Aspect and Reference Time
Olga Borik
Abstract
This book investigates the temporal structure of language. It deals with central issues in the understanding of tense and aspect, proposes a new approach to the main problems in the area, and seeks to establish the universal semantic properties of two important and contentious aspectual categories: perfectivity and imperfectivity. The book develops an original theory of aspect. It shows how this accounts for aspectual categories in Russian, and that it can used to compare Russian to other languages where similar aspectual issues arise. The book devotes particular attention to English, a langua ... More
This book investigates the temporal structure of language. It deals with central issues in the understanding of tense and aspect, proposes a new approach to the main problems in the area, and seeks to establish the universal semantic properties of two important and contentious aspectual categories: perfectivity and imperfectivity. The book develops an original theory of aspect. It shows how this accounts for aspectual categories in Russian, and that it can used to compare Russian to other languages where similar aspectual issues arise. The book devotes particular attention to English, a language which appears to have no grammatical categories of perfectivity and imperfectivity. It argues that the semantic properties established for the Russian tense-aspect system are reflected in English, and reveals parallels in the expression of temporal and aspectual information in the two languages.
Keywords:
temporal structure,
tense,
aspect,
perfectivity,
imperfectivity,
reference time,
Russian,
English,
language,
semantics
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2006 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199291298 |
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199291298.001.0001 |