Aspect and Aspectuality

Robert I. Binnick

Situation Aspect

• (Lexical Aspect/ Aktionsart) concerns the classification of eventualities.

• The Situation Aspect of a verb is part of the way how this verb is temporally structured.

The three basic types of eventualities:

State: being ill

Event: falling ill

Process/Activity: ageing

• A sequence of recurring eventualities are called a series.

The puppy whimpered all night.

• States properties of times

• Events occur at times

• Processes occur at times, but are not

countable things.

• Expressions belonging to various aspectual classes differ in their semantic and grammatical properties.

• A stative verb in the present tense reports a state at the present time.

John loves Pizza.

• A non-stative verb is not reporting an event occurring at the present moment.

John eats Pizza.

• The different types of eventualities are distinguished by temporal properties:

Stativity

Telicity

Durativity

• States are stative, they lack internal structure and development.

• Events are non-stative, show development over time.

• States are durative

• Achievements are non-durative events

• Accomplishments are durative

• Semelfactive processes are non-durative

• Processes are durative

• Events are telic

• States and processes are atelic

• States and processes are cumulative John was ill from noon to three in the

afternoon. John was ill from three to five in the

afternoon. John was ill from noon to five in the

afternoon.

• States and processes are partitive

• Events are neither cumulative nor partitive

John drew for five hours.

John drew for three hours.

Mozart wrote the symphony in five hours.

Mozart wrote the symphony in three hours.

• Eventualities consist of sequences of parts or phases.

• A state or process (durative, atelic) can be divided into initial, medial and final phases- defined by the aspectualizers begin, continue, stop.

• An event combines a preparatory phase (a durative process) with an endpoint (achievement).

Viewpoint Aspect

• (Verbal Aspect/ Grammatical Aspect) marks ‘different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation’ (Comrie, 1976, 3). It is a formal property of language.

Perfective/ Imperfective Aspect

• Perfective Aspect expresses the eventuality as a complete whole.

Mr. Blandings built his dream house.• Imperfective Aspect expresses the

eventuality with respect to its internal structure.

The rain was beating down.

Two varieties of the Imperfective Aspect

• Habitual Aspect represents periodic repetition of an eventuality.

John swims in the sea, never in a pool or lake.

• Continuous Aspect represents the eventuality as on-going and partial

Susan was sleeping. • A variety of the Continuous Aspect:• Progressive Aspect represents the

eventuality as dynamic Mr. Blandings was building his dream

house.

Prospective Aspect

Expressions such as ‘be to’ and ‘be going to’ represent a future eventuality as viewed from the present perspective

• The ‘futurate’ interpretation of the simple and progressive present tenses

Next Tuesday, Susan {performs/is performing/is to perform} before the queen.

Perfect Aspect

• The perfect has four principal uses the resultative, experiential, continuative perfects & the perfect of recent past.

• The resultative represents a present state resulting from a past event.

Mother has gone to the store (and is still there).

• The experiential indicates that an eventuality has occurred at least once and is repeatable.

Have you seen the current exhibit at the museum?

• The continuative indicates that an eventuality that started in the past is held up to the present.

The children have been outside all morning.

• The perfect of recent past reports an event that has happened recently.

The council has just voted to raise taxes.

• In American English, the perfect is often replaced by the past tense. However, it cannot substitute for the continuative use.

Mother went to the store (and is still there).

* Susan {walked/was walking} for three hours now.

• Situation aspect interacts with Viewpoint aspect in all the aspects.

• The progressive normally cannot be used with stative expressions, but there are some exceptions:

• I’m feeling tired. (temporary state)

• They’re believing in God more and more. (states in which there is a change of intensity)

• The children are being difficult. (states that result from the actions of an agent)

• The prospective aspect is not used with expressions for states and unbounded processes. In such cases, these receive inchoative and ingressive interpretations.

John plays (= starts to play) with the other children tomorrow.

If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to be (= become) wealthy some day.

Phasic Aspect

• Phasic aspect refers to one or more phases of an eventuality.

John began to run. (beginning)

John stopped running. (end)

The functions of Aspect in discourse

• Textual function creates and maintains the coherence of the discourse at global and local levels of structure.

• Global structure depends on the genre of the discourse.

• Narrative genres contrast with genres of discourse in structure and the use of tense and aspect.

• Narratives have a foreground, consisting of eventive clauses in the perfective aspect.

I came, I saw, I conquered. • Tense use is anaphoric, it links the

reference time of each clause to a specific time introduced by another clause in the narrative.

• The background of narratives consists of non-eventive sentences and/or sentences in non-perfective aspects.

Tom looked for a restaurant. He was hungry. He hadn’t eaten for hours.

• Genres of discourse such as conversation or reportage are associated with non-eventive sentences.

Formic acid can be obtained from a colorless fluid secreted by ants (…). It is strong irritant. (…)

• Tense use is deictic, the times of the eventualities relate to the deictic centre, the time of utterance, and not to one another.

• In the local structure of the discourse, aspect is used to maintain coherence on three levels:

• Linguistic

• Intentional

• Attentional

• Linguistic: anchoring of the reference point of each clause by some time referred to in the preceding discourse.

For the next few days the temperature was pleasant.

• Intentional: local discourse coherence is a matter of rhetorical relations that hold between segments of the discourse.

• Each of these relations defines a temporal relationship.

• For example narration and consequence define temporal sequence.

A car came slowly down the street. It stopped in front of Harry’s house.

A car stopped in the car park. A dog barked.

• Attentional: coherence is a matter of topical relevance. In discourse it is maintained by attaching each clause to a preceding segment of discourse.

• Rhetorical relations structure discourse by coordinating or subordinating material to the immediately preceding segment of discourse.

• Coordinating rhetorical relations, marked by perfective aspect, include narration and listing.

Bill sang a song. Jane thanked him on behalf of the audience.

Bill sang a song. Jane played the piano.

• Subordinating rhetorical relations include consequence and elaboration.

The waste bin burst into flame. Someone grabbed the fire extinguisher.

Susan visited her aunt Martha. They had tea on the veranda.

• Perfective aspect maintains the segment, while a non-perfective often marks a shift into a subordinate thread.

I told Frank about my meeting with Ira. We had talked about ordering a Butterfly.