Universality and language-dependency of tense and aspect: Performatives from a crosslinguistic perspective

Fortuin, Egbert

doi:10.1515/lingty-2018-0018

Cited by 8 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…The present tense reference, in principle, is typical for performative expressions, though cross-linguistically the situation can be more heterogeneous, and various verbal forms (not necessarily morphologically present) can occur in this function: sometimes past or perfect, sometimes future (cf. (De Wit et al 2018), (Fortuin 2019) for a more detailed overview). In Russian (and Slavic in general) imperfective present tense (like klyanus' 'I swear' or obeshchayu 'I promise') remaining the main grammatical device for performatives, perfective present is also possible; the distribution is not quite clear and seems to be largely lexical.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, their aspectual behaviour (if applicable) is somewhat more complicated: performative semantics can effectively draw on both perfective and imperfective -cf. notably Wiemer 2014, Dickey 2016and Biasio 2021a, 2021b for Slavic, and de Wit et al 2018 andFortuin 2019 in a wider cross-linguistic perspective.…”

Section: Prospective Performative and Present Perfective Paradoxmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Perfective, performative and present: Some non-standard combinations in Slavic and beyond

Плунгян

Рахилина²,

Reznikova³

2022

Russian Journal of Linguistics

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The combination of perfective aspect and present tense is frequently considered as an example of semantically incompatible grams. If verbal forms including markers of both perfective aspect and present tense do exist in a language, they tend not to express present resp. perfective in the strict sense. Thus, in Russian such forms usually convey the future, as in napishu ‘I will write’. The article discusses a specific type of contexts where these forms develop a less trivial meaning of what can be called “prospective present”. Obligatory components of these contexts are first person of the verb and negation. We focus on three instances of this kind : ne skazhu (lit. ‘I won’t tell’), ne dam (lit. ‘I won’t give’) and ne pushchu (lit. ‘I won’t let’)’. With the data of Russian National Corpus (RNC) and notably of the parallel corpora within RNC, we demonstrate that in certain uses, these constructions correspond to speech acts of refusal or prohibition and can be viewed, accordingly, as expressing a kind of performative meaning. As performatives, these verbs refer to a present situation: the speaker’s refusal or prohibition comes into operation at the moment of utterance, and not at some point in the future. The present-tense reference is corroborated by the translational counterparts of ne skazhu / ne dam / ne pushchu from parallel corpora, as other languages regularly use present forms in these contexts. Thus, performative-like constructions provide new data on potential non-future meanings of perfective present forms.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Prospective Performative and Present Perfective Paradoxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perfective, performative and present: Some non-standard combinations in Slavic and beyond

Плунгян

Рахилина²,

Reznikova³

2022

Russian Journal of Linguistics

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“…Koschmieder ( 1930 ), who coined the term “Koinzidenz” for what later became known as explicit performatives, already was aware that languages differ in expressing the coincidence of uttering a sentence and changing the world. In a more recent overview, Fortuin ( 2019 ) observes that languages tend to use unmarked verbal forms for explicit performatives. While English uses the simple present, many languages use the present imperfective.…”

Section: The Tense Of Declarationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performative updates and the modeling of speech acts

Krifka

2024

Synthese

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This paper develops a way to model performative speech acts within a framework of dynamic semantics. It introduces a distinction between performative and informative updates, where informative updates filter out indices of context sets (cf. Stalnaker, Cole (ed), Pragmatics, Academic Press, 1978), whereas performative updates change their indices (cf. Szabolcsi, Kiefer (ed), Hungarian linguistics, John Benjamins, 1982). The notion of index change is investigated in detail, identifying implementations by a function or by a relation. Declarations like the meeting is (hereby) adjourned are purely performative updates that just enforce an index change on a context set. Assertions like the meeting is (already) adjourned are analyzed as combinations of a performative update that introduces a guarantee of the speaker for the truth of the proposition, and an informative update that restricts the context set so that this proposition is true. The first update is the illocutionary act characteristic for assertions; the second is the primary perlocutionary act, and is up for negotiations with the addressee. Several other speech acts will be discussed, in particular commissives, directives, exclamatives, optatives, and definitions, which are all performative, and differ from related assertions. The paper concludes a discussion of locutionary acts, which are modelled as index changers as well, and proposes a novel analysis for the performative marker hereby.

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“…For instance, in their analysis of wine reviews, Hommerberg & Paradis (2014: 218) demonstrate that aspect choice contributes to 'the construal of the tasting event as a joint writer-reader enterprise', a matter of stance. Similarly, both De and Fortuin (2019) argue that, in many languages, performative contexts involve distinct forms of aspectual behavior, reflecting the alternative, non-temporal function aspectual constructions fulfill in such contexts (see example (5) above).…”

Section: The Use Of Aspectual Encoding In Non-canonical Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aspect beyond time: Introduction

Wit

Brisard

2020

J. Ling.

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The collection of papers presented in this special issue addresses the non-temporal import of aspectual constructions, in conventional and less conventional contexts and expression modes. In this introduction, we outline the notions of lexical and grammatical aspect, and how they are traditionally analyzed in temporal accounts, which focus on situations’ temporal constituency, duration, and limitation in time. This serves to clarify relevant notions for those readers who are less familiar with the domain (admittedly riddled with terminological confusion) and thus explicate some of the underlying tenets of existing (temporal) accounts, which the papers in this special issue call into question. This questioning, alongside insights coming from the discussion of various non-canonical constructions/uses in different languages and from different theoretical perspectives, promises an alternative approach to aspect, which goes beyond time.

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Universality and language-dependency of tense and aspect: Performatives from a crosslinguistic perspective

Cited by 8 publications

References 39 publications

Perfective, performative and present: Some non-standard combinations in Slavic and beyond

Perfective, performative and present: Some non-standard combinations in Slavic and beyond

Performative updates and the modeling of speech acts

Aspect beyond time: Introduction

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