[Lingtyp] Apologies for the rogue train document

Mon Aug 4 10:30:12 UTC 2025

Dear colleagues,

Yesterday, my phone took the liberty of sending a train purchase
confirmation to the list while it was in my pocket — clearly, it felt I
should share my travel plans more publicly with colleagues around the world.

Apologies for the noise, and please feel free to disregard it.

Wishing you all a smooth summer
*Moisés Velásquez*

El sáb, 2 de ago. de 2025 14:19, <lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org>
escribió:

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>    1. Re: once again about perfective vs. imperfective aspect
>       (Juergen Bohnemeyer)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2025 13:41:27 +0000
> From: Juergen Bohnemeyer <jb77 at buffalo.edu>
> To: Adam James Ross Tallman <ajrtallman at utexas.edu>, 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
> Message-ID:
>         <
> SJ0PR15MB469624903E145082C269076ADD27A at SJ0PR15MB4696.namprd15.prod.outlook.com
> >
>
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>
> 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 f?r
> 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
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>
> 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 Cha?cobo 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<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>
> wrote:
> Dear colleagues,
> Please allow me a na?ve 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 escribi? ~ 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 Universit?t
> Department of English Studies
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