[Lingtyp] once again about perfective vs. imperfective aspect

Mon Aug 4 03:07:36 UTC 2025

Here's another quirk from Spanish, a language with a rich collection of
tense/aspect forms. It is possible to take two perspectives on a past
durative event in a narrative, considering the event as continuing or as a
completed durative process. The past progressive is formed with *estar*
‘be’ + PRESENT.PARTICIPLE. The past auxiliary *estar* can be either
imperfective (*estaba*) or perfective (*estuvo*). For example, consider a
story in which a search (*buscar*) is ongoing: *estaba buscando* indicates
continuous searching throughout the story. However, if the search is
completed before the end of the story, *estuvo buscando *indicates the
total duration of an event that had been extended in time earlier in the
narrative. Both forms translate in English as "was searching."

This is not a matter of an imperfective-perfective continuum, but rather a
matter of treating an imperfective past situation as bounded or unbounded.

- Dan

Sebastián, E., & Slobin, D. I. (1994). Development of linguistic forms:
Spanish. In R. A. Berman & D. I. Slobin (Eds.), *Relating events in
narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study *(pp. 239-284)*.*
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

On Thu, Jul 31, 2025 at 7:08 AM Juergen Bohnemeyer via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

> Dear Adam – Just adding a few references:
>
>
>
> There is definitely a perfective-imperfective continuum as far as the
> likelihood of different lexical/situational-aspectual classes to occur with
> (im)perfective reference goes. This is explored in Becker & Malchukov
> (2022), which builds, among other things, upon observations in Bohnemeyer &
> Swift (2004).
>
>
>
> The correlation between perfective aspect and foregrounding and
> non-perfective aspect and backgrounding was pointed out long ago by Hopper
> (1982) and by the early DRT literature. An account that dispenses with the
> stipulations of the DRT framework is developed in Bohnemeyer (2009).
>
>
>
> Best – Juergen
>
>
>
> Becker, L. & A. Malchukov. (2022). Semantic maps and typological
> hierarchies: Evidence for the Actionality Hierarchy. *Zeitschrift für
> Sprachwissenschaft* 41(1): 31-66. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2021-2044
>
>
>
> Bohnemeyer, J. (2009). Temporal anaphora in a tenseless language. In W.
> Klein & P. Li (eds.), *The expression of time in language*. Berlin:
> Mouton de Gruyter. 83-128. Preprint
> <http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/MdG_ECC-Time_04_Bohnemeyer.pdf>.
>
>
>
> Bohnemeyer, J. & M. Swift. (2004). Event realization and default aspect*.
> Linguistics and* *Philosophy *27(3): 263-296. Preprint
> <http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/LING482_02_final.pdf>. Errata
> <http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/defaultaspect-corrections.pdf>.
>
>
>
> Hopper, P. J. (1982). Aspect between discourse and grammar: An
> introductory essay for the volume. In P. J. Hopper (ed.), *Tense-aspect:
> Between semantics and pragmatics. Containings the contributions to a
> symposium on tense and aspect, held at UCLA, May 1979*. Amsterdam:
> Benjamins. 3-18.
>
>
>
>
>
> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
> Professor, Department of Linguistics
> University at Buffalo
>
> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
> Phone: (716) 645 0127
> Fax: (716) 645 3825
> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu
> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/
>
> Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 585
> 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh)
>
> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
> (Leonard Cohen)
>
> --
>
>
>
>
>
> *From: *Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
> Adam James Ross Tallman via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Date: *Thursday, July 31, 2025 at 02:51
> *To: *Sergey Loesov <sergeloesov at gmail.com>
> *Cc: *LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> >
> *Subject: *Re: [Lingtyp] once again about perfective vs. imperfective
> aspect
>
> Hi Sergey,
>
>
>
> Me and Andres Salanova worked on this problem a little, so *maybe* our
> project relates to your question.
>
>
>
> We wondered whether there was a continuum (or in whether it is useful to
> posit a continuum) between perfective and imperfective somehow, but
> couldn't make much sense of this idea in the end.
>
>
>
> One way of approaching it, which we chose in the end, is by just deciding
> that perfective = narrative time advancement, and imperfective = no
> narrative time advancement, operationalizing this distinction so it can be
> coded in naturalistic speech and seeing with which morphemes it correlates.
> The degree to which a morpheme or construction correlates that distinction
> is the degree to which it is perfective or imperfective.
>
>
>
> Fairly descriptive, but we thought it might be a starting point for
> investigating typological variation. A proceedings paper is available
> here. <http://www.ddl.cnrs.fr/fulltext/DDL/Salanova_2022.pdf> (if the
> link doesn't work let me know)
>
>
>
> I thought that it would correlate a lot with lexical aspects, e.g. you
> just tend to get imperfective readings more in contexts where you have
> stative verbs. But we didn't have enough data to assess this I think. It
> turns out in Chácobo the past tense marker is the most consistently
> correlated with narrative time advancement and in Araona its whether you
> use a verbal or nonverbal predicate construction (nonverbal predicate
> constructions are associated with narrative time non-advancement
> naturally). Something similar was found for Mebengokre.
>
>
>
> But, I'd be very interested to hear if anyone was able to somehow measure
> (im)perfectivity using a different conceptual-measurement framework. I
> think this work remained pretty preliminary.
>
>
>
> best,
>
>
>
> A.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 27, 2025 at 5:20 PM Sergey Loesov via Lingtyp <
> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> Please allow me a naïve question: do we believe in a one-feature binary
> opposition of “perfective” vs. “imperfective” aspect in languages that,
> unlike English (e.g., yesterday he wrote ~ yesterday he was writing) or
> Spanish (ayer escribió ~ ayer estaba escribiendo), do not exhibit a
> clear-cut morphological distinction of this kind within the same tense, if
> I may put it as simply as possible?
>
> Thank you very much!
>
> Sergey
>
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>
>
> --
>
> Adam J.R. Tallman
>
> Post-doctoral Researcher
>
> Friedrich Schiller Universität
>
> Department of English Studies
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-- 

*<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> *

*Dan I. Slobin *

*Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology and *

*Distinguished **Affiliated **Professor Emeritus of Linguistics*

*University of California, Berkeley*

*email: slobin at berkeley.edu <slobin at berkeley.edu>*

*https://danslobin.academia.edu/research
<https://danslobin.academia.edu/research>*

*https://archive.org/search?query=Slobin&sin=TXT
<https://archive.org/search?query=Slobin&sin=TXT>*

*address: 2323 Rose St., Berkeley, CA 94708, USA*

*<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> *

*I acknowledge that the UC-Berkeley campus is on the traditional, *

*ancestral, and unceded land of the Ohlone people. *
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