The Compositional Nature of Tense, Mood and Aspect

Henk J. Verkuyl

ISBN 10: 1108970575 / ISBN 13: 9781108970570

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2024

About this Item

Druck auf Anfrage Neuware - Printed after ordering - A linguistic view of how natural language speakers package and open information, to deal with the expression of time.

Seller Inventory # 9781108970570

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Compositional Nature of Tense, Mood and Aspect
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1108970575
• ISBN 13: 9781108970570
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu

About this title

Synopsis

Bringing together fifty years' worth of cross-linguistic research, this pioneering monograph explores the complex interaction between tense, mood and aspect. It looks at the long way of combining elementary semantic units at the bottom of phrase structure up to and including the top of a sentence. Rejecting ternary tense as blocking compositionality, it introduces three levels obtained by binary tense oppositions.  It also counters an outdated view on motion by assuming that change is not expressed as having an inherent goal but rather as dynamic interaction between different number systems that allows us to package information into countable and continuous units. It formally identifies the central role of a verb in a variety of argument structures and integrates adverbial modifiers into the compositional structure at different tense levels of phrase structure. This unique contribution to the field will be essential reading for advanced students and researchers in the syntax-semantics interface.

About the Author

Henk J. Verkuyl is Professor Emeritus University of Utrecht Research Institute UIL OTS. This book rounds off a suite of works on tense and aspect, including On the Compositional Nature of the Aspects (1972), A Theory of Aspectuality (CUP, 1993) and Binary Tense (2008).