... clauses they introduce
and for the temporal relationship between the adverbial clause situation and
the head clause situation.
The Grammarof
the English Verb Phrase
Volume 1:
The Grammarof
the ... not
to iterative grammatical aspect Ϫ see 1.24 Ϫ nor to the fact that clauses may
get an iterative reading as a result of grammatical combinations, such as the
combination of punctual Aktionsart with ... in the treatment of ‘modal’ auxiliaries. As far as we can
see, the meaning they express is not modal but aspectual.
Can and could are two other auxiliaries which can express something like
a habitual...
... Depraetere, Raphael Salkie, Elizabeth Traugott, Naoaki Wada,
and Christopher Williams.
The Grammarof
the English Verb Phrase
Volume 1:
The Grammarof
the EnglishTense System
AComprehensive Analysis
by
Renaat ... on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines
of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Declerck, Renaat.
The grammaroftheEnglish ... Englishtensesystem : a comprehensive
analysis / by Renaat Declerck in cooperation with Susan Reed
and Bert Cappelle.
p. cm. − (The grammaroftheEnglish verb phrase ; v. 1)
(Topics in English...
... a sum-
mary of this first chapter.
I. General introductory remarks 5
account for tense in English, rather than a comparative study of other analyses
or a comparison of our analysis with the analyses ... forms
in English and that interact with tense: the sys-
tem of grammatical aspect and thesystem of
mood and modality.
In part IV (ϭ sections 1.28Ϫ1.32) we take a
closer look at the term ‘situation’. ... the analyses of other authors. Because of
this, unless a particular analysis or argument is specifically attributable to one
author, there are few references to competing analyses, or to the huge...
... whether a clause refers to the performance of an action,
the happening of an event, the development ofa process or the existence of a
state, we can say that the clause in question refers to the
actualization ... lexical aspect (for example the contrast between
a ‘state verb’ and a ‘dynamic verb’) and introduce the category of ‘actualization
aspect’ (which contrasts with both grammatical aspect and lexical ... Chapters 13 and 14
look at the semantics ofthe temporal adverbs when, before and after and the
consequences of these semantics both for the adverbial clauses they introduce
and for the temporal...
... clause’). The
head clause is the
clause on which a given subclause is syntactically and semantically dependent.
A head clause may be a clause that does not syntactically depend on any other
clause, ... representing the syntactic structure
of a sentence. Thus, in
I know that he was at home when the accident happened.
the clause that he was at home is at the same time the head clause of when the
accident ... becoming auxiliaries in that they
have a contracted form (I wanna go to Italy), which is characteristic of auxiliaries, not
of full verbs. The full verbs be and have also allow contraction, as in...
... noted that tenses that are basically used
as absolute tenses can sometimes fulfil the function of relative tenses. In their
default use these tense forms are absolute tense forms: they relate the ... unravelled,
unravelling.) The stem ofthe verb can also be used as a present infinitive
(which is the citation form ofthe verb used as an entry in dictionaries).
1.16 The formation ofthe past tense
The regular past ... there is no a priori reason for assuming that tense
can only be expressed morphologically, and not also by the use of auxiliaries Ϫ
see 2.7. Thetense forms other than the present tense and the...
... expressions of habitual aspect (which is a pairing of form and meaning)
11. (Non)habitual aspect is a form of grammatical aspect because it is expressed by means
of the form ofthe verb (viz . the use of ... that used to and will / would (as markers of habituality) are
traditionally included in the treatment of ‘modal’ auxiliaries. As far as we can
see, the meaning they express is not modal but aspectual.
Can ... actualization aspect is not a question of how a verb phrase describes
a kind of situation. Rather, it is a question of how a clause represents the
actualization ofa situation. (Both ontological aspect and...
... which the habit as a whole is located. Thus, both We take a walk after
breakfast and We’re taking a walk after breakfast these days can be uttered (to
express a habit) at any moment ofthe day: ... veranda while this hot weather lasts.
The use ofa progressive form here leads to a habituality reading ofa particular
kind: the situation is conceived of as repetitive and as forming a
temporary
habit
. ... phrases.
A noun like boy has a lexical meaning. The paraphrase ‘young male human
being’ is an attempt at describing this. The noun can be used as the head of a
noun phrase (e. g. the noun boy is the...
... situations, still less refer to actualizations of situations.
IV. The precise meanings and uses of ‘situation’ and ‘actualization’ 43
The past tense locates the time of actualization ofthe situation ... to any particular instance of actual-
ization, whereas John walked to the church, having a location in time and a
subject, denotes a complete situation and can be used to refer to an actualizing
situation. ... ab-
stract situation types, whereas clauses denote situations and, when they are
finite and used in an utterance, refer to particular actualizations of situations.
That is, walk and walk to the...
... not
to iterative grammatical aspect Ϫ see 1.24 Ϫ nor to the fact that clauses may
get an iterative reading as a result of grammatical combinations, such as the
combination of punctual Aktionsart with ... we saw in 1.23,
used to is a grammatical marker of past habituality.)
The use of ‘habit’ to refer to an instantiated characteristic without dynamic
subsituations (as in William is afraid ofthe ... consisting ofa number of stages (‘slices’) which are subsitu-
ations ofthe same kind as the situation as a whole. In this case it is possible
that a concrete actualization ofthe situation type...
... of) a situation as well as to any (relevant) part of
that situation. And in Every evening, I would have a glass of port while Sylvia
drank a glass of beer, the second clause has a habitual, and ... indication to the contrary, the hearer will assume
that there probably was a preparatory phase of some length, but this is a question
of pragmatic interpretation. The sentence itself asserts the transition ... conceptualizing
an abstract kind of situation as tending towards a natural point of completion
and representing an actualizing situation as reaching a terminal point (whether
this is a natural point of completion...
... refers
to actualization), the indication ofthe full length ofa situation can also be the
result of measuring the situation when the endpoint ofthe actualization is
reached, as in He had walked ... calls a ‘conventional’ (ϭ noncancellable)
pragmatic implicature ofthe infinitival VP write a book.
From a pragmatic point of view, there are only two kinds of verb phrase
that can measure a ... he had a heart attack.
John was walking for two hours when he had a heart attack.
In these examples a mile and for two hours indicate the natural terminal point
of a pre-determined telic situation...
... represented
as bounded by a clause. A
bounded clause is a clause which represents the
actualization ofa situation as bounded. If the clause constitutes a sentence, we
can also speak of a
bounded ... ‘homogeneous
actualization’
A clause that does not represent the actualization ofa situation as bounded
(and which is thus nonbounded) invariably represents (the actualization of) its
situation as both durative and ... bounded and nonbounded clauses
is the addition ofa particular type of duration adverbial. A
noninclusive
duration adverbial
(answering the question For how long?) can be added
(barring a repetitive...
... mood and modality, and grammatical aspect. We saw that tenses
(as individual realizations ofthe abstract category tense) express the temporal
relation between the time ofa situation and an orientation ... makes a statement
about a portion ofthe middle part ofthe actualizing situation and not about
the actualization as a whole, it leaves vague whether or not the natural point
of completion was ... the actualization ofa situation, either beforehand or at (or after) the
terminal point ofthe actualization, may or may not have an L-bounding effect:
I am going to run the marathon for another...
... the situation-template. However, apart from the fact that the
nature ofthe subject NP may affect the interpretation ofthe actualization of a
situation as homogeneous or not, it is often not ... languages. In English, al-
though many sorts of aspectual meaning can be expressed by, for example,
aspectual verbs (as in It began to rain), only two sorts of aspectual meaning
are grammaticalized. ... the situation referred to as
homogeneous. (In addition, a habitual interpretation may also alter the homo-
geneity value ofa situation, since a habit is a kind of state, and habituality
may be...