[Lingtyp] Fwd: once again about perfective vs. imperfective aspect
Pier Marco Bertinetto
piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it
Tue Jul 29 20:11:59 UTC 2025
Dear All,
I agree with those who pointed out the widespread exploitation of our
(human beings') inference capacity. The TAM domain is largely defective in
terms of full morphological explicitness.
In the attached paper of mine (if I may ...) I illustrated the notion of
radical tenselessness on the example of the South American languages.
Best regards
Pier Marco
Il giorno mar 29 lug 2025 alle ore 15:47 Tom Koss via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> ha scritto:
> Dear Sergey, dear all,
>
> I would say that what Jürgen has stated for aspectual reference (meaning)
> and aspect (form) most probably also goes for temporal reference and tense:
> any utterance in any language will involve reference to a certain time span
> the speaker wishes to convey, but not all languages have tense as a
> *grammatical* category (and additionally, the number of distinctions
> within that category may vary from language to language, as is also the
> case for aspect).
>
> In a study on 180 languages I conducted rather recently, I found all four
> logical possibilities in terms of the (non-) presence of tense and aspect
> as grammatical categories: *A.* languages that have both tense and
> aspect, *B.* languages that only have tense, *C.* languages that only
> have aspect, and *D.* languages that have neither tense nor aspect.
>
> The frequency distribution looks as follows: *A > B/C > D*
> So, cross-linguistically, it seems that languages like Chinese and Yucatec
> Maya are as common as languages like German (more or less).
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Best wishes,
> Tom Koss
> University of Antwerp
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
> Christoph Holz via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, July 29, 2025 9:59 AM
> *To:* randylapolla <randylapolla at protonmail.com>
> *Cc:* LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> >
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] once again about perfective vs. imperfective
> aspect
>
> *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.
>
> 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
>
> --
>
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
>
>
> --
> *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>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
--
=========================================================
|||| Pier Marco Bertinetto
------ professore emerito
/////// Scuola Normale Superiore
------- p.za dei Cavalieri 7
/////// I-56126 PISA
------- phone: +39 050 509111
///////
------- HOME
/////// via Matteotti 197
------- I-55049 Viareggio LU
/////// phone: +39 0584 597206
------- cell.: +39 368 3830251
===============================================================
editor of "Italian Journal of Linguistics"
webpage <https://www.ae-info.org/ae/Member/Bertinetto_Pier>
===============================================================
--
=========================================================
|||| Pier Marco Bertinetto
------ professore emerito
/////// Scuola Normale Superiore
------- p.za dei Cavalieri 7
/////// I-56126 PISA
------- phone: +39 050 509111
///////
------- HOME
/////// via Matteotti 197
------- I-55049 Viareggio LU
/////// phone: +39 0584 597206
------- cell.: +39 368 3830251
===============================================================
editor of "Italian Journal of Linguistics"
webpage <https://www.ae-info.org/ae/Member/Bertinetto_Pier>
===============================================================
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20250729/4fdc0ed9/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Bertinetto 14. Tenselessness in South American languages.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 1359780 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20250729/4fdc0ed9/attachment-0001.pdf>
More information about the Lingtyp
mailing list