Tense Aspect Modality

Spring term 2017

1st Year ITT
Course Instructor:
Mihaela Zamfirescu
mihaela.zamfirescu@gmail.com
 COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

• 75% SEMINAR ATTENDANCE

• SEMINAR HANDOUTS, NO ELECTRONIC HANDOUTS
• WRITTEN TWO-HOUR MIDTERM TEST
• ORAL FINAL EXAMINATION
• WHOEVER FAILS THE MIDTERM TEST OR DOES NOT WISH TO TAKE THE
MIDTERM TEST WILL BE EXAMINED FROM TWO DIFFERENT EXAM TICKETS
• LEARNING ABOUT MORPHOLOGY REQUIRES THAT YOU ACTUALLY DO
SEVERAL ASSIGNMENTS AND BE PREPARED TO PARTICIPATE ACTIVELY
DURING OUR LECTURES AND DURING YOUR SEMINAR CLASSES
• YOU LEARN BY DOING, TAKING NOTES, NOT JUST BY LISTENING OR READING.

Reading List:
• Ioana Ștefănescu, 1984, English Morphology
• Rodney Huddleston & Geoffrey Pullum, 2002, The Cambridge Grammar of English Language,
Chapter on Verb Phrases
• Geoffrey Leech, 1987, Meaning and the English Verb
 Course Overview

The Morphology course deals with the system of English verbs and verbal categories. The present course
will deal with the traditional parts of speech, in particular with the grammatical categories/inflectional
categories traditionally associated with the major parts of speech such as tense, aspect, mood, for the verb.
Students will develop theoretical knowledge of grammar and will grasp the differences between different
anguage systems.
By the end of the course, students will have acquired the knowledge of the morphological system of Englis
and will be asked to apply it to the practical language use.
students will be asked to translate into Romanian or English paying attention to the system of English
verbal morphology
Active participation is compulsory.

Lectures:
Introduction to Inflectional Morphology and X-Bar Theory
The Category of Tense, Reichenbach’s Tense Theory
The Category of Aspect: Situation-type/ Lexical Aspect
The Category of Aspect: Viewpoint/ Grammatical Aspect – The Progressive Aspect
The Category of Aspect: Cases of Recategorization; The Perfective Aspect – building on the Present Perfec
Simple
The Present Tenses
The Past Tenses
 Course Overview

8. Ways of Expressing Futurity

9. Introduction to Modal Verbs
10. The Semantics of Modal Verbs: NECESSITY and POSSIBILITY – core concepts of
modality – Part I
11. The Semantics of Modal Verbs: NECESSITY and POSSIBILITY – core concepts of
modality – Part II
12. The Subjunctive Mood
13. Final Revision
 Introduction to morphology
•
Language as an object of study has been approached from different
perspectives: traditional (descriptive; meant to observe and enumerate
aspects of language); structuralist (descriptive; an attempt to reflect the
systematic character of language); generative (language is a body of
rules by means of which all the sentences can be obtained).
•
“Morphology” is a term based on the Greek words morphe
(=form/structure) and logie (=account/study). In fact, the term can
apply to any domain of human activity that studies the structure or
form of something. In linguistics, morphology is the sub-discipline that
accounts for the internal structure of words.
•
two types of complexity of word-structure = both operations add extra
elements to what is known as the base.
1. one is due to the presence of inflections = > Inflection encompasses
the grammatical categories/markers for number, gender, case, person,
tense, aspect, mood and comparison. Inflectional operations do not change
the category they operate on.
2. another due to the presences of derivational elements => Derivation
refers to word formation processes such as affixation, compounding and
conversion. Derivational processes typically induce a change in the
lexical category of the item they operate on and even introduce new
meanings (-er adds the meaning of agent/instrument).
This set of lectures focuses on Inflectional Morphology!
 Inflectional Morphology

•
Inflectional affixes have the following characteristics:
1. They produce closure upon words (can no longer attach a derivational
element to them)
2. Inflected forms are organized in paradigms, i.e. they are in
complementary distribution; for instance, nouns occurs in pairs hat –
hats, book – books.
3. The elements of a paradigm may evince the phenomenon of suppletion –
one of the forms is not phonologically related to the other: went for go,
better for good.
4. A paradigm can be defective – lacks a form: can - *cans, trousers -
*trouser.
5. Inflections are formal markers (semantically they are empty, abstract);
they help us delimit the lexical category of the word to which they
attach. In other words, each lexical category (major part of speech) is
characterized by specific inflectional markers. =>
6. Case, number, gender, and determination characterize nouns.
7. Tense, aspect, mood, number and person characterize verbs.
8. Person, number and –in some cases – gender characterize pronouns.
9. Adjectives and adverbs are characterized by comparison.
10. Although all of them lack descriptive content, they pass on the
descriptive content of the category they depend on.
 Generative Grammars
•
lexical/grammatical categories can be defined only through their roles in the
rules and principles of grammar.
•
Generative grammars operate with two types of categories: lexical and
grammatical/syntactic categories.
•
Lexical categories (N, V, A) coincide with the traditional parts of speech and the
structuralist open classes
•
grammatical categories (NP, VP, AP) correspond to phrases or syntagms –
specific sequences of words.
•
Each lexical category has a corresponding syntactic phrase - N → NP. In other
words, syntactic phrases are projections of lexical categories.
•
Then we translate the syntactic information in N → NP into functional
information
•
model, it is not lexical categories (N, V, A etc.) that correspond to semantic
categories, but major syntactic categories (NP, VP, AP etc.) The syntactic
categories are in a relation of correspondence with semantic categories such as
events, processes, states, individual objects etc.
•
The lexical categories are defined in terms of features to be found in their
lexical entries in the lexicon. These features include morpho-syntactic
categories, i.e. inflections.
•
The most important opposition for the parts of speech system is the opposition
between verbal and nominal categories. Parts of speech are analyzed along the
dimension [+/- V] or [+/- N]. The [+/- N] categories (A, N) are marked for
gender, number and case, while the [+/- V] categories are not characterized by
these features. Adjectives and adverbs share the inflectional/functional category
of comparison.
 Inflectional Morphology
•
Another important opposition is between lexical categories and functional categories.
This opposition is in part the same as the structural distinction between open
classes (N, V, A etc.) and closed classes (Determiner, Inflection,
Complementizer etc) of items. The open classes are defined as classes with
descriptive/semantic content (N, V, A) containing indefinitely many items and
which allow conscious coining, borrowing etc. On the other hand, functional
categories include free morphemes: determiners, quantifiers, pronouns, auxiliary
verbs, complementizers etc. and bound morphemes/inflectional affixes:
inflections for tense, aspect, agreement/number. Hence the term ‘functional
categories’ covers minor parts of speech and inflectional categories. They form a
closed set of items which
1. never occur alone,
2. have a unique Complement and can’t be separated from it,
3. lack descriptive semantic content,
4. act as operators placing the Complement in time, in the world
5. are heads of lexical categories.
6. Information expressed by inflection is not always dictated by syntactic
structure. There are two types of inflection:
7. Inherent/morphological inflection (not required by the syntactic context):
number with nouns and pronouns, person for pronouns, gender for nouns.
8. Contextual/syntactic (which follows from syntax): number and person in verbs,
case in noun
 X-Bar Theory and the Structure of Sentences

Grammar interprets sound and meaning and mediates between them.

The components of the grammar:
LEXICON

D-STRUCTURE which is the input to the Semantic Component

(i.e. it is closer to the semantic information).

MOVE α  

S-STRUCTURE which is the input to Phonological

Component (i.e. it assigns reading to a sentence in terms of how we
pronounce a sentence).
 
Phonological Form Logical Form
PF-Representations LF-Representations
(meaning)

•
Each lexical item is assigned to a lexical category (i.e. verb, adjective,
noun, preposition) in a given language according to its general distribution
and morphological properties.
=> That is what we have called subcategorization frame of a lexical item:
 X-Bar Theory

(1) John jogs. Jog: V+[_#]

(2) John likes girls. Like: V+[_NP]
(3) John put the books on the shelf. Put: V+[_NP PP]
(4) John says he has never been happier. Say: V+ [_CP]
(5) John is fond of syntax. Fond: A+[_PP]

•
The subcategorization frame/features of lexical items is lexical
knowledge, that is, we take this information about lexical items from
our mental Lexicon. We do not know the meaning of a lexical item
unless we know the structure of a minimal phrase containing that
lexical item.
•
In early 80's, Chomsky set up another model of grammar in order to
make grammar more explanatory: "Government and Binding" (GB)
(1981).
Universal Grammar (UG) = “the system of principles, conditions and rules
that are elements or properties of all human languages…. the essence
of human language.” The goal of UG is to provide a theory of grammar
that should be able to offer a number of principles, a number of
generalized statements which are valid cross-linguistically. The
differences between languages are accounted for in terms of
parameters, namely the different values that the principles have in
different languages.
 X-Bar Theory

The Principle of Structure Dependency = language relies on structural

relationships rather than on the linear sequence of items. Operations on
sentences such as movement require knowledge of the structural
relationships of the words
The Projection Principle = the range of syntactic elements with which a
lexical unit combines can be projected ‘from’ a lexicon as restrictions on
structures that contain it; ‘representations at each level of syntax are
projected from the lexicon in that they observe the subcategorization
properties of lexical elements
Two types of selectional restrictions operate on the lexical item so as to
define the subcategorization properties of the respective item – c-slection
(categorial selection) and s-selection (semantic selection).
C-selection refers to the type of categorical phrase that is subcategorized
by the item.
S-selection refers to the semantic properties of the phrase subcategorized
by the respective item.
The Principle of Endocentricity = sentences may be broken up into
constituent phrases (words grouped together round a head).
The head is that word without which the respective phrase has no
meaning. The phrase is in fact a projection round a head, it is
endocentric.
The Extended Projection Principle = all sentences must have a subject. !The
problem is that the subject is not always overt even in the finite
sentences.