Tense and Aspect in Informal Welsh

Bob Morris Jones

Published by De Gruyter Mouton 2010

Tense and Aspect in Informal Welsh

Bob Morris Jones

Volume 223 in the series Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM]

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110227970

Overview
Contents

About this book

The book provides a descriptive account of the semantics of three grammatical areas in informal Welsh: inflections of finite verbs, perfect aspect, and progressive aspect. The analyses distinguish context-independent primary meanings from other meanings which are due to implications and contextual effects.

The inflections convey factuality, tense, (morphological) aspect, and habituality, but the inflections and their meanings are differently distributed over different sorts of verbs. The analysis of factuality outlines different sorts of counterfactual situations, and discusses whether counterfactual meaning can best be accounted for in terms of true statements in imagined possible worlds or in terms of false statements in the actual world. The analysis of tense argues that it conveys evaluation time and not situation time, which can be different to evaluation time, and that tense is not a collection of simple labels like 'past' or 'present' but is a combination of two times, a deictic reference time and a relative evaluation time, which organize the tenses as a system. Morphological aspect is discussed in terms of perfective and imperfective meanings. Habituality is a property of situations which can be described by all inflections but the study shows that bod 'be' alone has specialized forms to convey habituality.

The discussion of the perfect aspect considers the appropriateness of anterior time, retrospective view, and current relevance to account for its meaning. The author argues that the progressive aspect conveys a durative view and the non-progressive a non-durative view, and shows that the progressive can describe situations which are described by the non-progressive in other languages. The study also considers whether other expressions can be aspect markers.

The book shows that the primary meanings of the three grammatical areas are subject to various constraints.

Author / Editor information

Bob Morris Jones, Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK.

Topics

Frontmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	I
Contents Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	XIII
Conventions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	XVIII
Tables Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	XXI
Figures Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	XXIII
Chapter 1. The data: Finite verbs and aspect Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 2. Finite inflections of bod ‘be’ Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	26
Chapter 3. Finite inflections of lexical and modal verbs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	90
Chapter 4. Perfective and imperfective aspect Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	120
Chapter 5. The inflectional system Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
Chapter 6. Other semantic analyses of finite verb inflections Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
Chapter 7. Perfect aspect Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	212
Chapter 8. Progressive aspect Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	248
Chapter 9. More about aspect Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	304
Chapter 10. Closing remarks Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	341
Backmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	347

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
Audience: Academics (Undergraduates, Postgraduates, and Researchers)
Pages
- Front matter: 22
- Main content: 389
Illustrations
- Other: Num. tabs.
Keywords: Welsh/ Language; Semantics

eBook

Published: August 31, 2010
ISBN: 9783110227970

Hardcover

Published: August 17, 2010
ISBN: 9783110227963