[Lingtyp] Second call: Theme session on aspectuality

[Johanna NICHOLS]

We invite preliminary submissions for a theme session:


A cross-linguistic perspective on the role of the lexicon in aspectuality

ALT 13, Pavia (September 2019)

Organizers:
               Thera Crane (University of Helsinki)
               Johanna Nichols (University of California, Berkeley)
               Bastian Persohn (University of Hamburg)


            Actionality (also known as lexical aspect, verb aspect,
situation type, aktionsart, aspect2, and other terms)  arises through
the interaction of a lexical verb's meaning and aspectual potential
and its possible argument configurations and their bounding potential
(Sasse 2002). We understand actionality as the configuration of
constituent phases and boundaries that make up a state of affairs
(Binnick 1991).  The contribution of lexical items to aspectual
interpretations is a primary component in understanding how
states-of-affairs are conceptualized in human language.  Various
theoretical accounts lay out a set of actional classes together with a
set of verbal lexicosemantic properties that determine them (e.g.
Vendler 1957, Breu 1994, Smith 1997, Bickel 1997, Van Valin & LaPolla
1997, Tatevosov 2002, Croft 2012, Tatevosov 2016, Van Valin 2018).
The modal number of such classes is five or six (sometimes with
subtypes); Tatevosov has more.  Subsequent work, however, has
continued to reveal actional classes that they do not cover, and the
widely held assumption that some basic set of such classes is
universal can be questioned (see e.g. Bar-el 2015 and references
therein).
            No such system has been used in a large cross-linguistic
survey, probably for the practical reason that they require extensive
elicitation and/or high-quality grammatical and lexical resources.
Tests like those used since Vendler 1957 and Dowty 1979 to identify
actionality classes are language-specific and not easily
generalizable, i.e. we have no cross-linguistic standard tests.
Despite the known centrality of verb lexical meaning to actional and
aspectual classes, there appears to have been no wordlist-based
comparative work.  As a result we know almost nothing of the
distributional typology of actionality systems.
            There are studies identifying actionality phenomena that
might profitably be pursued cross-linguistically.  Bar-el 2015 notes
that some languages conflate what are generally considered robust or
universal distinctions.  Various descriptive grammars have posited
language-specific classes that are ripe for cross-linguistic testing.
Current work on the Bantu language family suggests complex
lexicalization patterns in which a single lexeme encodes a
coming-to-be phase (e.g. becoming angry), the ensuing state change,
and the resultant state (being angry) (Botne & Kershner 2000, Kershner
2002, among many others; for an overview see Crane & Persohn, in
prep.). Another remarkable phenomenon, reported mostly for  languages
of Asia and the Americas, is non-culminative readings of Vendlerian
accomplishments (as in ‘S/he read the book but did not finish it');
see Martin et al. 2016 for an overview.  Theoretical work generally
treats states as basic and state changes as derived (e.g. Van Valin
2006 for predicate semantics; Koontz-Garboden 2012 for derivation),
but Nichols 2015 and ongoing work suggests that many languages treat
change of state as basic.

The goals of the theme session are therefore as follows:

·      to bring together empirical evidence on actional categories and
actional typology from a broad spectrum of languages

·      to shed light on unexpected readings or construals, such as the
non-culmination of accomplishments, and on the semantic factors that
favour these

·      to work towards developing best documentary practices for
descriptive accuracy and typological comparison – if, in fact,
actional categories can be made comparable across languages

·      to raise hypotheses on the distributional typology of actionality

·      to ask whether, if not a universal system, a robustly
widespread core set of actionality categories can be identified



SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Please indicate your interest in participating, together with a
preliminary title. If the theme session proposal is accepted by the
ALT Program Committee, your abstract will have to be submitted in
early 2019 (we will send reminders and guidelines).

DEADLINE for statements of interest:     November 12, 2018  (Monday)

Contact:    persohn.linguistics at gmail.com, thera.crane at helsinki.fi,
johanna at berkeley.edu
                               (please send your E-mail to all three addresses)

We will consider publication of the papers as a special journal issue
or an edited volume.



REFERENCES

Bar-el, Leora. 2015. Documenting and identifying aspectual classes
across languages. In Bochnak & Matthewson (eds.) Methodologies in
semantic fieldwork, 75–109. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bickel, Balthasar. 1997. Aspectual scope and the difference between
logical and semantic representation. Lingua, 102.115-131.

Binnick, Robert I. 1991. Time and the verb: a guide to tense and
aspect. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Botne, Robert & Tiffany L. Kershner. 2000. Time, tense and the perfect
in Zulu. Afrika und Übersee 83. 161–180.

Breu, Walter. 1994. Interactions between lexical, temporal, and
aspectual meanings. Studies in Language 18:1.23-44.

Crane, Thera Marie & Bastian Persohn. n.d. What’s in a Bantu verb?
Manuscript available on request.

Croft, William. 2012. Verbs: Aspect and causal structure. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.

Kershner, Tiffany L. 2002. The verb in Chisukwa: aspect, tense and
time. Bloomington: Indiana University dissertation.

Koontz-Garboden, Andrew. 2012. The monotonicity hypothesis. In Violeta
Demonte & Louise McNally, eds., Telicity, change, and state: A
cross-categorial view of event structure.

Martin, Fabienne, Zsófia Gyarmarthy & Károly Varasdi. 2016. On
non-culminating interpretations of telic predicates. Handout from the
Fall School on Tense, Mood and Aspect, Paris 5 & 7 November 2016.

Nichols, Johanna. 2015. State-based vs. transition-based lexical event
structure. Paper read at the workshop on resultative constructions,
Stockholm University, November 2015.

Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 2002. Recent activity in the theory of aspect:
Accomplishments, achievements, or just non-progressive state?
Linguistic Typology 6(2). 199–271.

Smith, Carlota S. 1997 [1991]. The parameter of aspect, 2nd edn.
Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Tatevosov, Sergej G. 2002. The parameter of actionality. Linguistic
Typology 6.317-401.

Tatevosov, Sergej G. 2016. Glagol’nye klassy i tipologija
akcional’nosti. Moscwo: Jazyki slavjanskoj kul’tury.

Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. 2006. Some universals of verb semantics. In
Ricardo Mairal & Juana Gil, eds., Linguistic Universals, 155-178.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van Valin, Robert D., Jr.  2018.  Some issues regarding (active)
accomplishments.

Vendler, Zeno. 1957. Verbs and times. The Philosophical Review 66. 143–160.