\nPuzzle<\/b>: We examine the puzzle of \u0093fake\u0094 imperfective aspect in counterfactual conditionals (CFs).
\n\u0093Fake\u0094 tense and aspect (Iatridou, 2000) \u0096 i.e. morphology that does not seem to make a temporal interpre-
\ntive contribution \u0096 is used in many languages to mark CFs. The following example from Greek illustrates
\nboth past and imperfective morphology used to mark a future-less-vivid conditional:<\/p>\n
[An pe?ene<\/b> o ar?i?os] ?a ton ?avame stin korifi tu vunu<\/span><\/br >
\n if die.PST.IMP the chief FUT him bury.PST.IMP on.the top the mountain<\/span>
\n\u0091If the chief died, we would bury him on the top of the mountain.\u0092
\n(Iatridou, 2000, ex. (14))<\/p>\nThe use of \u0093fake\u0094 past morphology associated with CF interpretations has been well-documented (Steele,
\n1975; James, 1982; Iatridou, 2000, a.o.). Several proposals analyze fake past as the locus of CF semantics,
\neither by construing \u0093past\u0094 as a marker of modal, rather than temporal, remoteness (Steele, 1975; Iatridou,
\n2000; Ritter and Wiltschko, 2010) or by deriving CF meaning from a purely temporal past (Ippolito, 2002;
\nArregui, 2009). It has been claimed that fake imperfective is also involved in the marking of counterfactu-
\nals, though its use is less well-understood: for Iatridou (2000, 2009) imperfective in CFs is a default aspect;
\nArregui (2004) claims that it reflects incompatibility between perfective and CFs; while Ippolito (2004) pro-
\nposes that a \u0093modal imperfective\u0094 reflects a speaker\u0092s indirect evidence for a proposition. Iatridou (2009)
\nproposes that imperfective-marked CFs occur in a subset of the languages with past-marked CFs, a general-
\nization she based on the fact that Slavic languages have \u0093fake\u0094 past but \u0093real\u0094 aspect in CFs. We argue that
\na full typology includes languages with \u0093fake\u0094 perfective aspect in CFs as well, to which we return below.<\/p>\n
Proposal:<\/b> We argue that the apparent requirement for imperfective in CFs in some languages is illusory,
\nmerely a morphological reflex of the need to realize a true PAST feature. We argue that \u0093past imperfective\u0094
\nmorphology inthese languages actually expresses only PAST; itreceives animperfective interpretation dueto
\ncontrast with a true PERFECTIVE morpheme. In CFs, this \u0093past imperfective\u0094 morphology reflects only CF
\n\u0093past\u0094; in other words, it does not reflect syntactic IMPERFECTIVE features. We illustrate this proposal with
\nthe morphological paradigm of three types of languages: (1) Greek, Romance, and Zulu, where imperfective
\nis default and occurs in CFs; (2) Arabic, where perfective is default and occurs in CFs; and (3) Slavic, where
\nPAST is specified independently of aspect, and CFs preserve full aspectual contrasts.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Speaker: Bronwyn Bjorkman & Claire Halpert Title: In search of (im)perfection: the illusion of counterfactual aspect Date\/Time: Tuesday, Oct 25, 1-2p Location: 32-D461 This is a practice talk for NELS 42. The full abstract is available (PDF). Puzzle: We examine the puzzle of \u0093fake\u0094 imperfective aspect in counterfactual conditionals (CFs). \u0093Fake\u0094 tense and aspect (Iatridou, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3171"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3201,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3171\/revisions\/3201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}