Aspectual Composition in Minimal Recursion Semantics

Aspectual composition occurs when grammatical aspect (perfective and imperfective) and eventuality types (accomplishments, achievements, processes, states) carried by the verb phrase combine to trigger particular meanings. This aspectual composition may change the denotation of the eventuality type resulting to aspectual shifts An instance of this phenomenon is found in Modern Greek, where there is a contrast between perfective and imperfective aspect, overt in the morphology of the verb. The information grammatical aspect presents is aected by the eventuality it combines with, which is implicit in the meaning of the verb phrase. The accomplishment eventuality write the letter in (1) denotes a situation, which starts with the beginning of the writing and reaches a culmination with the completion of the letter. When this eventuality combines with perfective aspect in (1a), it retains its culmination point and the meaning does not change. When the same eventuality combines with imperfective aspect, it gets a shifted reading (1b) i.e. process or habitual reading. (1) a. O the Giannis giannis e Aug-graps-write.Perf-e-3sg.Past to the gramma. letter`Giannis wrote the letter' (basic reading) b. O the Giannis giannis e Aug-graf-write.Imperf-e-3sg.Past to the gramma. letter`Giannis was writing the letter' (process reading) `Giannis used to write the letter' (habitual reading) The aspectual shifts involved are subtypes of type shifts, formalised with the usage of a functor argument relation: f (a). In this case, there is a functor-argument relation between grammatical aspect and eventuality types (2): (2) aspect(eventuality type) Aspect is instantiated into a perfective functor, which normally takes as argument accomplishments and achievements and an imperfective functor, which combines with processes and states. There are cases though where the argument is not the appropriate input for the functor as in (1b), where the imprefective combines with an accomplishment. However, there is no ungramaticality involved but just reinterpretations occur, which remedy the con BLOCKINict. An explanation for these reinterpretations lies in the sphere of extralinguistic knowledge. In this case, the general relation f(Op(a)) is used, where the operator Op added, given by pragmatic context. A major drawback of this approach is that these operators can not be appropriately constrained, so that they occur only where and when needed. Dierent solutions have been provided where the operators are either constrained using a network of contigent aspectual relations (Moens and Steedman 1998), a qualia structure, where the possible selections are enlisted beforehand (Pustejovsky 1995) or underspecication in the selection is involved (Egg …