Article published in:
Cross-linguistic Semantics of Tense, Aspect, and ModalityEdited by Lotte Hogeweg, Helen de Hoop and Andrej L. Malchukov
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 148] 2009
► pp. 33–54
The perfective/imperfective distinction
Coercion or aspectual operators?
Corien Bary | Radboud University Nijmegen
I defend an aspectual operator approach of the perfective/imperfective distinction against a coercion approach, as, for example, proposed for French by de Swart (1998). I propose an analysis that follows de Swart on many points, but keeps temporal and aspectual contributions separate. I argue that such an analysis has a larger cross-linguistic coverage than one that combines the two in a single operator. The argumentation is based on the aspectual system of Ancient Greek, but holds for any language in which temporal and aspectual information are encoded in separate morphemes, and in which the opposition perfective/ imperfective is not restricted to the past tense. In addition, I show that a coercion analysis is problematic for French as well.
Published online: 30 November 2009
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.148.03bar
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.148.03bar
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