<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;">Hi Björn,<div><div style="text-indent: 47.200001px;">Yes, what I mean by “change of state” is <span style="text-indent: 47.200001px;">the actualization of a new situation”, such as from not leaving to leaving. In some cases that is a state in the Aktionsart sense, but it doesn’t have to be. In Chinese many words require le2 to be used predicatively, e.g. <i>bing</i> ’sick; illness’ and <i>si</i> ‘die': <i>ta bing le</i> [3sg ill le2] ‘he got sick;<i> ta si le</i> [3sg die le2] ‘he died'. In Aktionsart terms they are achievements, so you either died or have not yet died, that is, you can’t use an adverb such as ‘slowly’ or progressive aspect with them (unlike in English). there is no time frame in which the action is happening, it is a sudden change of state, and so requires le2.</span></div><div style="text-indent: 47.200001px;"><span style="text-indent: 47.200001px;"><br></span></div><div>In Tagalog <i>na</i> is used very frequently, and contrasts with <i>pa,</i> which marks a continuation of a situation rather than a change of situation, e.g.</div><div><i>Wala na si Michael</i> ‘Michael is no longer here’ vs. <i>Wala pa si Michael</i> ‘Michael is still not here’.</div><div><br></div><div>All the best,</div><div>Randy</div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>On 28 Feb 2024, at 8:48 PM, Wiemer, Bjoern <wiemerb@uni-mainz.de> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div><meta charset="UTF-8"><div class="WordSection1" style="page: WordSection1; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="">Dear Randy,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="">thanks for your explanation. Your answer seems to show that one has to be careful in distinguishing change-of-state and (subsequent) state. Unfortunately, sometimes people dealing with aspectual and verb/predicate semantics happen to be rather sloppy with this distinction (what is asserted vs what is implied or entailed). The result is that perfectivity is then claimed to be able to refer to states (instead of, e.g., marking off the beginning of a (new) state). Your explanation indicates that le2 is broader.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 35.4pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="">Apart from that, can something like “change from not leaving to leaving” be called a change-of-state? Or is this rather an artificial understanding of change-of-state (which has occurred in reasoning when aspectual semantics, or situation types, were just reduced to (bounded) events and states)?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 35.4pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="">In this context, just a side remark from somebody who is ignorant of the languages from your expert region: you translated Tagalog<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><i><span lang="EN-US">Kain na!</span></i><span lang="EN-US"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>[eat change-of-state] with ‘Time to eat!’. This would suggest that “change-of-state”, again, is related to just the actualization of a new situation. Is that kind of utterance normal for (daily) routines, i.e. when the “new situation” is expected to begin (on the basis of knowledge about habits)?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Best,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Björn.</span><span lang="EN-US" style=""><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style=""><o:p> </o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style=""><o:p> </o:p></span></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style=""><o:p> </o:p></span></div><div><div style="border-width: 1pt medium medium; border-style: solid none none; border-color: rgb(225, 225, 225) currentcolor currentcolor; border-image: none; padding: 3pt 0cm 0cm;"><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Von:</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Randy J. LaPolla [<a href="mailto:randy.lapolla@gmail.com" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">mailto:randy.lapolla@gmail.com</a>]<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br><b>Gesendet:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Montag, 26. Februar 2024 06:12<br><b>An:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Wiemer, Bjoern <<a href="mailto:wiemerb@uni-mainz.de" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">wiem</a></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><a href="mailto:wiemerb@uni-mainz.de" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">erb@uni-mainz.de</a>><br><b>Cc:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Jeanette Sakel <<a href="mailto:Jeanette.Sakel@uwe.ac.uk" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">Jeanette.Sakel@uwe.ac.uk</a>>; Oesten Dahl <<a href="mailto:oesten@ling.su.se" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">oesten@ling.su.se</a>>; Astrid De Wit <<a href="mailto:astrid.dewit@uantwerpen.be" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">astrid.dewit@uantwerpen.be</a>>;<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br><b>Betreff:</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Re: [Lingtyp] Intuitions about inclusive time reference<o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p> </o:p></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Hi Björn,<o:p></o:p></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I don’t think a clause marked by le2 is a state, though I called it a change of state marker. Here “state” means something more like ’situation’, as there is for example a change from not leaving to leaving. Something similar is found in a number of Asian languages, e.g. the Tagalog second position clitic<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>na</i>functions in a similar way:<i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Kain na!</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>[eat change-of-state] ’Time to eat!’ and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Tayo na</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>[1plinclusive change-of-state] ‘It’s our turn now’ (it is often translated as ’now’).<o:p></o:p></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p> </o:p></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">When the two<i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>le</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>are used together, there is both the perfective and change of state meaning, e.g.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>wo chi le1 fan</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>[1sg eat PFV rice] ‘I ate’ vs.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>wo che le1 fan le2</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>‘I have (now) eaten’ (this is why le2 is sometimes talked about as a perfect marker, but it isn’t really perfect marking, at least not like the English perfect, it is more a change to the perfective situation).<o:p></o:p></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p> </o:p></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">All the best,<o:p></o:p></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Randy<o:p></o:p></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br><br><o:p></o:p></div><blockquote style="margin-top: 5pt; margin-bottom: 5pt;"><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">On 22 Feb 2024, at 5:05 PM, Wiemer, Bjoern <<a href="mailto:wiemerb@uni-mainz.de" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">wiemerb@uni-mainz.de</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></div></div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p> </o:p></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Thanks to Guillaume for pointing out “periodic tense markers” (and for the paper dealing with them)!</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> But if I understand correctly, the Chinese case (with le1 and le2) is different in the sense that le2 is not per se a marker of periodic time intervals, but its flexibility with regard to utterance time (as the reference interval) is a side effect, isn’t it?</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> Moreover, if le2 can be combined with le1 (considered a marker of perfectivity), does this combination also allow for this flexibility? The reason why I’m asking is that then we seem to be back to the initial concern explained by Östen and related to the so-called perfectivity paradox. Or would a clause marked with le2 in any case be interpreted as a state? (This seems more reasonable for anterior reference –<i>He has left</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>– than for posterior reference –<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>He is about to leave</i>.)</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Best,</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Björn.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div><div style="border-width: 1pt medium medium; border-style: solid none none; padding: 3pt 0cm 0cm; border-color: currentcolor; border-image: none;"><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">From:</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Randy LaPolla <<a href="mailto:randy.lapolla@gmail.com" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">randy.lapolla@gmail.com</a>><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br><b>Sent:</b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Thursday, February 22, 2024 2:33 AM<br><b>To:</b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Jeanette Sakel <<a href="mailto:Jeanette.Sakel@uwe.ac.uk" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">Jeanette.Sakel@uwe.ac.uk</a>><br><b>Cc:</b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Wiemer, Bjoern <<a href="mailto:wiemerb@uni-mainz.de" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">wiemerb@uni-mainz.de</a>>; Östen Dahl <<a href="mailto:oesten@ling.su.se" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">oesten@ling.su.se</a>>; Astrid De Wit <<a href="mailto:astrid.dewit@uantwerpen.be" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">astrid.dewit@uantwerpen.be</a>>;<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br><b>Subject:</b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Re: [Lingtyp] Intuitions about inclusive time reference<o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Dear Jeanette,<o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">There are two positions that le (</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: "MS Gothic";">了</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">) can appear in, immediately post-verbal or clause-final. These are sometimes called le1 and le2 in the literature. They can also both appear in the same clause. The functions of the two are different, with le1 usually thought of as perfective marking, but le2 functions as a change of state marker. It is the latter that can refer to an action that has happened or is about to happen. For example, if I am about to leave a place I could say Wo zou le [1sg go le2] ‘I’m leaving/ about to leave’, but the same structure could be used for when someone left some time ago: If someone asks where is that person, I could say Ta zou le [3sg go le2] ‘He left.’ Maybe a better example would be Xia yu le [fall rain le2], which could be used to express ‘It is starting to rain’ or ‘It rained’ (see <a href="https://www.jianshu.com/p/79860ad450b2" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">https://www.jianshu.com/p/79860ad450b2</a> for a natural example of the latter use).<o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Randy<o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br><br><br><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><blockquote style="margin-top: 5pt; margin-bottom: 5pt;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 12pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">On Feb 21, 2024, at 7:30 PM, Jeanette Sakel <<a href="mailto:Jeanette.Sakel@uwe.ac.uk" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">Jeanette.Sakel@uwe.ac.uk</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></p></blockquote></div><blockquote style="margin-top: 5pt; margin-bottom: 5pt;"><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Aptos;">Dear all,</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Aptos;">I think what you're after here, Björn, might be something like the Chinese "perfective aspect" marker<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>le<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span><span style="font-family: "MS Gothic";">了</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family: Aptos;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Aptos;">that is used in situations close to the utterance time - something that has either happened or is about to happen.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Aptos;">Not being a native speaker of Mandarin, my examples would not necessarily be great - so I'll leave that to the experts.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Aptos;">All the best,</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Aptos;">Jeanette</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-family: Aptos;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div id="Signature"><div id="divtagdefaultwrapper"><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; background: white;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Dr Jeanette Sakel (she/her)</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; background: white;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Professor of Language and Linguistics</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; background: white;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">University of the West of England, Bristol</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; background: white;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; background: white;"><u><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: blue;"><a href="https://credentials.advance-he.ac.uk/434a6f41-f46c-4747-b775-5953950cbdcb" title="https://credentials.advance-he.ac.uk/434a6f41-f46c-4747-b775-5953950cbdcb" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;"><Outlook-k5yjvhfs.png></a></span></u><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; background: white;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><hr size="2" width="98%" align="center"></span></div><div id="divRplyFwdMsg"><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">From:</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> on behalf of Wiemer, Bjoern <<a href="mailto:wiemerb@uni-mainz.de" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">wiemerb@uni-mainz.de</a>><br><b>Sent:</b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>21 February 2024 11:19<br><b>To:</b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Östen Dahl <<a href="mailto:oesten@ling.su.se" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">oesten@ling.su.se</a>>; Astrid De Wit <<a href="mailto:astrid.dewit@uantwerpen.be" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">astrid.dewit@uantwerpen.be</a>>;<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>><br><b>Subject:</b><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Re: [Lingtyp] Intuitions about inclusive time reference<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Dear Östen, Astrid and everybody else,<br>I have been following this interesting discussion raised by Östen's elicitation request, but now cannot but ask a simple, and maybe too trivial and silly, question. As I understand tense (as a grammatical category), in particular present tense, it is not always about time measured in a physical sense, but rather about what Klein has called the topic you make a statement (or question, or request) about (therefore Topic Time). This topic is usually by necessity "located" somewhere on the timeline (or whatever imagination we might have about "time"), but even if, in a physical sense, the moment of speech is contained in the interval ('day + night' = 24 hours) the speaker wants to make a statement about, the choice of a TAM form often seems to be influenced rather by reference to some knowledge background ('information source') and concomitant degrees of epistemic commitment. That's probably why many of the first replies to Östen's request "drifted" into that domain. The inverse side of the (probably) same phenomenon seems to be that (speakers of diverse) languages might not be very much "suited" for providing just one conventional and short form that would be capable of denoting exactly what Östen has been after. So, my question is: is the apparent lack of such a form (or: the problems connected to giving a short answer to Östen's question) an indication of the rarity of such a communicational need? That is, a need of only being very precise about a bounded event time within a cyclical interval (of which the utterance interval is a small subinterval) without specifying anything about the speaker's knowledge/belief status (certainty etc.)? In other words: for natural language use this sort of question might be too outlandish, because speakers are just "more interested" in other aspects of reference to (bounded) events than just and only their temporal location in relation to the time of speech.<br> Of course, this doesn't solve the descriptive (so to say, the onomasiological) problem posed by Östen, but I think it might say something about how people "use" language. In particular, isn't it the case that the current interval called "today" (as part of a chain 'day + night' = 24 hours, or Russ. 'sutki', etc.) gains a somewhat special treatment by people, and that this becomes manifest in language? After all, some languages seem to make grammatical distinctions between "hodiernal past" and just "(non-hodiernal) past", and ways of saying things about what is closer to the moment of speech (and speakers'/hearers' immediate consciousness) like "just happened" (e.g., the French "venir de" kind of past) vs "probably will happen in a moment" (as with prospectives, e.g. many futures developed from "go-"periphrases) appear to be more salient (and frequently spoken about) than situations that are more remote (or beyond the actual daily cycle).<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br> By the way: is there any language that has a conventional way of expressing something close to utterance time irrespective of before or after utterance time? I think, this would be Östen's original request, but related to a special form (something like a "hodiernal tense" marker), not to the use of widely known forms (like present tense, progressive, simple, or whatever).<br><br>This is just one of the questions arising to me when I follow this discussion. But I don't want to bother you further. I hope that I haven't yet bothered too much.<br><br>Best,<br>Björn (Wiemer).<br><br><br><br>-----Original Message-----<br>From: Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> On Behalf Of Östen Dahl<br>Sent: Monday, February 19, 2024 6:58 PM<br>To: Astrid De Wit <<a href="mailto:astrid.dewit@uantwerpen.be" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">astrid.dewit@uantwerpen.be</a>>;<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br>Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Intuitions about inclusive time reference<br><br>Dear Astrid and all,<br><br>I didn't mean that the situations overlap with the time of speaking, I was thinking of the interval denoted by "today" as containing the moment of speech. That wasn't too clear perhaps. I wasn't too worried about those cases, rather I wanted to see what happened if you tried to speak of an event that you knew had happened or would happen within such an interval. You're right that it probably depends on what grammatical distinctions there are in the language. Swedish works more or less similarly to Dutch here, so we can say in the present tense "Mary lämnar in sin projektansökan idag".<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br><br>Actually I'm not sure the situations have to overlap with the moment of speech, even in stative sentences. Suppose some shops are open in the morning and other shops are open in the afternoon and none are open during lunch. I guess you could still say at lunch time "The shops are open today", even if they are all closed at that point. If someone disagrees, write to me privately and I will post a summary afterwards.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br><br>Response to Paolo Ramat's posting, which just came: I didn't intend to deny that you can use the future or past tense if you restrict the time span.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><br><br>Best,<br>Östen<br><br>-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----<br>Från: Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> För Astrid De Wit<br>Skickat: den 19 februari 2024 18:04<br>Till:<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br>Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Intuitions about inclusive time reference<br><br>Dear Östen,<br><br>You're right - it's very difficult to come up with a good elicitation technique for this one!<br><br>As for the question you were asking yourself, I just wanted to check whether I'm getting this correctly. You're saying that the present tense is sometimes used to refer to non-punctual situations as long as these situations overlap with the time of speaking, but the English example (I must admit I can't say anything about Russian in this case) involves a stative situation, right? "Shops are closed today, shops remain closed today,..." Even if they are temporary states, these are states nonetheless and can therefore be made to coincide with the present, i.e. the time of speaking, because they have the sub-interval property. So I don't think these examples show that the present is extended in time. But perhaps this isn't what you were trying to say, and I misunderstood completely?<br><br>Now that you've given some additional explanation on the kind of context you were after (and indeed, with less focus on the source of information), I think it would be possible to use a present tense in Dutch and say "Marie dient vandaag haar onderzoeksvoorstel in", if you don't know whether or not she's already submitted her proposal. But the Dutch present tense is aspectually ambiguous - or that's what I would say at least - and can therefore refer to situations where, in English for instance, you'd have to use a progressive. I'm not a native speaker of English, but the sentence "Mary submits her application today" seems less felicitous in this context. I would read this as a part of a series of planned events or something along those lines ("So, Mary submits her application today, and I do the same tomorrow, and then what?"). Almost narrative-like.<br><br>In any case, interesting food for thought - thank you!<br><br>Astrid<br><br>-----Original Message-----<br>From: Lingtyp <<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>> On Behalf Of Östen Dahl<br>Sent: vrijdag 16 februari 2024 10:46<br>To:<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br>Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Intuitions about inclusive time reference<br><br>CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.<br><br><br>Many thanks to everyone who has responded to my query!<br><br>The background to my question was that I have been worrying about a well-known phenomenon that Astrid De Wit describes as follows in her book "The Present Perfective Paradox across Languages": "the assumption that there is a cognitive constraint on the alignment of bounded situations in their entirety with the time of speaking, and that this constraint is linguistically reflected in the fact that is difficult to use present perfective constructions with dynamic verbs to report present-time events".<br><br>My problem is that while it seems plausible that one cannot place a bounded situation in the present as long as the present, as Aristotle claimed, is not extended in time, the present tense in languages such as English and Russian can be used about non-punctual time intervals, if they include the time of speech, as in "Today the shops are closed" or "Segodnja magaziny zakryty". So you might expect that you should in fact be able to get perfective presents about events that take place with such an interval. But that is rather tricky. It should preferably be a single event, but if you speak of a single event taking place today, you will tend to get a past or future tense depending on whether it is before or after the time of speech, e.g. "Today I got a letter from Mary" or "Today I will write to Mary". So the question is: what happens if I don't know the exact time of the event? I decided to do my best to construct a situation of that kind.<br><br>I think that at this point, I had better not get into further lengthy explanations but just summarize the result of the query (so far).<br><br>Whatever language responses were about, the major tendency was to modify the sentence so as to reflect the source of the information, that is, either state explicitly that this was something Mary had said or just use a form or construction that indicated that this was what had been planned. Some respondents also used plain present-referring constructions. I don't think anyone used a straightforward future tense or anything equivalent, but I may have missed that. - Particularly notable was the use of the past tense in Dutch pointed out by Astrid De Wit and Kees Hengeveld.<br><br>Christian Lehmann points out that a simple present tense would be more likely if I had not mentioned the source of information. My intention was to make the context as clear as possible. However, I think this illustrates a general difficulty with elicitation as a method. If you mention some aspect of the context in the instructions, this potentially makes it more salient to the respondent than it would be in a natural situation. The respondent may feel a need to include it somehow in the response even if they would not do so "in real life".<br><br>- Östen<br>_______________________________________________<br>Lingtyp mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br><a href="https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=05%7C02%7Cjeanette.sakel%40uwe.ac.uk%7Cfe27297011124f92223d08dc32cf163b%7C07ef1208413c4b5e9cdd64ef305754f0%7C0%7C0%7C638441112231604849%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=dNcMVgGtAx%2FyLvT%2Bei8ZrMqH4an%2FjgRxQsJr4POEZFk%3D&reserved=0</a><br>_______________________________________________<br>Lingtyp mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br><a href="https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=05%7C02%7Cjeanette.sakel%40uwe.ac.uk%7Cfe27297011124f92223d08dc32cf163b%7C07ef1208413c4b5e9cdd64ef305754f0%7C0%7C0%7C638441112231611412%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=YBrLiGrFRIBAAxdBmiDw07pE5fL9NNMatKQHjJummwA%3D&reserved=0</a><br>_______________________________________________<br>Lingtyp mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br><a href="https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=05%7C02%7Cjeanette.sakel%40uwe.ac.uk%7Cfe27297011124f92223d08dc32cf163b%7C07ef1208413c4b5e9cdd64ef305754f0%7C0%7C0%7C638441112231614968%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=PGWBuhjPxepyEtoDKoUrF2P5H97QsAg%2B73CBcTFybOE%3D&reserved=0</a><br>_______________________________________________<br>Lingtyp mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br><a href="https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=05%7C02%7Cjeanette.sakel%40uwe.ac.uk%7Cfe27297011124f92223d08dc32cf163b%7C07ef1208413c4b5e9cdd64ef305754f0%7C0%7C0%7C638441112231618412%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=hYeolNBxIZ7AKOdTEiDMmUvl4vrVo9pqAntOQNg7IyE%3D&reserved=0</a><o:p></o:p></span></div></div></div></div><div><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">_______________________________________________<br>Lingtyp mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br><a href="https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp" style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp</a></span></div></div></div></blockquote></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>