The Representation and Processing of Tense, Aspect & Voice across Verbal Elements in English

We consider the representation and processing of the English verb features tense, aspect and voice, within a computational cognitive model of human language processing. We assume that a collection of features is associated with each verbal element and that these features may project to the clauses in which they occur. When multiple verbal elements occur, it is possible for the features to conflict, necessitating mechanisms of feature blocking and overriding to determine feature projection. The alternative of having multiple entries in the mental lexicon for each verbal element with different feature sets is avoided due to the ambiguity that would be introduced, and the weak grammatical motivation for doing so. However, we do assume an ambiguity in the case of most v-ed and vbase verb forms, with the past tense v-ed form being distinct from the past participle v-ed form and the present tense v-base form being distinct from the non-finite v-base form. We assume that every finite clause expresses a tense and voice feature and many finite clauses express an aspect feature as well. We consider the case of transitive and intransitive verbs in combination with the auxiliary verbs ―be‖ and ―have‖ in finite clauses. For intransitive verbs, we introduce an active/inactive voice feature distinction which aligns with the transitive distinction between active and passive voice.