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Project

How to catch the present? A typological study of present-tense marking

The default function of a present-tense construction would appear to be locating situations at the time of speaking. Yet it has been observed that, in various languages, the present tense turns out to express non-present-time meanings when combined with event verbs. This phenomenon, called the "present perfective paradox", has been analyzed as a consequence of the interaction of the present tense with different types of ectual constructions which convey a bounded perspective on a situation. The current project sets out to analyze the manifestation of the present perfective paradox in a typologically adequate sample of languages. On the one hand, the project has descriptive objectives: it will chart the characteristics of present-tense constructions and the way they interact with different types of ect, on the basis of existing grammars, a questionnaire and an acceptability judgement task. This description will provide a unique perspective on the meaning types that can be expressed by means of so-called present-tense constructions across languages. In addition to these descriptive goals, the project aims to offer theoretical contributions to the study of tense and ect across languages, as it will provide cognitive-functional explanations for the patterns attested, both crosslinguistically and within specific languages. Ultimately, this typological investigation will result in a semantic connectivity map reflecting theoretically plausible patterns of polysemy.
Date:1 Nov 2021 →  Today
Keywords:TENSE AND ASPECT, TIME-ASPECT
Disciplines:Grammar, Linguistic typology, Morphology, Semantics