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Semelfactive
In linguistics, semelfactives are a type of aktionsart or lexical aspect, which is a property of verbs and other predicates representing the temporal flow of an event. A semelfactive describes a very brief event which ends by returning to its initial state, making it capable of being repeated. Semelfactive verbs in English include "blink", "sneeze", and "knock". As a kind of aktionsart, the temporal information of semelfactives is incorporated into the verb's root itself, rather than through auxiliary verbs or morphological inflections as in other types of aspect. The use of the term "semelfactive" is analogous to iterative aspect in the realm of grammatical aspect. A semelfactive event is punctual or non-durative, since it happens suddenly and lasts only a moment. According to Bernard Comrie, who first posited the idea of semelfactive as a category of aktionsart, the event represented by a semelfactive verb is also perfective The perfective aspect (abbreviated ), sometimes c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lexical Aspect
In linguistics, the lexical aspect, situation type or Aktionsart (, plural ''Aktionsarten'' ) of an event is part of the way in which that event is structured in relation to time. For example, the English verbs ''arrive'' and ''run'' differ in their lexical aspect since the former describes an event which has a natural endpoint while the latter does not. Lexical aspect differs from grammatical aspect in that it is an inherent semantic property of a predicate, while grammatical aspect is a syntactic or morphological property. Although lexical aspect need not be marked morphologically, it has downstream grammatical effects, for instance that ''arrive'' can be modified by "in an hour" while ''believe'' cannot. Theories of aspectual class Although all theories of lexical aspect recognize that verbs divide into different classes, the details of the classification differ. An early attempt by Vendler recognized four classes, which has been modified several times. Vendler's class ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iterative Aspect
In linguistics, the iterative aspect ( abbreviated ), also called " semelfactive", "event-internal pluractionality", or "multiplicative", is a grammatical aspect In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how a verbal action, event, or state, extends over time. For instance, perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference t ... described by some authors as expressing the repetition of an event observable on one single occasion, as in 'he knocked on the door', 'he coughed', 'she is drumming', etc. It is not to be confused with frequentative aspect and habitual aspect, both of which signal repetition over more than one occasion. Other authorsp236 in S.C. Dik. 1997. The Theory of Functional Grammar, part I The Structure of the Clause. Berlin: Mouton. have reserved the term "semelfactive" for this mono-occasional repetition, and defined iterative aspect as denoting 'several' repetitions over more tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language, and analogous systems of sign languages), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning). Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics (the study of the biological variables and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) bridge many of these divisions. Linguistics encompasses Outline of linguistics, many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical applications. Theoretical linguistics is concerned with understanding the universal grammar, universal and Philosophy of language#Nature of language, fundamental nature of language and developing a general ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Comrie
Bernard Sterling Comrie, (; born 23 May 1947) is a British linguist. Comrie is a specialist in linguistic typology, linguistic universals and on Caucasian languages. Personal life Early life and education Comrie was born in Sunderland, England on 23 May 1947. He earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees in Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics from the University of Cambridge, where he also taught Russian and Linguistics until he moved to the Linguistics Department of the University of Southern California. Personal life He married linguistics professor Akiko Kumahira in 1985. Professional life Academic career For 17 years he was professor at and director of the former Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, combined with a post as Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he returned full-time from 1 June 2015. He has also taught at the U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perfective Aspect
The perfective aspect ( abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole, i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the imperfective aspect, which presents an event as having internal structure (such as ongoing, continuous, or habitual actions). The term ''perfective'' should be distinguished from ''perfect'' (see below). The distinction between perfective and imperfective is more important in some languages than others. In Slavic languages, it is central to the verb system. In other languages such as German, the same form such as ("I went", "I was going") can be used perfectively or imperfectively without grammatical distinction. In other languages such as Latin, the distinction between perfective and imperfective is made only in the past tense (e.g., Latin "I came" vs. "I was coming", "I used to come"). However, perfective should not be confused with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telicity
In linguistics, telicity (; from Greek τέλος "end, goal") is the property of a verb or verb phrase that presents an action or event as having a specific endpoint. A verb or verb phrase with this property is said to be ''telic''; if the situation it describes is ''not'' heading for any particular endpoint, it is said to be ''atelic''. Testing for telicity in English One common way to gauge whether an English language, English verb phrase is telic is to see whether such a phrase as ''in an hour'', in the sense of "within an hour", (known as a ''time-frame adverbial'') can be applied to it. Conversely, a common way to gauge whether the phrase is atelic is to see whether such a phrase as ''for an hour'' (a ''time-span adverbial'') can be applied to it. Defining the relevant notion of "completeness" Having endpoints One often encounters the notion that telic verbs and verb phrases ''refer'' to events that ''have endpoints'', and that atelic ones ''refer'' to events or stat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boundedness (linguistics)
In linguistics, boundedness is a semantic feature that relates to an understanding of the referential limits of a lexical item. Fundamentally, words that specify a spatio-temporal demarcation of their reference are considered ''bounded'', while words that allow for a fluidly interpretable referent are considered ''unbounded''. This distinction also relies on the divisibility of the lexical item's referent into distinct segments, or strata. Though this feature most often distinguishes countability in nouns and aspect in verbs, it applies more generally to any syntactic category. Boundedness in verbs For verbs, certain grammatical aspects express boundedness. Boundedness is characteristic of perfective aspects such as the Ancient Greek aorist and the Spanish preterite. The simple past of English commonly expresses a bounded event ("I found out"), but sometimes expresses, for example, a stative ("I knew"). The perfective aspect often includes a contextual variation similar to an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Verb Types
A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle ''to'', is the infinitive. In many languages, verbs are inflected (modified in form) to encode tense, aspect, mood, and voice. A verb may also agree with the person, gender or number of some of its arguments, such as its subject, or object. In English, three tenses exist: present, to indicate that an action is being carried out; past, to indicate that an action has been done; and future, to indicate that an action will be done, expressed with the auxiliary verb ''will'' or ''shall''. For example: * Lucy ''will go'' to school. ''(action, future)'' * Barack Obama ''became'' the President of the United States in 2009. ''(occurrence, past)'' * Mike Trout ''is'' a center fielder. ''(state of be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammatical Aspects
In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to formulate rules that define well-formed, grammatical sentences. These rules of grammaticality also provide explanations of ill-formed, ungrammatical sentences. In theoretical linguistics, a speaker's judgement on the well-formedness of a linguistic 'string'—called a grammaticality judgement—is based on whether the sentence is interpreted in accordance with the rules and constraints of the relevant grammar. If the rules and constraints of the particular lect are followed, then the sentence is judged to be grammatical. In contrast, an ungrammatical sentence is one that violates the rules of the given language variety. Linguists use grammaticality judgements to investigate the syntactic structure of sentences. Generative linguists are larg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
