{"id":4912,"date":"2013-03-04T05:00:56","date_gmt":"2013-03-04T09:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=4912"},"modified":"2013-03-04T05:03:26","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T09:03:26","slug":"linguistics-colloquium-38-lisa-matthewson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2013\/03\/04\/linguistics-colloquium-38-lisa-matthewson\/","title":{"rendered":"Linguistics Colloquium 3\/8 - Lisa Matthewson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linguistics.ubc.ca\/people\/lisamatt\">Lisa Matthewson<\/a> (University of British Columbia)<br clear='none'\/>\nDate\/Time: Friday 8 March, 3:30 - 5pm<br clear='none'\/>\nVenue: 32-141<br clear='none'\/>\nTitle: Current relevance meets inchoativity: On what makes a perfect aspect <\/p>\n<p>Abstract:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Here are some big questions: Why do viewpoint aspects (like perfective, imperfective, or<br clear='none'\/>\nperfect) recur in language after language with similar, but not identical, semantics? What if any<br clear='none'\/>\nuniversal properties are shared by the language-specific instantiations of each aspect? How much<br clear='none'\/>\nvariation is permitted, and what do the differences follow from?<\/p>\n<p>In this talk I address a sub-part of the big questions; my goal is to isolate the common properties<br clear='none'\/>\nshared by present perfects cross-linguistically. I concentrate mainly on Niuean (Polynesian), with<br clear='none'\/>\nbrief looks at Japanese, St\u0092\u00e1t\u0092imcets, Russian, Blackfoot, Mandarin and Saanich. Pushing<br clear='none'\/>\nPortner\u0092s (2003) analysis of English to its logical limits, I propose that the present perfect is<br clear='none'\/>\npurely a pragmatic phenomenon, consisting only of a current relevance presupposition.<br clear='none'\/>\nFollowing Portner, I assume that the other salient property of the present perfect \u0096 that it places<br clear='none'\/>\nevents within the Perfect Time Span \u0096 is derivable from other parts of the grammar.<\/p>\n<p>The claim that perfects contribute only current relevance predicts that current relevance does not<br clear='none'\/>\nhave to be associated solely with viewpoint aspect. I show that this prediction is confirmed by<br clear='none'\/>\nNiuean. The Niuean perfect displays current relevance effects and places events within the<br clear='none'\/>\nPerfect Time Span, yet differs from the English perfect in the readings obtained with each<br clear='none'\/>\nAktionsart. In Niuean, perfect activities or stage-level states can receive a simple present-tense<br clear='none'\/>\ninterpretation, perfect individual-level states receive an inchoative interpretation, and there are<br clear='none'\/>\nno universal perfect readings. I argue that all the properties of the Niuean perfect fall out from an<br clear='none'\/>\nanalysis of it as an inchoativizer; it adds an initial change-of-state to any predicate. This shows<br clear='none'\/>\nthat current relevance can be associated with a process operating at the level of event structure.<br clear='none'\/>\nThe analysis of Niuean may also extend to Japanese <span style=\"font-style:normal\">teiru<\/span>, as well as several other puzzling<br clear='none'\/>\naspects cross-linguistically.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker: Lisa Matthewson (University of British Columbia) Date\/Time: Friday 8 March, 3:30 - 5pm Venue: 32-141 Title: Current relevance meets inchoativity: On what makes a perfect aspect Abstract: Here are some big questions: Why do viewpoint aspects (like perfective, imperfective, or perfect) recur in language after language with similar, but not identical, semantics? What if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4912","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\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4912"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4940,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4912\/revisions\/4940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}