Cognitive Approaches to Tense, Aspect, and Epistemic Modality

Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-90-272-2383-8
Verlag: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Buch, Englisch, Band 29, 319 Seiten, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 245 mm, Gewicht: 750 g

Reihe: Human Cognitive Processing

This volume addresses problems of semantics regarding the analysis of tense and aspect (TA) markers in a variety of languages, including Arabic, Croatian, English, French, German, Russian, Thai, and Turkish. Its main interest goes out to epistemic uses of such markers, whereby epistemic modality is understood as indicating “a degree of compatibility between the modal world and the factual world” (Declerck). All contributions, moreover, tackle these problems from a more or less cognitive point of view, with some of them insisting on the need to provide a unifying explanation for all usage types, temporal and non-temporal, and all of them accepting the premise that the semantics of TA categories essentially refers to subjective, rather than objective, concerns. The volume also represents one of the first attempts to gather accounts of TA marking (in various languages) that are explicitly set within the framework of Cognitive Grammar. Ultimately, this volume aims to contribute to establishing an awareness that modal meaning elements are directly relevant to the analysis of the grammar of time.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Patard, Adeline

Brisard, Frank

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Semantik & Pragmatik
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Grammatik, Syntax, Morphologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften Theoretische Linguistik
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Sprachpsychologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Cognitive approaches to tense, aspect, and epistemic modality
Frank Brisard and Adeline Patard
Part I. Theoretical foundations
The definition of modality
Renaat Declerck
The English present: Temporal coincidence vs. epistemic immediacy
Ronald W. Langacker
The organization of the German clausal grounding system
Elena Smirnova
Grounding in terms of anchoring relations: Epistemic associations of ‘present continuous’ marking in Turkish
Ceyhan Temurcu
Part II. Descriptive application: Cognitive grammar
Some remarks on the role of the reference point in the construal configuration of “more” and “less” grounding predications
Elena Smirnova and Tanja Mortelmans
New current relevance in Croatian: Epistemic immediacy and the aorist
Mateusz-Milan Stanojevic and Renata Geld
Aspect as a scanning device in natural language processing: The case of Arabic
Lazhar Zanned
Part III. Descriptive application: Other cognitive approaches
Imperfective aspect and epistemic modality
Ronny Boogaart and Radoslava Trnavac
Communicating about the past through modality in English and Thai
Katarzyna M. Jaszczolt and Jiranthara Srioutai
The epistemic uses of the English simple past and the French imparfait: When temporality conveys modality
Adeline Patard