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Present Perfective Paradox Across Languages

By Astrid De Wit

Present Perfective Paradox Across Languages

By Astrid De Wit

0 - Default Title
Description
This book presents an analysis of how speakers of typologically diverse languages report present-time situations. It begins from the assumption that there is a restriction on the use of the present tense to report present-time dynamic/perfective situations, while with stative/imperfective situations there are no such alignment problems. Astrid De Wit brings together cross-linguistic observations from English, French, the English-based creole language Sranan, and various Slavic languages, and relates them to the same phenomenon, the 'present perfective paradox'. The proposed analysis is founded on the assumption that there is an epistemic alignment constraint preventing the identification and reporting of events in their entirety at the time of speaking. This book discusses the various strategies that the aforementioned languages have developed to resolve this conceptual difficulty, and demonstrates that many of the features of their tense-aspect systems can be regarded as theresult of this conflict resolution. It also offers cognitively plausible explanations for the conceptual structures underlying the interactions attested between tense and aspect.
Product details
Edition:
1
Number of Pages:
236
Release Date:
2016-12-20
Publication Date:
2016-12-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press(UK)
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
0198759533
ISBN13:
9780198759539
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
523 g
Height:
161 cm
Width:
240 cm
Thickness:
17 cm
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