![Introduction
constituency”, other characterizations are found in the literature: aspect is a “
specific
perspective adopted by the speaker/writer” (Bertinetto Delfitto 2000:190) or “a
particular ‘viewpoint’ which is described by the situation” (Smith 1991; Klein 2009;
Johanson 2000, among many others). Others definitions focus on the fact that aspect
and tense have to do, semantically, with the time and that “true aspect concerns the
temporal relationship of a situation to the reference frame against which it is set”
(Binnick 1991:458, see also Klein 2009). As for the perfective/
imperfective distinc-
tion, considered fundamental to the study of aspect, it is used with various mean-
ings in the descriptions of numerous languages, corresponding to different notions
such as complete/incomplete, completed/non-completed, completive/incompletive,
accomplished/un
accomplished, conclusive, global/partial, etc. Such notions are not
always defined, and it is not always clear, for instance, what the difference is between
completive and completed, with both notions often being used as synonyms for the
perfective notion. The difficulty here is that the general typological terms perfective/
imperfective usually have meanings which are at once similar to and different from
those which were initially associated with the terms in Slavic languages. It is true
that the derivational-like character, fundamental to the grammatical organization of
Slavic languages, has led many linguists to consider that the Slavic perfective/imper-
fective distinction is “only one ‘special case’ of verbal aspect, which occurs in one
form or another in the other languages of the world” (Maslov 1985:1, cited by Tomal-
leri 2010).2 Trying to identify universal tendencies in aspect-tense phenomena, Dahl
(1985, 2000:17–18) and Bybee Dahl (1989:89) distinguish between the notion of
“perfectivity”, which is manifested at the lexical and derivational level, and typologi-
cal “perfective types”, which, expressed rather through inflectional morphology, indi-
cate that a situation is viewed as bounded (i.e. a situation which has reached a sort of
boundary or end-point).
The fact that the Slavic perfective/imperfective distinction cannot be considered
prototypical of the theory of aspect is nothing new. In the conclusion to his analysis of
the verbal systems of two Uto-Aztec languages (Paiute and Tübatulabal), Benveniste
(1961:260) had already highlighted the “exceptional” nature of the Slavic verbal sys-
tem: “the Slavic verb which provided the framework and distinctions for the theory of
aspect […] is in no way typical; […] the entire problem must be overhauled.” It is inter-
esting to note on this subject that Marcel Cohen (1923), who introduced the major
. Dahl (1985) reaches similar conclusions: “the Slavic systems are in fact rather idiosyn-
cratic in many ways” (p. 69); the Slavic verbal prefixes are “grammaticalized” as markers of
“perfectivity” (p. 89). This is what led Dahl to introduce the label Slavic-style aspect, although
recognizing that the term “is unfortunate in that it implies that all Slavic systems look the
same” and that “North Slavic would be a more adequate label.” (ibid. 2000:23n6).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2951100-250521101603-171b954b/85/Aspectuality-And-Temporality-Descriptive-And-Theoretical-Issues-Zlatka-Guentchva-19-320.jpg)
![ Zlatka Guentchéva
semantic distinction accompli/inaccompli (“complete/incomplete”) to analyze verbal
forms in Semitic languages, stressed that this distinction is not to be confused with the
Slavic distinction marked by a verb’s Perfective or Imperfective forms.3
Many attempts have been made to define more precisely the binary semantic per-
fective/imperfective distinction. Most of the recent studies agree that aspectuality is
closely linked to the notion of boundary but, as Sasse points out (2002:263–264): “[…]
the term ‘boundedness’ is often used too vaguely to figure out what type of bounds the
writer has in mind”. Indeed, it is important to define clearly and unambiguously the
concept of boundary. It is often asserted that the perfective presents a situation as “com-
pleted”, and refers to a bounded situation presented on an interval which includes both
the initial boundary and the final boundary (the so-called perfective type), whereas
the imperfective presents a situation as an “ongoing” or “non-completed” process, and
refers to an unbounded situation, presented on an interval excluding both bound-
aries (“without its boundaries”). Thus the difference between (1) He ate the fish/two
apples and (2) He ate fish/apples has been described as a bounded vs. an unbounded
event. This characterization is not enough to distinguish (1) from (2). As has been
noted several times, it is necessary to take into account a finer distinction, namely the
distinction between complete (Fr. accompli) and completed (Fr. achevé). The notion
of “completed” calls to another dimension that is not purely temporal (Desclés 1980,
1989, this volume).
The concepts of “open boundary” and “closed boundary” must be integrated
in the mathematical framework of temporal continuity. They make it possible to
account e.g. for the distinction made in Bulgarian between an Aorist perfective ((3a)
Tja izmi prozorcite lit. she washed (all) the windows; (3b) Tja postoja na pazara dva
casa ‘She stood at the market two hours’) where the perfective form indicates that the
right boundary has been reached (i.e. the event is completed) and an Aorist imperfec-
tive ((4a) Tja mi prozorcite lit. she washed (the) windows; (4b) Tja stoja (aor.impf)
na pazara dva casa ‘She stood at the market for two hours’), where the imperfec-
tive indicates that the event took place but was interrupted at some point, without
further specification (i.e. the event is only complete (Guentchéva 1990;
Desclés
Guencthéva 2012:completed entails complete, but the opposite is not true)).4,5
. This problem was discussed, but to avoid any misinterpretation by English speakers,
several authors opted for the terms perfective/imperfective for languages such as Arabic,
Berber,Wolof, Langi…
. Lindstedt (2001:775) suggests a distinction between material bound and temporal bound:“A
material bound presupposes telicity and entails a temporal bound”, but the contrary is not true.
. One could object that the class of po-prefixed verbs is an exception in the aspectual
systems of Slavic languages, because the situation is presented as bounded without any in-
dication as to telicity. (On this point, see the comments by Bertinetto Delfitto 2000:220).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2951100-250521101603-171b954b/85/Aspectuality-And-Temporality-Descriptive-And-Theoretical-Issues-Zlatka-Guentchva-20-320.jpg)
![Introduction
A similar distinction is noted for Georgian (Tomelleri 2010:71). Mandarin appears
to capture such a distinction using the particle le depending on the meaning (telic
or atelic) of the verb (Klein et al. 2000): “[…] le indicates that the situation comes to
its natural endpoint, that is, it is completed, as illustrated in (1). But when the verb
encodes a situation with no natural boundary, le signals the termination rather than
completion of a situation as in (2):
(1) Qi-chi zhuang-dao-le fangzi.
car hit-break-LE house
‘The car knocked down the house.’
(2) Xiao yazi you-le yong
duckling swim-LE stroke
‘The duckling swam.’
It is clear that it is not a question of terminology but of concepts, and that it is necessary
to establish coherent networks of concepts associated to the markers grammaticalized
in languages.
The notions applied to tense and aspect are not independent of reflections on the
nature of temporality where philosophy, logic, cognitive studies and linguistics inter-
twine, as shown in the recent study by N. Thelin (2014). Many scholars for example
apply the model developed by Reichenbach (1947) on the values of verbal tenses, and
use also Vendler’s (1967) classification into four semantic classes. Reichenbach artic-
ulates three points in time to describe verbal tense (S: moment of Speech, E: moment
of Event and R: moment of Reference). Although many scholars have advanced a
number of objections (Comrie 1981, 1985; Hornstein 1993; Klein 1994; Vet 1980;
Vetters 1996, among many others) as to the status of the three points in time (points
in time or time spans?), his model remains a source of inspiration. Many authors
have proposed modified versions of this approach to various extents. For instance,
the notion of reference time is not clearly defined and has often been refined (Com-
rie 1981, 1985; Rothstein 2008 and many more). The Reichenbachian approach sup-
poses a linear organization of time, where the speech act is viewed as a punctual
moment located between the past (“before”) and the future (“subsequent to”), and
most approaches to temporality adopt this temporalist position. However, it has been
shown that this analysis is problematic for natural language. Linguistic time does not
identify with chronological time, calendar time, physical time… (Benveniste 1966;
Culioli 1980, 1990, 1999; Desclés 1980; Klein 2009, Gsell this volume) and is not lin-
early organized. In addition to two purely temporal relationships, i.e. temporal con-
comitance (e.g. identification), and temporal non-concomitance (e.g. differentiation
by anteriority or posteriority), it is especially used to identify an aspectual situation
(presented as a state, an event or a process) whose reference time is anchored in T0
(the enunciative instant). Grammatical tenses often take on specific semantic mean-
ings, depending on the type of temporal frame of reference (general,
hypothetical,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2951100-250521101603-171b954b/85/Aspectuality-And-Temporality-Descriptive-And-Theoretical-Issues-Zlatka-Guentchva-21-320.jpg)
![Introduction
René Gsell (Chapter 3) discusses the rich Standard Thai tense-aspect system, with
a few remarks on questions of methodology: “[…] descriptions must be based on sema-
siological reasoning: starting from actual “forms” -in Thai, bound or free morphemes,
distribution and combinatory possibilities, syntactic properties- leading to effects in
meaning, functions, and beyond to the system’s structure”. However, his analysis is
not restricted to this semasiological approach, and basic notions are
constructed, even
though they may be considered as temporary.
From a typological point of view, Standard Thai belongs to the “amorphous iso-
lating” type. All morphemes are invariable: no inflection or affixation is possible.
Verb and noun forms have identical structure, and can only be distinguished through
their combinatory possibilities, only a verbal predicate can be negated. Aspect, tense,
Aktionsart and modality are expressed by word order and various function words.
The verb phrase is therefore a string of morphemes with a strict order: Preverb +
Verb (Lexemes) + Postverb. Preverbs can be represented by linked bound morphemes
(expressing possibility and probability), semi-free preverbs and free morphemes serv-
ing as auxiliaries or lexemes with a modal scope. As for postverbs, they belong to
aspectuality comprised of aktionsart and aspect proper.
TheconstructionoftenseinThaïcannotbeconfusedwithexternaltime(“objective
time”), and cannot be analysed as a linear axis, on which the present separates a past
and a future. Aspectuality is a block which can be analysed starting from the intrinsic
properties of verb lexemes (processives and statives) and from the Aktionsart, consid-
ered as belonging to the lexical domain. Thus one may distinguish between, on the
one hand, aspect, affecting the process globally and realized along two axes: complete/
incomplete (“accompli”/“inaccompli”) and durative/non-durative, and, on the other
hand, Aktionsart, affecting the lexeme only.
Christiane Pilot-Raichoor (Chapter 4) studies the uses and distribution of the
basic “Past” and “Non-Past” morphemes in Badaga, a minority South-Dravidian lan-
guage. She points out that, in Dravidian linguistics, it is usually assumed that the cat-
egory of tense plays a major role in the verb systems, but descriptions of the usage of
the tenses in various languages signal regularly obvious mismatches between the tense
of the verb form and its actual temporal interpretation in the sentence. The author
demonstrates that, even though the pervasive use of these morphemes in the verb
morphology testifies that they do play a major role in the verb systems, a careful analy-
sis of “Past” and “Non-Past” morphemes reconstructed as Proto-Dravidian had made
it clear that they could not be viewed as tense-encoding distinctions, no more than the
usual aspectual or modal distinctions. Re-examining the Dravidian data in the light
of G. Guillaume’s theory (Temps et Verbe 1929), and focusing on the basic principles
of grammaticalization of time in the verb, and the development of the verb systems,
Pilot-Raichoor draws attention to the third term of the reconstructed system: Past/
Non-Past/Negative. She argues that morphological integration of negation in the basic](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2951100-250521101603-171b954b/85/Aspectuality-And-Temporality-Descriptive-And-Theoretical-Issues-Zlatka-Guentchva-25-320.jpg)
![Introduction
Part V. Perfects and resultatives
Eleni Valma (Chapter 15) presents an account of the semantic distinction between the
Modern Greek adjectival forms ending in -τος and -μένος. The author briefly pres-
ents current studies attempting to provide an explanation, and concludes that these
account only partially for this distinction. Based on the aspectual distinction of event,
state and process, it is argued that the deverbals in -τος denote “a state which is the
result of an implicit transient event, […] reconstructible thanks to the lexical informa-
tion conveyed by the root.” Generally, the construction in -τος denotes meaning of
contingency, as demonstrated by examples such as “βραστό αυγό”, which designates
a state contingent to an event, neither salient nor stressed, but simply implied in that
it caused the passage from state₁ to state₂. The author builds her argumentation by
providing a great amount of examples that explain the different configurations of -τος
lexicalized forms, with the status of nouns. Subsequently, she notices the forms τος
and -μένος in adjectival derivation, and concentrates on the semantic explanation of
-μένος. She concludes that both forms denote the aspectual notion of state, but, con-
trary to -τος, -μένος stresses the transitional event which “takes the noun or nominal
entity from state₁ to state₂”, and carries therefore a more salient meaning of tense and
aspect.
Injoo Choi-Jonin (Chapter 16) deals with the two Korean periphrastic construc-
tions yielding a resultative interpretation of their preceding predicate, namely VR-a/e
iss-VS (verbal root-a/e ‘exist’-verbal suffix) and VR-ko iss-VS (verbal root-ko ‘exist’-
verbal suffix). The former is generally considered a resultative marker in Korean gram-
mars, and the latter, commonly regarded as a progressive marker, may also denote a
resultative meaning in some cases. Scholars have assumed that the resultative marker
-a/e iss- is only combinable with intransitive telic verbs, whereas the resultative inter-
pretation of the progressive marker -ko iss- is only possible for certain transitive verbs.
Recently, Lee EunHee (2008) has claimed that the difference between the two peri-
phrastic constructions lies on their argument structure: -a/e iss- can be combined with
only unaccusative verbs and passive verbs only while ko iss- selects ergative verbs and
transitive verbs. Her analysis, as interesting as it is, raises however some problems.
The aim of this article is twofold: (i) to re-examine Lee EunHee (2008)’s assump-
tion on the distribution of -a/e iss- and -ko iss- constructions explained by argument
structures, as well as the validity of Unaccusative Hypothesis in Korean; (ii) to eluci-
date syntactic and semantic factors allowing the resultative interpretation of Korean
predicates when they are followed by -a/e iss- and -ko iss- constructions. The author
agrues that, on the one hand, the distinction between unergative and unaccusative
verbs need not be taken into account, insofar as it seems not relevant at least in Korean,
and, on the other hand, the resultative interpretation of Korean predicates derives](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2951100-250521101603-171b954b/85/Aspectuality-And-Temporality-Descriptive-And-Theoretical-Issues-Zlatka-Guentchva-33-320.jpg)
![Introduction
The general purpose of Tournadre’s study (Chapter 19) is to examine some of the
ways in which Tibetic languages refer to future time, in relation to grammatical mark-
ers conveying aspects and modalities. As in other languages, a wide range of categories
are associated with the verb, and it is not very easy to determine whether the aspectual,
temporal or modal function is primary or secondary. In many languages, there is a ten-
dency to mark the future time reference with the present tense (Fr. Ils partent demain,
They go tomorrow), the present progressive tense (They are going), the
imperative
(Vous partez demain! You leave tomorrow!), etc. There are also many languages where
the future may mark probability, possibility or potentiality (Ultan 1978:103–104).
However, as pointed by the author, future time reference is not restricted to the verbal
predicate (see also Binnick, this volume, for Mongolic languages), and other parts of
speech (for instance, adverbials) and subordinate clauses may also contribute.
It is pointed out that the specific “future stem” present in Classical Tibetan
and Old Tibetan is limited to a few hundred verbs which have disappeared in
every modern Tibetic language. In Classical Tibetan, this “future stem” combines
with the auxiliary byed ‘to do’, and occurs in the auxiliary constructions to express
future time. Originating in suffixed forms inherited from auxiliary constructions,
the V[present]+[rel]+ cop construction (where the relator is a connective or
a
nominalizer) is the main device for conveying a future meaning in any modern
Tibetic languages. Depending on several factors, such as the controllable vs. non-
controllable nature of the lexical verb or person, different types of future are ana-
lyzed: “factual”, “assumptive”, “intentional”, “benefactive”, “inferential”, “preventive”,
“deontic”, “dubitative” and “autolalic”.
Valentina Vapnarsky (Chapter 20) explores the hypothesis that even in tense-
less languages, inferences relative to temporal location may ultimately become con-
ventionalized and encoded by grammatical markers (previously conveying modal or
aspectual information).
In Yucatec Maya, spoken in Mexico, temporality is mainly expressed through
aspect, with a main division between completive and incompletive, and finer dis-
tinctions, such as inceptive, progressive, terminative, prospective, etc. A set of modal
markers or auxiliaries complements the aspectual system, but they indicate posteri-
ority, and not future in a strict sense. The author argues that bíin, one form among
Yucatec TAM markers, conveys future. The temporal reference of the event modified
by bíin is always posterior to the moment of speech: bíin does not express intention,
and is only used in restricted contexts, such as the reference to prophecies, events fixed
by destiny, or other ineluctable reasons; it implies a temporal frame in which the future
does not appear as a set of open possibilities or speculations, but as the accomplish-
ment of predetermined events. Thus, at least two temporal frames seem to be involved
in Yucatec grammar relative to futurity: a “conjectural” frame, where expression of
modality predominates, and the non-actualized frame with bíin.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2951100-250521101603-171b954b/85/Aspectuality-And-Temporality-Descriptive-And-Theoretical-Issues-Zlatka-Guentchva-35-320.jpg)
![Introduction
one pole, durative-progressive-continuous-imperfect-unaccomplished-concomitant-
present-active and intransitive-nominal. The corresponding affinity on the other pole
is between punctual-perfect-accomplished-non-concomitant-non-present/passive and
transitive-verbal-definite patient. It is beyond the scope of the paper to specify those
affinities in detail, yet they seem to apply cross-linguistically.
We hope that this volume will stimulate further cross-linguistic studies on seman-
tics of aspectual and temporal phenomena.
Acknowledgements
It goes without saying that the book is the result of the work of many hands. We
would like to thank lacito-cnrs for the financial support of the volume. We are most
grateful to Margaret Dunham who translated several chapters in this book: those by.
Desclés, Galand, Gsell, Guentchéva, Naïm, Mennecier, Queixalós, Taine-Cheik and
Valma. We are extremely grateful to Jean-Michel Roynard for his editorial work and
careful reading of all the articles in this volume. A special thanks go to all referees for
their helpful and always kind remarks, observations and suggestions. We would also
like to express our gratitude to all authors of this volume for their extreme patience
during the lengthy preparation of the volume. Last, we would like to thank particu-
larly Werner Abraham and Elly Van Gelderen, and also Kees Vaes, for their compe-
tent assistance and patience during the process of bringing this
volume to press.
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![ Zlatka Guentchéva
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Vetters, Carl. 1996. Temps, aspect et narration. Amsterdam: Rodopi.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2951100-250521101603-171b954b/85/Aspectuality-And-Temporality-Descriptive-And-Theoretical-Issues-Zlatka-Guentchva-40-320.jpg)
![ Jean-Pierre Desclés
Niger-Congo languages (Dahl 1985:71, 187; Bickel Nichols 2005)); other languages
make use of particles or suppletive series of pronouns… Natural languages provide
valuable insights into the cognitive structuring of time which they represent and cat-
egorize (cf. Desclés 1995a, 2011). This immediately raises the question: does each lan-
guage express temporality in such a way that sets it apart from all other languages? One
may recall on this subject the stances taken by Whorf (1950) and Benveniste (1966):
I find it gratuitous to assume that a Hopi who knows only the Hopi language
and the cultural ideas of his own society has the same notions, often supposed
to be intuitions, of time and space that we have, and that are generally assumed
to be universal. In particular, he has no general notion or intuition of TIME as a
smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at an
equal rate, out of a future, through a present, into a past; or, in which, to reverse
the picture, the observer is being carried in the stream of duration continuously
away from a past and into a future. (Whorf 1950:67)
Aristotle […] posits the totality of predications that may be made about a being,
andheaimstodefinethelogicalstatusofeachoneofthem.Nowitseemstous-and
we shall try to show- that these distinctions are primarily categories of language
and that, in fact, Aristotle, reasoning in the absolute, is simply identifying certain
fundamental categories of the language in which he thought. Even a cursory look
at the statement of the categories and the examples that illustrate them, will easily
verify this interpretation, which apparently has not been proposed before.
(Benveniste 1966:66)
The logician Frege takes an inverse position as he seems to consider that thought can be
expressed language-independently, so that languages are a simple “dress for thought”:
It is true that we can express the same thought in different languages; but the
psychological trappings, the clothing of the thought, will often be different. This
is why the learning of foreign languages is useful for one’s logical education.
Seeing that the same thought can be worded in different ways, we learn better to
distinguish the verbal husk from the kernel with which, in any given language, it
appears to be organically bound up. This is how the differences between languages
can facilitate our grasp of what is logical. (Frege 1997:243)
Based on a semantic-grammatical study of languages, would it be possible to isolate
certain general concepts underlying the diversity of linguistic categorizations, and to
formulate conceptual “invariants” tightly linked to language activity?
2.
Two principal linguistic analysis methods
To answer these questions, two main methods may be used. The first is the inductive
method, based on generalizations; the second is based on abductive reasoning, which](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2951100-250521101603-171b954b/85/Aspectuality-And-Temporality-Descriptive-And-Theoretical-Issues-Zlatka-Guentchva-44-320.jpg)
Aspectuality And Temporality Descriptive And Theoretical Issues Zlatka Guentchva
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- 4. Aspectuality and Temporality Descriptive and theoretical issues Edited by Zlatka Guentchéva
- 6. Volume 172 Aspectuality and Temporality. Descriptive and theoretical issues Edited by Zlatka Guentchéva Editors Werner Abraham University of Vienna / University of Munich Founding Editor Werner Abraham University of Vienna / University of Munich Elly van Gelderen Arizona State University Editorial Board Bernard Comrie University of California, Santa Barbara William Croft University of New Mexico Östen Dahl University of Stockholm Gerrit J. Dimmendaal University of Cologne Ekkehard König Free University of Berlin Christian Lehmann University of Erfurt Marianne Mithun University of California, Santa Barbara Heiko Narrog Tohuku University Johanna L.Wood University of Aarhus Debra Ziegeler University of Paris III Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS) issn 0165-7763 This series has been established as a companion series to the periodical Studies in Language. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see http://benjamins.com/catalog/slcs
- 7. Aspectuality and Temporality Descriptive and theoretical issues Edited by Zlatka Guentchéva LACITO-CNRS – Université Paris 3 John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia
- 8. doi 10.1075/slcs.172 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress: lccn 2015040036 (print) / 2015042895 (e-book) isbn 978 90 272 5937 0 (Hb) isbn 978 90 272 6761 0 (e-book) © 2016 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com 8 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
- 9. Table of contents List of contributors vii Introduction 1 Zlatka Guentchéva part i. Theoretical issues A cognitive and conceptual approach to tense and aspect markers 27 Jean-Pierre Desclés part ii. Grammatical encoding of aspectual and temporal distinctions Tense, aspect and mood in Nêlêmwa (New Caledonia): Encoding events, processes and states 63 Isabelle Bril On the tense-aspect system of standard Thai 109 René Gsell Dravidian conceptual basis for the Badaga “tenses” 131 Christiane Pilot-Raichoor Tense and aspect in the verbal system of Wolof 171 Stéphane Robert Tense and aspect in Langi 231 Margaret Dunham Aspect in Sikuani 265 Francesc Queixalós part iii. Grammatical aspect and Aktionsarten Aspect-tense relations in East Greenlandic 297 Philippe Mennecier On interaction between external and internal markers in expressing aspect in Arabic dialect varieties 325 Samia Naïm
- 10. Aspectuality and Temporaliry Descriptive and theoretical issues part iv. Indo-European Aorist and Hamito-Semitic Aorist The aorist and the perfect in Albanian 357 Jean-Louis Duchet Remzi Përnaska The aorist in Modern Armenian: Core values and contextual meanings 375 Anaïd Donabédian The verbal form V-ā in Hindi/Urdu: An aorist with “aoristic” meanings 413 Annie Montaut The aorist in Berber 447 Lionel Galand The Aorist in Zenaga Berber and the Imperfective in two Arabic dialects: A comparative viewpoint 465 Catherine Taine-Cheikh part v. Perfects and resultatives Modern Greek -tos (‑τος) and ‑menos (‑μενος): Two truly aspectual suffixes 505 Eleni Valma Resultative Interpretation of Predicates in Korean 525 Injoo Choi-Jonin On two types of result: Resultatives revisited 563 Mila Dimitrova-Vulchanova part vi. The Future and future reference Future and prospective in the Mongolic languages 599 Robert I. Binnick The future tenses in the Tibetic languages: Diachronic and dialectal perspectives 625 Nicolas Tournadre No escape from the future: Temporal frames and prediction in Yucatec Maya 643 Valentina Vapnarsky The Bulgarian future in light of the temporal frames of reference 679 Zlatka Guentchéva part vii. Grammatical change Aspect as the source of diathesis in North‑Eastern Neo-Aramaic and beyond with remarks on transitivity, accusativity, ergativity and case 705 Pablo Kirtchuk
- 11. Table of contents Language Index 727 Author Index 729 Subject Index 735
- 13. Robert BINNICK University of Toronto 1265 Military Trail Toronto, ON Canada M1C 1A4 [email protected] Isabelle BRIL LACITO-CNRS Centre André-Georges Haudricourt 7, rue Guy Môquet, 94800 Villejuif, France [email protected] Injoo CHOI-JONIN University of Toulouse-Le Mirail LACITO-CNRS 5 Allée Antonio Machado 31100 Toulouse [email protected] Jean-Pierre DESCLES Université Paris-Sorbonne LALIC Maison de la Recherche 28, rue Serpente 75006 Paris [email protected] Mila DIMITROVA-VULCHANOVA Department of Language and Literature The Norwegian University of Science and Technology Edvard Bulls veg 1 Dragvoll , Building 2 NO-7491 Trondheim Norway [email protected] Anaïd DONABEDIAN INALCO SEDYL - CNRS 7 rue Guy Moquet, Bat. D 94801 Villejuif Cedex INALCO 65 rue des Grands-Moulins 75013 Paris [email protected] Jean-Louis DUCHET EA 3816 FORELL Université de Poitiers 95, av. Recteur Pineau 86022 Poitiers [email protected] Margaret DUNHAM LACITO-CNRS Centre André-Georges Haudricourt 7, rue Guy Môquet, 94800 Villejuif, France [email protected] Lionel GALAND 12 r André Theuriet 92340 BOURG LA REINE [email protected] †René GSELL Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle Paris 3 13 rue Santeuil 75231 Paris Cedex 05 Zlatka GUENTCHEVA LACITO-CNRS Centre André-Georges Haudricourt 7, rue Guy Môquet, 94800 Villejuif, France [email protected] List of contributors
- 14. Aspectuality and Temporaliry Descriptive and theoretical issues Pablo KIRTCHUK LACITO-CNRS Centre André-Georges Haudricourt 7, rue Guy Môquet, 94800 Villejuif, France [email protected] Philippe MENNECIER Éco-Anthropologie et Ethnobiologie Musée de l’Homme 17 place du Trocadéro 75116 Paris, France [email protected] Annie MONTAUT INALCO – SEDYL CNRS Institut National des Langues et Civilisa- tions Orientales 2 rue de Lille 75 007 Paris [email protected] Samia NAÏM LACITO-CNRS Centre André-Georges Haudricourt 7, rue Guy Môquet, 94800 Villejuif, France [email protected] Remzi PËRNASKA INALCO 65 rue des Grands-Moulins 75013 Paris [email protected] Christiane PILOT-RAICHOOR LACITO-CNRS Centre André-Georges Haudricourt 7, rue Guy Môquet, 94800 Villejuif, France [email protected] Francesc QUEIXALOS SEDYL-CNRS Centre André-Georges Haudricourt 7, rue Guy Môquet 94800 Villejuif, France [email protected] Stéphane ROBERT Llacan-CNRS Centre André-Georges Haudricourt 7, rue Guy Môquet, 94800 Villejuif, France [email protected] Catherine TAINE-CHEIKH Lacito-CNRS, Centre André-Georges Haudricourt 7, rue Guy Môquet, 94800 Villejuif, France [email protected] Nicolas TOURNADRE Université d’Aix-Marseille LACITO-CNRS 29 av Robert Schumann 13621 Aix-en-Provence, France LACITO : 7, rue Guy Môquet, 94800 Villejuif, France [email protected] Eleni VALMA Institut de Formation Pédagogique Université Catholique de Lille LACITO-CNRS 236, rue du Faubourg de Roubaix 59041 Lille Cedex, France [email protected]
- 15. List of contributors Valentina VAPNARSKY, EREA – CNRS LESC / EREA - CNRS Université Paris Ouest 21, allée de l’université 92023 Nanterre cedex - France Courriel: [email protected]
- 17. doi 10.1075/slcs.172.01gue © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company Introduction Zlatka Guentchéva LACITO-CNRS – Université Paris 3 The majority of the articles in this volume arose from the “Aspect and tense: description and theories” project piloted by the LACITO-CNRS (the French National Center for Scientific Research). Some contributions were presented during the international conference “Le Temps sous tous ses aspects”, held in October 2007 at the international cultural center of Cerisy-la-Salle; others are the result of long-standing collaborative work with leading international researchers from different theoretical backgrounds, and were solicited outside the Lacito project. The volume brings together a collection of articles examining aspect and tense as manifested in many diverse and complex ways, in several Indo-European lan- guages (such as Albanian, Bulgarian, Armenian, English, Norwegian, Hindi,) Hamito- Semitic languages (Berber, Zenaga Berber, Arabic varieties, Neo-Aramaic) as well as in languages more or less well studied, spoken in Africa (Wolof, Langi), Asia (Badaga, Korean, Mongolian languages -Khalkha, Buriat, Kalmuck- Thaï, Tibetic languages), America (Yucatec Maya, Sikuani), Greenland (Eskimo), Oceania (Nêlêmwa). Although not all authors work within the same theoretical framework, what ties together the contributions in this volume is that: (1) they are grounded in solid empirical knowledge, of the documented languages, but also on many lesser known languages, for which first-hand data was gathered in the field; (2) they strive to provide insight concerning cross-linguistic concepts in the domains of tense and aspect. The goal is not to simply list “exotic” facts but rather to uncover the right semantic primi- tive notions and concepts for establishing and explaining linguistic universals. Indeed, some of the studies are explicitly grounded in a specific theoretical framework; oth- ers do not always specify the framework but each chapter offers an in-depth study of tense-aspect phenomena from a cross-linguistic perspective and seeks to contribute to our understanding of the domain under consideration and more broadly to linguistic typology. The first article of the volume is the only one which is not directly con- nected to a particular language, but rather discusses languages in terms of whether the phenomena bolster or weaken current hypotheses. Moreover, it presents the general framework of the enunciative theory and its main concepts, to which several other contributions in this volume explicitly refer.
- 18. Zlatka Guentchéva Over the past fifty years, investigations in the field of aspectuality and temporal relations show that, despite the immense amount of work which has been carried out, there is no generally accepted theory, but instead a plurality of theoretical approaches, both similar and concurrent, which diverge very often in their methodology and the conceptualizations and representations proposed.1 In formal semantics, one of the main trends in this domain, no single book provides a thorough assessment of this plurality of theoretical approaches through confrontation with their cross-linguistic applicability. It is indeed a difficult field and it has given rise to wide discrepancies in analysis, especially in the area of aspect, where the terminology is confusing and not always consistent: different terms are often used for the same notion, or the same term is used for different notions. In recent years, the typological approach to languages has become more and more mainstream in linguistics, but relatively little has been done in the field of aspect and tense. Among the rare works in this domain, one may cite: Comrie (1976, 1985), Chung Timberlake (1985), Dahl (1985, 2000), D. Cohen (1989), Bybee Dahl (1989), Bybee et al. (1994). But as Dahl (2000:3) observes, several factors are respon- sible for this scarcity, including the “predominantly semantic nature” of the phenom- ena and the lack of a “suitable framework in which different systems can be compared”. We believe however that for a typology in the aspect-temporal domain, the problem can be solved by refining the theoretical analysis, grounding it in well-defined cross- linguistic concepts, grammaticalized in some languages but not in others. Then, based on large data sets, one can better explore the deep regularities and variations which underlie language diversity, establish correspondences between the structure of lin- guistic expressions and the conceptual situations they encode, so as to thereby uncover language universals. It is useful to recall that the notions called into play are not all agreed upon. While most linguists agree with Comrie’s (1985:6) widely quoted definition that the notion of aspect “refers to the grammaticalisation of expression of internal temporal . There are however several published volumes presenting different perspectives: the book Notion d’aspect (David Martin 1980) brings together and compares several theoretical ap- proaches to aspect; two volumes on the interrelationship between the concepts of aspect and actionality (known as Aktionsart) from the Cortona workshop in 1993: Bertinetto, Bianchi, Dahl Squartini (1995) and Bertinetto, Bianchi, Higginbotham Squartini (1995); a collec- tion of papers on lexical semantics, logical semantics and syntax from a workshop on events as grammatical objects: Tenny Pustejovsky (2000); papers from the Utrecht conference Per- spectives on Aspect in 2001: Verkuyl, de Swart van Hout (2005); Kepchinsky Slabakova (2005); Abraham Leiss (2008), Rothstein (2008); van der Auwera Filip (2008), Hogeweg, de Hoop Malchukov (2009), Klein Li (2009); Patard Brisard (2011); Binnick (2012), among many others.
- 19. Introduction constituency”, other characterizations are found in the literature: aspect is a “ specific perspective adopted by the speaker/writer” (Bertinetto Delfitto 2000:190) or “a particular ‘viewpoint’ which is described by the situation” (Smith 1991; Klein 2009; Johanson 2000, among many others). Others definitions focus on the fact that aspect and tense have to do, semantically, with the time and that “true aspect concerns the temporal relationship of a situation to the reference frame against which it is set” (Binnick 1991:458, see also Klein 2009). As for the perfective/ imperfective distinc- tion, considered fundamental to the study of aspect, it is used with various mean- ings in the descriptions of numerous languages, corresponding to different notions such as complete/incomplete, completed/non-completed, completive/incompletive, accomplished/un accomplished, conclusive, global/partial, etc. Such notions are not always defined, and it is not always clear, for instance, what the difference is between completive and completed, with both notions often being used as synonyms for the perfective notion. The difficulty here is that the general typological terms perfective/ imperfective usually have meanings which are at once similar to and different from those which were initially associated with the terms in Slavic languages. It is true that the derivational-like character, fundamental to the grammatical organization of Slavic languages, has led many linguists to consider that the Slavic perfective/imper- fective distinction is “only one ‘special case’ of verbal aspect, which occurs in one form or another in the other languages of the world” (Maslov 1985:1, cited by Tomal- leri 2010).2 Trying to identify universal tendencies in aspect-tense phenomena, Dahl (1985, 2000:17–18) and Bybee Dahl (1989:89) distinguish between the notion of “perfectivity”, which is manifested at the lexical and derivational level, and typologi- cal “perfective types”, which, expressed rather through inflectional morphology, indi- cate that a situation is viewed as bounded (i.e. a situation which has reached a sort of boundary or end-point). The fact that the Slavic perfective/imperfective distinction cannot be considered prototypical of the theory of aspect is nothing new. In the conclusion to his analysis of the verbal systems of two Uto-Aztec languages (Paiute and Tübatulabal), Benveniste (1961:260) had already highlighted the “exceptional” nature of the Slavic verbal sys- tem: “the Slavic verb which provided the framework and distinctions for the theory of aspect […] is in no way typical; […] the entire problem must be overhauled.” It is inter- esting to note on this subject that Marcel Cohen (1923), who introduced the major . Dahl (1985) reaches similar conclusions: “the Slavic systems are in fact rather idiosyn- cratic in many ways” (p. 69); the Slavic verbal prefixes are “grammaticalized” as markers of “perfectivity” (p. 89). This is what led Dahl to introduce the label Slavic-style aspect, although recognizing that the term “is unfortunate in that it implies that all Slavic systems look the same” and that “North Slavic would be a more adequate label.” (ibid. 2000:23n6).
- 20. Zlatka Guentchéva semantic distinction accompli/inaccompli (“complete/incomplete”) to analyze verbal forms in Semitic languages, stressed that this distinction is not to be confused with the Slavic distinction marked by a verb’s Perfective or Imperfective forms.3 Many attempts have been made to define more precisely the binary semantic per- fective/imperfective distinction. Most of the recent studies agree that aspectuality is closely linked to the notion of boundary but, as Sasse points out (2002:263–264): “[…] the term ‘boundedness’ is often used too vaguely to figure out what type of bounds the writer has in mind”. Indeed, it is important to define clearly and unambiguously the concept of boundary. It is often asserted that the perfective presents a situation as “com- pleted”, and refers to a bounded situation presented on an interval which includes both the initial boundary and the final boundary (the so-called perfective type), whereas the imperfective presents a situation as an “ongoing” or “non-completed” process, and refers to an unbounded situation, presented on an interval excluding both bound- aries (“without its boundaries”). Thus the difference between (1) He ate the fish/two apples and (2) He ate fish/apples has been described as a bounded vs. an unbounded event. This characterization is not enough to distinguish (1) from (2). As has been noted several times, it is necessary to take into account a finer distinction, namely the distinction between complete (Fr. accompli) and completed (Fr. achevé). The notion of “completed” calls to another dimension that is not purely temporal (Desclés 1980, 1989, this volume). The concepts of “open boundary” and “closed boundary” must be integrated in the mathematical framework of temporal continuity. They make it possible to account e.g. for the distinction made in Bulgarian between an Aorist perfective ((3a) Tja izmi prozorcite lit. she washed (all) the windows; (3b) Tja postoja na pazara dva casa ‘She stood at the market two hours’) where the perfective form indicates that the right boundary has been reached (i.e. the event is completed) and an Aorist imperfec- tive ((4a) Tja mi prozorcite lit. she washed (the) windows; (4b) Tja stoja (aor.impf) na pazara dva casa ‘She stood at the market for two hours’), where the imperfec- tive indicates that the event took place but was interrupted at some point, without further specification (i.e. the event is only complete (Guentchéva 1990; Desclés Guencthéva 2012:completed entails complete, but the opposite is not true)).4,5 . This problem was discussed, but to avoid any misinterpretation by English speakers, several authors opted for the terms perfective/imperfective for languages such as Arabic, Berber,Wolof, Langi… . Lindstedt (2001:775) suggests a distinction between material bound and temporal bound:“A material bound presupposes telicity and entails a temporal bound”, but the contrary is not true. . One could object that the class of po-prefixed verbs is an exception in the aspectual systems of Slavic languages, because the situation is presented as bounded without any in- dication as to telicity. (On this point, see the comments by Bertinetto Delfitto 2000:220).
- 21. Introduction A similar distinction is noted for Georgian (Tomelleri 2010:71). Mandarin appears to capture such a distinction using the particle le depending on the meaning (telic or atelic) of the verb (Klein et al. 2000): “[…] le indicates that the situation comes to its natural endpoint, that is, it is completed, as illustrated in (1). But when the verb encodes a situation with no natural boundary, le signals the termination rather than completion of a situation as in (2): (1) Qi-chi zhuang-dao-le fangzi. car hit-break-LE house ‘The car knocked down the house.’ (2) Xiao yazi you-le yong duckling swim-LE stroke ‘The duckling swam.’ It is clear that it is not a question of terminology but of concepts, and that it is necessary to establish coherent networks of concepts associated to the markers grammaticalized in languages. The notions applied to tense and aspect are not independent of reflections on the nature of temporality where philosophy, logic, cognitive studies and linguistics inter- twine, as shown in the recent study by N. Thelin (2014). Many scholars for example apply the model developed by Reichenbach (1947) on the values of verbal tenses, and use also Vendler’s (1967) classification into four semantic classes. Reichenbach artic- ulates three points in time to describe verbal tense (S: moment of Speech, E: moment of Event and R: moment of Reference). Although many scholars have advanced a number of objections (Comrie 1981, 1985; Hornstein 1993; Klein 1994; Vet 1980; Vetters 1996, among many others) as to the status of the three points in time (points in time or time spans?), his model remains a source of inspiration. Many authors have proposed modified versions of this approach to various extents. For instance, the notion of reference time is not clearly defined and has often been refined (Com- rie 1981, 1985; Rothstein 2008 and many more). The Reichenbachian approach sup- poses a linear organization of time, where the speech act is viewed as a punctual moment located between the past (“before”) and the future (“subsequent to”), and most approaches to temporality adopt this temporalist position. However, it has been shown that this analysis is problematic for natural language. Linguistic time does not identify with chronological time, calendar time, physical time… (Benveniste 1966; Culioli 1980, 1990, 1999; Desclés 1980; Klein 2009, Gsell this volume) and is not lin- early organized. In addition to two purely temporal relationships, i.e. temporal con- comitance (e.g. identification), and temporal non-concomitance (e.g. differentiation by anteriority or posteriority), it is especially used to identify an aspectual situation (presented as a state, an event or a process) whose reference time is anchored in T0 (the enunciative instant). Grammatical tenses often take on specific semantic mean- ings, depending on the type of temporal frame of reference (general, hypothetical,
- 22. Zlatka Guentchéva potential, conditional, irrealis, counterfactual situations), and discourse devices that speakers use in their narrations (Desclés 1980, 1994, 1995; Hanks 1990; Desclés Guentchéva 2006, 2010). Vendler’s (1967) classification, in terms of “state”, “activity”, “accom plish ment” and “achievement”, has been adopted by many linguists, as such or with various refinements. What is not clear, however, is whether this classification pertains to the meanings of verbs, verb phrases or sentences. Klein et al. (2000:745) observes that “it seems that even Vendler himself was not entirely sure whether time schemata should refer strictly to the temporal properties of events/situations, or to the semantic prop- erties of verbs, or to both”. Languages often combine lexical aspect and grammati- cal aspect, and discussions around the “Tense-Aspect-Aktionsart” triad pervades the literature, with some attempting to oppose aspect and Aktionsart6 or “actionality” (e.g. Kortmann 1991; Bertinetto Delfitto 2000), and others attempting to reconcile the two (e.g. Comrie 1976; Sasse 1991). The authors in this volume do not explicitly invoke Reichenbach’s and Vendler’s notions. Several authors work within the framework of the enunciative theory. This approach has its origins in the works on enunciation by Benveniste (1966, 1970), within a trend earlier initiated by philosophers such as M. Buber (1923) and linguists in the Prague School (Jakobson 1932; Poligny 1967), but it applies also the modus/ dictum distinction established by Bally (1932). It is noteworthy that these various trends inspired major works, for example on aspect in Modern Greek (Seiler 1952) and on Slavic languages (Ivanchev 1971). Culioli (1980, 1990, 1999) and his disciples developed a systematic approach to enunciative operations, based on the theory of reference relations (by identification, differentiation, or disconnection) which makes it possible to organize the relations between, on the one hand, I (enunciator), YOU (co-enunciator) and HE (the absent from the dialog), and, on the other hand, the tem- poral relations between the aspectualized situations and the situation of enunciation as organized by the enunciator. This enunciative approach highlights the dialogic inter- action, often expressed by linguistic markers within a given sentence. It is complexi- fied by a cognitive approach to language, where lexemes and grammatical units call upon representations (such as state, event, process, resultant state…) grounded in a specific perception of the environment, and in more or less intentional actions on the environment. The enunciative approach thus has obvious ties to cognitive gram- mars ( Langacker 1987, 1991; Talmy 2000a, 2000b) and the cognitive model, organized . According to Kortmann (1991:10), the term Aktionsart was introduced by Brugmann in 1885 in his comparative grammar of Indo-European languages. According to Kortmann (1991:11), “Brugmann’s Aktionsart captured at least two different things which had better be kept separate”, namely aspect and Aktionsart, the latter having been established by Agrell (1908) in his analysis of the Polish verb.
- 23. Introduction around the “trimorph” established by Pottier (2000). One cannot speak of tense and aspect without also mentioning the work of G. Guillaume (1929) who, on many points, examines the same questions, as to the cognitive nature of temporality as expressed and categorized in language. As most of the contributions to this book look at non-European languages, and given that many different approaches are applied to the analysis of aspectual and tem- poral phenomena, contributors were free to choose their own framework. The present volume is organized as follows: – – Part I presents an enunciative approach to aspect and tense, applied by several contributors to this volume. – – Part II addresses the thorny problem of the relationship between grammatical aspect and Aktionsarten. – – Part III investigates the expression of aspectual and/or temporal semantics. – – Part IV focuses on the notion of Aorist used for various Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages. – – PartVexaminesresultativeinterpretationsandtheirmorpho-syntacticrealization. – – Part VI centers on the Future and future time reference. – – PartVIIdiscussestheaspectualoriginsofdiathesisinNorth-EasternNeo-Aramaic (NENA). Part I. Theoretical issues Jean-Pierre Desclés (Chapter 1) offers, from an enunciative perspective, a theoretical presentation of the main meanings associated with aspect-tense markers in languages. He focuses on the three basic aspectual concepts (state, event and process), keeping up with the work carried out by Comrie and Mourelatos. He argues that these aspectual concepts are not independent of each other but function as operators applied firstly to a predicative relation and, secondly, actualized on temporal topological intervals: an open interval for states (“no first or last instant is taken into account”), a closed interval for events (“there is a first (and a last) instant of actualization”), and an interval closed to the left and open to the right for processes. In this approach, the enunciative act (or speech act) is actualized as an incomplete process, where the right boundary, unlike in many models (including that of H. Reichenbach) is not “the moment of speech ‘T₀’“ but “the first of the instants not yet actualized”. Furthermore, Desclés introduces additional notions: (i) different temporal frames of reference, including the enuncia- tive temporal frame of reference, distinguishing it from the external time system; the temporal frame of reference, organized through narration, without any relation to the enunciative act; the hypothetical temporal frame of reference…; (ii) temporal relation- ships within the same temporal frame of reference, and the disconnection relationship
- 24. Zlatka Guentchéva between different temporal frames of reference; (iii) the segmentation of situations into different internal phases (Aktionsarten). The paper proposes a structured net- work (or semantic map) of the main aspectual concepts encountered in the tense and aspect analysis of languages. The more conventional notions found in the literature, such as “complete”, “incomplete”, “completed” (or perfectivity), “inchoative”… stem from more primitive concepts with overtly cognitive scope, acquiring over time ever more precise definitions. Part II. Grammatical encoding of aspectual and temporal distinctions Part II is dedicated to the morpho-syntactic strategies developed and illustrated in eight non-Indo-European languages (Nêlêmwa; Thaï, Badaga (Dravidian), Wolof, Langi (Bantu), Sikuani (Guahiban family). It provides also discussion on the difficulty in clarifying the distinction between lexical semantics and grammatical aspect. Isabelle Bril (Chapter 2) investigates tense, aspect and mood in Nêlêmwa and its variant Nixumwak, aspect-mood oriented languages, belonging to the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian family. Tense, aspect or mood are not marked by con- jugation or inflectional verbal morphology, but are rather expressed by morphemes that occur mostly before the (verbal or non-verbal) predicate. Temporal reference is not marked by tensed verbs, but by various types of morphemes (chronology adverbs, deictic and anaphoric demonstratives or adverbs). Modal reference frames, expressed by realis/irrealis morphemes, are the third essential and interacting parameter. The study goes beyond morphological marking in that it makes use of the enunciative theoretical framework. The aspectual system is based on three main notions: events (marked by the aorist bare form), states, and processes (marked by a variety of gen- erally pre-verbal morphemes, Aktionsart verbs, as well as directional morphemes). The analysis focuses also on the contrast between the functions of the perfect and of the aorist. Bare aorist verb forms refer to events or to sequences of events, without any reference to their internal phases. The perfect, marked by (k)u, (x)u, on the other hand, marks transitional processes, which may or may not have reached their final instant, and are relevant either to speech time (t₀) or to some past event in a narra- tive. The perfect may refer to a change of state or to the resulting state of a process, and is also commonly used to express internal relations between processes (ante- riority, backgrounding or causal relations). Another frequent meaning of the per- fect marker, interacting with mood, is that of an imminent change of state, or the imminent completion of a process; the perfect then interacts with epistemic potential (o) or future (io) referential frames, as well as with deontic mood in injunctive and optative utterances, and expresses the speaker’s certainty or determination about the projected occurrence of the event.
- 25. Introduction René Gsell (Chapter 3) discusses the rich Standard Thai tense-aspect system, with a few remarks on questions of methodology: “[…] descriptions must be based on sema- siological reasoning: starting from actual “forms” -in Thai, bound or free morphemes, distribution and combinatory possibilities, syntactic properties- leading to effects in meaning, functions, and beyond to the system’s structure”. However, his analysis is not restricted to this semasiological approach, and basic notions are constructed, even though they may be considered as temporary. From a typological point of view, Standard Thai belongs to the “amorphous iso- lating” type. All morphemes are invariable: no inflection or affixation is possible. Verb and noun forms have identical structure, and can only be distinguished through their combinatory possibilities, only a verbal predicate can be negated. Aspect, tense, Aktionsart and modality are expressed by word order and various function words. The verb phrase is therefore a string of morphemes with a strict order: Preverb + Verb (Lexemes) + Postverb. Preverbs can be represented by linked bound morphemes (expressing possibility and probability), semi-free preverbs and free morphemes serv- ing as auxiliaries or lexemes with a modal scope. As for postverbs, they belong to aspectuality comprised of aktionsart and aspect proper. TheconstructionoftenseinThaïcannotbeconfusedwithexternaltime(“objective time”), and cannot be analysed as a linear axis, on which the present separates a past and a future. Aspectuality is a block which can be analysed starting from the intrinsic properties of verb lexemes (processives and statives) and from the Aktionsart, consid- ered as belonging to the lexical domain. Thus one may distinguish between, on the one hand, aspect, affecting the process globally and realized along two axes: complete/ incomplete (“accompli”/“inaccompli”) and durative/non-durative, and, on the other hand, Aktionsart, affecting the lexeme only. Christiane Pilot-Raichoor (Chapter 4) studies the uses and distribution of the basic “Past” and “Non-Past” morphemes in Badaga, a minority South-Dravidian lan- guage. She points out that, in Dravidian linguistics, it is usually assumed that the cat- egory of tense plays a major role in the verb systems, but descriptions of the usage of the tenses in various languages signal regularly obvious mismatches between the tense of the verb form and its actual temporal interpretation in the sentence. The author demonstrates that, even though the pervasive use of these morphemes in the verb morphology testifies that they do play a major role in the verb systems, a careful analy- sis of “Past” and “Non-Past” morphemes reconstructed as Proto-Dravidian had made it clear that they could not be viewed as tense-encoding distinctions, no more than the usual aspectual or modal distinctions. Re-examining the Dravidian data in the light of G. Guillaume’s theory (Temps et Verbe 1929), and focusing on the basic principles of grammaticalization of time in the verb, and the development of the verb systems, Pilot-Raichoor draws attention to the third term of the reconstructed system: Past/ Non-Past/Negative. She argues that morphological integration of negation in the basic
- 26. Zlatka Guentchéva “tense” system is the revealing sign that the grammaticalization of time in Dravidian is grounded on a completely different conceptual basis: the main divide is between the occurrence of an event (with a positive specification of its temporal dimension: “Past”/“Non-Past”) and its non-occurrence (Negative) in a given time situation. The article details the theoretical framework, and the analysis of the Badaga data provides evidence of an original cumulative encoding of tense-aspect-mood-polarity in these morphemes, based on the historical grammaticalization of time within the verb. S. Robert (Chapter 5) analyses the complex inflectional verbal system in Wolof (Niger-Congo, Senegal), in relation to the grammaticalization of focus and negation in the verbal morphology. The system presents an original aspectual system, with two levels of organization: 1. The basic verbal system is organized into inflectional paradigms expressing polar- ity and focus features. These basic conjugations share a common perfective value, and have the moment of the enunciative act as tense locus, with the exception of one conjugation, the Null tense by definition (also called Aorist). The Perfective aspect is therefore the unmarked value, and is induced by three different configu- rations, depending on the semantics of each conjugation: resulting state for the Perfect, temporal presupposition entailed by focusing conjugations, and minimal structuring and a comprehensive view of the process for the Null tense and Pre- sentative. These three configurations converge in a common “perfective effect” when contrasted with the derived imperfective forms. 2. These primary conjugations enter into secondary oppositions by means of aspectual and temporal suffixes. Thus, imperfective and past reference are derived from the bare (perfective) conjugations by suffixation. The imperfective suffix yields a predicative variant, which probably signals an ongoing grammaticaliza- tion process involving spatial deictics. The imperfective suffix and its predicative variant are used to produce two distinct future tenses. They also combine to form original imperfective compound conjugations, referring to occasional events. The imperfective suffix also has noteworthy interclausal and modal effects. More gen- erally, the Wolof verbal system reveals an overarching mechanism conditioned by Aktionsarten: with stative verbs, aspectual phasing shifts from a temporal to a modal level and expresses epistemic modality (certainty vs. uncertainty). Margaret Dunham (Chapter 6) investigates the rich tense-aspect-mood verbal system in Langi, a Bantu language (spoken in central Tanzania), combining Bantu-inherited and Bantu- or non-Bantu-borrowed structures. The author, the first researcher to describe this language in her doctoral work, analyses the rich devices used to convey tense and aspect: from morpheme to auxiliary and intonation. Distinctions between tense and aspect are often highly blurred, to the extent that Langi is a hodge-podge of
- 27. Introduction inherited, adapted and borrowed mechanisms. The language makes use of both agglu- tination, as is usual in Bantu, and analytical structures, with argument-marking being spread across several discrete elements, most likely a borrowing from Cushitic. In his analysis of the expression of aspect in Sikuani, a Guahibo language spoken in the mid-Orinoco savanna area (Colombia and Venezuela), F. Queixalós (Chapter 7) combines both a semasiological an and onomasiological approach. Defining aspect as being “the temporal structure of a given manner of existing denoted by a clause predicate”, the author specifies that this definition covers all predicates (actions, events, processes, states, properties, inclusion, possession, and existence itself; equative) and “probably fall beyond the specific meanings conveyed by ‘manner of existing’”. From the semantic point of view, a first distinction is established between stative and dynamic verbs. Verbs are obligatorily inflected for mood, and select one of the ten suffixes structured in pairs, to distinguish between the factual and the virtual moods, each of which, however, is comprised of an aspectual component and a temporal component. Therefore, the verb stem provides two different verbs, which, from the point of view of aspect, express e.g. the contrast between the semelfactive and the itera- tive, or between the perfective and the imperfective. Various devices (verb inflection, auxiliaries, particles, reduplication, noun inflection) are used to express aspect, and are analyzed as an operator, which carries “lexical aspect (contained in the intentional definition of the predicate’s lexical component)”. Among these various tools, second- ary auxiliaries play a special role in a complex structure, as they “receive their seman- tic substance from spatial notions”, and they may function as main verbs, as well as aspect operators bearing on “the temporal texture of the manner of existing described by the verb with which they combine”. As many other languages of this area, Sikuani resorts to “particles”, stemming from a phrasal verb, to refer to completeness (“finish”, “accomplish”, “turn perfect”). Many of these various heterogeneous tools lie between inflection and derivation, making it highly difficult to establish a clear cut distinction between categories. We leave the reader to discover the complexity of the aspectual system of Sikuani. Part III. Grammatical aspect and Aktionsarten The complexity of this distinction is addressed in two typologically different languages. Philippe Mennecier (Chapter 8) discusses the particular semantics of infixes and their combinations in the expression of aspect and tense relations in East Greenlandic, a polysynthetic, ergative language. The language is characterized by its complex inflectional morphology, and the absence of a grammatical system of tense. Verbs are obligatorily inflected for mood. The distinction between lexical and grammatical morphemes is sometimes difficile to establish. However, the order in which affixes
- 28. Zlatka Guentchéva appear is significant, as the verbal word must contain at least a verb base, a mood morpheme and an ending. Various affixes can in addition be inserted between the verb base and the mood morpheme. The author shows that the semantic description of affixes is complex, since their meaning can vary, depending on that of the verb base. So-called aspectual affixes are not a homogeneous class in terms of semantics, and do not make up a paradigm which would enable a clear separation between aspectual infixes and Aktionsart affixes. In fact, it is a compositional category containing affixes with aspectual meanings, which capture the process in its various phases of unfold- ing (generally analyzed as action modes: -caar- ‘cease to’, -lir- ‘inchoative, immediate future’, -ŋalittuar ‘on the point of’, etc). Contrary to aspect (“internal temporality”), which is a mandatory category, temporal relations are generally provided by the con- text, as well as through particles, such as “yesterday”, or aspectual affixes implicating the verb’s Aktionsart. Samia Naïm (Chapter 9) focuses on the functions of the auxiliaries and particles to express different aspectual meanings in three Arab dialects (Palestinian and Syrian Lebanese, and Yemeni dialects of Zabīd and S�anʕā). These varieties did not follow quite the same evolution, but they have preserved the basic aspectual opposition between the perfective (suffixed inflection) and the imperfective (prefixed inflection) inherent to classical Arabic. Some dialects have undergone changes by including a referential marker in the verb form, such as the prefix b-, which gave rise to a second imperfective form in the Yemenite dialect of S�anʕā. The aspectual distinction perfective/imperfec- tive is closely linked to temporal distinctions, and, in their absolute use, processes are localized in relation to the time of speech (T0). The past tense reference can be explained with the auxiliary kān ‘be’: the processes can then be localized in relation to each other, or to any other reference point. Depending on the dialect, other auxiliaries and particles may have an aspectual function: (i) the inchoative, mainly expressed by qaʕad/ʔeʕid, ʒalas/gilis (a posture verb equivalent to ‘sit’), signals the triggering of the process; (ii) the ingressive, expressed by the motion verb qām ‘get up’, by rāħ ‘go’ or by ʒā ‘come’, indicates the sudden advent of an event, or the entry into a state; (iii) the continuative is expressed by two auxiliaries in eastern Arabic: baqa (beqe, beʔe) and d�all (ð̣all); (iv) the iterative is expressed by two synonymous displacement verbs: rǝʒiʔ and ʕād (not used as a full verb) ‘come back’, and by the auxiliary jzīd ‘increase, multiply’ in Sanaa Arabic. Two particles, ʕād and gad, convey aspectual, temporal and modal meanings. The study focuses on the difference between the temporal auxiliary kān ‘be’ and aspectual auxiliaries: kān operates over the propositional content and provides tem- poral anchoring; aspectual auxiliaries operate over the verbal predicate. The study also focuses on the inchoative/ingressive distinction, the inchoative being related more spe- cifically to the semantics of the verb. However, as pointed out, the boundary between them can sometimes be very hazy. It should be noted that, in the linguistic literature,
- 29. Introduction the terms “inchoative” and “ingressive”, to which must be added the term “inceptive”, are used in an undifferentiated way. The inchoative/ingressive distinction has been reported also for certain procedural verbs in Slavic languages. A verb like zasmejat’sja ‘(begin) to laugh’, can express, depending on the context, either the starting-point in the process, or the whole process as an event (Forsyth 1970:421–422). This prob- lem is both descriptive and theoretical: how are the grammatical aspects related to Aktionsarten? Part IV. Indo-European aorist and Hamito-Semitic aorist The term aorist has been used with various meanings across language descriptions. It has been commonplace to note that it originates in the grammar of Ancient Greek and has been applied to other Indo-European languages (Sanskrit, Armenian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Georgian…). The term has more recently been introduced in the description of some non-Indo-European languages (Berber, Wolof, Mwotlap, etc.). The question is whether the term “aorist”, as pointed out by one of the anonymous ref- erees, can be interpreted from a typological point of view, as a kind of a cross-linguistic category (“gram type” in Bybee and Dahl’s terminology). It is clear that to avoid any possible confusion, a tertium comparationis is essential to compare language-specific categories. The first three articles in this section are devoted to the aorist in Indo-European languages; the next two concern the aorist in Berber. In all these languages the aorist may express various meanings in the context of discourse and text. Jean-Louis Duchet and Remzi Përnaska (Chapter 10) devote their study to the Albanian aorist and perfect. The paper concentrates on the textual and discursive dimension of the use of the aorist, and on its particular features when used in non- actualized context or with enunciative functions. Data is provided on the three main functions fulfilled by the Albanian aorist: (1) the aorist which expresses processes localized in time, and referring to a complete accomplishment or achievement of a process or of a sequence of processes in the past; (2) the aorist which expresses results in the same way as the perfect, and especially the accomplishment of a recent process; (3) the aorist recording processes as events which conveys pure information about past facts with a bleached, almost neutral, expression of temporal localization, and a weak link between the process and its agent. Other facts have been taken into account and analyzed in connection with this third function: the Albanian aorist may also express future reference, condition in conditional protases, and, concurrently with the present tense, it also refers to the boundless time frame of maxims and axioms (gnomic aorist).
- 30. Zlatka Guentchéva This paper also examines the contextual meanings of the Albanian aorist in enun- ciative registers. Used both in narrative texts and in discourse, it overlaps the meanings of the perfect. The close examination of contextual uses of the perfect has in turn brought new ideas about the way these two tenses share functions in the tense, aspect and modality system. Although the perfect has, on the whole, the typical function of a resultative tense with current relevance at the time of enunciation, it has also secondary functions, and rather than succeeding the aorist in a diachronic view of grammaticalization, it has a development of its own, co-extensive with the aorist, which has retained most of its original functions. The narrative is the typical domain of the aorist, even though it allows also the perfect. Discourse is a domain shared by both the aorist and the perfect. Special atten- tion will also be devoted to contexts, in which both tenses appear together rather than in contrast. Interpretations and analyses are conducted on samples extracted from narratives (fiction, journalistic, biblical) and from conversations and reported dialogues. Anaïd Donabédian (Chapter 11) proposes a semantic and structural analysis of the Aorist in Modern Armenian. The main goal of the article is to examine the semantic meaning of the Aorist in as many contexts as possible, and to define its invariant features. The Aorist remained the only stable synthetic tense form during the history of the Armenian language, and it has a very special place in Armenian grammatical system. It has a specific inflexional paradigm that differs from other verbal inflexional forms. As in other languages (Greek, Hindi, Persian, Albanian, etc.), the opposition between aorist and perfect kept all its vitality in Armenian where the Aorist needs to be consid- ered in the context of the triad aorist/present perfect I/present perfect II. An extensive analysis of the morphological particularities of the Armenian Aorist is presented, as they play an important role in its semantic analysis. It is examined in narrative contexts, as well as in contexts anchored to the situation of utterance; its various uses are explored through many examples, including gnomic, hypotheti- cal and “future” uses. The study is based on Culioli’s theory of enunciative operations. From an aspectual point of view, the Aorist is interpreted as an event whose temporal anchoring depends on the type of sentence and register. The analysis determines three parameters which may account for the specificity of the Aorist in Modern Armenian: “eventiveness”, “compacity” and “lack of anchoring to T0”. Depending on the type of the sentence, these three parameters appear differently in the narrative register, in the discourse register and in hypothetical contexts. The author argues that, in narratives, the aorist is event-oriented and the temporal anchoring is text-internal, without a spe- cific modal meaning, whereas, in the discourse register, it implies an anchoring to the situation of utterance and is associated with strong assertion, argumentative and possibly exclamative nuances. In discursive hypothetical contexts, the Aorist displays
- 31. Introduction strong subjective attitude. Based on this analysis, supported by very accurate data, the invariant of Armenian Aorist is considered to be compatible with the definition of “aoristic” in Culioli’s framework. The topic of Annie Montaut’s article (Chapter 12) is the analysis of the verb form V-ā (where -ā stands for the gender-number) in Hindi/Urdu, an Indo-Aryan language derived from Sanskrit. This simple verb form, currently known as “perfective” in the linguistic literature, is called here “aorist”. The author argues that this simple form, used in narratives, is distinct from the perfective and perfect in the verbal system of the language, and the form behaves like the Aorists in other Indo-European languages (see Donabédian, Duchet Përnaska, this vol.). It is also argued that this form expresses the aspectual and temporal meaning of an anterior event, as well as other meanings such as eventual, gnomic present, anticipation and mirative. The verb form V-ā is morphologically atypical, since it displays no verbal, per- sonal, tense or aspect marker, but only gender and number directly suffixed to the verb base, a form quasi-homonymous with the “past” participle. These morphologi- cal peculiarities are directly linked to the historical origin of the verbal paradigm to express accomplished processes. They are described as the grammaticalization of the unmarked (nominal) form into a zero-marked form, following Bybee et al. (1994). However, as pointed out, its historical evolution partially accounts for its present state, both at the morphological and functional level. The study is conducted within the framework of the theory of enunciative operations (Culioli 1999). According to the author, in all its uses, the form lacks temporal anchoring, and displays aoristic values as coined by Culioli (1980). The V-ā form in Hindi/Urdu is then analysed as an operator which entails “a radical disjunction from the time of utterance and from the subject (‘énonciateur’)”. The article gives data of great quality, which is very useful for develop- ing the notion of aorist. With Lionel Galand’s article (Chapter 13), we leave the field of Indo-European to observe the complex functioning of the Aorist in Berber, which is context-dependent. The term “aorist” was introduced a little over a century ago (Basset 1894) and is often used in linguistic descriptions. The verb system in Berber is based on an opposition between three basic themes found in all varieties of Berber: the perfective (the process or state being presented as complete); the imperfective (an ongoing process, a process still to come, or a state referring to the time of speech or to some other temporal indi- cation provided by the situation or context; and also an habitual); the aorist, which lacks any reference to aspectual distinctions and is, most often, considered as “the unmarked form for aspect” (formally and semantically) and whose value is dependent on the context: “The Aorist is nothing but a verb reduced to its most simple expression, both in form and meaning” (Galand, this volume). Therefore its aspectual meaning depends on the context already specified by other means, but the need for a higher level of specification leads to the use of the particle a(d). The bare form of the aorist,
- 32. Zlatka Guentchéva i.e. without a particle, has a wide range of uses, but only if the aspectual context is otherwise specified: in narratives, for any chain of events marked by a perfective or imperfective, the bare form of the Aorist can also express modal meanings, but pre- ceded by the particle a(d), or sometimes another particle, it focuses more explicitly on the modal meanings, which are determined by the situation or context (injunction, conditions, future time reference, etc.). In the same domain, Catherine Taine-Cheikh (Chapter 14) discusses the Aor- ist in Zenaga, a Berber variety spoken in Mauritania (see Galand on Berber Aorist, this volume), and offers a comparison with the Imperfective in two Arabic dialects (Ḥassāniyya, spoken in Mauritania, and Morrocan Arabic). Zenaga categorizes verbs into two classes (stative or processive). Depending on this verbal sub-categorization, one distinguishes two Perfective forms and, in many dialects, two Imperfective forms, but only one Aorist. The Perfective of dynamic verbs refers to an event; the Perfective of stative verbs refers to the notion of “entry into a state”. As to the Imperfective of dynamic verbs, it expresses an ongoing process, whereas the less frequent Imperfec- tive of statives refers to a state which has future reference. Alongside, there are various devices for specifying the different phases of a process. In Zenaga, the Aorist is a “neutral” form, whose aspectual value is built from the context; its frequency is low, compared to other Berber dialects, due probably to its diachronic evolution. The use of the “bare” Aorist is quite rare, but it can occur in the apodoses of conditionals. In Imperative sentences, it can appear in a sequence of ordered events, following a verb in the Imperative. Preceded by the particle äđ, whose origin is a demonstrative, it has various modal uses, such as in injunctive sentences (the negative form of a sentence is preceded by the particle wär), in complex clauses following a verb expressing a request, an order or a wish, in a conditional protasis, in indirect clauses, in dependent clauses with consecutive meaning, in negative contexts etc. It can be combined with the particle wär (äđ wär + aor.) in injunctive sentences, to express prohibition. It can also express habitual or potential events. In Arabic, the opposition is essentially binary (Perfective-Imperfective), here referred to as suffixal conjunction (SC) and prefixal conjunction (PC) respectively, and the comparison with Zenaga exhibits quite a similar diachronic evolution. The study shows that the function of the Berber particle ad (except in Zenaga) is compa- rable to that of the Arabic preverb ka-. It is argued that Zenaga’s opposition Aorist vs. Imperfective appears to be very similar to Moroccan Arabic (bare PC vs. preverbed PC), even though the uses of the bare Moroccan Arabic PC are more restricted than those in Zenaga. It is also argued that, compared to Ḥassāniyya, Zenaga shows a more elaborate modal system, however less developed than that of Morrocan Arabic. The author hypothesizes that Zenaga’s Aorist is perhaps an Imperfective with modal mean- ings, compared to an indicative Imperfective factual, also called “intensive”.
- 33. Introduction Part V. Perfects and resultatives Eleni Valma (Chapter 15) presents an account of the semantic distinction between the Modern Greek adjectival forms ending in -τος and -μένος. The author briefly pres- ents current studies attempting to provide an explanation, and concludes that these account only partially for this distinction. Based on the aspectual distinction of event, state and process, it is argued that the deverbals in -τος denote “a state which is the result of an implicit transient event, […] reconstructible thanks to the lexical informa- tion conveyed by the root.” Generally, the construction in -τος denotes meaning of contingency, as demonstrated by examples such as “βραστό αυγό”, which designates a state contingent to an event, neither salient nor stressed, but simply implied in that it caused the passage from state₁ to state₂. The author builds her argumentation by providing a great amount of examples that explain the different configurations of -τος lexicalized forms, with the status of nouns. Subsequently, she notices the forms τος and -μένος in adjectival derivation, and concentrates on the semantic explanation of -μένος. She concludes that both forms denote the aspectual notion of state, but, con- trary to -τος, -μένος stresses the transitional event which “takes the noun or nominal entity from state₁ to state₂”, and carries therefore a more salient meaning of tense and aspect. Injoo Choi-Jonin (Chapter 16) deals with the two Korean periphrastic construc- tions yielding a resultative interpretation of their preceding predicate, namely VR-a/e iss-VS (verbal root-a/e ‘exist’-verbal suffix) and VR-ko iss-VS (verbal root-ko ‘exist’- verbal suffix). The former is generally considered a resultative marker in Korean gram- mars, and the latter, commonly regarded as a progressive marker, may also denote a resultative meaning in some cases. Scholars have assumed that the resultative marker -a/e iss- is only combinable with intransitive telic verbs, whereas the resultative inter- pretation of the progressive marker -ko iss- is only possible for certain transitive verbs. Recently, Lee EunHee (2008) has claimed that the difference between the two peri- phrastic constructions lies on their argument structure: -a/e iss- can be combined with only unaccusative verbs and passive verbs only while ko iss- selects ergative verbs and transitive verbs. Her analysis, as interesting as it is, raises however some problems. The aim of this article is twofold: (i) to re-examine Lee EunHee (2008)’s assump- tion on the distribution of -a/e iss- and -ko iss- constructions explained by argument structures, as well as the validity of Unaccusative Hypothesis in Korean; (ii) to eluci- date syntactic and semantic factors allowing the resultative interpretation of Korean predicates when they are followed by -a/e iss- and -ko iss- constructions. The author agrues that, on the one hand, the distinction between unergative and unaccusative verbs need not be taken into account, insofar as it seems not relevant at least in Korean, and, on the other hand, the resultative interpretation of Korean predicates derives
- 34. Zlatka Guentchéva from the combination between the argument structure of the verb iss- (‘exist’), the semantic structure of the preceding verb, and the way of connecting the two predicates by means of the connective markers -a/e and -ko. Mila Dimitrova-Vulchanova (Chapter 17) discusses resultatives from the point of view of the lexicon/grammar dichotomy, and proposes a typology of resultative constructions distinguishing between what she labels conservative (connected) results and radical (disconnected) results. Both types are subject to certain, non-overlapping lexical constraints, and the two types exhibit different aspectual and structural prop- erties. It is argued that connected resultatives arise in the cases of conservative unifi- cation, whereby the resultative expression spells out a natural result of the situation denoted by the head verb. In contrast, disconnected resultatives are constructional and made available by language specific options for syntactic realization. It is further shown that, even though disconnected results are in part lexically constrained, their generation, unlike connected results, does not depend on lexical information per se. They depend rather on the syntactic repertoire of the language at hand. Part VI. The Future and future reference The articles in this section relate to the notion of futurity and its expression in typo- logically distinct languages. The analysis of the future raises more or less explicitly the same question: do these languages carry a specific category of “future tense” in their grammatical systems? Robert Binnick (Chapter 18) discusses the notion of a semantically future verb form in Mongolic languages (Khalkha, Buriat, and Kalmuck, etc.), which have a very rich system of finite and non-finite verb forms expressing aspect and tense relations, as well as various devices to mark the future. A wide range of standard criteria for such a semantic value are presented, and a considerable variety of devices for marking future events, and a survey of various studies on this topic (grammars, articles, etc.) are dis- cussed. The author argues that the interpretation of the only form of the past that can be used to mark the future depends crucially on the aspectual nature of the predicate (eventive and processual but not stative predicates), and on the temporal orientation of the context. “Verbal nouns” receiving personal subject-agreement endings can also have a future reading, but this meaning is equated to that of tenses. It is argued that, in this case, verbal nouns can mark a temporal relationship, which can refer to the speech act time or to the context defined by other temporal references (governing matrix verb, external situation, etc.). Finally, the author discusses the use of some converbs (con- ditional, terminal and final) and shows that imperatives may be used to express future eventuality. The conclusion is that, in Mongolic languages, there is no verb form that carries a specific meaning of the notion of future.
- 35. Introduction The general purpose of Tournadre’s study (Chapter 19) is to examine some of the ways in which Tibetic languages refer to future time, in relation to grammatical mark- ers conveying aspects and modalities. As in other languages, a wide range of categories are associated with the verb, and it is not very easy to determine whether the aspectual, temporal or modal function is primary or secondary. In many languages, there is a ten- dency to mark the future time reference with the present tense (Fr. Ils partent demain, They go tomorrow), the present progressive tense (They are going), the imperative (Vous partez demain! You leave tomorrow!), etc. There are also many languages where the future may mark probability, possibility or potentiality (Ultan 1978:103–104). However, as pointed by the author, future time reference is not restricted to the verbal predicate (see also Binnick, this volume, for Mongolic languages), and other parts of speech (for instance, adverbials) and subordinate clauses may also contribute. It is pointed out that the specific “future stem” present in Classical Tibetan and Old Tibetan is limited to a few hundred verbs which have disappeared in every modern Tibetic language. In Classical Tibetan, this “future stem” combines with the auxiliary byed ‘to do’, and occurs in the auxiliary constructions to express future time. Originating in suffixed forms inherited from auxiliary constructions, the V[present]+[rel]+ cop construction (where the relator is a connective or a nominalizer) is the main device for conveying a future meaning in any modern Tibetic languages. Depending on several factors, such as the controllable vs. non- controllable nature of the lexical verb or person, different types of future are ana- lyzed: “factual”, “assumptive”, “intentional”, “benefactive”, “inferential”, “preventive”, “deontic”, “dubitative” and “autolalic”. Valentina Vapnarsky (Chapter 20) explores the hypothesis that even in tense- less languages, inferences relative to temporal location may ultimately become con- ventionalized and encoded by grammatical markers (previously conveying modal or aspectual information). In Yucatec Maya, spoken in Mexico, temporality is mainly expressed through aspect, with a main division between completive and incompletive, and finer dis- tinctions, such as inceptive, progressive, terminative, prospective, etc. A set of modal markers or auxiliaries complements the aspectual system, but they indicate posteri- ority, and not future in a strict sense. The author argues that bíin, one form among Yucatec TAM markers, conveys future. The temporal reference of the event modified by bíin is always posterior to the moment of speech: bíin does not express intention, and is only used in restricted contexts, such as the reference to prophecies, events fixed by destiny, or other ineluctable reasons; it implies a temporal frame in which the future does not appear as a set of open possibilities or speculations, but as the accomplish- ment of predetermined events. Thus, at least two temporal frames seem to be involved in Yucatec grammar relative to futurity: a “conjectural” frame, where expression of modality predominates, and the non-actualized frame with bíin.
- 36. Zlatka Guentchéva The author’s hypothesis is that the future value of bíin results from a process of grammaticalization of conversational inferences. For this, she analyses the forms which give rise to temporal inferences from a combined grammatical, interactional and cultural perspective, in synchrony and diachrony. Zlatka Guentchéva (Chapter 21) investigates the Bulgarian future expressed by an analytical form, and generally characterized as presenting an action as posterior to the “moment of speech”. It is argued that this characterization fails to account for its various uses, in narrative or in completive sentences for example. Its analysis implies more than one temporal frame of reference, and therefore, the situation cannot always be defined as posterior to the time of speech. In the approach defended here, the enun- ciator’s attitude towards the content of the message, as well as the notion of reference frame, are essential to analyze more precisely grammatical forms. The enunciative temporal frame of reference is characterized by two asymmetrical parts: an actualized domain, where situations are presented as anterior to the enunciative act (referred to as T0), and a non-actualized domain, conceptualized as a “branching structure” with various sub-domains (quasi-certain, probable, possible, improbable, impossible). When T0 is taken as a reference point, and the situation is not yet actualized at T0, the future time reference entails a modal component expressing the enunciator’s commit- ment to the content of the message. Thus the message may be presented as planned, predetermined, with intentions, promise and threat, probable, or possible. In narrative or completive clauses, the situation (event or process) expressed by the future is not related to T0 but to some other point of reference. Events and processes are then pos- terior to this reference point, disconnected from T0, and localized in a non-actualized temporal frame of reference. The future time reference is then more complex than the past, and T0 is used as the default point of reference to future time. Part VII. Grammatical change Pablo Kirtchuk (Chapter 22) focuses on North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA), which exhibits features distinguishing it radically from earlier forms of Aramaic. In NENA, aspect oppositions are interwoven with those of transitivity, voice and ergativity. Basically, there are two verbal paradigms built on ancient participles, so- called passive and active respectively. This apparently diathetic opposition is, how- ever, originally aspectual: the so-called passive participle is originally perfect, while the so-called active one is originally a non-perfect participle. The fact that aspect and transitivity are at the origin of diathesis explains that in NENA, and even in earlier stages of the language as well (Babylonian Talmud Aramaic, for instance), one and the same form may function both as passive and active, depending on con- text. As for the link aspect-transitivity, there seems to be an affinity between, on
- 37. Introduction one pole, durative-progressive-continuous-imperfect-unaccomplished-concomitant- present-active and intransitive-nominal. The corresponding affinity on the other pole is between punctual-perfect-accomplished-non-concomitant-non-present/passive and transitive-verbal-definite patient. It is beyond the scope of the paper to specify those affinities in detail, yet they seem to apply cross-linguistically. We hope that this volume will stimulate further cross-linguistic studies on seman- tics of aspectual and temporal phenomena. Acknowledgements It goes without saying that the book is the result of the work of many hands. We would like to thank lacito-cnrs for the financial support of the volume. We are most grateful to Margaret Dunham who translated several chapters in this book: those by. Desclés, Galand, Gsell, Guentchéva, Naïm, Mennecier, Queixalós, Taine-Cheik and Valma. We are extremely grateful to Jean-Michel Roynard for his editorial work and careful reading of all the articles in this volume. A special thanks go to all referees for their helpful and always kind remarks, observations and suggestions. We would also like to express our gratitude to all authors of this volume for their extreme patience during the lengthy preparation of the volume. Last, we would like to thank particu- larly Werner Abraham and Elly Van Gelderen, and also Kees Vaes, for their compe- tent assistance and patience during the process of bringing this volume to press. References Abraham, Werner Leiss, Elizabeth (eds). 2008. Modality-Aspect Interfaces. Implications and Typological Solutions [Typological Studies in Language 79]. Amsterdam: John Ben- jamins. DOI: 10.1075/tsl.79 Agrell, Sigurd. 1908. Aspektenanderung und Aktionsartbilding beim polnischen Zeitworte: Ein Beitrag zum Studium des indogermanischen Präverbia und ihrer Bedeutungsfunktion. Lund: Ohlsson. Bally, Charles. 1932. Linguistique générale et linguistique française. Berne: A. Francke. Basset, René. 1894. Études sur les dialectes berbères. Paris: Leroux. Benveniste, Emile. 1961. Annuaire du Collège de France. Paris: Collège de France. Benveniste, Emile. 1966. Problèmes de linguistique générale, Vol. I. Paris: Gallimard. Benveniste, Emile. 1970. Problèmes de linguistique générale, Vol. II. Paris: Gallimard. Bertinetto Pier Marco, Bianchi, Valentina, Higginbotham, James T. Squartini, Mario (eds). 1995. Temporal Reference, Aspect and Actionality, 2: Typological Perspectives. Torino: Rosenberg and Sellier. Bertinetto Pier Marco Delfitto, Denis. 2000. Aspect vs. actionality: Why they should be kept apart. In Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe, Östen Dahl (ed.), 189–225. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
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- 43. doi 10.1075/slcs.172.02des © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company A cognitive and conceptual approach to tense and aspect markers Jean-Pierre Desclés STIH-LaLIC, Université de Paris-Sorbonne This article aims to present the most specific concepts of linguistic temporality (aspectuality and temporal relations) called upon seven intricate notions: (i) the construal of enunciative temporal reference frames associated with any dialogic enunciative act; (ii) aspectualization of a predicative relation (state, event, or process); (iii) conceptualization of the enunciative act through the “enunciator’s present” in the temporal frame of reference; (iv) segmenting a verbalized situation into different phases (Aktionsarten); (v) combining the various temporal reference frames (enunciative, external time, non-actualized situations, reported discourse, hypothetical situations) with the enunciative reference frame; (vi) introducing temporal relations (concomitance, anteriority, posteriority) which provide temporal coordinates for the verbalized situation so as to locate it in relation to a temporal frame of reference; (vii) introducing relations of “disconnection” or synchronization between the various temporal frames of reference. Keywords: enunciation theory; cognition; metalinguistic representation; aspect; temporality; frames of reference 1. Introduction How do humans grasp time? This is an epistemological, philosophical and psycho- logical question which we will not delve into in all its complexity here (see Barreau 1996; Evans 2004; Klein 2009a; Jaszczolt de Saussure (eds) 2014; Thelin 2014, among many others). It is however also a linguistic question that linguists can contribute to answering. Indeed, linguistic analyses show that language activity, as manifested by grammatical (and lexical) categorizations, has the ability to represent referential situ- ations which are inserted in a temporal framework specific to the activity in question. Thus some languages have verb conjugations; Slavic languages have recourse to a set of preverbs; yet others, like Chinese, call into play the markers le, guo, zhe and zai; yet others, a change in tone, such as Karaboro (Gur language, belonging to the family of
- 44. Jean-Pierre Desclés Niger-Congo languages (Dahl 1985:71, 187; Bickel Nichols 2005)); other languages make use of particles or suppletive series of pronouns… Natural languages provide valuable insights into the cognitive structuring of time which they represent and cat- egorize (cf. Desclés 1995a, 2011). This immediately raises the question: does each lan- guage express temporality in such a way that sets it apart from all other languages? One may recall on this subject the stances taken by Whorf (1950) and Benveniste (1966): I find it gratuitous to assume that a Hopi who knows only the Hopi language and the cultural ideas of his own society has the same notions, often supposed to be intuitions, of time and space that we have, and that are generally assumed to be universal. In particular, he has no general notion or intuition of TIME as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at an equal rate, out of a future, through a present, into a past; or, in which, to reverse the picture, the observer is being carried in the stream of duration continuously away from a past and into a future. (Whorf 1950:67) Aristotle […] posits the totality of predications that may be made about a being, andheaimstodefinethelogicalstatusofeachoneofthem.Nowitseemstous-and we shall try to show- that these distinctions are primarily categories of language and that, in fact, Aristotle, reasoning in the absolute, is simply identifying certain fundamental categories of the language in which he thought. Even a cursory look at the statement of the categories and the examples that illustrate them, will easily verify this interpretation, which apparently has not been proposed before. (Benveniste 1966:66) The logician Frege takes an inverse position as he seems to consider that thought can be expressed language-independently, so that languages are a simple “dress for thought”: It is true that we can express the same thought in different languages; but the psychological trappings, the clothing of the thought, will often be different. This is why the learning of foreign languages is useful for one’s logical education. Seeing that the same thought can be worded in different ways, we learn better to distinguish the verbal husk from the kernel with which, in any given language, it appears to be organically bound up. This is how the differences between languages can facilitate our grasp of what is logical. (Frege 1997:243) Based on a semantic-grammatical study of languages, would it be possible to isolate certain general concepts underlying the diversity of linguistic categorizations, and to formulate conceptual “invariants” tightly linked to language activity? 2. Two principal linguistic analysis methods To answer these questions, two main methods may be used. The first is the inductive method, based on generalizations; the second is based on abductive reasoning, which
- 45. A cognitive and conceptual approach to tense and aspect markers gradually unveils a network of cognitive concepts and then seeks to describe how each language leaves linguistic traces of these concepts (Culioli 2002; Desclés 2006, 2011). 2.1 The inductive method through generalizations The study of ever more different languages should bring to light the categorizations specific to each language (or language group, in typological studies), which in turn bring to light various general categories. However, language-specific descriptions tend to differ in their terminology from general linguistic studies, and this leads to some confusion. Let us quote some often used terms (cf. for instance Comrie 1976; David Martin 1980; Dahl 1985, 2000; D. Cohen 1989; Bertinetto et al. 1995, etc.): eventuality; situation; imperfective/perfective; incomplete/complete; punctual, global; duration; activity, state, resultant state; resultative state, event, process, progressive, cumulative, bounded, unbounded; open and closed, bounds; inchoative, iterative, habitual, telic, atelic, perfect, aorist… These metalinguistic terms, like many others, do not have the same meaning across authors because they are often introduced only through examples which are simply considered prototypical. Obviously, illustrations are indispensable for understanding the meaning of a metalinguistic term used in linguistic descriptions, but do not suf- ficiently characterize the precise operational scope covered by the concept, because a concept must be defined in its complex relations between its intension (the orga- nized set of properties characteristic of the concept) and its extension (the set of the concept’s instantiations). For example, what exactly are the meanings of the terms “perfective” and “imperfective” (used by M. Cohen (1924) but also by Dahl (1985, 2000), D. Cohen (1989) and many others) in the analysis of semantic oppositions in the verb system of Semitic languages? The term “perfective” is sometimes defined as “completed”, whereas for other authors, “perfective” and “completed” are not inter- changeable. The English terms “perfective” and “imperfective” are the usual transla- tions of the French “accompli” and “inaccompli” respectively, but are these the terms which would be used to render the “perfective meaning” and “imperfective meaning” notions? Cross-linguistic comparisons raise immediate difficulties, since the French terms “perfectif” and “imperfectif” (also used in French grammars to distinguish between so-called perfective and imperfective verbs) are often directly associated with the distinction between Perfective and Imperfective forms in Slavic languages. However, the analysis of how verb forms are used, in Slavic languages on the one hand, and e.g. Semitic languages on the other, shows that the semantic notions asso- ciated with these grammatical forms are far from equivalent, an issue which the ter- minological distinction between “complete” and “completed” attempts to address (Comrie 1976:18). One may also mention Abraham (2008) who uses the distinction “completed”/“uncompleted”.
- 46. Jean-Pierre Desclés To describe analogous phenomena, such as the tense and aspect distinctions expressed in a given language, one should not use, without justification, identical terminology if in other languages the meanings are not exactly the same. Some lin- guists (e.g. Lazard 1999, 2006) defend the following principle: “it doesn’t matter which descriptive terms are used, what is important is the distinctions between terms”: Are terminological questions important? No, it is only a matter of providing labels for clearly conceived notions. If scholars using the same notions give them different names, dialog can be hindered and give rise to misunderstandings. However, if all take care to clearly specify the meanings given to the terms used, these hurdles can be overcome, if all contribute, and specialists can understand each other even if they do find it irritating. Terminological haziness is simply an inconvenience.(Lazard 1999:111–112). One must note however that the choice of metalinguistic terms (rarely defined beyond a mere sketch) can also be a source of implicit misunderstandings because each term always conveys connotations which are not entirely neutral. For example, while the meanings of the Aorist are quite similar in Albanian, Bulgarian, Modern Greek, Armenian… forms which are also termed Aorist in Berber and Wolof convey entirely different meanings (see the articles in this volume and the bibliographical references therein). Thus, using the term “Aorist” could lead some, at least among those who consult such descriptions, to believe that it has the same connotations as e.g. in Mod- ern Greek. Many linguists prefer the neoplatonic method, inspired by the “Porphyr- ian tree”, proceeding through successive binary division between opposing semantic traits, in order to organize the meanings of the morphological forms (both marked and unmarked). This method leads to descriptions expressed in the form of Boolean vectors of semantic features. While this is often useful for relatively simple catego- ries such as gender, with the features in the set {male (unmarked), female (marked)// neutral = neither-male-nor-female/male-or-female}, it cannot adequately serve to describe complex categories such as aspect, tense relations, and modality, which more- over are intricately intertwined. 2.2 A network of abstract concepts by abductive method An additional research method, which complements the first, consists in identi- fying primary elementary concepts, serving to derive more complex concepts, by organizing them within structured networks, displayed in the form of “semantic maps”, term used by Anderson (1982, 1986), and Haspelmath (2000), for instance… A semantic map is a network of concepts linked to each other by various semantic relations; the network structure cannot necessarily be reduced to an arborescence organized through binary splits. The reader may be referred to the semantic map of aspect (see Figure 2), which is presented and commented in Section 6.5 below.
- 47. A cognitive and conceptual approach to tense and aspect markers The various links between concepts on a semantic map are specifications (or instan- tiations) of a more general concept through narrower concepts; implication relations between concepts, relations of contradiction or compatibility, associations between concepts… The concepts which are highest in the network hierarchy tend to have a cognitive interpretation linked to cognitive functions (e.g. perception of one’s sur- roundings) and to thought mechanisms tightly linked to language activities (on this subject, see the papers by Culioli, Desclés, Dubois, Langacker, Talmy, Pottier, Seiler, Wildgen in the collective volume directed by Lüdi Zuber 1995). The concepts on a map must be established abductively1 -as defined by Peirce (1965) and Pólya (1954)– based on categorizations observed in this or that language. Thus they are not to be con- fused with formal oppositions within the morphological system of a given language. For Classical Arabic for example it is certainly preferable to keep the classical terms to refer to the morphological forms al-māḍī (meaning ‘past’) and al-muḍāri’ (mean- ing ‘noun like’) rather than ‘perfective’ and ‘imperfective’, thereby avoiding confusion between the semantic values of these Semitic forms with that of the Perfective and Imperfective forms in Slavic languages. 2.2.1 Remarks We have obviously taken the precaution of not referring to the concepts of a seman- tic map by the labels which are usually applied in descriptive grammars of languages to avoid any confusion between grammatical forms and meanings. In keeping with the convention laid out by Comrie (1976, 1985), we will use upper case characters to refer to linguistic forms (for example: Perfective and Imperfective, Present, Aorist…) and lower case characters to express metalinguistic labels referring to contents (e.g. “present”, “perfective”, “imperfective”, “aorist”…). Examining how other scientific fields view the issue can be of help. Mechanics, with Galileo, knew how to “work” (in the sense used by Bachelard and Canguilhem) its primary concepts (establishing a reference point, changing referentials depending on the observer, instantaneous speed, acceleration…) to more or less aptly mathema- tize them, so as to integrate them in a coherent theory. Although we are well aware that linguistics is not a science of nature analogous to physics, it must nonetheless, to become a true science, overcome the divides due to insufficiently conceptualized ter- minologies, with each school of thought (of which there are far too many in the field of aspect) fiercely defending their own. Work on the linguistic concepts of grammatical . Abductive reasoning is based on observed facts ‘F’ which lead to a plausible hypothesis ‘H’, on condition that, in addition, the one entails the other:‘H = F’. Inferential abductive rea- soning,‘H = F’ ‘F’ therefore‘H is plausible’ is distinct from inferential deductive reasoning: ‘H = F’ ‘H’ therefore ‘F’.
- 48. Jean-Pierre Desclés semantics (see, among others, the ideas laid out in Enfield (2002)) has not progressed far enough yet, at least if one attempts to avoid terminological bloating, the source of many errors: One should always beware of a concept which no one has been able to dialectize. What prevents its dialectization is that its contents are overloaded. This bloat prevents the concept from being delicately sensitive to all of the variations of the conditions within which it plays its proper role. This concept has certainly been given too much meaning because it is never considered formally. But if it is given too much meaning, the fear is that two different minds will give it two different meanings.(Bachelard 1940)2 Concepts derived in a scientific discipline (e.g. chemistry or biology) are obtained by combining together more primitive elementary concepts. It is therefore necessary to specify the “formal composition tools” used, and, inversely, the tools used to decom- pose complex concepts into more elementary concepts (Desclés 2004, 2011). In the semantic map of aspect presented in this article (Figure 2 and Section 6.2), the primary concepts selected must be specified for their characteristic properties, whereby one can link together derivative concepts and explicitly associate them (in the best of cases, by formal calculations),3 through observable empiric instances, which are the linguis- tic traces of such concepts. To better circumscribe their operational nature and exact meanings, it is desirable to mathematize these concepts whenever possible. One should note that semantic maps, such as that of aspect, are not determined by this or that particular philosophical or metaphysic consideration or a priori. They are the result of reasoned construction based on a variety of observations and the analysis of theoretical articles on aspect and tense across languages. One progressively deducts a structured network of concepts which can then be rectified and fine-tuned. The method consists then in assessing the empirical usefulness of the map, using it to examine language descriptions, this time with well-reasoned terminology based . “On devrait toujours se méfier d’un concept qu’on n’a pas encore su dialectaliser. Ce qui empêche sa dialectisation c’est une surcharge de son contenu. Cette surcharge empêche le concept d’être délicatement sensible à toutes les variations des conditions où il prend ses justes fonctions.A ce concept,on donne sûrement trop de sens puisque jamais on ne le pense formel- lement. Mais si on lui donne trop de sens, il est à craindre que deux esprits différents ne lui donnent pas le même sens.” (Bachelard 1940/1966:134). . The formal composition and segmentation tools are those of Curry’s Combinatory Logic (Curry Feys 1958; Shaumyan 1977, 1982, 1987; Desclés 1990a, 2004, 2005, 2011; Desclés Ro 2011) conceived as a logic of abstract operators and intrinsic compositions between operators which can be linked to empirical domains. Other formalisms can be used to “compose” predicates and relations, for example Desclés Culioli (1982a, b); Krifka (1989, 1998); Verkuyl (1993); Asher (2011, 2014); ter Meulen (2014).
- 49. A cognitive and conceptual approach to tense and aspect markers on transparent conceptualizations, even if it means rectifying the characterizations of the concepts and the structure of the concept network. A semantic map of aspect makes it possible to carry out descriptions using the same concepts (in particular the most elementary) which, being clearly defined, will be understood in the same way by all linguists. Languages are perhaps the best place to observe cognitive activities: the representation, elaboration, structuring and transmission of knowledge, both old and new; the observable traces of the map’s concepts provide a large number of important clues to ‘reconstruct’, through abductive reasoning, plausible semantic representations, which could become elements serving to explain language activity (Desclés 1996, 2006, 2011). 2.3 Grammatical category Let us specify what we mean by grammatical category. Languages are made up of two classes of linguistic units: lexical units (lexemes and lexies) and grammatical units. The former belong to open classes, fully compatible with individual creativity which can be adopted by a linguistic community and thus become part of the lexical system of a given language, at least for a given period of time; the latter belong to closed classes and offer practically no scope for individual creativity: whosoever wishes to master or acquire a language must grasp how these grammatical units function (their mor- phology, syntax, semantics and even pragmatics). To these two systems of units one must add another class of linguistic units, i.e. the discursive units which correspond to operations serving to “put into text and discourse”, which generally go beyond the strict framework of sentence construction. For example, speakers use various specific expressions to indicate that they are simply expressing a hypothesis and not a hard fact, or that they are quoting someone else whose opinion they do not necessarily share… A grammatical category is characterized by four components: Fg, Σg, Rg, CERg ThecomponentFg isasetofgrammaticalformswhichareoftenstructuredinparadigms (e.g. morphological case paradigms associated with nominal terms; morphological inflection paradigms; the set of prepositions; the set of preverbs; various adverbial markers…). The component Σg is a structured network of meanings making up a semantic map; for grammatical sub-categories, it is useful to show “meaning invariables”, which characterize that particular sub-category by linking it to the more general category. The third component, Rg, is the relation between the grammatical forms in Fg and the meanings, in Σg. This relation is rarely one to one, since a single grammatical form in Fg generally refers to several meanings in Σg. The last component, CERg, is a set of contextual exploration rules (too often omit- ted in linguistic descriptions). They serve to remove semantic indeterminacy from the
- 50. Jean-Pierre Desclés occurrence of a grammatical form in a sentence, by taking into account its contextual environment.4 Indeed, the simple occurrence of a grammatical form does not fully determine its meaning; to remove indeterminacy, one must associate the occurrence of the grammatical form being examined with complementary linguistic markers, providing contextual information. It is thus the configuration ‘grammatical form + contextual information’ which serves to more precisely specify the “(semantic) value” that the form, inserted in that particular context, expresses. 3. Aspect-tense markers To illustrate this point, let us consider a few example of the French verbal system. The meaning network of indicative verb forms (Présent, Imparfait, Passé composé, Passé simple, Plus-que-parfait, etc.) is complex. For example, the grammatical morphemes in the Imparfait paradigm {-ais, -ait, -ions, -iez, -aient} express several semantic val- ues (more or less exhaustively listed and heterogeneously classified in grammars). The “past” meaning of the Imparfait is often presented as its fundamental characteristic. This is not correct. In fact, forms in the Imparfait can co-occur with markers such as demain ‘tomorrow’ (Qu’est-ce qu’on apportait déjà demain au pique-nique? ‘What were we bringing again to the picnic tomorrow?’) or refer to situations which are clearly in the present (polite or hypocoristic Imparfait: Je venais, Monsieur le directeur, vous demander une augmentation ‘I was coming, Sir, to ask you for a raise’; merchant’s Imparfait: Alors, qu’est ce qu’elle prenait la petite dame? ‘So what was she taking, this little lady?’)… The semantic invariant of the French Imparfait cannot therefore be character- ized by the “past” feature. Let us now look at a simple sequence of text: le lendemain, il était repris ‘the next day he was retaken’. This sentence is susceptible of denoting referential situations which contradict each other; it can express either a past situation (‘he was retaken’), or the counter-factual value, which in fact indicates negation of the occurrence of an event (‘he was not retaken’). Various linguistic markers present in the context of this sequence contribute to removing its semantic indeterminacy. In the sentence Malgré/En dépit de tous les efforts de ses complices, le lendemain, il était repris… (‘Despite all his accomplices’ efforts, the next day he was retaken…’) it is a past situation: ‘he was taken’; one should note that, in this context, the Imparfait il était repris can commute with the Passé simple il fut repris, which both translate as ‘he was retaken’ in English. In the sentence Sans les efforts de ses complices, le lendemain, il était repris/ *il fut repris (‘Without the efforts of his accomplices, he was retaken’) one . An example may be found in Desclés Guentchéva (2004).
- 51. A cognitive and conceptual approach to tense and aspect markers obtains the interpretation: ‘he was not retaken’. The presence of contextual information (including punctuation markers) makes it possible to reduce semantic indeterminacy, which must not be reduced to a simple “stylistic variant”. For a truly theorized descrip- tion of the French Imparfait, one should explain the aspectual difference (and therefore the differences in usage) expressed by the choice of the Imparfait in (…) le lendemain, il était repris… (‘the next day, he was retaken…’), as compared to the Passé Simple in (…) le lendemain, il fut repris (‘he was retaken the next day’). In both cases translated by the English ‘The next day he was retaken’, this occurrence of the Passé Simple may be theorized as follows: it simply expresses the occurrence of an event abstracted from a narrative sequence; the Imparfait expresses rather a very particular type of state, which we have called a “new state”, i.e. a “state new to the narrative universe” (Desclés 2003). A correct and complete description of the semantic and grammatical functions of the Imparfait must thus show how its various meanings (including those which con- tradict each other) are described and represented, and how they each specify a same “abstract invariant” -i.e. a “power meaning” in the sense of Guillaume (1964)– which specifies its place and role in the French grammatical tense system. Although some linguists do not believe it possible to formulate an Imparfait invariant, this invariant must nonetheless enter into opposition with the Présent invariant and all of the other so-called “past” tenses (among others, the Passé Composé, Passé Simple, Plus-que- Parfait…). One must also explain the differences in meaning between the above exam- ples in the Imparfait with the same in the grammatical tense Présent (Qu’est ce qu’on apporte demain au pique-nique? ‘What are we bringing to the picnic tomorrow’/Que désire la petite dame? ‘What does the little lady want?’) as well as with other modalities (Je viens vous demander une augmentation ‘I am coming to ask you for a raise’/Je veux une augmentation ‘I want a raise’/Donnez moi mon augmentation ! ‘Give me my raise!’/ Alors, mon augmentation, elle vient?! ‘Now, my raise, where is it?!’). The analysis of the meanings associated with grammatical tenses highlights that metalinguistic representations must call upon concepts which pertain both to aspect and to tense relations. In fact, grammatical tenses are not only markers of time rela- tions (concomitance, anteriority, posteriority) but are instead much more complex aspect-tense markers. Although Mandarin Chinese and Yucatec Maya are generally considered as languages “without tenses”, this does not mean however that the two languages cannot express tense relations (Guillaume 1964; Comrie 1976:100; Vapnar- sky 1999 and herein; Bohnemeyer 2009); in fact, there are linguistic units (adverbs, particles) which clearly indicate temporal relations of anteriority or posteriority in relation to the act of enunciation. Similarly, when one analyzes the semantic values of forms in the Perfective and Imperfective in Polish or Russian, one quickly comes to the conclusion that these grammatical forms do not have purely aspectual meaning. It would be hard to find a language containing forms referring only to tense relations and others only to aspectual values. It seems impossible to define purely aspectual concepts
- 52. Jean-Pierre Desclés because characterizing aspect entails reference to underlying temporality (Guillaume 1929/1970; see also Comrie 1976, 1985; Pottier 2000, 2012). Moreover, many aspect- tense markers also express modal meanings. For example, future markers express situ- ations located in time, posterior to a specific temporal reference point (see for instance Comrie 1985; Gosselin 1996, 2014), but this posteriority often implies modal values, such as probability, potentiality, eventuality, promise, unavoidable consequences… Whereas the “already actualized” is linked to the modal category “certainty”, the “not yet actualized” is linked to the category “not certain”. To provide a semantic descrip- tion of aspect-tense markers, one must draw up complex semantic networks where relations between tense, aspect and modality interact with the context, thus constitut- ing a more general category, referred to as TAM (or TAME if one adds the analysis of evidentiality). 4. Linear, cyclic and spiral time Concerning aspect and tense relations, the interpretative model of temporality expressed by languages cannot be reduced to simple temporality organized only by the objective chronology of events in the perceived surroundings. Linguistic temporality is represented by the speaker’s situation, located between time already gone by and time to come, the speaker being carried along by the flow of time. A linear conception of linguistic time, modeled on classical Newtonian universal mechanical time, consti- tutes an “epistemological obstacle” (in the sense of Bachelard) to understanding this crucial issue: “how do languages categorize situations inserted in a temporality which is not organized around absolute and objective reference points (such as calendars), but which instead are essentially egocentrically structured around the speaker?”5 Various linguistic and anthropological descriptions hint that some languages could express temporality in cycles, without any clear distinction between past and future, between before and after. It is obvious that temporal cyclicity is often perceived through experienced alternations: day follows night, the sunrise follows the sunset, the light fol- lows the dark, the dry season follows the rainy season, the gradual and periodic disap- pearance of the moon at its full, at the origin of lunar months… The periodic return of cosmic phenomena serves as the basic structure for calendars, at times manifesting cyclic- ity in the sequence of events: a long period of drought, leading to the disappearance of . “Comment les langues catégorisent-elles des situations insérées dans une temporalité qui n’est pas organisée à partir de repères absolus et objectifs (comme des calendriers), mais qui trouve une structuration essentiellement ego-centrée sur l’énonciateur?” (Desclés 1976, 2009, 2011).
- 53. A cognitive and conceptual approach to tense and aspect markers flourishing cities, is often followed by a long rainy spell where new social organizations can make a new start… Perceived and experienced cyclicity in the human environ- ment has certainly contributed to our “construal of temporality”. That all languages should express, through linguistic markers (often lexical ones) the principle cycles of daily life (especially agricultural cycles) and of the cosmos should not be a source of surprise. Careful attention to linguistic data reveals several linguistic markers serving to express e.g. the posteriority of an event which has not yet been actualized; such markers also express either the speaker’s commitment to their coming about, or the impossibility of commitment because the eventual actualization of the events is inde- pendent from the speaker’s will (see for example Vapnarsky on Yucatec Maya herein). Temporality structured in a spiral could appear better suited than in a cycle. How- ever that means agreeing on the structuring, as it entails a degree of cyclicity as well as progression. Some analogous events (because deemed equivalent, like analogous seasons in a yearly cycle, analogous days in different months…), although comparable, can nonetheless be localized on different temporal branches of the spiral. Although they belong to different cycles, analogous events are no longer lumped together in a spiral structure: one branch of the spiral is closed with a final event and a new branch can then be started with a first event distinct from the final event of the preceding branch; thus the branches follow each other without folding over, combining changing evolution and periodic recurrence.6 5. Notions, concepts, figures, diagrams Aspect-tense markers are linguistic signs conveying meanings represented either directly by notions or concepts or, more often, by patterns, i.e. the structured organiza- tion of more elementary meanings. A notion is a sort of pre-conceptualization which is far less well circumscribed and more general than a concept. A concept takes on an operative status when it succeeds in building the relation between its intension (or comprehension), defined by a structured set of characteristics or specific properties, and its extension, which specifies the observable instances expressed by the concept, some being typical, others more or less atypical, with some becoming veritable excep- tions, where of course the exceptional character must be justified. A concept bearing on empirical domains is the result of theorization accompanied by controlled empirical variations (variations in acceptability, in meaning depending on the context, between . This is also the position which was defended by Hanks during the international confer- ence Mesures et textures du temps chez les Mayas: le dit, l’écrit et le vécu, 8–10 October, 2014, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris.
- 54. Exploring the Variety of Random Documents with Different Content
- 55. vacillation in war. Compare, for instance, York v. Wartenburg's masterly exposition of Napoleon's ruinous, suicidal vacillation in 1813 at Dresden. Also there is required the power of listening to reason in the midst of the most intense excitement, in the storm of the most violent passions. But to keep to the result of by-gone reflections in opposition to the stream of opinions and phenomena which the present brings with it, is just THE difficulty. Here nothing else can help us but an imperative maxim which, independent of reflection, at once controls it: that maxim is, in all doubtful cases to adhere to the first opinion and not to give it up till a clear conviction forces us to do so. But as soon as difficulties arise, and that must always happen when great results are at stake, then the machine, the army itself, begins to offer a sort of passive resistance, and to overcome this the commander must have great force of will. Driving power, such as Napoleon's. And also the heart-rending sight of the bloody sacrifice, which the commander has to contend with in himself. These are the weights which the courage and intelligent faculties of the commander have to contend with and OVERCOME, if he is to make his name illustrious. If he is to prevent the downfall of his country. Reflections (1) In connection with these difficulties I would like to put forward a suggestion as to criticism of a general's action in war, which though not exactly Clausewitz's, is a corollary from Clausewitz. It is this. In reading a war with the clearness and after-knowledge of history nearly all defeats are easily seen to be due to the non- observance of one or other of the few leading principles of strategy referred to in the previous chapter. But we must assume that the defeated general was familiar with that principle, and that his will
- 56. was to carry it out. What, then, were the difficulties, the friction, which, on any particular day or days, overcame his will and made him sacrifice the principle? This is where most critics fail us. Here seems the matter to search for. And could a stronger resolution have enabled him to overcome those difficulties, that friction? And if so, how and by what means? But we must first discover the difficulties and uncertainties of the particular day when his will gave way. Take the Manchurian campaign as an instance. If we could only have a military history of the campaign of 1870 or that of Manchuria, written in the form of a series of appreciations of the situation, so that we know nothing but what the general knew at the time as we read, and if the true state of affairs could be withheld from us till the end, this, I think, would be very instructive and helpful. It would be a more difficult way of writing a military history, but I think that the extra trouble would be repaid by the extra value. So at least it appears. (2) If we reflect upon the enormous difficulties, so strikingly brought out by Clausewitz, which our generals have to contend with and overcome in actual war, it should surely teach us to curb our criticism. It should surely also make us resolve in future to try to aid them as far as is in our power at home, and not thoughtlessly to increase their already stupendous burdens. In the past we at home have much to accuse ourselves of, much to regret. In the past often have we added to the difficulties of our generals, often have we greatly weakened their chances, and increased those of their opponents, often have we, unintentionally, through ignorance cast a weight into the scale against our country. (3) The ignorance of the public regarding the conduct of war constitutes for us a very serious national danger. If this ignorance were less pronounced, if our statesmen understood the vast importance of information to the enemy, and the equal importance to our generals that this information the enemy should NOT obtain, then the public craving for information regarding every detail of what occurs in the field, and the demand for the wide publication thereof, would certainly be repressed. Nothing occurs in any of our
- 57. campaigns which is not immediately made known; reports of actions with the fullest details as to the troops engaged, and the casualties that have befallen them, appear in the columns of the Press within a few hours of their occurrence. Any efforts, therefore, of our generals in the field to maintain secrecy as to strength, intentions, and movements are deliberately, though probably unintentionally, counteracted by their own countrymen. This is due to pure ignorance of war, no doubt, but the effect of this ignorance is as bad as if it were due to evil intention. In fairness, however, we must admit that, in the past, the immense value of reticence has not been fully appreciated by some of our soldiers themselves, and it were well if, in the future, more attention were directed to the importance of secrecy. The results of such almost criminal stupidity may not be apparent when we are fighting with a savage foe, but if we ever have, as we undoubtedly some day shall have, the misfortune to find ourselves engaged with a civilized Power, we may be certain that not only will the operations be indefinitely prolonged, and their cost enormously increased, but their successful issue will be for us highly problematical. In this connection it must be remembered that every Great Power has secret agents in every country, including Great Britain, and that it will be easy for such a secret agent to telegraph in cypher or in some agreed code to an agent in a neutral State all war information published here, who will telegraph it on at once to the hostile general, who will thus get, within a very short time of its publication in London, perhaps just exactly the information he requires to clear up the strategical or tactical situation for him, and enable him to defeat the combinations of our generals. As a case in point, take Macmahon's march on Sedan to relieve Metz in 1870, where secrecy was absolutely necessary for success, but which became known to the Germans by the English newspapers. — Result, Sedan.
- 58. That this cannot be allowed is plain. It is believed that the patriotism of our Press will welcome any necessary measure to this end if it is made compulsory upon ALL. 61
- 59. CHAPTER XI TACTICS Some will probably feel inclined to ask what Clausewitz, who wrote more than eighty years ago, can possibly have to say about tactics which can be valuable in the twentieth century. It was said by Napoleon that tactics change every ten years, according, of course, to the progress of technicalities, etc. Weapons indeed change, but there is one thing that never changes, and that is human nature. The most important thing in tactics, the man behind the gun, never alters; in his heart and feelings, his strength and weakness, he is always much the same. Therefore, Clausewitz's tactical deductions, founded on the immense and varied data supplied by the desperate and long- continued fighting of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, permeated as they are by his all-pervading psychological or moral view, can never lose their value to us. It is true, no doubt, that our rifles of to-day can be used with effect at a distance ten times as great as the old smooth bores of Clausewitz's day, our shrapnel five times as far as his cannon, and that cover and ground play a far more important part now than then, and so on. All these things, of course, considerably modify the tactics of Clausewitz. Not so much, however, as some text-books would lead us to suppose, which always seem to assume clear ground and clear weather. For, after all, how many combats are fought on ground where there is a very restricted field of fire (vide Herbert's Defence of Plevna, etc.), or at night? How many battles
- 60. are fought during rain, or snow, or mist, or fog, which destroys all long range? Compare the tremendous fighting with bullets, bayonets, swords, hand-grenades, and even fists, of Nogi's attempt to cut the Russian line of retreat at Mukden, with the hand-to-hand fighting of Eylau, Friedland, Borodino, or with the desperate efforts of the French in 1812 to open their line of retreat through Maro- Jaroslawitz, where all day the masses of troops fought hand-to-hand in the streets, the town was taken and retaken seven times, and the rival nations fought with the bayonet in the midst of the burning houses (Alison). When it comes to push of pike, as in all great decisions between equally resolute adversaries it is bound to do, the difference between the fighting of Clausewitz's day and ours is but small. The most recent instances of all, the hand-to-hand fighting in Manchuria, take us back to the Napoleonic struggles. Therefore, despite the eighty years that have intervened, the writings of Clausewitz are still valuable from a tactical point of view, always considering of course the difference in weapons, because of the human heart in battle. His ideas on tactics have largely filtered through his German pupils into our textbooks, minus the psychological or moral note, so that it is not necessary to go at length into the subject, or give a number of extracts. It would be wearisome. I will, however, give a few passages at haphazard as illustrations. Flank Attacks The endeavour to gain the enemy's line of retreat, and protect our own, on which so much learned erudition has been spent by various writers, he regards as a NATURAL instinct, which will ALWAYS produce itself both in generals and subalterns. From this arises, in the whole conduct of war, and especially in great and small combats, a PERFECT INSTINCT, which is the security of
- 61. our own line of retreat and the seizure of the enemy's; this follows from the conception of victory, which, as we have seen, is something beyond mere slaughter. In this effort we see, therefore, the FIRST immediate purpose in the combat, and one which is quite universal. No combat is imaginable in which this effort, either in its double or single form, is not to go hand in hand with the plain and simple stroke of force. Even the smallest troop will not throw itself upon the enemy without thinking of its line of retreat, and in most cases it will have an eye upon that of the enemy. 62 This is a great natural law of the combat, and so becomes the pivot upon which ALL strategical and tactical manœuvres turn. Reserves — Destructive and Decisive Act The combat he regards as settled by whoever has the preponderance of moral force at the end; that is, in fresh or only partly used up troops. The combat itself he divides into a destructive and a decisive act. During the long destructive act, or period of fire preparation, the troops engaged gradually wear each other out, and gradually almost cease to count as factors in the decision. After a fire combat of some hours' duration, in which a body of troops has suffered severe losses — for instance, a quarter or one-third of its numbers — the débris may for the time be looked upon as a heap of cinders. For the men are physically exhausted; they have spent their ammunition; many have left the field with the wounded, though not themselves wounded (compare, for instance, Eylau and the 1870 battles); the rest think they have done their part for the day, and if they get beyond the sphere of danger, do not willingly return to it. The feeling of courage with which they originally started has had the edge taken off, the longing for the fight is satisfied, the original organization is partly destroyed, and the formations broken up.
- 62. So that the amount of moral force lost may be estimated by the amount of the Reserves used up, almost as with a foot rule. 63 This goes on till, In all probability, only the untouched reserve and some troops which, though they have been in action, have suffered very little, are in reality to be regarded as serviceable, and the remainder (perhaps four-sixths) may be looked upon for the present as a caput mortuum. Therefore the art of the commander he regards as economy of force during the destructive period; that is, to employ as few troops as possible, by taking advantage of ground, cover, etc., to use a smaller number of men in the combat with firearms than the enemy employs, so that a smaller proportionate number of his own are reduced to a heap of cinders and more are left, more moral force, for the decision. Hundreds of times, he says, a line of fire has maintained its own against one twice its strength (e.g. the Boers). To do this and yet obtain a good fire-effect demands very skilful handling of the troops, both on the part of the chief and subordinate leaders. With the preponderance thus obtained the commander at last starts the decision. Towards the close of a battle the line of retreat is always regarded with increased jealousy, therefore a threat against that line is always a potent means of bringing on the decision (Liao-yang, Mukden). On that account, when circumstances permit, the plan of battle will be aimed at that point from the very first. Or, If this wear and tear and exhaustion of the forces has reached a certain pitch, then a rapid advance in concentrated masses on one side against the line of battle of the other (i.e. the Napoleonic breaking the centre, of recent years thought almost hopeless, but revived in Manchuria with success, in the case of Nodzu breaking the centre at Mukden). From what precedes it is evident that, as in the preparatory acts, the utmost economy of forces must prevail, so in the decisive act to
- 63. win the mastery through numbers must be the ruling idea. Just as in the preparatory acts endurance, firmness and coolness are the first qualities, so in the decisive act boldness and fiery spirit must predominate. The difference between these two acts will never be completely lost as respects the whole. This is the way in which our view is to be understood; then, on the one hand, it will not come short of the reality, and on the other it will direct the attention of the leader of a combat (be it great or small, partial or general) to giving each of the two acts of activity its due share, so that there may be neither precipitation nor negligence. Precipitation there will be if space and time are not allowed for the destructive act. Negligence in general there will be if a complete decision does not take place, either from want of moral courage or from a wrong view of the situation. 64 Duration of the Combat Even the resistance of an ordinary division of 8,000 or 10,000 men of all arms, even if opposed to an enemy considerably superior in numbers, will last several hours, if the advantages of country are not too preponderating. And if the enemy is only a little or not at all superior in numbers, the combat will last half a day. A corps of three or four divisions will prolong it to double that time; an army of 80,000 or 100,000 men to three or four times. These calculations are the result of experience. 65 As General von Caemmerer points out, if these calculations were adhered to in present-day German manœuvres, as they are now in all war games, tactical exercises, and staff rides, the dangerous dualism of their training, the difference between theory and manœuvre practice, would cease.
- 64. Attack and Defence I have left to the last the consideration of three or four disputed points in Clausewitz. In considering these I shall quote a good deal from General von Caemmerer's Development of Strategical Science, as in such matters it is best to quote the most recent authors of established reputation. The most important of these, and the most disputed, is Clausewitz's famous dictum that the defensive is the stronger form of making war. The defence is the stronger form of war with a negative object; the attack is the weaker form with a positive object. 66 General von Caemmerer says, It is strange, we Germans look upon Clausewitz as indisputably the deepest and acutest thinker upon the subject of war; the beneficial effect of his intellectual labours is universally recognized and highly appreciated; but the more or less keen opposition against this sentence never ceases. And yet that sentence can as little be cut out of his work 'On War' as the heart out of a man. Our most distinguished and prominent military writers are here at variance with Clausewitz. Now, of course, I do not here propose to go into such a controversy. I only wish to point out that Clausewitz, in saying this, only meant the defensive-offensive, the form in which he always regards it, both strategically and technically, in oft-repeated explanations all through his works. For instance — It is a FIRST maxim NEVER to remain perfectly passive, but to fall upon the enemy in front and flank, even when he is in the act of making an attack upon us. 67 And again — A swift and vigorous assumption of the offensive — the flashing sword of vengeance — is the most brilliant point in the defensive. He who does not at once think of it at the right moment, or rather he
- 65. who does not from the first include this transition in his idea of the defensive, will never understand its superiority as a form of war. 68 Von Caemmerer comments thus: And this conception of the defence by Clausewitz has become part and parcel of our army — everywhere, strategically and tactically, he who has been forced into a defensive attitude at once thinks how he can arrange a counter- attack. I am thus unable to see how the way in which Clausewitz has contrasted Attack and Defence could in any way paralyse the spirit of enterprise. Von Caemmerer also justly remarks that, as Clausewitz always insisted both in strategy and tactics, neither Attack nor Defence is pure, but oscillates between the two forms; and as the Attack is frequently temporarily reduced to defend itself, and also as no nation can be sure of never being invaded by a superior coalition, it is most desirable to encourage a belief in the strength of the Defence, if properly used. In this I think that Wellington would probably have agreed. Certainly Austerlitz and Waterloo were examples of battles such as Clausewitz preferred. Still, one must admit that Clausewitz's chapter on The Relations of the Offensive and Defensive to each other in Tactics, Book VII. Chapter 2, is the least convincing chapter of his work. Strategically, the argument is stronger. It always seems to me that we must remember that Clausewitz had taken part in the defensive-offensive in its strongest, most absolute and unlimited form, on the greatest possible scale — the Moscow campaign and the ruin (consummated before a single flake of snow fell) of the Grand Army. If he had lived to complete the revision of his works, it always seems to me that he would have made his theory undeniable by stating that the defensive is the strongest form of war, if unlimited by space. What, for instance, would have happened if the Japanese had tried to march through Siberia on to St. Petersburg? But, after all, which of the two is absolutely the stronger form of war, attack or defence, is merely a theoretical abstraction, for, practically, the choice is always settled for us by the pressing necessity of circumstances. And, in this connection, let us always
- 66. bear in mind Clausewitz's dictum: A swift and vigorous assumption of the offensive — the flashing sword of vengeance — is the most brilliant point in the defensive. The Inner Line A second disputed point is Clausewitz's alleged preference, as a rule, for the Inner Line in strategy. But it is necessary to remember that that was only due to the conditions of his time, before railways and telegraphs, when it was difficult to communicate between columns acting on concentric lines. And he is not in any way wedded to the Inner Line, like Jomini, but only when circumstances are favourable. He has many sentences from which we may infer that, had he lived in railway and telegraph days, his strategy, like Moltke's, his most distinguished pupil, would have aimed at envelopment as a rule. For to bring up troops rapidly by several railways necessitates a broad strategic front, and Clausewitz especially lays down rapidity as his second great principle, and says — If the concentration of the forces would occasion detours and loss of time, and the danger of advancing by separate lines is not too great, then the same may be justifiable on these grounds; for to effect an unnecessary concentration of the forces would be contrary to the second principle we have laid down (i.e. 'to act as swiftly as possible'). 69 Also: Such separation into several columns as is absolutely necessary must be made use of for the disposition of the tactical attack in the enveloping form, for that form is natural to the attack, and must not be disregarded without good reason. 70 Also: It is sufficient now if the concentration takes place during the action. So that while the conditions of his time led Clausewitz to prefer close concentration and the Inner Line, like Napoleon, yet his reflections led him to propound the germ of the strategy of Moltke. Substitute for Clausewitz's close concentration this: As close concentration, the combined movements regulated by telegraph, as
- 67. is compatible with the utmost use of the railways and the greatest rapidity (as he would certainly have said), and we arrive at Moltke's strategy. Frontal Attacks A third disputed point is his belief in the superior tactical efficiency, under favourable circumstances, of the Napoleonic method of breaking the enemy's line in the centre. Breaking the line by a frontal attack was, of course, much easier in Clausewitz's Napoleonic day than it is with the long-ranging arms of our day, and it is only natural that Clausewitz in his writings should give it the full tactical importance which it then deserved. His book would not be true to the tactical conditions of his day had he not done so, with Rivoli, Austerlitz, Salamanca, Eckmuhl, etc., before his mind. But it seems hardly correct to accuse him of over-partiality to frontal attacks, for he has examined both frontal and enveloping attacks most fairly, giving to each their relative advantages and disadvantages, and concluding: The envelopment may lead directly to the destruction of the enemy's army, if it is made with very superior numbers and succeeds. If it leads to victory the early results are in every case greater than by breaking the enemy's line. Breaking the enemy's line can only lead indirectly to the destruction of the enemy's army, and its effects are hardly shown so much on the first day, but rather strategically afterwards, 71 by forcing apart on different lines of retreat the separated fragments of the beaten army. The breaking through the hostile army by massing our principal force against one point, supposes an excessive length of front on the part of the enemy; for in this form of attack the difficulty of occupying the remainder of the enemy's force with few troops is greater, because the enemy's forces nearer to the principal point of attack can easily join in opposing it. Now in an attack upon the centre there are such forces on both sides of the attack; in an attack
- 68. upon a flank, only on one side. The consequence of this is that such a central attack may easily end in a very disadvantageous form of combat, through a convergent counter-attack. Which is exactly our modern difficulty. The choice between these two forms of attack must therefore be made according to the existing conditions of the moment. Length of front, the nature and direction of the line of retreat, the military qualities of the enemy's troops, and the characteristics of their general, lastly the ground must determine the choice. Speaking generally he regards the concentric enveloping form of tactical attack aiming at the enemy's line of retreat as the most efficacious and natural. On the field of battle itself ... the enveloping form must always be considered the most effectual. 72 And the eccentric or frontal counter-attack at the extended enveloping attack as the most efficacious and natural form of the defence, such as Napoleon's counter-attacks at Austerlitz or Dresden, or Wellington's at Salamanca. And we think that one means is at least as good as the other. 73
- 69. * * * * * Now I think that these extracts sufficiently defend Clausewitz from the imputation of too great a belief in frontal attacks, and considering the frequent success of such Napoleonic attacks in his day, he gives a very fair summing up of the relative advantages and disadvantages thereof, and indeed such as might be written in the present day. Indeed the quite abnormal conditions of the Boer war produced such a feeling against frontal attacks, and so much loose talk of their being extinct, that it is very useful to turn to Clausewitz for a reminder that breaking the centre, whenever the condition he postulates, namely over-extension of front on the enemy's part, is present, will always remain one of the two great forms of decisive attack open to a commander. And as in our day the forces are so enormous that to reach the hostile flank becomes more difficult, and the extension of front becomes so gigantic (a front of several armies on a line of forty to seventy miles perhaps), it is well to consider whether breaking the enemy's centre will not again offer the most advantageous form for the final decisive act, coupled of course, as Clausewitz says it ALWAYS MUST be, with a strong flank attack. And in these gigantic battles of the future, such as Liao-yang and Mukden, which we must consider typical of the future, battles which must take several days, during which the troops in the first line become utterly exhausted and used up, — a decisive attack on the centre can well be imagined after the hostile reserves have been decoyed away over a day's march by a strong flank attack. As, for example, Nogi's flank attack round Mukden followed by Nodzu's decisive breaking the centre and capture of Mukden itself. So that far from thinking Clausewitz's remarks about frontal attacks and breaking the line to be obsolete, it rather appears from the great Russo-Japanese battles that they are worthy of close study in view of the future.
- 70. Tactical versus Strategical Envelopment A fourth disputed point is the preference of Clausewitz, owing to his insistence on the greatest concentration possible with proper regard for the circumstances, for the tactical envelopment arranged on or near the field to strategical envelopment with divided forces arranged beforehand. In this matter I will again quote General v. Caemmerer, who disagrees with him, and says: Clausewitz proclaims the oblique front as the most effective strategic form of attack, ... that is to say, when the whole army with one united front falls upon the strategic flank of the enemy, and, if victorious, cuts him from his line of retreat. But where such a situation cannot be brought about, where our advance has brought us before the strategic front of the enemy, then he sees in the tactical envelopment, in the formation of an offensive flank, the proper means of effectively preparing to push the enemy from his line of retreat, and he distinctly explains that tactical envelopment need not at all be the consequence of strategical envelopment, and need not at all be prepared long beforehand by a corresponding advance of divided forces. Clausewitz says, The consequence of this is that battles fought with enveloping lines, or even with an oblique front, which should properly result from an advantageous relation of the lines of communication, are commonly the result of a moral and physical preponderance. 74 Also he should therefore only advance with his columns on such a width of front as will admit of their all coming into action together. Such separation into several columns should be made use of for the disposition of the tactical attack in the enveloping form (i.e. by troops within a day's march of each other). But it must be only of a tactical nature, for a strategic envelopment, when a great blow is to be struck, is a complete waste of power. General v. Caemmerer comments: He is thus of opinion that the lateral movement of part of the army against the flank of the enemy could without any difficulty still be carried out as initiated by the plan
- 71. of battle; and in order to understand this idea we must again bear in mind the difference between the fire-effect of then and now. In those days a comparatively short movement made it still possible for a considerable portion of the army to gain the defenders' flank; to- day a lengthy and troublesome operation would be necessary for the same object, and its successful execution would only be counted upon if the defender remained entirely passive, and would neither think of a counter-stroke nor of a corresponding movement of his forces to the threatened flank. Without going into this controversy I will, however, quote the excellent reason given by Clausewitz for his preference for tactical as opposed to strategical envelopment: One peculiarity of the offensive battle is the uncertainty, in most cases, as to the position (note, and strength) of the enemy; it is a complete groping about amongst things that are unknown (Austerlitz, Wagram, Hohenlinden, Jena, Katzbach). The more this is the case the more concentration of forces becomes paramount, and turning a flank to be preferred to surrounding. 75 It is also well to recollect how many famous generals had been ruined in Clausewitz's experience through over-extension or dispersion of their forces. The crushing defeats of Napoleon's marshals in the winter of 1813, Macdonald at the Katzbach, Oudinot at Gros Beeren, Ney at Dennewitz, which neutralized Napoleon's great victory at Dresden and began his ruin, were all chiefly owing to this cause. And the weather may, again, have as great influence in shortening resistance and allowing troops to be overwhelmed before the too-distant reinforcements arrive, as it had in those battles. If the weather then prevented the old muskets going off, and enabled the attack to rush the defence, so now a fog, rain, mist, or snow, by restricting the field of view and fire, may produce the same results. When one thinks of the number of great battles fought in such weather, as they may well be again, one sees an additional reason for carefully considering Clausewitz's warning. Far from relegating
- 72. his preference for the tactical as opposed to the strategical envelopment to the region of the obsolete, because of our improved armament, it seems right to give it full weight as a corrective to a perceivable tendency to elevate strategical envelopment (after Königgrätz) into a formula for victory. If in the past many great generals have been ruined by over-extension, so may they be again. Against this tendency Clausewitz will for ever lift his voice. Also it remains to be considered, with the huge armies of to-day and the future, such armies as at Liao-yang and Mukden, such armies as may possibly one day join issue in Afghanistan, whether strategical envelopment will be practicable, or whether tactical envelopment, such as General Kuroki's tactical enveloping movement on Yentai, and the Russian line of retreat at Liao-yang, or General Nogi's tactical enveloping dash northward on Hsinminting and the railway at Mukden, will not be preferable. Perhaps, as a compromise, one might call such a movement strategical-tactical, and so avoid the dispute by jugglery of words. I have not attempted to do more than roughly indicate that the solution of these four disputed tactical questions in Clausewitz is to be sought in a study of the latest campaign, as he would have said himself; that is, the campaign in Manchuria. For, as the Times correspondent in the XLVth Chapter, Clausewitz in Manchuria, of his book The War in the Far East, observes, It will be abundantly clear to any one who has followed the great battles in Manchuria that the spirit of Clausewitz has presided over Japanese victories and wept over Russian defeats.
- 73. CHAPTER XII CHANGES SINCE THE DAYS OF CLAUSEWITZ In reading Clausewitz it is, first, the great principles of the nature of war founded on human nature, which alter not; and, secondly, it is his spirit and practical way of looking at things that we want to assimilate and apply to THE PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY, to which end it is necessary to read him always with the changed conditions of to- day in our minds, and think what he would have said under the circumstances. These changes are chiefly: — (1) The improved net-work of roads. (2) Railways. (3) Telegraphs, wire and wireless. (4) Improved arms. (5) Aviation (6) Universal service armies. The Improved Net-work of Roads The improved net-work of roads in Europe (not, of course, in Manchuria, or in Afghanistan where we have to consider our future strategy, but in Europe), as General v. Caemmerer puts it, now offers to the movements of armies everywhere a whole series of useful roads where formerly one or two only were available, easier gradients, good bridges instead of unreliable ones, etc. So that the march-discipline of that day when concentrated for battle, artillery
- 74. and train on the roads, infantry and cavalry by the side of the roads, has disappeared. Such close concentration is therefore now not possible, as we move all arms on the road, and an army corps with train, or two without, is the most that we can now calculate on bringing into action in one day on one road. Railways Railways have, above all, completely altered the term 'base,' remarks V. Caemmerer. Railways carry in a few days men, horses, vehicles, and materials of all kinds from the remotest district to any desired point of our country, and nobody would any longer think of accumulating enormous supplies of all kinds at certain fortified points on his own frontier with the object of basing himself on those points. One does not base one's self any longer on a distinct district which is specially prepared for that object, but upon the whole country, which has become one single magazine, with separate store-rooms. So the term 'base' has now to be considered in this light. It is only when operating in savage or semi-savage countries, where there are no railways, that the old idea of a base applies. As we penetrate deeper and further from our own country into the enemy's, and as a small raiding party can demolish the railway line so as to stop all traffic for days or weeks, it becomes far more necessary than it ever was in Clausewitz's day to guard our communications. And armies become more and more sensitive to any attack upon their communications. Also such a line cannot easily be changed, and consequently those celebrated changes of the line of communication in an enemy's country which Napoleon himself, on some occasion, declared to be the ablest manœuvre in the art of war, could scarcely be carried out any more (V. Caemmerer).
- 75. Also concentration by means of several railways demands a broad strategic front, which produces that separation of corps or armies which prepares the way for strategical envelopment, and so on. General von der Goltz, in his Conduct of War, says: The more recent treatises on the conduct of war on a large scale are principally taken up with the mobilization and strategical concentration of armies, a department of strategy which only began to play an important part in modern times. It is the result of a dense net-work of railways in Western Europe which has rendered it possible to mass large bodies of troops in a surprisingly brief time. Each Power tries to outdo its neighbours in this respect, ... which gives an opportunity to the strategical specialist to show off his brilliant qualities.... Consequently it is now frequently assumed that the whole conduct of war is comprised in this one section of it. This over-estimate is of course an error, which, however, requires to be pointed out. Telegraphs The telegraph has very greatly reduced the danger of separation. The great advantage of the inner line in the day of Napoleon and of Clausewitz was that separated forces could only communicate by mounted messengers, so if the enemy got between them they could not communicate at all, nor act in concert. This the telegraph has completely altered, for as the field telegraph can now be laid as quickly as an army can advance, the most widely separated bodies of troops can every day arrange combined operations by telegraph through, if necessary, a point one hundred or four hundred miles in rear. So that to-day the chief advantage of the inner line has gone, while its chief disadvantage, the possibility of being surrounded, remains.
- 76. Maps We now possess complete detailed Ordnance maps of every country in Europe, kept up to date by the latest alterations, whereas in the days of Clausewitz maps were of the very roughest character, and quite unreliable in comparison. Improved Arms Smokeless powder, quick-firing and long-ranging artillery and rifles, the infantry field of effective fire being ten times, the artillery five times what it was in Clausewitz's time, have all to be borne in mind when reading the tactical part of his writings. In consequence, also, cover and the tactical use of ground are of far greater importance now than then, etc., etc., etc. Aviation The recent wonderful developments in aviation will obviously almost revolutionize Information in War. To what extent, it is as yet impossible to say. Each year will teach us more. The Nation-in-Arms The nation-in-arms as the common foundation of all armies (except our own), brought up by railways, vastly increases the numbers in a modern battle from what they were in Clausewitz's day. Compare Austerlitz, Dresden, Leipzig and Waterloo, with Liao- yang and Mukden. It should be so with us also, for as General von der Goltz says in The Conduct of War: The BEST military organization is that which renders available ALL the intellectual and material resources of the country in event of war. A State is not
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