The Perfective, the Progressive and the (dis)closure of situations: comment on the paper by María J. Arche

Abstract

In the present paper, inspired by María J. Arche's work, "The construction of viewpoint aspect: the imperfective revisited" (2013, this issue), I add several pieces of evidence in favor of her proposal that viewpoint aspect does not alter the fundamental situation aspect properties of predicates. Namely, I discuss the temporal interpretations in Capeverdean, a Portuguese-based Creole language for which the salient opposition in the domain of viewpoint aspect is not between the imperfective and the perfective, but rather between the Progressive and the Perfect, here taken as semantically complex categories that involve certain temporal characteristics; crucially, imperfectivity is one of the features of the Progressive and a perfective viewpoint is part of the semantic complexity of the Perfect. I also discuss the role of for-time durational adverbials when combined with the perfective and propose that, in their presence, the relevant final boundary when telic predicates are at stake is not the culmination of the event, but rather the final point described by that time-argument. This proposal accounts nicely for the fact that, in these specific contexts, there is no contradiction in having this perfective clause conjoined with the assertion that the underlying telic situation is not completed.

Progressive forms and meanings: the curious case of Capeverdean

“…Previous descriptions of data from the variety of Santiago point to the fact that the salient opposition regarding grammatical aspect in that variety is between the progressive and the perfect, rather than between the imperfective and the perfective. This was proposed in Pratas ( , 2012aPratas ( , 2014 and is also assumed here, with some relevant adaptations. In most cases, these progressive and perfect values are not obtained through a structure that includes an auxiliary verb, such as happens in English (be+V-ing for the progressive, have+participle for the perfect) and many other languages -"perfects and progressives are overwhelmingly periphrastic" (Dahl / Velupillai 2005: 2); see also for an overview of the progressive in European languages.…”

Elements of denial in Capeverdean

“…This nicely accounts for its temporal/aspectual restrictions. By means of reanalysis and grammaticalization, typical processes in the formation of Creoles, it has not only extended its meaning to 'until then' (see example in fn 15), but may also 14 For the analysis of allegedly bare verbs that are in fact marked by a zero morpheme which conveys a Perfect reading, see Pratas ( , 2012aPratas ( , 2014 have acquired the properties of an n-word (note that Portuguese adverbial expression até hoje is not a n-expression), behaving exactly like the DPs ningen 'no.one' and nada 'nothing' (see section 2). This means that it is also a weak NPI with the same values for the different polarity features: (34) Values for the polarity features of tioxi [0 aff, α neg, 0 mod] However, it does not obey the diagnostics for universal n-words, namely it does not allow for the modification by almost.…”

“…In the Santiago variety of Capeverdean, 1 a Portuguese-based Creole language, sentential negation is expressed by the word ka, as illustrated in (1) (Pratas 2012b):…”