The Parameter of Aspect presents a unified theory of aspect within UniversalGrammar. It provides an unusual combination of syntactic semantic andpragmatic appro... » 

The Parameter of Aspect presents a unified theory of aspect within UniversalGrammar. It provides an unusual combination of syntactic semantic andpragmatic approaches to a single domain and gives detailed linguistic analysesof five languages with very different aspectual systems English FrenchMandarin Chinese Navajo and Russian. Extensive discussion of the linguisticevidence is complemented by a formal semantic treatment in the framework ofDiscourse Representation Theory with an explicit procedure for computingaspectual meaning from syntactic surface structure. Among the theoreticalinnovations is a principled account of the interaction between viewpointperfective imperfective and situation type state event a level ofpragmatic analysis at which contrastive and inferred meanings are stated adefault analysis of sentences that are neither perfective nor imperfective inviewpoint. This second edition has been completely revised to include furtherdevelopment of the twocomponent theory including new treatments ofboundedness dynamism and a general account of aspectual shifts. Syntactic andsemantic tests are given for determining aspectual categories in all fivelanguages. «