On how Compositional Aspect and the Article-Aspect Interplay Ought to Appear in English Comprehensive Grammars

Abstract

Two recent publications on compositional aspect (CA) and the article-aspect interplay (AAI) in English argue that these cross-language phenomena are so fundamental that they must be taught to learners of English at higher levels and incorporated into the contents of comprehensive English grammars (CEGs). This paper fully endorses the idea that English language teaching (ELT) at higher levels – intermediate to advanced, must include CA-AAI and that CA-AAI must also become part of the lingusitic knowledge of native speakers, but focuses on some aspects of the CA theory that are insufficiently covered and need further elaboration. Outlined and analyzed are some CA theory issues that must be appropriately handled in CEGs – and in intermediate/advanced ELT in general. It is high time for the domains of aspect, tense, nominal determination, lexical semantics and aspectually relevant adverbials to be describеd in CEGs in terms of CA and according to the latest achievements of theoretical linguistics. This will provide a much better picture of the structure, rules and regularities of the world’s most important language today. Keywords: Compositional and verbal aspect, article-aspect interplay, perfectivity- imperfectivity, boundedness/non-boundedness, definite/indefinite/zero article

Hearer’s Real-Time Aspect Recognition in English as a Compositional-Aspect Language vis-à-vis Aspect Recognition in Verbal-Aspect Languages

“…When these NPs are understood as bare NPs (with a zero article and with no other quantifier), the aspectual value of the sentence is imperfective. Thus now it can be generalized that the use of a truly biaspectual verb in a Slavic language such as Serbian or Russian brings about confusion as to the aspectual meaning of sentences with three situation-participant NPs, a conclusion already reached in Kabakčiev (2020;2021a). This circumstance is clearly demonstrated in the examples (10) and ( 11).…”

“…In the theoretical framework employed here and best represented in Kabakčiev (1984Kabakčiev ( , 2000Kabakčiev ( , 2019Kabakčiev ( , 2023, Dimitrova (2021), Dimitrova and Kabakčiev (2021), based on Verkuyl's (1972Verkuyl's ( , 1993Verkuyl's ( , 2022 theory and similar to Bulatović's (2013;2019; model, the perfectiveimperfective contrast in compositional-aspect languages arises as an extremely complex interplay in the sentence/clause between the referent of the verb and the referents of situation-participant NPs. Our model differs from the other two in one major respect.…”

“…verb arguments) constitute temporal entities in the minds of speaker/hearer, no matter whether as lexical entries they stand for so-called abstract entities or for spatial (physical/material) objects. The crucial idea of the temporal nature in the minds of speaker/hearer of all entities, many of which are otherwise normally understood as spatial (physical/material), is explained in extensive detail elsewhere (Kabakčiev 1984(Kabakčiev , 2000(Kabakčiev , 2023, including BELLS (Kabakčiev 2021b), and is supported by at least three aspectologists - Vounchev (2007: 86-87), Dimitrova (2021) and Shabashvili (in Shabashvili and Kabakčiev 2021).…”

“…On aspect recognition in compositional-aspect languages 3. On aspect recognition in compositional-aspect languages Some recent publications (Kabakčiev 2019;2023) describe the way aspect is explicated in English perfective sentences such as (4a) below, with two bounded situation-participant NPs (containing quantifiers and not representing a Verkuylian leak), versus imperfective sentences with a nonbounded situation-participant NP -which in (4b) is the syntactic object:…”

“…It is truly remarkable how a single non-quantified situation-participant NP in a sentence (7b, c, d) can coerce an initially perfective sentence (7a) into imperfective ones. For further detail on aspect in sentences with three situation-participant NPs, (see Kabakčiev 2020;2021a;2021b;2023) and (Dimitrova and Kabakčiev 2021).…”