mode and aspect, while Langacker unveils 

a new model "space grammar". 

1. The relativity of linguistic categories. In hindsight, the symposium was 

more a consciousness-raising session on linguistic diversity and complexity 

than a workshop hammering out solutions to ancient philosophico-linguistic 

problems of categories. But by the very act of looking for them, linguistics was 

revealed to be lacking a post-structuralist outlook — not yet nudged by developments 

in physics (quantum theory), philosophy (Wittgenstein and Derrida), 

or logic (Gödel) into the contemporary moment, which warns us that 

searching for essential, ultimate categories may be a philosophical illness. Defining, 

delimiting a classical grammatical category in a cross-linguistic, multilevel 

framework became an implicit concern. Skepticism about what has since 

come to be known as gesamtbedeutung was expressed as far back as 1924 by 

Otto Jespersen, who complained that "the 'notion' behind a grammatical phenomenon 

is as elusive as Kant's Ding an sich." Jespersen's citing of Benfey 

("after the merits achieved by modern linguistics, universal and philosophical 

grammars have suddenly disappeared so completely that their methods and 

views are now only to be traced in such books as are unaffected by real 

science") now seems variously ironic (Jespersen 1924:57,48). The linguist's 

dilemma is that either his category is notional and the search for its expression 

in a progressively larger group of languages affects his description of those

CROSS-LINGUISTIC CATEGORIES 337 

languages, or he concentrates on the specificities of each language and loses 

his notional category. Only a precarious balance between these two enables 

any dialogue at all on cross-linguistic categories. Whatever the watertight Aristotelian 

category, Kant's notional category with its elusive Ding an sich, and 

the rationalist enterprise in linguistics might have in common is rendered dubious 

by two hard-headed pioneers, Sapir and Saussure. Sapir put the matter 

thus: 

Inasmuch as languages differ very widely in their systematization of fundamental 

concepts, they tend to be only loosely equivalent to each other as symbolic 

devices and are, as a matter of fact, incommensurable in the sense in 

which two systems of points in a plane are, on the whole, incommensurable 

with each other if they are plotted out with reference to differing systems of 

coordinates. 

(Sapir 1931:578. For an example of this with reference to time and tense in 

Sanskrit, see Nakamura 1966:77-81, particularly 81.) 

Whether one accepts this or not, we are left with what I shall call the categorial 

paradox: a semantic or grammatical category is one only in relation to 

other 'neighboring' categories, yet we have not succeeded in isolating or defining 

a tense/aspect category (giving it gesamtbedeutungen) in the most studied 

languages. (For documentation of this failure in Slavic and Homeric 

Greek aspect by Forsyth and Friedrich see Chatterjee 1979: n. 2). Further, even 

if we did, our category would be language-specific, and so would its interaction 

with other categories of the language. In both Jespersen's 'notional' and 

Whorf's 'covert' categories the one-to-one relation between forms and meaning 

is negate. Aspect being to some extent notional (i.e., an investigative concept) 

in all languages, a universalist pinning down of the category is impossible. 

Another point of view against the possibility of the positive isolation of 

universal categorial notions is Saussure's: 

The Slavic languages regularly single out two aspects of the verb.... The categories 

are difficult for a Frenchman to understand, for they are unknown in 

French; if they were predetermined, this would not be true. Instead of pre-existing 

ideas, then, we find... values emanating from the system. When they are 

said to correspond to concepts, it is understood that the concepts are purely 

differential and defined not by their p>ositive content but negatively in their 

relations with the other terms of the system. Their most precise characteristic 

is in being what the others are not. (Cours p. 117. Emphasis added.) 

Aspect studies (really a microcosm of linguistics itself) can thus have as 

their goal the description of individual languages (and such insights into the


general nature of language — the macrocosm — as may spin off). Like Derrida 

we might designate such description sous rature, 'under the aspect of erasure,' 

i.e., use the term 'description' for want of a better one, but erase it to 

show its inadequacy. What I am discounting here is the hope of some accurate 

predictive/explanatory modeling for aspect (or grammar in general). An indefinite 

montage effect within discourse ensures constant change in the alignment 

of categories. 1 

2. Meaning as process in discourse. My remarks in this section are in dialogue 

with the discourse school of aspect, an attempt to understand the relation 

of discourse to grammar writing. 

Understanding (or interpretation) is the essence of grammar, just as possession 

is nine-tenths of the law. I say this in connection with the asterisk debate 

in linguistics. Being understood (cf. the Verstehen of the hermeneutic 

school) presupposes being interpreted, and is presupposed in the process of 

creating new meaning and structures. The message comes before the grammar. 

We are used to thinking of an utterance as an encoding, its interpretation 

as a decoding—as if in the beginning was the code. But this is impossible. The 

word, or gesture, comes first. On its being heard and interpreted meaning is 

created, and what we lazily call the grammar of a language is an unending dialectic 

of utterance and understanding in context. In Wittgenstein's terms, language 

games in forms of life. Only this view of grammar as alive can join synchrony 

and diachrony, normal and deviant, poetry and prose. The continuous 

rationalization of "deviance" (never amounting to a symmetrical whole) is the 

native's competence as well as performance. The rationalization of this continuous 

process is the linguist's grammar, incomplete, derivative, obsolete as 

soon as written. Grammar, in Hymes's phrase, is the precipitate of style. Discourse 

began with the flection of potentially symbolic substance to convey affect. 

Every utterance uniquely recapitulates this beginning. From another angle, 

"the semantics of interpretation have no epistemological consistency and 

can therefore not be scientific." 2 Not scientific, at least, in the old natural 

science sense of consistent, verifiable, analytic. One may, of course, introduce 

fuzzy sets or statistical models, but the values of and I in a fuzzy set 

have to be subjectively determined, preventing the attainment of the Newtonian 

clarity preferred in linguistics. Heidegger's hermeneutic circle is more 

accurately a near-circle, since "no totality of meaning or closure of form can 

suffice. " 

In the hermeneutic near-circles shown below the incomplete overlap is


the source of creativity, change, life in language. To call it shift is to imply permanence. 

But as in history every age is an age of transition, in discourse every 

meaning is a shift from all other meanings while simultaneously deferring to 

them, a reality for which Derrida has coined the word différence. Context narrows 

the distance between M (=meaning)i, M2, etc., but does not eliminate 

it, in words as in the 'categories' of linguistic discourse. De Man's perception 

that "no totality of meaning or closure of form can suffice" is the same as Waismann's 

of "open texture" in lanuage. (Thus father is not reducible to male parent 

universally: certain tribes do not connect sex with preganancy; and what if 

in some future culture random artificial insemination of women were to be resorted 

to?) Waismann speaks of the "fight of thought with the obtuseness of 

speech" waged not only by literary figures but by all of us — "breaking away 

from the norm is often the only way of making oneself understood" — that is 

to say, the norms are constantly changing. Over three decades ago Wittgenstein 

had neatly reversed our current dogma by pointing out that "the rule... is 

what is explained, not what does the explaining." {Zettel 302). And in the 

terms of contemporary French post-structuralism, it is more precise to speak 

of meaning in discourse as structuration, continuous process of differing from 

and deferring to all other texts, than as structure, implying a system, static and 

closed. Aspectologists and linguists in general have not totally ignored this. 

Karcevskij speaks of the mysterious dualisme asymmètrique in language, and 

Coetzee 1979 throws three well-aimed wrenches in the works of conventional 

linguistics: 

(1) We must never lose sight of the fact that, since language is always chang-


ing, a synchronic grammar is an artificial construct. (2) There is inevitably 

conflict between a systematizing theory of language and a literary practice 

(like that of Surrealism) with philosophical objections to system. (3) The undiscussed 

model of language put forward by transformational grammar situates 

metaphor at the outermost boundaries of langue, whereas Surrealism 

situates it at the core of the linguistic faculty. 

The symposium, at which there was discussion of the question of possible borderlines 

between the poetic and other modes in language, thus becomes a device 

for the apprehension of some of these 'truths' or 'facts' about language. 

Word is getting around among linguists "that every general statement worth 

making about language invites a counterstatement or antithesis" (Steiner 

1975: 123). Saussure certainly realized this, if not in the Cours (cf. de Mauro 

1967: 30-31). 

3. Temporal categories and psychoanalytical theory. For a linguist the 

psychoanalytical theory of language is both humbling and revealing. (Short 

general accounts are available in Brown 1959: 68-73 and Lafall 1949). Brown 

points out that in psychoanalytical terms language is inescapably a disease. He 

cites Wittgenstein on limiting the task of philosophy to recognizing the inevitable 

insanity of language. Even more comforting to tense-aspectologists is 

Freud's discovery that "in the id there is nothing corresponding to the idea of 

time. " It follows that psychoanalysts have been "anatomizing time-consciousness 

as a diseased consciousness and tending towards the conclusion that what 

Kant took to be the schemata of rationality are really the schemata of repression" 

(Brown 1959: 70). Further, Bateson 1972: 139 notes that "primary process 

[the unconscious] is characterised (e.g., by Fenichel) as lacking negatives, 

lacking tense, lacking any identification of linguistic mood (i.e., no 

identification of indicative, subjunctive, optative, etc.) and metaphoric." 

These archaic processes are not unrelated to conscious language: they have 

"implications for the whole economics and dynamic structure of the mind" 

(141). The precise implications for language would have to be worked out by 

psychoanalysts and linguists together. For the present the comforting speculation 

appears justified that explanations for the gaps, asymmetries and antinomies 

we all encounter in detailed exmination of temporal categories are to be 

found not in some high logic that has eluded us so far but in the depths of the 

temporally and modally undifferentiated unconscious. That aspect is related 

to the unconscious and beyond direct analysis was suggested by at least one 

linguist over forty years ago (cf. Guillauime 1933: 359). In short, we can save 

energy and stop trying to prove that these categories are based on "objective


reality" or are internally consistent. 

4. Implicate and explicate order in science and grammar. The sophistication 

of the symposium was displayed in the lack of claims. Nobody stood up 

and said, "this is aspect, this is tense, semantics, pragmatics, perfective, imperfective, 

etc...." In the discussions several participants gracefully yielded 

positions they had held in their papers. There was even a down-to-earth debate 

at one point over what constitutes a linguistic fact. Admirable, but how 

can we escape this predicament and retain some of the values of earlier "scientific" 

approaches? In this section I shall try to tackle the problem of making 

descriptive cuts to carve out categories like aspect which are so obviously tied 

to other categories of the linguistic continuum. The illustrative analogy here is 

taken from the physics of David Bohm, although, as Paul Friedrich has pointed 

out, the data of linguistics are more complex than those of physics. For a 

convenient presentation of Bohm's approach I have used Schumacher and 

Anderson 1979. 

The main lessons of twentieth century physics, according to Heisenberg, 

is the limited validity of concepts. The validity of linguistic concepts is even 

more limited. They are certainly fuzzier than particle/wave, mass/energy, position/velocity 

etc. seem to become on subatomic examination. Think of our 

technique of lexical decomposition, breaking down to semantic primitives, as 

subatomic linguistics. Now you see aspect, now you don't. When you don't, 

you see mood, sometimes tense — in Standard Average European at any rate. 

Isolate, pin down one, lose the others. Hit the position, lose the velocity. As 

conditions of observation affecting the experiment, linguists have to contend 

with changing linguistic and non-linguistic contexts, data filtered through 

their native tongues, past theoretical constructs, the judgments of other linguists. 

All this in dealing with limited data from just one language. Multiply this 

by the number of languages discussed at the symposium. Add culture-bound 

depictions of time (on this cf. van Bertalanffy 1955, LaBarre 1954: 177-206 

passim, Ricoeur 1976:13-24, especially 24). The discreteness and idealization 

possible in physics certainly make it simpler. But just as quantum mechanics 

has had to extend the idea of event from 'pure, objective event' to 'event plus 

minimal observer,' so post-structuralist linguistics must think of a structure 

(or event) as 'the natural object plus the subjective intelligence of the structuralist' 

(Derrida 1976: lvii). 

Even in physics no unified theory holds. The most technical of terms 

shade off into metaphor. Bohm introduces implicate and explicate order on 

the analogy from holography (the creation of artificial but accurate three-


dimensional images of objects with laser beams, mirrors and photographic 

plates). If, in the process of creating the hologram, 

"we illuminate only a small region R of the plate, we still see the whole structure, 

but in somewhat less sharply defined detail.... The interference pattern 

in each region R of the plate is relevant to the whole structure, and each region 

of the structure is relevant to the whole of the interference pattern on the 

plate." The whole structure is implicated by, or enfolded into, each region R 

of the hologram, and thus the laser light and the eye can explicate or unfold 

the whole structure from each such region. Consequently, we have in the hologram 

an excellent analogy to the undivided wholeness of the implicate order 

in physics which Bohm proposes: "To generalize so as to emphasize undivided 

wholeness, we shall say that what 'carries' an implicate order is the holomovement, 

which is an unbroken and undivided totality. In certain cases we 

can abstract particular aspects of the holomovement (e.g. light, electrons, 

sound, etc.). But more generally, all forms of the holomovement merge and 

are inseparable.... Thus, the holomovement is undefinable and immeasurable. 

" The aspects of the holomovement when explicated may appear as separate 

or autonomous but...one must not be misled by this: "Thus, the word 

'electron' should be understood as no more than a name by which we call attention 

to a certain aspect of the holomovement...so that such 'particles' are 

no longer considered autonomous and separately existent.... Thus, we come 

to a new general physical description in which 'everything implicates everything'... 

even to the extent that 'we ourselves' are implicated together with 

'all that we see and think about.'" Accordingly, "the whole implicate order is 

present at any moment" and what is "growing out" of it may do so as follows : 

in discussing how attention is to be called to such aspects (of the implicate 

order in the holomovement which are relevant in some limited context), it is 

useful to note that the word 'relevant' is a form obtained from the verb 'to 

relevate' which has dropped out of common usage, and which means 'to lift 

up'... We can thus say that in a particular context that may be under consideration, 

the general modes of description that belong to a given theory serve to 

relevate a certain content, i.e., to lift it into attention so that it stands out "in 

relief" .... Thus explicit order arises primarily as a certain as pect of sense perception 

and of experience with the content of such sense perception." 

(Schumacher and Anderson 1979: 83-4. Original emphasis. Portions in double 

quotes are Bohm's words — RC). 

I think linguists dealing with slippery categories like aspect (again, only a 

microcosm, to my mind, of language in general) will readily see the relevance 

of such a schema of things to their concerns. The innumerab 1 e articles on Slavic 

aspect alone that 'make sense' in the tight little world of a particular paper 

and its particular data don't quite add up because the implicate level cannot be 

reduced to a certain number of instances, however large, of explicate order, 

just as the path of any one electron cannot be predicated from a statistical


base. Bohm's undefinable holomovement corresponds to the linguist's working 

conception of a linguistic system or, more narrowly in this context, an 'aspect 

system' within a 'language system.' This fluctuating holomovement, definable 

only in concrete instantiations of explicate order (i.e., each linguist's 

data, pet theory, presuppositions) and therefore undefinable in a general 

way, corresponds not to the structuralist wisdom of language having 'a hidden 

core of exact structures mirroring the possible structures of the world' (Finch 

1977: 154), but rather to the conventionalist or Wittgensteinian view of language 

as patterns of human uses and activities in constant flux. It is no accident 

that a classic study of Slavic aspect shows an awareness of the possible indefinability 

of the category (Dostal 1954: 7), and a later one of the irrelevance of 

sharp and unchanging categories or subcategories once particular cases are 

transparently decoded (Jong 1974: 125). Thus the unschooled native has no 

water-tight conception of aspect or any other linguistic category. The only 

way he or she can be made to have one is by the linguist's post factum reification 

of a gesamtbedeutung. 

As describers of languages, we have tremendous freedom in what we 

wish to deem relevant. So Wallace (p.24) could argue convincingly from his 

data that aspect-tense-mode constitute one unsplittable super-category, and I 

from mine that Slavic has no generalized aspect system at all, just X number of 

subcategories too full of holes and contradiction to be called a system. To give 

another inconspicuous but revealing example, the same constructions are 

called imperfectives by Rafferty (sent. 5) and perfective processes by Langacker 

(sents. 12a — d). At the same time Langacker can make a new conceptual 

departure to deal with English aspect. (For documentation of the prodigious 

diversity of linguists' opinions cf. Yngve 1979: 5-7. As LaBarre 1954 remarks, 

"the odd thing is that it takes purposes to make facts." 

Conclusion. I have tried to connect some of the issues at the symposium 

to general problems of linguistic, cultural, textual, and scientific theory. My 

purpose has been to complement the proceedings rather than to contradict or 

criticise. I do feel pessimistic about the possibility of philosophically sound results 

from the cross-linguistic study of such categories as tense, mood and aspect, 

and hence about a 'general scientific theory' of language. This variety of 

pessimism is mirrored in the later Wittgenstein (cf. for instance the reading in 

Pears 1969), and in works of cultivated reflection such as Steiner's After Babel 

For me, however, the death of the general linguistic dream means that rebirth 

of pure wonder at the mysteries of language which was so evident at the 

symposium.


FOOTNOTES 

1) After drafting these notes I read Rijksbaron 1979, where views supporting some of these 

points are collated. 

2) Paul de Man, Blindness and insight; cf. Hassan 1977: 15. 

REFERENCES 

Bateson, G. 1972. Steps to an ecology of mind. San Francisco: Chandler. 

Bertalanffy, Ludwig von. 1955. "The cultural and biological relativity of categories." 

The Philosophy of Science 22: 243-63. 

Brown, N. 0.1959. Life against death: the psychoanalytical meaning of history, 

New York: Vintage. 

Chatterjee, R. 1979. "Review of H. Galton, The main functions of the Slavic 

verbal aspect." Folia Slavica, in press. 

Coetzee, J. M. 1979. "Surreal metaphors and random processes." Journal of 

Literary Semantics 8. 

Derrida, J. 1976. Of grammatology. Trans. Gayatri C. Spivak. Baltimore: 

John Hopkins University Press. 

Dostál, A. 1954. Studie o vidovém systému u staroslovënstinë. Prague: SPN. 

Finch, H. L. 1977. Wittgenstein: the later philosophy. Atlantic Highlands, N. 

J., Humanities Press. 

Guillaume, G. 1933. "Immanence et transcendance dans la catégorie du 

verbe: esquisse d'une théorie psychologique de l'aspect." Jour. de psychologie 

30: 355-72. 

Hassan, I. 1977. "The critic as innovator." Chicago Review 28: 5-31. 

Jespersen, D. 1924. The philosophy of grammar. London: Allen and Unwin. 

Jong, T. H. A. 1974. The meaning of the finite verb forms in the old Church 

Slavonic codex Suprasliensis. The Hague: Mouton. 

LaBarre, W. 1954. The human animal. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press. 

Lafall, Julius. 1964. "Freud's theory of language." Psychoanalytic quarterly:33: 

157-75. 

Mauro, T. de. 1967. Ludwig Wittgenstein: his place in the development of 

semantics. Dordrecht: Reidel. 

Nakamura, H. 1966. Time in Indian and Japanese thought. In Julius Fraser, 

ed. The voices of time; a cooperative survey of man's views of time as expressed 

by the sciences and by the humanities. New York: G. Braziller. 

Pears, D. 1969. Wittgenstein. New York: Viking.


Ricoeur, P. 1976. Introduction to Cultures and Time, L. Gardet, ed. Paris: 

UNESCO. 

Rijksbaron, A. 1979. "Review of H. Hettrick, Kontext und Aspekt in der altgriechischen 

Prosa Herodots." Lingua 48: 223-54. 

Sapir, E. 1931. "Conceptual categories in primitive languages." Science 74. 

Schumacher, J. A., and R. M. Anderson. 1979. "In defense of mystical 

science." Philosophy East and West (U. of Hawaii). 

Steiner, G. 1975. After Babel. Oxford U. Press. 

Waismann, F. 1946. "The Many-level structure of language." Synthese 5:211- 

19 (in some issues 222-29). 

Yngve, V. 1979. Human linguistics: the scientific study of how people communicate. 

Draft of forthcoming book.

INDEX TO REFERENCES 

Abdullah Munshi, bin Abdul Kadir, 

6,14 

Achistein, Peter, 219n 

Aksu, Ayhan A, 3,13,181n, 233,260n 

Anderson, John M, 3,170,179,181n 

Anderson, Lloyd B, 3,13,15,40-41, 

336 

Anderson, R.M, 341, 342 

Anderson, S, 149 

Antinucci, Francesco, 151,191 

Aro, Jussi, 249, 261n 

Aronson, Howard, 176, 177, 178, 

181n 

Ashton, E, 154 

Austin, J.L, 83 

Babbitt, Frank Cole, 203,204 

Banguoglu, Tahsin, 186,188,194 

Baron, Stephen, 42n 

Baskakov, N. A, 190 

Bateson, G, 336, 340 

Bellugi, Ursula, 93-94, 95, 98-100, 

102-103,108,112n 

Benfey, Theodor, 336 

Bennet, Charles E, 202, 204, 208 

Benveniste, Émile, 149,167, 260n 

Bergsland, Knut, 46, 56 

Berlin, Brent, 227, 242 

Bertalanffy, Ludwig von, 341 

Bever, Thompas G, 209,213, 215 

Bickerton, Derek, 15,115,116,118- 

127,138,151,155-156,160n, 161n, 

162n-163n, 191 

Blake, Barry J, 167 

Bloom, Lois, 191 

Bloomfield, Leonard, 211, 219n 

Boeck, W, 319-321, 329n 

Boeder, Wilfried, 176 

Bohm, David, 341-343 

Bolinger, Dwight, 16 

Bondarko, A.V, 308, 313, 328n 

Brecht, R, 319 

Bronckart, Jean-Paul, 180,181 

Brown, N. O, 340 

Bull, William E, 202 

Carden, Guy, 302n 

Cardona, George, 174 

Carnap, Rudolf, 61n 

Carroll, John B,219n 

Chafe, Wallace L, 32 

Chao, Yuen-ren, 31, 42n 

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 243 

Chomsky, Noam, 18n, 116, 156, 

163n 

Chung, Sandra, 41n 

Cochrane, Nancy J, 261n 

Coetzee, J. M, 339-340 

Cohen, Marcel, 239, 249 

Comrie, Bernard, 3,15,20,66, 111n, 

167,173,174,181n, 188, 202, 203, 

205-206, 211, 217, 218, 219n, 239, 

248,309,328n 

Crutchfield, Richard S, 213-214 

Darden, Bill, 259n 

DeLancey, Scott, 3, 42n, 205-206,

348 INDEX TO REFERENCES 

219n, 239, 336 

Derrida, J, 336, 338, 339, 341 

Diehl, Lon, 170,179,181n 

Dixon, R. M. W, 106,167 

Diver, William, 204, 208, 219n 

Dorais, Louis-Jacques, 47, 60n 

Dostál, A, 343 

Egede, Paulo, 46 

Eulenberg, John, 108 

Fenichel, 340 

Ferguson, Charles A, 230, 257 

Ferreiro, E, 180 

Fielder, G, 316 

Fillmore, Charles, 168, 169-170,189 

Finch, H. L, 343 

Fischer, Susan, 93,106 

Forsyth, John, 9, 10-13, 202, 204, 

205, 208, 305-307, 308, 313, 314, 

317, 329n, 337 

Frajzngier, Zygmunt, 301n 

Freud, Sigmund, 340 

Friedman, Victor, 233,260n, 305,314 

Friedrich, Paul, 3, 18n, 19, 21, 66, 

202,305,314,337,341 

Frishberg, Nancy, 113n 

Garcia, Erica C, 129 

Givón, Talmy, 3, 14, 15, 108, 173, 

211,218 

Glock, Naomi, 6,18n 

Gödel, Kurt, 336 

Gonda,J,210 

Goodwin, William W, 202, 208 

Gough, Bonnie, 106 

Gragg, Gene B, 106, 258n 

Greenberg, Joseph H, 219n 

Grice, Paul H, 42n-43n, 76-77 

Grimes, Joseph E, 6,118n, 208,209, 

219n 

Groot, A. Willem de, 230, 257 

Gruber, Jeffrey, 168, 170, 181n 

Grunina, E. A, 186, 188, 190,199n 

Guillauime, G, 340 

Haarmann, Harald, 186, 187, 233, 

260n 

Hafitz, Jeremie, 191 

Haltof,B,308,309,329n 

Hankamer, Jorge, 232 

Harper, Kenn, 47 

Hassan, I, 344n 

Heidegger, Martin, 338 

Heisenberg, Werner, 341 

Hill, Jane H, 303n 

Hindle, Don, 237 

Hockett, Charles F, 219n, 328n 

Holisky, Dee, 261n 

Holtved, 60n 

Hopper, Paul J, 6, 9,19, 61n, 65, 66, 

67, 72-73, 79, 80, 84, 123, 161n, 

167, 179-180, 208, 209, 210-213, 

215,218,259n,300n,313 

Hyman, L, 139 

Hymes, Dell, 335, 338 

Jackson, Rick, 92 

Jacobs, Roderick , 

Jakobson, Roman, 18n, 307, 328n 

Jesperson, Otto, 210, 336 

Johnson-Laird, Philip N, 215 

Jones, Larry B, 208-209, 219n 

Jones, Linda K, 208-209, 216, 219n 

Jong, . . A, 343 

Joos, Martin, 203 

Kaburaki, Etsuko, 170,171 

Kalmár, Ivan, 3 

Kant, Immanuel, 336-337, 340 

Karcevskij, S, 339 

Kay, Paul, 115,227,242

INDEX TO REFERENCES 349 

Kazembe, M, 162n 

Keenan, Edward L, 219n 

Kierkegaard, S0ren, 335 

Kimenyi, A, 162n 

Kienast, Burkhart, 261n 

Kleinschmidt, Samuel, 46 

Klima, Edward, 93,100,106,112n 

Kononov, A. N, 186,187 

Krech, David, 213-214 

Kuno, Susumu, 170 

Kurylowicz, Jerzy, 203, 206, 248, 

249,260n,261n 

Kwan-Terry, Anna, 42n 

LaBarre,W,341,343 

Labov, William, 227, 237, 261n 

Lafall, Julius, 340 

Lambert, l'Abbé de, 104,113n 

Langacker, Ronald W, 3, 203, 336, 

343 

Lawrence, Helen, 179 

Leech, Geoffrey, 202, 204, 210 

Lehmann, Winfred P, 46 

Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 48 

Levinsohn, Stephen, 208, 219n 

Lewis, G. L, 186 

Li, Charles, 3,13, 66, 73, 218n, 235, 

237,305,336 

Lifter, Karin, 191 

Livson, Norman, 213-214 

Lloyd, Albert L, 5 

Longacre, Robert E, 18n, 208, 216, 

219n 

Lyons, John, 46, 185-186, 202, 203, 

207, 328n 

McCawley, James D, 258n 

McCoard, Robert W, 41n, 228,259n- 

260n, 261n 

MacWhinney, Brian, 215, 219n 

Macaulay,R. K. S,314 

Maloney, John, 260n 

Man, Paul de, 339, 344n 

Maran, LaRaw, 171,179,180n 

Masica, Colin P, 230 

Laslov, Ju S, 9, 308, 309, 313, 328n 

Matisoff, James A, 261n 

Mauro, Tullio de, 340 

Menovscikov, G. A, 60n 

Merrill, P, 314-315 

Miller, George A, 215 

Miller, Ruth, 151,191 

Mistry, 174 

Moore, R.W, 208 

Morgan, J. L, 303n 

Mossé, Fernand, 173 

Munro, Pamela, 301n 

Murphy, Gardner, 214 

Nakamura, H, 337 

Newport, Elissa L,93,100,107,112n 

Nichols, J, 322, 329n 

Odo, C, 160n 

Oléron, Pierre, 105 

Otanes, Fe, 211 

Paillet, Jean-Pierre, 56 

Palmer, F. R, 210 

Palmer, L. R, 202 

Pears, D, 343 

Pesetsky, David, 302n 

Pettit,P,329n 

Piaget, Jean, 171,191 

Prokosch, Eduard, 18n 

Pulleyblank, E.G,261n 

Rafferty, Ellen, 3, 61n, 336, 343 

Rasmussen, Knud, 47, 48-56, 62-64 

Rassudova, O.P,328n 

Redhouse,J. W, 194-195 

Reed, 60n

350 INDEX TO REFERENCES 

Rehg, Ken, 92 

Reichenbach, Hans, 44n, 329n 

Reid, Wallis, 204, 205, 208, 211-213 

Ricoeur, P, 336, 341 

Rijksbaron, A, 344n 

Rischel, J0rgen, 47 

Rock, Irvin, 214 

Rohsenow, John, 42n 

Ross, John R, 83, 258n 

Rygaloff, Alexis, 42n 

Sag, Ivan, 237 

Sankoff, Gillian, 60,115 

Sapir, Edward, 188, 242, 337 

Saussure, Ferdinand de, 337, 340 

Schachter, Paul, 211 

Schooneveld, C. H. van, 219n 

Schumacher, J. A, 341, 342 

Schwyzer, Eduard, 204, 205, 208 

Scott, D,329n 

Sebüktekin, Hikmet, 186 

Silverstein, Michael, 67, 217, 218 

Sinclair, Hermine, 180,191 

Slobin, Dan 1,3,13,115,160n, 181n, 

218n,233,260n,336 

Soden, Wolfram von, 112n, 248,257, 

260n, 261n 

Solley, Charles M, 214 

Spanos, George, 42n-43n 

Spencer, Margaret, 42n 

Stang, Chr. S, 206 

Steiner, Gerd, 261n-262n, 340, 343 

Stephany, Ursula, 191 

Stokoe, William C., Jr, 112n 

Sugita, Hiroshi, 92 

Supalla, Ted, 93,100,107,112n 

Supp, Frederick, 219n 

Svartvik, Jan, 210-211 

Talmy, Leonard, 215, 267 

Tekin,Talat, 190 

Teng, Shou-hsin, 42n 

Thompson, R. McMillan, 3, 13, 66, 

73,235,237,305,336 

Thompson, Sandra A, 3, 13, 66, 73, 

80, 161n, 167, 179-180, 208, 210- 

213, 215, 218, 219n, 235, 237, 

259n,300n,305,336 

Thurman, R, 162n 

Timberlake, Alan, 3, 5, 9-10, 15, 

41n, 211, 215, 218 

Townsend, David J, 209, 213, 215 

Traugott, E.C, 115 

Underhill, Robert, 187 

Vendier, Z, 329n 

Vogt, Hans, 175 

Waismann, F, 340 

Wald, B, 154 

Wallace, Stephen, 3, 6, 77, 336, 343 

Wang, Li, 42n 

Watkins, Calvert, 206 

Watters, David, 172,181n 

Waugh, Linda R, 202,203,207,219n 

Whitney, William Dwight, 101 

Whorf, Benjamin Lee, 242, 336, 337 

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 336,338,339, 

343 

Wolf son, Nessa, 202 

Woodward, James, 113n 

Worth, D.S, 323 

Yilla, Sori, 163n 

Yngve, Victor, 343 

Zusne, Leonard, 214, 219n

Typological Studies in Language 

A complete list of titles in this series can be found on the publishers’ website, www.benjamins.com 

73 Ansaldo, Umberto, Stephen Matthews and Lisa Lim (eds.): Deconstructing Creole. 2007. 

xii, 292 pp. 

72 Næss, Åshild: Prototypical Transitivity. 2007. x, 240 pp. 

71 Nedjalkov, Vladimir P. (ed.): Reciprocal Constructions. With the assistance of Emma Š. Geniušienė and 

Zlatka Guentchéva. 2007. xxiii, 2219 pp. (5 vols.). 

70 Zúñiga, Fernando: Deixis and Alignment. Inverse systems in indigenous languages of the Americas. 

2006. xii, 309 pp. 

69 Aranovich, Raúl (ed.): Split Auxiliary Systems. A cross-linguistic perspective. 2007. vii, 277 pp. 

68 Abraham, Werner and Larisa Leisiö (eds.): Passivization and Typology. Form and function. 2006. 

x, 553 pp. 

67 Veselinova, Ljuba N.: Suppletion in Verb Paradigms. Bits and pieces of the puzzle. 2006. xviii, 236 pp. 

66 Hickmann, Maya and Stéphane Robert (eds.): Space in Languages. Linguistic Systems and Cognitive 

Categories. 2006. x, 362 pp. 

65 Tsunoda, Tasaku and Taro Kageyama (eds.): Voice and Grammatical Relations. In Honor of 

Masayoshi Shibatani. 2006. xviii, 342 pp. 

64 Voeltz, F. K. Erhard (ed.): Studies in African Linguistic Typology. 2006. xiv, 426 pp. 

63 Filimonova, Elena (ed.): Clusivity. Typology and case studies of the inclusive–exclusive distinction. 

2005. xii, 436 pp. 

62 CoUPer-Kuhlen, Elizabeth and Cecilia E. Ford (eds.): Sound Patterns in Interaction. Crosslinguistic 

studies from conversation. 2004. viii, 406 pp. 

61 Bhaskararao, Peri and Karumuri Venkata Subbarao (eds.): Non-nominative Subjects. Volume 2. 

2004. xii, 319 pp. 

60 Bhaskararao, Peri and Karumuri Venkata Subbarao (eds.): Non-nominative Subjects. Volume 1. 

2004. xii, 325 pp. 

59 Fischer, Olga, Muriel Norde and Harry Perridon (eds.): Up and down the Cline – The Nature of 

Grammaticalization. 2004. viii, 406 pp. 

58 hAspelmath, Martin (ed.): Coordinating Constructions. 2004. xcv, 578 pp. 

57 Mattissen, Johanna: Dependent-Head Synthesis in Nivkh. A contribution to a typology of 

polysynthesis. 2003. x, 350 pp. 

56 Shay, Erin and Uwe Seibert (eds.): Motion, Direction and Location in Languages. In honor of Zygmunt 

Frajzyngier. 2003. xvi, 305 pp. 

55 Frajzyngier, Zygmunt and Erin Shay: Explaining Language Structure through Systems Interaction. 

2003. xviii, 309 pp. 

54 Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. and R.M.W. Dixon (eds.): Studies in Evidentiality. 2003. xiv, 349 pp. 

53 Givón, T. and Bertram F. Malle (eds.): The Evolution of Language out of Pre-language. 2002. x, 394 pp. 

52 Güldemann, Tom and Manfred von Roncador (eds.): Reported Discourse. A meeting ground for 

different linguistic domains. 2002. xii, 425 pp. 

51 Newman, John (ed.): The Linguistics of Sitting, Standing and Lying. 2002. xii, 409 pp. 

50 Feigenbaum, Susanne and Dennis Kurzon (eds.): Prepositions in their Syntactic, Semantic and 

Pragmatic Context. 2002. vi, 304 pp. 

49 Wischer, Ilse and Gabriele Diewald (eds.): New Reflections on Grammaticalization. 2002. 

xiv, 437 pp. 

48 Shibatani, Masayoshi (ed.): The Grammar of Causation and Interpersonal Manipulation. 2002. 

xviii, 551 pp. 

47 bAron, Irène, Michael Herslund and Finn Sørensen (eds.): Dimensions of Possession. 2001. 

vi, 337 pp. 

46 Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y., R.M.W. Dixon and Masayuki Onishi (eds.): Non-canonical Marking of 

Subjects and Objects. 2001. xii, 364 pp. 

45 Bybee, Joan and Paul J. Hopper (eds.): Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure. 2001. 

vii, 492 pp. 

44 Voeltz, F. K. Erhard and Christa Kilian-Hatz (eds.): Ideophones. 2001. x, 436 pp.

43 Gildea, Spike (ed.): Reconstructing Grammar. Comparative Linguistics and Grammaticalization. 2000. 

xiv, 269 pp. 

42 Diessel, Holger: Demonstratives. Form, function and grammaticalization. 1999. xii, 205 pp. 

41 Frajzyngier, Zygmunt and Traci S. Curl (eds.): Reciprocals. Forms and functions. Volume 2. 2000. 

xii, 201 pp. 

40 Frajzyngier, Zygmunt and Traci S. Curl (eds.): Reflexives. Forms and functions. Volume 1. 2000. 

xiv, 286 pp. 

39 Payne, Doris L. and Immanuel Barshi (eds.): External Possession. 1999. ix, 573 pp. 

38 Siewierska, Anna and Jae Jung Song (eds.): Case, Typology and Grammar. In honor of Barry J. Blake. 

1998. 395 pp. 

37 Giacalone-Ramat, Anna and Paul J. Hopper (eds.): The Limits of Grammaticalization. 1998. 

vi, 307 pp. 

36 Newman, John (ed.): The Linguistics of Giving. 1998. xv, 373 pp. 

35 Givón, T. (ed.): Grammatical Relations. A functionalist perspective. 1997. viii, 350 pp. 

34 Givón, T. (ed.): Conversation. Cognitive, communicative and social perspectives. 1997. viii, 302 pp. 

33 Fox, Barbara A. (ed.): Studies in Anaphora. 1996. xii, 518 pp. 

32 Bybee, Joan and Suzanne Fleischman (eds.): Modality in Grammar and Discourse. 1995. viii, 575 pp. 

31 Gernsbacher, Morton Ann and T. Givón (eds.): Coherence in Spontaneous Text. 1995. x, 267 pp. 

30 Downing, Pamela A. and Michael Noonan (eds.): Word Order in Discourse. 1995. x, 595 pp. 

29 kAhrel, Peter (PJK) and René van den Berg (eds.): Typological Studies in Negation. 1994. x, 385 pp. 

28 Givón, T. (ed.): Voice and Inversion. 1994. viii, 402 pp. 

27 Fox, Barbara A. and Paul J. HoPPer (eds.): Voice: Form and Function. 1994. xiii, 377 pp. 

26 Lord, Carol: Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions. 1993. x, 273 pp. 

25 Svorou, Soteria: The Grammar of Space. 1994. xiv, 290 pp. 

24 Perkins, Revere D.: Deixis, Grammar, and Culture. 1992. x, 245 pp. 

23 KeMMer, Suzanne: The Middle Voice. 1993. xii, 300 pp. 

22 Payne, Doris L. (ed.): Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility. 1992. viii, 320 pp. 

21 Downing, Pamela A., Susan D. Lima and Michael Noonan (eds.): The Linguistics of Literacy. 1992. 

xx, 334 pp. 

20 Croft, William, Suzanne Kemmer and Keith Denning (eds.): Studies in Typology and Diachrony. 

Papers presented to Joseph H. Greenberg on his 75th birthday. 1990. xxxiv, 243 pp. 

19:2 Closs Traugott, Elizabeth and Bernd Heine (eds.): Approaches to Grammaticalization. Volume II. 

Types of grammatical markers. 1991. xii, 558 pp. 

19:1 Closs Traugott, Elizabeth and Bernd Heine (eds.): Approaches to Grammaticalization. Volume I. 

Theoretical and methodological issues. 1991. xii, 360 pp. 

18 hAiman, John and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.): Clause Combining in Grammar and Discourse. 1988. 

xiii, 428 pp. 

17 hAMMond, Michael, Edith A. Moravcsik and Jessica Wirth (eds.): Studies in Syntactic Typology. 

1988. xiv, 380 pp. 

16 Shibatani, Masayoshi (ed.): Passive and Voice. 1988. xi, 706 pp. 

15 Austin, Peter (ed.): Complex Sentence Constructions in Australian Languages. 1988. vii, 289 pp. 

14 Hinds, John, Shoichi Iwasaki and Senko K. Maynard (eds.): Perspectives on Topicalization. The 

case of Japanese WA. 1987. xi, 307 pp. 

13 Never published. 

12 Nedjalkov, Vladimir P. (ed.): Typology of Resultative Constructions. Translated from the original 

Russian edition (1983). Translation edited by Bernard Comrie. 1988. xx, 573 pp. 

11 Tomlin, Russell S.: Coherence and Grounding in Discourse. Outcome of a Symposium, Eugene, Oregon, 

June 1984. 1987. viii, 512 pp. 

10 rAnsom, Evelyn N.: Complementation: its Meaning and Forms. 1986. xii, 226 pp. 

9 Bybee, Joan: Morphology. A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. 1985. xii, 235 pp. 

8 Slobin, Dan I. and Karl Zimmer (eds.): Studies in Turkish Linguistics. 1986. vi, 294 pp. 

7 Craig, Colette G. (ed.): Noun Classes and Categorization. Proceedings of a symposium on categorization 

and noun classification, Eugene, Oregon, October 1983. 1986. vii, 481 pp.

6 Haiman, John (ed.): Iconicity in Syntax. Proceedings of a symposium on iconicity in syntax, Stanford, 

June 24–26, 1983. 1985. vi, 402 pp. 

5 rUtherford, William E. (ed.): Language Universals and Second Language Acquisition. 1984. ix, 264 pp. 

4 Chisholm, William, Louis T. Milic and John A.C. Greppin (eds.): Interrogativity. A colloquium on 

the grammar, typology and pragmatics of questions in seven diverse languages, Cleveland, Ohio, October 

5th 1981-May 3rd 1982. 1984. v, 302 pp. 

3 Givón, T.: Topic Continuity in Discourse. A quantitative cross-language study. 1983. vi, 492 pp. 

2 hAiman, John and Pamela Munro (eds.): Switch Reference and Universal Grammar. Proceedings of a 

symposium on switch reference and universal grammar, Winnipeg, May 1981. 1983. xv, 337 pp. 

1 HoPPer, Paul J. (ed.): Tense-Aspect. Between semantics & pragmatics. 1982. x, 350 pp.

(Typological Studies in Language 1) Paul J. Hopper (Ed.)-Tense-Aspect_ Between Semantics and Pragmatics-John Benjamins Publishing Company (1982).pdf

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?