A Theory of Aspectuality: The Interaction between Temporal and Atemporal Structure (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, Series Number 64)

Sentences may pertain to states or processes or events. They may express duration, frequency, habituality, and many other forms of temporality. How do they do this? It is the aspectual properties of sentences in natural languages which allow the user to express a temporal structure, and Henk Verkuyl presents a unified formal system to account for them. He explains aspectuality in terms of the opposition between terminative aspect and durative aspect, and describes the way in which terminative aspect is compositionally formed on the basis of semantic information expressed by different syntactic elements, in particular the verb and its arguments. The aim is to determine which semantic conditions make a sentence terminative; but at least ten different forms of durative aspectuality are also treated. All are drawn into a theory which can account for both terminative and durative aspectuality together. A Theory of Aspectuality draws together into a coherent whole the author's thinking on the subject over the last twenty years, and will interest all those working on aspect and the semantics of noun phrases. It promises to be a major new contribution to our understanding of the subject. Issues Of Compositionality -- The Plus-principle -- Inner And Outer Aspect -- [[plus Or Minus]add To] And [[plus Or Minus]sqa] -- Aspectual Asymmetry -- The Scope Of This Study -- Aspectual Classes And Aspectual Composition -- Vendler's Time Schemata -- Continuous Tense Criteria -- Definiteness Criteria -- On The Alleged Punctual Nature Of Achievements -- Mourelatos' Merger Of Vendler And Kenny -- Dowty's Reductionist Approach -- Hoeksema's Cross-classification -- Carlson's Extension -- Ter Meulen's Hierarchy -- Moens' Temporal Ontology -- Noun Phrase Structure -- The Tools Of Generalized Quantification -- Extensional Type Logic: El -- Generalized Quantification -- In Search Of Sqa -- Sqa: Boundedness Of A[characters Not Reproducible]b? -- Constraints On Quantifiers -- Is Sqa A Constraint On Quantifiers? -- Properness And Terminativity -- Numerals And Quantifiers: One Level Up -- Np = [det [num ... N[superscript 0]]] -- [n[superscript 0]] = [olash]: Strawson Vs. Russell -- Some Problems Of Prenominal Np Structure -- Det-num-problems -- Problems With All, The And Every -- Indefinite And Definite Bare Plurals -- Determiner Structure -- A Problem With [phi] -- Scalarity, Partitions And Pseudo-partitions -- Plug -- Multiple Quantification -- All And Every Again -- Negation -- Some Explorative Issues -- X-bar Theory And Plug -- Bareness Again -- Mass Terms -- Temporal Structure -- Homogeneity -- Homogeneity And Truth At Intervals -- Three Problems For Dowty -- Homogeneity And The Alleged Imperfective Paradox. Henk J. Verkuyl. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 373-385) And Index. Sentences may pertain to states or processes or events. They may express duration, frequency, habituality, and many other forms of temporality. How do they do this? It is the aspectual properties of sentences in natural languages which allow the user to express temporal structure, and Henk Verkuyl here presents a unified formal system to account for them. He explains aspectuality in terms of the opposition between terminative aspect and durative aspect, and describes the way in which terminative aspect is compositionally formed on the basis of semantic information expressed by different syntactic elements, in particular the verb and its arguments. The aim is to determine which semantic conditions make a sentence terminative: but at least ten different forms of durative aspectuality are also treated. All are drawn into a theory which can account for both terminative and durative aspectuality together.A theory of aspectuality draws together into a coherent whole the author's thinking on the subject since the mid 1970s, and will interest all those working on aspect and the semantics of noun phrases. It promises to be a major contribution to our understanding of the subject. Sentences may pertain to states or processes or events. How do they do this? It is their aspectual properties which allow users of natural languages to express their perspective on the temporal structures they are talking about: on boundedness, ongoing activity, uniqueness, habituality, indeterminacy and many other subtly encoded forms of temporality. Henk Verkuyl here presents a unified formal system to account for all these properties. This theory combines insights and tools from Montague grammar and generative grammar (in the broad sense which also includes the localistic framework). This volume draws together in a coherent whole the author's thinking on the subject over 20 years, and will interest those working on aspectuality and quantification

Sentences may pertain to states or processes or events. They may express boundedness, duration, repetition, frequency, and many other forms of temporality. How do they do this? Henk Verkuyl presents here a theory about aspectual properties of sentences in natural languages. A Theory of Aspectuality brings together the fruit of his thinking on the subject over the past 20 years, and will interest all those working on aspect and the semantics of noun phrases. It promises to be a major contribution to our understanding of the subject.

Sentences may pertain to states or processes or events. They may express boundedness, duration, repetition, frequency, and many other forms of temporality. How do they do this? Henk Verkuyl presents here a theory about aspectual properties of sentences in natural languages. A theory of aspectuality brings together the fruit of his thinking on the subject over the last 20 years, and will interest all those working on aspect and the semantics of noun phrases.It promises to be a major new contribution to our understanding of the subject. To evade the notorious terminological problems connected with the definition of aspect, I shall simply say at this point that central to the present theory is the conviction that, in English, sentences like (1)-(4) differ in a number of important respects and that an aspectual theory is called for to describe and explain these differences.