Aspectuality

Front matter

DE GRUYTER

Sarah Dessi Schmid

ASPECTUALITY

Preface to English Edition

This is the English translation of the book Aspektualitát, which was published in 2014 in the Journal of Romance Philology’s series of supplements (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fiir romanische Philologie) by De Gruyter publishers. Except for minor corrections, the German text has been retained unchanged.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the people who contributed in many ways to the English version of this book and without whose support it would not have been possible.

The idea for an English translation came from Lia and Daniel, when I hadn’t even thought of it. Daniel encouraged me in this undertaking in every possible way. My heartfelt thanks to both of them. I would like to thank Sam Featherston, Neil Huggett, Andrew Duane and - especially — Tessa Say very warmly for their mother-tongue competence, as well as the long phone calls, rich in linguistic content and empathic laughter. My deepest gratitude goes to Reinhild Steinberg — who loves language games as much as I do - for her generous and highly competent help as well as for her precious friendship in preparing the English manuscript in all its phases up to its publication. I am greatly indebted to De Gruyter publishers — especially to Ulrike Krauss, Christine Henschel and Gabrielle Cornefert — for their unfailing kindness and patience and their experienced support throughout this project.

Tiibingen, July 2019

© Open Access. © 2019 Sarah Dessì Schmid, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. D d 8/10 9783110562088

Preface

This book is a slightly revised version of my Habilitation (post-doctoral) thesis which was successfully presented in June 2012 to the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Tiibingen, and then to the University of Stuttgart in February 2013.

The core of the research is the presentation of a new theoretical model for classifying and interpreting the aspectual contents of states of affairs. In this book, I develop a set of descriptive and analytical tools at the conceptual level, which may be applied crosslinguistically and are therefore suitable for language comparison, but nevertheless may also be used for detailed analyses of specific phenomena in individual languages. In retrospect, I recognise in this a recurring — more or less conscious — motivation in my research, namely, the wish to combine the different thematic domains in which I work and the passions that drive me: grammar and semantics, linguistics and language philosophy.

As with any work of this sort, I have travelled a long way, but not alone. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have accompanied me on this journey and have contributed in many ways to the making of this book.

First of all, I would like to thank Peter Koch with all my heart. Always with the right questions at the right time, he has accompanied the process from conception to completion of the book with tireless enthusiasm and his typically respectful and constructively critical nature. I am especially grateful to him for sharing his human and intellectual greatness with me and for his generosity in past years and now once again on a daily basis. I would also like to affectionately thank Achim Stein, who gave me wonderful years in Stuttgart and opened up new horizons. He not only showed me new ways and perspectives in research as well as in the university realm, but also continuously supported my project with many helpful suggestions, not least by granting me the freedom needed to pursue it. I cannot be grateful enough for that. My sincere thanks also go to Johannes Kabatek and Tilman Berger not just for their willingness to take on additional reviews of my work, but also for important advice, remarks and helpful criticism, which have unquestionably contributed to the development of this book. I would also like to thank them for their special sense of humour that often filled our discussions with gaiety.

For valuable suggestions, bibliographic references, attentive and constructively critical reading of the text, and last but not least encouraging words of friendship, I owe thanks to those dear friends who are an example and a help to me every day: Heidi Aschenberg, Andrea Fausel and Daniela Marzo.

© Open Access. © 2019 Sarah Dessì Schmid, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. D d 8/10 9783110562088-203

Vill — Preface

Many colleagues and friends, not only of the institutes of Romance and Slavic languages and literature in Tübingen, Stuttgart and all of Germany, with whom I was able to discuss aspectuality on numerous occasions, have substantially contributed to the development of this book in its various phases. They have listened, commented and shared fruitful discussions with me, provided valuable bibliographical references, offered to present and discuss my project in front of an audience while it was still in the making, offered their expertise as native speakers, helped me deal with the flood of work from other areas and given me much-needed support with their friendship and affection. I can acknowledge here only a few of these people, but those who are not mentioned are by no means forgotten — my sincere gratitude goes to them all: Tanja Anstatt, Vahram Atayan, Asencion Bailen, Gabriele Beck-Busse, Martin Becker, Christine Blauth-Henke and her daughter Julia, Klaus Bóckle, Daniel Bun£ic, Giuseppe Burgio, Eva Erdmann-Schwarze, Ljudmila Geist, Paul Gévaudan, Jochen Hafner, Antonio Junco, Wiltrud Mihatsch, Carla Miotto, Rosina Nogales, Daniela Pirazzini, Nicoletta Rivetto, Marie-Rose Schoppmann, Stefan Schreckenberg, Maria Selig, Reinhild Steinberg, Liane Stróbel, Carola Trips, Eva Varga, Chrisoula Vernarli, Valentina Vincis, Richard Waltereit and all the other participants in the Tübingen colloquia on Wednesday evenings, as well as all the other colleagues and friends at the Institute of Linguistics/ Romance Studies of the University of Stuttgart and the Institute of Romance Languages and Literature of the University of Tübingen.

I would like to thank Andrea Fausel, Annika Franz, Jiirgen Freudl, Lara Schleyer, Daniel Schmid and Martin Sinn for their efficiency, precision and patience in proofreading, even under great pressure of time at various stages of the work. Additional thanks go to Daniel Schmid for drawing the figures and images.

I am especially indebted to Claudia Polzin-Haumann, Giinter Holtus and Wolfgang Schweickard for including my work in the Journal of Romance Philology’s series of supplements (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fiir romanische Philologie), as well as to the publishers De Gruyter — especially to Ulrike Krauss and Christine Henschel - for their always exceptionally friendly and competent support through the various difficulties which tend to arise on the path to publication of a long project.

The privilege of working in a discipline where the boundaries between work and private life are not necessarily clear-cut means that many of the friends I would like to thank have already been mentioned above. Once again, and a little more privately, I would like to extend special thanks to them and to all my other friends and my family for their patience and their readiness to

Preface — IX support me - especially my dear parents, as well as my siblings, whether by birth or by affection: Alessandra and Alessandro, Luca and Daniela.

To my husband Daniel - without whom this book would not have been possible — and to my son Leonhard I owe thanks for unlimited support and constant encouragement, and for loving distraction and cheeky laughter at work-intensive moments. Certainly, this was not always easy for them, but they have shared the load and accompanied me with rarely finite patience, even as far as the examples that appear in this book. I owe all this and much more to them - the sounds and images of my verbal and nonverbal world.

Tübingen, June 2014

A few days after this preface was written my dear and beloved teacher and friend Peter Koch died unexpectedly. He had been looking forward to the publication of this book with joy and pride, as he always enjoyed the successes of people who were close to him as if they were his own. We had forged many plans for the next few years and were very happy about our cherished academic exchanges and close personal contact which we re-established in October last year. I painfully miss his laughter and his wisdom, and our many conversations, which neither of us could ever keep short, every day - and every day more.

Tübingen, July 2014

Contents Preface to English Edition — V Preface — VII

1 The Temporal Structuring of States of Affairs — Tense, Aspect and Aktionsart — 9

1.2.1 Tense - a grammatical, deictic category — 10

1.2.2 Aspect - a grammatical, non-deictic category — 14

1.2.3 A terminological-definitional remark —— 19

1.2.4 Aktionsart — a lexical category — 21

1:3 On the relation between tense, aspect and Aktionsart — three theoretical approaches — 26

1.3.1 Bertinetto's interpretation of tense, aspect and Aktionsart — 27

1.3.2 Temporal relations and tenses according to Rojo and Veiga — 31

1.3.3 The Romance verbal system according to Coseriu — 33

1.4 Delimitation problems with the traditional verbal categories — aspect vs. tense vs. Aktionsart — 36

2.2 Aspectuality - onomasiology and content categories — 39

2.3 Onomasiological approaches to aspectuality —— 45

2.3.1 Aspectuality in Romance linguistics — De Miguel's concept —— 45

2:3:2 The two components of the aspectual domain - Smith's approach — 48

2.4.1 Aspect and Aktionsart — two categories? — 50

2.4.2 Grammaticality vs. Lexicality, Obligatoriness vs. Optionality,

Subjectivity vs. Objectivity — 53 2.5 Limits of unidimensional approaches? — 62

XII —— Contents

3 Aspectuality as a Complex, Semantic, Universal Category. Theoretical and Methodological Foundations — 65 3.1 Introductory remarks — 65 3.2 Aspectuality and frames — 69 3.2.1 Aspectuality and the levels of language — 69 3.2.2 Frames as basic structures of the categorisation of reality — 72 3.2.3 Contiguity and the figure-ground effect —— 74 3.2.4 Areas where the notion of frame can be applied — 78 3.2.5 Aspectuality and situation frames - a first definition — 80 3.3 Semanticity — abolishing the semantic distinction between aspect and Aktionsart — 82 3.4 Universality — cognition and the crosslinguistic perspective —— 85 3.5 Complexity - the structuredness of the category and the interplay in the sentence — 88 3.6 Summary and a first interim conclusion —— 100 4 The Model of Aspectuality as an Internal Temporal Structuring of States of Affairs — 103 4.1 Introductory remarks —— 103 4.2 Aspectual situation frames —— 104 4.3 The delimitation principle — 106 4.4 The three dimensions of aspectuality — 111 4.4.1 External, adjacency-related and internal aspectuality — 111 4.4.2 Realisations of the three dimensions of aspectuality —— 115 4.4.3 External aspectuality — delimitation of a state of affairs — 117 4.4.4 Adjacency-related aspectuality - adjacency relevance of the state of affairs — 127 4.4.5 Internal aspectuality — subdivision of the state of affairs — 134 4.5 A second interim conclusion —— 139 5 Combinations of the Dimensions of Aspectuality in the Situation Frame: the First Level of the Model Applied — 141 5.1 Introductory remarks —— 141 5.2 Aspectual delimitation schemas —— 141 5.2.1 A comprehensive inventory of delimitation schemas — 141 5.2.2 Presentation of the individual delimitation schemas —— 145

5.3 A third interim conclusion — 166

6 6.1 6.2

6.2.1 6.2.2 6.3

Contents —— XIII

The Second Level of the Aspectuality Model Applied — 169 Introductory remarks — 169 Aspectual delimitation schemas of the second level of the model — 170 An inventory of the delimitation schemas of the second level — 170 Presentation of the individual delimitation schemas — 173 (Aspectual) periphrastic verbal constructions — 202 The relevance of the phenomenon and problems of definition — 203 A flexible definition —— 212 STARE + gerund - a semasiological parenthesis — 215 “Aspectual-grammatical” and “actional” verbal periphrases? — 227 Verbal periphrases - a last interim conclusion — 229

Abbreviations —— 237

Author Index — 267