Workshop: Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics of Aspect Across Modalities (SSPAM)

13th International Tbilisi Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation

Batumi, Georgia (Eurasia), 16-20 September 2019

It is commonly assumed in both semantics and syntax that there is a distinction between inner aspect (lexical or predicational aspect) and outer aspect (grammatical aspect) (e.g. Smith 1991/97; Cinque 1999; Travis 2010 for spoken languages; Bross 2018 for sign languages). Inner aspect pertains to the distinction between telic and atelic predicates at the level of the VP (the verb and its argument(s)), and the compositional derivation of telicity, going back to works by Verkuyl (1972) and Krifka (1989). Outer aspect, on the other hand, is concerned with, e.g., imperfective (IPF) and perfective (PF) verb forms that are associated with (im)perfective meanings in finite sentences (see, e.g., Klein 1994). At the same time both levels of aspect interact, with grammatical aspect commonly taken to operate on the level of inner aspect (see, e.g., de Swart 1998 for an early treatment of this interaction). The workshop “Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics of Aspect Across Modalities” wants to discuss recent advances in the research on inner and outer aspects and their interaction. Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

  • Morphological or other means to mark (a)telicity, (im)perfectivity, and the associated syntax, semantics, and/or pragmatics in both spoken and sign languages (cf., e.g., work by Wilbur 2003 et seq.; Kuhn 2017 on (a)telicity in sign languages); the cognitive basis for (see, e.g., Strickland et al. 2015) and psycholinguistic investigation into such distinctions (e.g., Gennari & Poeppel 2003; Brennan & Pylkkänen 2008; Bott 2010; Bott & Hamm 2014).
  • Sources for variable telicity and cross-linguistic variation in this domain (e.g. variable telicity of degree achievements in English but not in Russian, which has a richer inventory of verbal affixes to mark aspectual distinctions; cf. Borik 2006)
  • Cross-linguistic variation in grammatical aspect marking: both PF and IPF (e.g. Slavic) or just one, e.g. IPF in English (Progressive)? In all tense forms (e.g., Slavic, English) or just in past tense forms (e.g. aorist vs. imperfect in various languages, such as Greek, Bulgarian, French, Spanish)? On all verb classes, or only on dynamic ones (e.g. English) or just on a subset of the dynamic ones?
  • How do aspectual systems develop diachronically, what are the grammaticalization paths that we observe (see, e.g., Deo 2012, 2015, Condoravdi & Deo 2014)?
  • Typologically: Is a uniform semantics of (I)PF possible (see, e.g., Arregui et al. 2014, Altshuler 2014), and are cross-linguistic differences semantic or pragmatic in nature?
  • Micro-variation in the domain of aspect between closely related languages, such as grammatical aspect in Slavic languages (e.g. Dickey 2000; Gehrke 2002; Alvestad 2014) or the perfect in Germanic and Romance languages (see, e.g., de Swart 2016 for a recent overview).
  • Interaction of Tense and Aspect, the general role of finiteness (e.g., Klein 1994; Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria 2007, 2014).
  • Relational or pronominal accounts of aspect and tense, (in)definite aspects, tenses (see, e.g., Grønn & von Stechow 2010 on a recent proposal, that builds on Bennett & Partee’s 1972 original proposal).
  • The role of Aspect in discourse (e.g., de Swart 1998; Altshuler 2012).
  • At what level do we interpret (I)PF? At the level of the event description or of the conceptual semantics associated with events, possibly modeled in terms of event kinds or types (e.g. Grimm & McNally 2015 and Ramchand 2017 for English -ing, and related work on past passive participles in Gehrke 2015) or only when finiteness comes into play (e.g. Klein 1994; Tatevosov 2011, 2015 on Russian)? In other words: Do we interpret grammatical Aspect in non-finite verb forms? Do we need possible world semantics, as widely assumed, for example to account for the imperfective paradox (e.g., Dowty 1979, Landman 1992, Portner 1998)?
  • Perfective non-culminating events in various languages and related to this irresultative readings of PF telic predicates (cf. papers in Martin & Demirdache 2019 and references cited therein).
  • Completed non-iterated events in the IPF in, e.g., Russian (and possibly other Slavic languages; cf. Grønn 2004, 2015; Altshuler 2012, 2013, 2014; Alvestad 2014; Borik & Gehrke 2018; Mueller Reichau 2018): Can we work with one semantics for the IPF and derive these effects pragmatically or otherwise (e.g. Grønn 2004, Altshuler 2012 et seq.), or do IPF forms have PF semantics in these contexts and thus behave like ‘fake IPFs’ (e.g., Grønn 2015; Alvestad 2014)? How does this vary across Slavic languages (cf. Dickey 2000; Gehrke 2002, for non-formal descriptions of such differences, and Alvestad 2014 for aspect marking in imperatives)?

Call for papers

We invite abstracts on the semantics, syntax, and pragmatics of aspect in different languages and especially welcome contributions from sign language linguistics and gesture research, as well as from psycholinguistics (e.g., work on acquisition or on processing). Abstracts should not exceed 2 pages (A4, using a 12pt font) including references and examples. Anonymized abstracts should be sent to SSPAM2019@googlemail.com no later than 14 April 2019.

The workshop will be part of the 13th International Tbilisi Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation, which will be held on 16-20 September 2019 at Batumi, Georgia. The exact workshop dates will be announced soon; but we expect the workshop to take place on the first two days of the symposium.


Important dates

Extended submission deadline: 14 April 2019

Notification of acceptance: 1 June 2019

Final abstracts due: 1 August 2019

Registration deadline: 28 August 2019

Symposium: 16-20 September 2019


Convenors: Berit Gehrke (HU Berlin), Fabian Bross (University Stuttgart)


References

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Altshuler, Daniel (2013). There is no neutral aspect. Proceedings of SALT 23, 40–62.

Altshuler, Daniel (2014). A typology of partitive aspectual operators. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 32(3), 732–775.

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