The temporal interpretation of West Flemish non-inverted V3

AbstractThe Middle Dutch verse romance Segheliin van Iherusalem has survived in the following known extant copies: a manuscript (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, MS. Germ. fol. 922, fos. 71r.-122v., on the basis of the watermarks dated by the present author c. 1412-15); an incunabulum (Ghent University Library, Res. 1405 (between 1483 and 1486)); five post-incunabula, all printed in Antwerp (1511-40) and now in The Hague (2 copies), Leiden, Vienna and Paris; and a mid fifteenth-century excerpt (Brussels, Royal Library, Hs. II 116, fos. 2v.-5r.). These sources, all rhyming texts, are described here, and the excerpt is given in full. The gap still facing students of the Segheliin has thus been filled. Both manuscript and incunabulum are incomplete at the end. The text in the sixteenth-century editions differs widely from that of the manuscript version. For its part the incunabulum departs from the text of the post-incunabula with a version (perhaps closer to the original?) which in very many places tends towards the manuscript version, being something of a watershed between the two traditions. Preliminary investigation of the linguistic levels in the text, carried out on the basis of changes in the rhyme words, points to a Flemish and probably more specifically west or south-west Flemish base level (possibly the area where Ingvaonic and Brabantish meet (the region of the Dender), above which there is at least a Brabantish level. This fact, combined with the possibility of an interpretation of the Segheliin to some extent in terms of the context of the medieval veneration of the Cross and the Blood of Christ, more than suggests that the story is of Flemish origin.

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Localizing cross-linguistic variation in Tense systems: On telicity and stativity in Swedish and English

Nordic Journal of Linguistics ◽

10.1017/s033258651200011x ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

pp. 27-70

Author(s):

Björn Lundquist

Keyword(s):

Romance Languages ◽

Linguistic Variation ◽

Verb Morphology ◽

Reference Time ◽

Lexical Aspect ◽

Temporal Interpretation ◽

Viewpoint Aspect ◽

The Difference ◽

Made In

It is well known that the aktionsart/lexical aspect of a predicate influences the temporal interpretation and the aspectual marking of a sentence, and also that languages differ with respect to which aktionsart properties feed into the tense-aspect system (see e.g. Bohnemeyer & Swift 2004). In this paper, I try to pin down the exact locus of variation between languages where the stative–dynamic distinction is mainly grammaticized (e.g. English, Saamáka) and languages where the telic–atelic distinction is mainly grammaticized (e.g. Swedish, Chinese and Russian). The focus will be on the differences between English and Swedish, and I will argue that these two languages crucially differ in the nature of Assertion Time (or Topic/Reference Time, Klein 1994, Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria 2000): whereas the assertion time in English is always punctual in imperfective contexts, assertion time in Swedish can extend to include minimal stages of events. The Assertion Time is introduced by a (viewpoint) aspect head that is present in both languages, but not phonologically realized. The difference can thus not be ascribed to the presence or absence of overt tense, aspect or verb morphology, or to a special tense value, as argued in one way or other by, for example, Giorgi & Pianesi (1997), Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria (2000) and Ramchand (2012). Once this factor (i.e. the nature of Assertion Time) has been isolated, it becomes evident that all verbs in English and Swedish, regardless of telicity or dynamicity, can be assigned either a perfective or an imperfective value. Moreover, I will argue that the English progressive–non-progressive (or ‘simple’) distinction is independent of viewpoint aspect (i.e. the perfective– imperfective distinction) made in, for example, the Romance languages.

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THE MORPHOLOGY AND DISTRIBUTION OF OBJECT CLITICS IN WEST FLEMISH

Studia Linguistica ◽

10.1111/j.1467-9582.1993.tb00839.x ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 47 (1) ◽

pp. 57-94 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Liliane Haegeman

Keyword(s):

Object Clitics ◽

West Flemish

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On the Temporal and Aspectual Value of Modern Eastern Armenian Aorist: A Comparative Perspective

Armenian Folia Anglistika ◽

10.46991/afa/2014.10.1-2.151 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 10 (1-2 (12)) ◽

pp. 151-170

Author(s):

Alessandra Giorgi ◽

Sona Haroutyunian

Keyword(s):

Comparative Perspective ◽

First Person ◽

Temporal Interpretation ◽

Semantic Properties

In this research we study some syntactic and semantic properties of the Modern Eastern Armenian aorist by comparing it to similar verbal forms in English and Italian. We argue that the temporal interpretation of the aorist is not a primitive property, but derives from its main aspectual characteristic, i.e. perfectivity. This hypothesis is further supported by the analysis of the futural value expressed in certain contexts by means of the first person aorist form.

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