[Lingtyp] once again about perfective vs. imperfective aspect

[Christoph Holz]

Dear Sergey,



Two other languages without tense are Konomala and Siar, two Oceanic
languages of New Ireland in Papua New Guinea. The languages only
distinguish realis vs. irrealis and have a couple of aspect markers. Tense
is inferred pragmatically. The same might have been true for Proto Oceanic.



Best wishes

Christoph


On Tue, 29 Jul 2025 at 07:23, randylapolla via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

> Hi Sergey,
> Not just Chinese (i.e. Mandarin), but most of Sinitic and Sino-Tibetan “encodes
> only aspectual meanings, with tense always inferred pragmatically as an
> implicature .”
> The controversies come up when made up sentences rather than natural data
> in context are used, and so it is easy to “show” tense distinctions that
> are actually just the pragmatic implicatures you mentioned.
> Cross-linguistically there is also poor understanding of the difference
> between tense and aspect, and so, for example, English “going to/gonna” is
> talked about as tense.
>
> Randy
>
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2025 at 4:13 AM, Sergey Loesov via Lingtyp <
> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> <On+Tue,+Jul+29,+2025+at+4:13+AM,+Sergey+Loesov+via+Lingtyp+%3C%3Ca+href=>>
> wrote:
>
> Sure, Chinese seems to be a parade example of this feature in the
> literature
>
> On Mon, 28 Jul 2025, 22:57 Artem Fedorinchyk, < artem.fedorinqyk at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Maybe Chinese is not the best example in terms of coding aspects but not
>> tenses but it comes quite close.
>>
>> On Mon, 28 Jul 2025 at 20:42, Sergey Loesov via Lingtyp <
>> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Christian,
>>>
>>> Thanks you for your message! Indeed, German is well known for lacking
>>> grammatical aspect. But are there languages whose verbal morphology (along
>>> with productive periphrastic constructions) encodes only aspectual
>>> meanings, with tense always inferred pragmatically as an implicature?
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Sergey
>>>
>>> On Sun, 27 Jul 2025 at 19:21, Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp <
>>> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear Sergey,
>>>>
>>>> you may wish to specify your question. First of all, there are
>>>> languages without any aspect at all, e.g. German. Second, there are
>>>> languages with more than two aspects at the same morphological level, e.g.
>>>> Yucatec Maya. So what exactly is the question?
>>>>
>>>> Cheers, Christian
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> Am 27.07.2025 um 17:20 schrieb Sergey Loesov via Lingtyp:
>>>>
>>>> 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
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttps://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp <https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
>>>> Rudolfstr. 4
>>>> 99092 Erfurt
>>>> Deutschland
>>>> Tel.: +49/361/2113417
>>>> E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
>>>> Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu
>>>> <https://www.christianlehmann.eu>
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-- 
*Christoph Holz*
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Naples L'Orientale
Adjunct Research Fellow, Jawun Research Centre, CQU

Website: https://tianglanguage.wordpress.com/
Orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-7997-4928

Recent publications:
A comprehensive grammar of Tiang
<https://acquire.cqu.edu.au/articles/thesis/A_comprehensive_grammar_of_Tiang/25182350?file=44461052>
Documentation of Konomala <https://www.elararchive.org/dk0759>
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