LINGUIST List 14.2340

Fri Sep 5 2003

Review: Semantics/Morphosyntax: Giorgi & Pianesi (1997)

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  • ALEXANDRA GALANI, Tense and Aspect: From Semantics to Morphosyntax

    Message 1: Tense and Aspect: From Semantics to Morphosyntax

     Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 13:47:26 +0000
    From: ALEXANDRA GALANI <alexandra_galaniyahoo.com>
    Subject: Tense and Aspect: From Semantics to Morphosyntax


    Giorgi, Alessandra and Fabio Pianesi (1997) Tense and Aspect: From Semantics to Morphosyntax, Oxford University Press, Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax.

    Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/9/9-419.html

    Alexandra Galani, Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, England. DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK This book investigates the interpretation of tense and aspect on the basis of the interaction between morphosyntax and semantics. The authors adopt Chomsky's (1995) minimalist framework in an attempt to provide theoretical explanations for the variety of the morphosyntactic distribution and interpretation of tense and aspect in the Romance and Germanic languages. Specifically, the authors are interested in answering the following questions: how the semantics are expressed in morphemes, how this interface is governed, how children acquire the temporal and aspectual system of a language and how language variation is interpreted. They pay attention to issues concerning morphology and word order as well as issues related to tense, aspect, and sequence of tense. The Reichenbachian (1947) approach to semantics also plays an important role to the ideas they are developing. The book is divided into six chapters in addition to the introduction (pp.xiii-xv), appendixes of the symbols used (pp.xi-xii), author (pp.304-307) and subject (pp.308-319) indexes which are also available. Introduction A fairly clear introduction of the general aim of the book and the framework followed, are given in the introduction. Chapter 1: The Syntactic and Semantic Background The first chapter is devoted to the syntactic and semantic background under which this work is formulated. The authors briefly sketch the Split-Infl hypothesis, Chomsky's minimalist approach, they make a short reference to phrase structure, syncretic categories, the feature scattering principle, sentential operators, temporal entities and events. They present some arguments in favour of the referential approach to the representation of tenses and they also pay attention to syncretic and hybrid categories. Chapter 2: On the Italian, Latin, and Portuguese Temporal Systems In the second chapter, the authors look at the Italian, Latin and Portuguese temporal systems. They also discuss the assignment of nominative case, whereas the etymology of the Latin pluperfect and future perfect is looked at in the appendix. The aim is to provide evidence for the neo-Reichebachian theory of tense they are arguing for. The comparison of the above systems shows that their account correctly predicts the presence or the absence of auxiliaries even in languages which differ minimally from each other in relation to the way tenses are morphologically spelled-out. Chapter 3: The Present Perfect in Germanic and Romance In this chapter, Giorgi and Pianesi expand their theory to the present perfect in the Germanic and Romance languages. Some of the main issues discussed here, are the following: the morphosyntax of the English verbal system, the present perfect in Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, German and Dutch, the position of negation, English modals, the present perfect puzzle, the simple past and the present perfect in Italian. The second part of this chapter deals with the semantics of the present perfect; notion of consequent state, compositional semantics for synthetic and analytic perfects, argumental status of temporal adverbials. In the final section of the chapter, the present perfect in Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese is discussed. A short reference to the present perfect in Catanese and Vicentino is made in the appendix. They highly argue in favour of the existence of temporal arguments in the thematic grid of predicates they are proposing. Chapter 4: The Present and Imperfect in Germanic and Romance The theory is applied to the present tense in the Romance and Germanic languages as well as to the present-in-the-past interpretation of embedded predicates. They claim that punctuality is the property of anchoring events. The focus of this chapter lies on aspectual facts. The main issues relate to the structure of events, notion of punctuality, properties of the speech event, present tense, perfectivity and Italian imperfect. Chapter 5: On the Semantics and Morphosyntax of the Italian Subjunctive In the fifth chapter, the semantics of subjunctive, mood and modality, mood in subordinate clauses, factive predicates, the morphosyntax of the Italian subjunctive, syncretic categories, the feature scattering principle and conditionals are the main topics of discussion. Chapter 6: The Double Accessibility Reading in Italian and English In the final chapter, the double accessibility reading and the property of the present tense in embedded clauses, are discussed. Evidence for the claims made, is drawn from Italian and English. CRITICAL EVALUATION As a whole, the book is well-organised and coherent. The theoretical points are generally well-supported and illustrated by good exemplification throughout the book. There are few cases where a closer look to and some additional discussion of some of the examples are necessary for the reader's better understanding. A general problem of most of the examples is that the glosses are either not provided or they are not particularly detailed. The chapters are generally well-organised and equally presented. Nevertheless, the length of the third chapter in addition to the variety of issues covered makes the comprehension fairly hard. At several points, and especially in short sections- the discussion could have been expanded/implemented. As it stands, it gives a feeling of incompletiness and the discussion does not seem to be linked to the remaining sections. The frequent concluding remarks are particularly welcome. Alternative analyses are also highlighted in some cases where possible, although complete and detailed arguments are not offered. Cross-referencing is well managed, there are no major misprints, the subject and author indexes are complete. Only a couple of symbols abbreviations (for example, CHL) are missing from the symbols appendix. I would want this review to be based on the arguments the authors are making for the data presented. Driving away from any personal beliefs, I believe that this book provides useful arguments for the morphosyntactic-semantic interface of tense and aspect. REFERENCES Chomsky, N. (1995). The minimalist programme. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachussets. Reichenbach, H. (1947). Elements of symbolic language. MacMillan, New York.

    ABOUT THE REVIEWER Alexandra Galani is a PhD student at the Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York, UK. She is currently working on the morphosyntax of tense and aspect in Modern Greek within the theoretical framework of Distributed Morphology.