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Tense and Aspect
My research in the area of tense and aspect mostly
focuses on the perfect (e.g., I have seen the movie). I study
various aspects of the meaning of the perfect – cross-linguistic variation,
interaction with viewpoint aspect and tense, and with temporal adverbials and
negation – as well as the distribution of the semantic primitives in
the syntactic structures underlying the perfect. § The present perfect puzzle. In joint work [6], my co-author and I
proposed a solution to the so-called present perfect puzzle –
the fact that some adverbials are prohibited in the present perfect in
some languages. For instance, in English John has arrived yesterday is
not acceptable, but its German counterpart is. Our solution to this
long-standing puzzle has three components: a weak semantics for the perfect,
a cross-linguistic variation in the semantics of the present, and a mechanism
of grammatical competition and strengthening of meaning. In our proposal, the
semantic contribution of the perfect, in
both English and German, is to introduce an interval no part of which may be
after the local evaluation time. When the perfect combines with the present
tense, the strictly compositional meaning of the present perfect is compatible with intervals that
are before the speech time. This meaning is, however, further restricted in
English, because of competition with a semantic formative with a more
specified meaning, the past. The particular semantics of the present in
English, in contrast to German, is
the reason the past is a stronger scalar alternative to the
present perfect in that language. The result of the competition
between present perfect and past in English is that the present perfect is
strengthened to non-past, requiring
inclusion of the speech time. Failure of modification by adverbials such as yesterday
then follows, as intervals including the speech time may not be modified
by such adverbials. Since inclusion of the speech time is not required by the
German present perfect, as its meaning is not strengthened, adverbials such
as yesterday are predictably acceptable. § Reference time
modification in the perfect. Developing further the ides in [6], I have identified
additional restrictions imposed by the perfect on temporal adverbials. I have
established a new generalization concerning the interaction of the perfect
with referential adverbials such as yesterday vs. the anaphoric the
same day [5]. The generalization
states that no part of the reference time may be included in the interval
denoted by a referential adverbial modifying a perfect (e.g., We saw John last night. He had arrived ?? yesterday / Ö the
same day vs. We saw John this morning. He had arrived yesterday).
The generalization is naturally explained only with the new semantics for the
perfect developed for the present perfect puzzle [6], providing independent
confirmation for that proposal. In work in progress, I study related
restrictions on reference time modification in the perfect in Bangla [1], [2]. § Interaction between perfect and viewpoint aspect. The
weak semantics for the perfect is also crucial for providing a unified account
[7], [8], of the different interpretations
of the perfect such as the universal (I have always lived in Sofia), which carries the implication
that I still live in Sofia, the experiential (I have eaten Belgian
chocolate ice cream before), and the resultative
(I have lost my keys), which has the implication that my keys, lost
before the speech time, are still lost at the speech time. My co-authors and
I develop an interval-based semantics for the perfect, a version of the
Extended Now theory, according to which the perfect simply introduces a time
interval in a particular relationship to the evaluation time, and the kind of
viewpoint aspect embedded under the perfect is responsible for situating the
event time relative to the perfect time, and for the different perfect
readings. § The Perfect of Evidentiality.
Finally, I have a long-term interest in a phenomenon, which I have called
the Perfect of Evidentiality [9], [4] – the use of
the perfect morphosyntax for conveying
that the speaker does not have a first-hand evidence for the truth of a
proposition (in English, this meaning is closely rendered with the use
of apparently). This phenomenon raises the question of cross-categorial parallels, in this case between
temporality and modality. Publications & Talks
[1] Pancheva,
R. and P. Biswas (2012). “Temporal Adverbials, Negation, and the Bangla
Perfect” Formal Approaches to South Asian Languages 2, MIT, March
17-18, 2012. [2] Pancheva,
R. (2010). “A Perfect Puzzle in Bangla” Workshop on Perfect
Puzzles, University of Bochum, Germany, Nov 12, 2010 (invited talk) [3] Pancheva, R. (2010). “Layers of
Aspectual Structure” Formal
Description of Slavic Languages 8.5,
Brno, Czech Republic (invited talk) [4] Pancheva,
R. (2005). “Tense and Evidentiality” Colloquium on Tense, Mood and Modality, Université de Paris 3 and Sorbonne, December 8-10,
2005; and Workshop on the Linguistics
Representation of Tense and Mood, University of Stuttgart,
December 3, 2005. (invited talks) [5] Pancheva,
R. (2004). “Another Perfect Puzzle”. In V. Chand,
A. Kelleher, A.J. Rodríguez, and B. Schmeiser (eds.) WCCFL 23. Cascadilla Press. 621-634. [6] Pancheva,
R. and A. von Stechow. (2004). “On the Present Perfect Puzzle”. In K. Moulton and M. Wolf (eds.) NELS 34. [7] Pancheva,
R. (2003). “The Aspectual Makeup of Perfect Participles and the
Interpretations of the Perfect”. in A. Alexiadou,
M. Rathert, and A. von Stechow(eds.) Perfect Explorations. Mouton de Gruyter.
277-306. [8] Iatridou, S., E. Anagnostopoulou,
and R. Izvorski. (2001). “Observations about the Form and Meaning of the Perfect”. In M. Kenstowicz (ed.) Ken Hale: A Life in Language. MIT Press. 189-238. [9] Izvorski, R. (1997). “The Present Perfect as an Epistemic Modal”.
In A. Lawson and E. Cho (eds.), SALT
VII Proceedings, CLC Publications. Cornell University. |