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Article published In:
Asymmetries, Mismatches and Construction Grammar
Edited by Nikos Koutsoukos, Kristel Van Goethem and Hendrik De Smet
[Constructions and Frames 10:2] 2018
► pp. 210–233

The semantics of the simple tenses and full-verb inversion in English

A story of shared epistemic schemas

| University of Antwerp

This paper offers a fresh perspective on (restrictions on) aspectual coercion, thereby focusing on the essentially epistemic import of aspectual constructions. The case study that I will discuss is the unexpected use of the simple tenses for ongoing event reports in sentences involving full-verb inversion. I will argue that this attestation of the simple present/past in inverted sentences can be analyzed as a kind of aspectual mismatch between the higher-order construction and the embedded tenses. Yet at a more basic, epistemic level of analysis, there is no mismatch: the full-verb inversion construction and the embedded tenses are similar in the sense that both report events that are conceived of as fully and instantly identifiable.

Keywords: full-verb inversion, simple tenses, progressive aspect, coercion, epistemic schemas
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Full-verb inversion in English: A brief introduction
  • 3.The aspectual properties of full-verb inversion: Corpus data and native speaker elicitations
  • 4.Mismatch at the aspectual level
  • 5.The shared epistemic schemas of full-verb inversion and the simple tenses
    • 5.1The epistemic semantics of the simple tenses
    • 5.2Full and instant identifiability and full-verb inversion
  • 6.Constraints on aspectual coercion: An epistemic motivation
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 January 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cf.00019.wit
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