Imperfectivity and Progressivity: The French Imparfait

Jayez, Jacques

doi:10.3765/salt.v9i0.2822

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 18 publications

(7 reference statements)

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“…The [assertion time] is viewed as spanning the whole event [...] but not beyond [...], whence the peculiar flavour of the narrative Imparfait: one follows completely some eventuality, then shifts to the next one, etc. (Jayez 1999) This is exactly what we get if we assume that the complete event interpretation of IPF in French amounts to the aspectual configuration t = e.…”

Section: The Inclusion Relationsupporting

confidence: 53%

“…(3) A huit heures, les voleurs entraient imparfait dans la banque, ils discutaient imparfait avec un employé, puis se dirigeaient imparfait vers le guichet principal. (from Jayez 1999) At eight, the robbers entered the bank. They discussed with a clerk and then they moved towards the main desk.…”

Section: B: Who Decorated It?unclassified

“…(Breu 1998). According to the traditional view of French aspectologists like Guillaume, Passé simple stands outside the complete/incomplete event opposition (Jayez 1999). I will therefore propose an explicit semantic interpretation of Imparfait, which is expected to have an invariant meaning due to its markedness.…”

Section: Markednessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the Italian Imperfetto, Bonomi (2004) claims that although achievements are clearly preferred in the complete event interpretation, accomplishments may be possible, as well. Concerning the French IPF, in example (3) above -from Jayez (1999) -the achievement predicate entraient is followed by the activity/accomplishment discutaient avec and the accomplishment se dirigeaient vers. Interestingly, however, my informants seem to prefer Passé simple or Passé compose for the two last VPs.…”

Section: Perfect Tenses Likementioning

confidence: 99%

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Interdependence of Diachronic and Synchronic Analyses

2008

Studies in Language Companion Series

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Imperfectivity is cross-linguistically associated with the subinterval property and a modal component induced by the famous 'imperfective paradox'. These properties arguably hold for both the progressive and habitual-iterative readings. However, both in Romance and Slavic, the imperfective may also refer to complete events instantiated in the world of evaluation: the so-called Imparfait narratif in French and the Factual Imperfective in Russian. I propose an analysis of viewpoint aspect in terms of temporal inclusion relations between the event time and the assertion time. Importantly, however, the source of the two complete event readings in question are quite different inasmuch as the Russian imperfective is unmarked and is used whenever the marked perfective aspect is inappropriate, while the French Imparfait is marked. This means that the French Imparfait retains its meaning of contemporaneity even when it has a complete event interpretation.

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Section: The Inclusion Relationsupporting

confidence: 53%

Section: B: Who Decorated It?unclassified

Section: Markednessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Perfect Tenses Likementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Interdependence of Diachronic and Synchronic Analyses

2008

Studies in Language Companion Series

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“…For French, traditional grammarians, such as Imbs and Grévisse, have assumed that the imparfait narratif does not need to be unified with the more canonical event-inprogress reading. More recently, there are accounts of the imperfective in both Romance and Slavic that take it to be either underspecified or substantially disjunctive in its meaning (Jayez 1999, Borik 2002, Grønn 2003, 2008. However, the existence of both properties with durative gemination in Northern Paiute-a genetically and geographically distinct language-supports attempts to unify the completed reading with the other readings for the imperfective aspect (Labelle 2003, Altshuler 2010, Arregui et al 2014.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Imperfective Semantics of Durative Gemination in Northern Paiute

Toosarvandani¹

2017

International Journal of American Linguistics

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Like other Numic languages (Uto-Aztecan), Northern Paiute has a morphological process of durative gemination, which conveys some type of aspect. I describe the semantics of durative gemination in Northern Paiute, locating it within an emerging typology of imperfective aspect from the formal semantics literature. Like the imperfective aspect in other languages, durative gemination has an event-in-progress interpretation, in addition to a number of other interpretations. Somewhat unexpectedly, one of these does not depict the internal structure of an event, but rather the event as a whole. I identify parallels between this completed interpretation for durative gemination in Northern Paiute and similar interpretations for the imperfective aspect in better-studied languages. * I am greatly indebted to Grace Dick, Edith McCann, and Madeline Stevens for continuing to teach me about their language over the years. In addition, I thank Pranav Anand, Isabelle Charnavel, and Sergei Tatevosov for their helpful discussion on a number of issues. I have also learned a lot from audience members at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas in Portland and Semantics of Under-Represented Languages in the Americas 8 at the University of British Columbia, as well as at Boston University and the University of California (Berkeley and Santa Cruz). 1 Transcriptions use IPA except y stands for [j], lenis b, d, and g are [b ∼ B], [R], and [g ∼ G] respectively, and double letters represent geminate consonants and long vowels. I use the following abbreviations: ACC = accusative, ADV = adverbial, COM = comitative, CONJ = conjunctive subject, CONT = continuous aspect, DEM = demonstrative, DIM = diminutive, DL = dual, DUR = durative gemination, EMPH = emphatic particle, EXCL = exclusive, F = feminine, GEN = genitive, HAB = habitual aspect, IMPF = imperfective aspect, INCEP = inceptive, INSTR = instrumental, INT = intensive, IP = instrumental prefix, LOC = postposition, NEG = negation, NMZ = nominalizer, NOM = nominative, PASS = passive, PAST = past tense, PERF = perfect aspect, PFV = perfective, PL = plural, PROG = progressive aspect, PROSP = prospective aspect, PRS = present tense, PTC = discourse particle, QUOT = quotative, REFL = possessive reflexive anaphor, SEQ = sequential suffix, SG = singular, SIM = simultaneous suffix, SUBJ = indicative subject.

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Incompleteness and (not-)at-issue Updates in Mandarin Chinese

Sun

2023

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Imperfectivity and Progressivity: The French Imparfait

Abstract: No abstract.

Cited by 8 publications

References 18 publications

Interdependence of Diachronic and Synchronic Analyses

Interdependence of Diachronic and Synchronic Analyses

The Imperfective Semantics of Durative Gemination in Northern Paiute

Incompleteness and (not-)at-issue Updates in Mandarin Chinese

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