Notions like markedness, competition, underspecification, context sensitivity and pragmatic implicatures play an important role in traditional Slavic aspectology. I propose in this paper to give these somewhat vague theoretical constructs a more explicit status within the framework of bidirectional optimality theory (BiOT), introduced in (Blutner 1998, 2000). Blutner’s BiOT can merge these elem...

It has been widely observed that in the L2 acquisition of aspect, progressive/imperfective marking is acquired earlier with activity verbs than with achievement verbs (the Aspect Hypothesis; Andersen & Shirai, 1994). This pattern has been seen repeatedly in Japanese -te i(e.g., Shirai & Kurono, 1998), and in -ko issand -a issin L2 Korean (e.g., Lee & Kim, 2007). However, Ishida (2004) found her...

The study describes the acquisition of verb by typically developing Amharic-speaking children. It recruitedcross-sectional research design to gather speeches’ data from thirty-two children using picture description, spontaneous elicitation, and story-tellingtasks. Thedata were audio- recorded, transcribed IPA, analyzed. result showed that most ofAmharic speakingchildren’s verbs appeared as sing...

1. Outline of the argument The puzzle of English until is well-known. Karttunen 1974 argues that until is ambiguous between a durative and a punctual negative polarity (NPI) meaning. Mittwoch 1977 claims that there is no ambiguity and that the two meanings are due to scope differences: NPI-until is in fact until above negation. Mittwoch's account relies crucially on the assumption that negation...

This dissertation is about the structure of temporal semantics and children’s acquisition of temporal language. It argues for the importance of investigating semantics both at the abstract level of linguistic structures and at the concrete level of the time-course of acquisition, as these two levels provide natural constraints for each other. With respect to semantics, it provides a computation...

T T T Th h h he e e e Q Q Q Qu u u ua a a an n n nt t t ti i i iz z z za a a at t t ti i i io o o on n n n P P P Pu u u uz z z zz z z zl l l le e e e 1 1 1 1 I I I In n n nt t t tr r r ro o o od d d du u u uc c c ct t t ti i i io o o on n n n Recent discussions of Slavic perfective aspect commonly make two assumptions: First, perfective verb forms are semantically quantized, or, to use other te...

This article aims at contrasting aspectual oppositions in English and Persian in the context of the novel The Old Man and the Sea, and its translation by Daryabandari (1983) as the data. Unlike English, in Persian perfective and imperfective forms are morphologically marked. While the vast majority of English simple past forms are translated into Persian by past perfective forms, only less than...

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) uses five different particles to express sentential negation: the invariant particle maa, the particle laa and its tensed counterparts lam (PAST) and lan (FUT), and laysa which is marked only for SUBJ agreement. Partial analyses of these elements are offered in other frameworks, notably Minimalism (Shlonsky, 1997; Benmamoun, 2000), but have not to date received an a...