The Imperfective Paradox

The imperfective paradox brought in by Dowty (1979) is, summarizing, the problem of

description of how a sentence entails undertaking of an action by a subject but does not entail the

success or finishing of the action (p. 133). Primary examples, given by Dowty, are the following:

(1) John was drawing a circle.

(2) John drew a circle.

(3) John was pushing a cart.

(4) John pushed a cart. (p. 133)

The case has been elaborated on by many scholars and in various studies, and has been applied

with respect to many languages, e.g. French in “Temps et Discours” in the article by Carl Vetters

(1998), Basque in the article “The imperfective paradox of Basque” by Asier Alcazar (2003), and

Dutch in “Aspect and temporal ordering: a contrastive analysis of Dutch and English” by Ronny

Johannes and Ursula Boogart (1999).

Ziegeler (2006), for example, discusses Langacker’s relationship of (im)perfective lexical

aspect and (im)perfective grammatical aspect, and states that the imperfective paradox is based on the

combination of imperfective grammatical aspect and perfective lexical aspect (p. 17). She asserts that

turning a lexically perfective verb into an imperfective one would show factuality changes, e.g.

making the truth of a proposition indeterminable (p. 17). Subsequently, she mentions another

important factor in the solving of the imperfective paradox, namely the division between perfectives

and imperfectives; she comments that the paradox is absent in the case of combination imperfective

grammatical and lexical aspects, which, she adds, is at odds with the stand of Langacker, who

considers verbs such as talk as perfective (p. 18).

Rothstein (2004), on the other hand, undertakes the case of the imperfective paradox from the

point of view of telicity. According to her, the difference between telic accomplishments and atelic

activities is that the former “induce the imperfective paradox in the progressive” and the latter do not

(p. 38). Furthermore, Rothstein gives more examples and states that the formalization of the paradox

allowing to differentiate between accomplishments and activities is troublesome:

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 (5) John is eating a sandwich DOES NOT ENTAIL John has eaten/ate a

sandwich.

(6) Mary was building a house DOES NOT ENTAIL Mary has built/built a

house.

(p. 22)

Yet another aspect of the problem might appear if a determiner such as ‘another’ substitutes

the indefinite articles:

(7) John is eating another sandwich.

(8) Mary was building another house.

This substitution might change the entailments – (7) does not entail that John (has) partially

eaten/ate a number of sandwiches nor that John has eaten/ate a number of sandwiches, but the latter

suggestion is more likely. The case of (8), again, does not entail that Mary has tried to build several

houses before this one nor that she had already built several houses, however, similarly to the instance

in (7), it is more appealing to consider the latter case as more probable. In the cases of (7) and (8),

several telic accomplishments are considered more probable, but not entailed as several atelic

activities not resulting in accomplishing the task are also possible.

A different approach is given by Androutsopoulos (2002), who for the explanation of the

imperfective paradox uses yes/no questions and following examples:

(9) Was IBI ever advertising a new computer?

(10) Did IBI ever advertise a new computer?

(11) Was J. Adams ever repairing engine 2?

(12) Did J. Adams ever repair engine 2? (p. 11)

Androutsopoulos asserts that the verb of (9) and (10) is an activity verb and the one of (11)

and (12) is an accomplishment verb which, in such a situation as (12), has to imply that the action

undertaken was successful at least once (p. 11). Put in context of an interrogation, however, the answer

to (12) would most probably be affirmative even if J. Adams only attempted to repair the engine 2.

Following Androutsopoulos’s aviation examples, the verb ‘circle’ belongs to the activity verbs

category since an affirmative answer to (13) “implies an affirmative answer to” (14) (p. 30).

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 (13) BA737 was circling.

(14) BA737 circled.

On the other hand, (13) might be a way of expressing that BA737 completed several circles

around the airport. Here arise the questions of the plural noun use with such verbs and of the plurality

in the imperfective paradox in general. Restating (9) and (10):

(15) Were Cherokee Indians ever advertising new computers?

(16) Did Cherokee Indians ever advertise new computers?

(17) Were Cherokee Indians ever advertising the BA737?

(18) Did Cherokee Indians ever advertise the BA737?

The entailments are not straightforward – consider the following case: when only one member

of the Cherokee tribe took part in the part of (as in (15)) / whole (as in (16)) advertising campaign of

new computers, should the answer be affirmative? And how does the plurality of the object affect the

imperfective aspect? The questions remain unresolved also in the case of (17) and (18). Logically, if

only one Cherokee Indian advertized either new computers or the specific model of BA737, the

answers to all questions would be negative. In any other case, excluding no participation of Cherokee

Indians, the answers would depend on the object of the sentence, or rather on whether they (have)

advertized only one or several machines.

Concluding, the imperfective paradox, which deals with the entailment of activity excluding

accomplishment in the combination of imperfective grammatical aspect and perfective lexical aspect,

relates to a number of linguistic phenomena. These phenomena include telicity mentioned by

Rothstein and, inextricably connected with telicity, the distinction between accomplishment and

activity mentioned both by Rothstein (p. 2) and Androutsopoulos.

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 Works Cited

Alcazar, A. (2003). The imperfective paradox of basque. USC Working Papers in Linguistics 1. Los

Angeles, CA: University of Southern California.

Androutsopoulos, I. (2002). Exploring time, tense, and aspect in natural language database interfaces.

Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Johannes, R., & Boogart, U. (1999). Aspect and temporal ordering: A contrastive analysis of Dutch

and English. MA thesis. Amsterdam: Free University.

Rothstein, S. (2001). What are incremental themes? In G. Jaeger, A. Strigin, C.Wilder and N. Zhang,

(Eds.) Papers on Predicative Constructions, ZAS Papers in Linguistics 22.

Rothstein, S. (2004). Structuring events: a study in the semantics of lexical aspect. Oxford: Blackwell.

Vetters, C. (1998) Les “temps” du verbe. Reflexions sur leur temporalite et comparaison avec la

reference (pro)nominale. In S. Vogeleer, A. Borillo, C. Vetters, & M. Vuillaume (Eds.), Temps et

Discours. Leuven: Peeters.

Ziegeler, D. (2006). Introduction. In Interfaces with English aspect: Diachronic and Empirical Studies

(pp. 1-28). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.