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    De Swart

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    Shift coercion

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    HENRIETTE DE SWART ASPECT SHIFT AND COERCION* ‘This paper develops an analysis of aspect shift and applies it to French and English. ‘The Progressive, the Perfect/Parfait, and duration adverbials introduced by in or for are interpreted as aspectua! operators which modify eventuality descriptions. The French past tenses are sensitive to aspect, but they do mot change Une aspectuat Chass of the eventuality desoription themselves. Instead, they presuppose that the eventuality description they operate on is of the right aspectual type: the Passé Simple and Imparait are tense operators which locate respectively events and states in the past Free aspectual transitions may be triggered by coercion in order to satisfy the aspectual requirements on aspectual and temporal operators. The analysis is formulated within the framework of Discourse Representation Theory (DRT), 1. AspECTUAL CLASS AND GRAMMATICAL ASPECT In the literature on aspectual class (axTIoNsART) and grammatical aspect, we can distinguish two general approaches. Smith (1991), Depractere (1995) and others claim that aspectual class and grammatical aspect are essentially different notions, which involve distinct analytical tools. Smith talks about struatiON TYPE versus POINT OF VIEW, Depraetere’s terms are (a) euuiciry versus (UN)pounpenvess, Smith and Depractere provide a fine-grained analysis of the meaning effects which result from the combi- nation of different situation types with different aspectual markers. A. disadvautage of their approach is that it docs not allow recursion, because there is exactly one situation type and exactly one view point. For con- structions and languages in which there is no visible effect of grammatical aspect it may be necessary to assume a third notion ot ‘zero’ or “neutral aspect. Also, such an approach cannot handle constructions in which there are multiple aspectual markers that apply recursively. On the other hand, we find analyses in which the distinction between Aktionsart and aspect is blurred. Hinrichs (1986) argues that Progressive sentences in English introduce state variables. just like lexical states. His analysis is based on Kamp and Rohrer (1983), who take Passé Simple sentences in French to refer to events, and Imparfait sentences to describe states, These analysca suggest that the cituation type either does not influence the denotation of the sentence as a whole, or is in some sense * Many thauhs to Acie Mfolendijs, the participants in the Tonos and Acpost cominar at Stanford, and the audiences at the linguistics colloquia at Berkeley and Santa Cruz for helpful comments and discussion, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 16: 347-385, 1998. © 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands 348, HENRIETTE DE SWART. ‘overruled’ by the contribution of grammatical aspect. This view is motiv- ated by the temporal structure of narrative discourse, where we observe differences between states and events. Events move the story line on, whereas states typically provide background information. If only the output type matters at the discourse level. it is less important to know whether the sentence denotes a state heeanse it jnst has the Aktinnsart af a state, or because it is a derived (progressive or imperfective) state. The drawback of this focus on output type is that we do not gain insight into the way specific meaning cffocts result from the combination of aspectual class and aspectual operators. The aim of this paper is to develop a compositional analysis of Aktion- sart and aspect which preserves insights from the two approaches I just described. On the one hand, I keep the distinction between Aktionsart and grammatical aspect, so that we can study the meaning effects their combination gives rise to. On the other hand, I assume that the model- theoretic notions underlying Aktionsart and aspect are the same, and can be captured by introducing states. processes and events as ontological entities into the model. Ideally, we would want to develop a framework which describes how these meaning components hang together in a variety of languages. As a first step towards this gonoral aim, I provide an analysis of aspect shift in English and French. J assume that aspectual class is determined at the level of predicate- aigument suucture, which I idenwify as Wie level of the EVENTUALLY DESCRIPTION. According to Comrie (1976, pp. 1-3), “tense relates the time of the situation referred to to some other time”. whereas “aspects are different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation”. Accordingly, I assume that tense operates after all the as- pectual operators have done their work. Under these assumptions, the syntactic structure of the sentence is as follows: a) [Tense [Aspect* [eventuality description]]]} The Kleene star indicates zero, one or more operations. This paper focusses on the semantics of the structure in (1).' Eventuality descriptions denote scts of cventualitics, where the term rvewruacity generalizes over different types of situations (cf. Bach 1986). Following Mourelatos (1978), ’ The distinction between tense and aspectual operators is implemented in generative gram- mar with functional categories (Ramchand 1993), and in functional grammar with predicative strata (Vet 1994b). Kamp and Reyle (1993) use a Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar swith tonse and oapoot features. The details of the cyntactic implementation ars ierolovant for the purposes of this paper, so I will simply presuppose that the grammar provides us with the correct syntactic tree for every sentence ASPECT SHIFT AND COERCION 349 Rach (1986), én (1995) and others, I assume an ontology of sTATES, Processes and EVENTS, Aspectual operators are interpreted as eventuality modifiers, so they map sets of eventualities (of a certain type) onto sets of cventualitics (of some possibly other type). Tense operators introduce existential closure over this set of eventualities, and map the event onto the time axis via its location time in relation to the speech time. An important claim made in this paper is that aspectual intonation plays a role at all three levels. I will formulate the interpretation within the framework of Discourse Representation theory (DRT, Kamp and Reyle 1993). In general, the presentation in the main text is rather informal. Precise construction rules, a model-theoretic interpretation and a ver- ification procedure are provided in the appendix. The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 2 gives a definition of eventuality descriptions, and defines an ontology based on states, pro- cesses and events, Section 3 generalizes Kamp and Reyle’s (1993) seman- tics of temporal and aspectual operators. Coercion, as defined in section 4, is an implicit, contextually governed process of reinterpretation which comes int play wlicuever there is a conflict between the aspectual nature of the eventuality description and the input condition of some aspectual operator. Section 5 interprets the French Imparfait and Passé Simple as past tense operators which are sensitive to the aspectual nature of the eventuality description they operate on. Section 6 extends the discussion to other Romance languages and to Slavic languages. 2. THe Domain of EVENTUALITIES Aktionsart or aspectual class is determined at the level of the eventuality description. A verb which has all its argument positions filled by constants vu variables is an atomic eventuality description.” Eventuality deveriptions come in different aspectual types, as argued by Vendler (1957), Mourel- atos (1978), and others. States and processes correspond to eventualities which do not have an inherent endpoint, Event predicates invelve au inherent culmination point. Processes (2a) and events (2b) license different inferences: (2)a. Ann was running, > Ann ran, b. Ann was running a mile. -/ Ann ran a mile. With an event predicate like running a mile, the inference from a sentence in the Progressive to that same sentence in the Simple Past does not go ? J will not treat quantificational NPs in this paper. 350 HENRIETTE DE SWART thrangh, hecanse the Simple Past, unlike the Progressive, implies that the event culminates. The semantic difference between states/processes and events is reflected in their combination with aspectual expressions. States and processes combine with for-adverbials, whereas event predivates com bine with it-adverbial: Q) for-adverbials a, Susan lived in Paris for two years. b, Andrew swam for three hours. ¢. #Eve drew a circle for three hours.* (4) in-adverbials a. #Susan lived in Paris in two years. b. #Andrew ran in three hours, c. Eve drew a circle in ten minutes. Krifka (1989) and Verkuyl (1993) develop compositional analyses in which the aspectual class of the sentence as a whole is determined by the semantic nature of the verb, by the characteristics of its NP arguments. and by the way the verb is related to its arguments. Eventuality descriptions involving a stative verb are stative (Sa). Non-stative verbs which do not affect their arguments in a gradual and incremental way describe a process (5b). Non- stative verbs which affect their arguments in a gradual and incremental way refer to a process when they combine with a homogeneous NP (a bate plual or arass nyun) (Se), and tw au event when they combine with a quantized NP (5d): (S)a. Mary was sick b. The cat licked the kitten. c. Susan wrote letters. Ue Susau wrote @ leuter. Link (1983) and Bach (1986) show that bare plurals share with mass nouns the property of enmulative and divisive reference Caffe plus coffee is coffee, and adding letters to letters gives you letters. Also, parts of coffee count as coffee, and the subparts of letters can still be characterized as Jetters (at least down to the atomic level). A quantized NP like « leeeer does not have these properties: part of a letter is no longer a letter, and if we add a letter to another letter, we no longer have one, but two letters. These observations lead Link (1983) to develop a lattice-theoretical * The symbol # indicates that only « nor-intended reading is available. For instance, in (Sc), it possible to unagine Eve drawing a circle over and over again tor three hours. Ihe non-intended reading involves coercion, as defined in section 4 below. ASPECT SHIFT AND COERCION 351 analysis of plurals and mass nouns. He introduces a structured universe of discourse £;, which includes the set A of atomic individuals, and the set D of quantities of matter. Along similar lines, Bach (1986), Krifka (1989), Pifién (1995) and others adopt a lattice-theoretic structure of the domain of eventualities €, Following their proposals, I assume that every eventuality ~ whether atomic or non-atomic - is a state. a process or an. event, so € is the union of the set S of states, the set P of processes, and the set £ of events: E=$U PU E. Processes and events are both non- stative, and form the supereategory of dynamic eventualities. States and processes pattern together in having homogeneous, non-quantized refer- ence, just like bare plurals and mass nouns. They have divisive reference (parts of being sick qualify as being sick), and cumulative reference (writ- ing plus writing is writing). Events have non-homogencous, quantized reference, just like count nouns. The classification of eventualities is sum- marized in Figure 1 (compare also Verkuyl 1993; Pifién 1995): HOMOGENEOUS. | QUANTIZED state __|_process. event. STATIVE DYNAMIC Fig. 1. The position of processes in this classification represents such eventualities as sharing certain properties with states, and others with events. In the version of Discourse Representation Theory I adopt here. the ontological nature of the discourse referent is reflected in the use of designated variables s for states, p for processes and e for events. I use h to refer to members of the super category of non quantized, homogeneous eventu alities (members of SU P), and d to refer to dynamic eventualities (in PUE). There is a straightforward correlation between the aspectual class of an atomic cventuality descripdion and the type of evenwuulity it denotes. stative sentences introduce states, process sentences refer to processes, and event sentences describe events. 3. AspecruaL OPERATORS Aspectual operators impose a certain view point on the eventuality intro- duced by the eventuality description. This motivates their analysis as modifiers of eventuality descriptions (compare the general schema in (1) above). 352. HENRIETTE DE SWART 3.1, Grammatical Aspect Following Bach (1986), I interpret grammatical aspect as a mapping relation from one domain of eventualities to another in ways similar to the mapping relations that have been defined between the mass and the count domain. Link (1983) defines a materialization function A which maps (atomic and plural) individuals onto the ‘stuff? which makes them up. Every count predicate P denoting a set of atomic individuals (in A) has a mass term correspondent "P which denotes a set of quantities of mater (in D). Formally ||"P|| = 4x © D |x = sup Af||Pl|]}. The supremum function ‘sup’ applies to the materialized counterpart of P (the result of applying function / to the denotation of P) to give the sum of the quantities of matter which make up the individuals in the interpretation of P. The alternation between P and ”P accounts for the interpretation of (6a, b): (Oa. There are many/few apples in he sulad. b. There is muchilittle apple in the salad. Determiners like many and few are generalized quantifiers aver atomic individuals (in A), whereas much and little establish measurement relations between subsets of the domain D. (6) shows that a mass interpretation can casily be derived from a count meaning: the determiner in (6a) operates on the count predicate Apple. the one in (6b) on its mass counterpart “Apple. If we assume that such expressions as water, gold and beer translate as mass terms, we turther need mappings trom the mass to the count domain to account for sentences like (7): (7)a. There was much/little beer on the table. b. There were many/few beers on the table. Reer in (7h) ean be used to refer ta a serving or a kind of heer. Starting with a basic mass predicate P, we need to be able to define its count counterpart, which we could call “P. In addition to the materialization function /, we thus need packaging functions g which map quantities onto bounded entities. As a result, we have both a UNIVERSAL GRINDER and a UNIVERSAL PACKAGER (Pelletier 1979, Bach 1986) in our semantics. The observation that states can be presented as events, aud vice versa suggests that the metaphor of the Universal Grinder and the Universal Packager extends to the temporal domain, where it can be used to account for aspect shift. In English, aspectual operators are optional. There are no aspectual operators in (8a, b): (8)a. Mary was sick. [PAST [Mary be sick] ASPECT SHIFT AND COERCION a 3 b. Susan wrote a letter. PAST [Susan write a letter]] The aspectual class of the eventuality description determines that (8a) introduces a state, and (8b) an event into the Discourse Representation Structure (DRS). The interpretation of (Sa) and (8b) is spelled out in the DRS in Figures 2 and 3 respectively, which follow the standard construc- tion rules defined in Kamp and Reyle (1993). nos t x in Mary (x) sot ik be sicl 8 Fig. 2. Mary was sick. noetx y Andrew swam. b. Andrew was swimming for three hours. 4 Andrew swam for three hours, ce. Eve was drawing a circle. +5 Fve drew a circle * In principle, event modifiers can be freely ordered with respect to each other. However, in (12) the reverse order of the aspectual markers is not well-formed, because the output of the Perfect operator is a set of states, and the Progressive operator is restricted to non- stative, dynamic eventualities. Aspectuai constraints thus reduce the number of scope ambi- guities (see also De Swart and Molendijk 1996) ASPECT SHIFT AND COERCION 357 As far as the semantic inferences of sentences involving for-adverbials are concerned, they pattern with the event sentence in (15c), rather than with the process scutence in (15a). This patterning correlates with Krifka’s (1989) observation that measurement phrases make a predicate quantized. Thus fo swim denotes a set of processes, but fo swim for three hours denotes a set of quantized eventualities, i.e. events, As an extension of Kamp and Reyle (1993), I propose to interpret for-adverbials in terms of a function FOR x time: §U PE. In-adverbials denote a function IN x time: E > E. Duration adverbials are thus seen as aspectual operators mapping sets of eventualities onto sets of eventualities, just like the Perfect and the Progressive.* Duration adverbials denote extensional operators, so their interpretation entails the existence of both the input and the output eventuality. Their analysis is thus similar to the one we gave for the Perfect. The grammatical structure of (13a) is as in (16), and its interpretation is spelled out in Figure 6. (16) Susan lived in Paris for two years. [PAST [FOR two years [Susan live in Paris)]] noset x y mt in Susan (x) Paris (y) ot e=BOUND(s) two years(mt) dur(s)2mt s:[xlive in y Fig. 0. Susan lived in Pais for tu years, The amount of time (mt) introduced by the for-adverbial in Figure 6 is two years, and the duration (dur) of the state s of Susan’s living in Paris is at least as long ( = ) as that, The application of the BOUND-operator to the state variable results in a bounded, quantized portion of the state (sce appendix, part D), which counts as an event because it is quantized. The interpretation of both aspectual operators and duration adverbials as eventnality description modifiers opens the wav to recursive structures ® Moltmann (1992) areues against a treatment of duration adverbials as event modifiers. If we combine the analysis developed here with the assumption that negative and quantified sentences introduce their own eventuality referent, as argued for by De Swart and Molendijk (1996), most of her objections disappear. 358 HENRIETIE DE SWART. in which multiple operators are piled on top of each other. (15b) combines the Progressive with a for-adverbial. The examples in (17) contain a Progressive and an in-adverbial: (17)a. John is running a mile in ten minutes. b. Susan is writing a book in a month. If we combined Kamp and Reyle’s interpretation of in-adverbials with their treatment of the Progressive as a VP-operator, we would automati- cally end up with the in-adverbial taking wide scope over the Progressive. However, a wide scope interpretation of the adverbial would not capture the meaning of the sentences in (17), for they describe the event of something culminating within the specified period as an event in progress. On the other hand, my definition of the Progressive as an eventuality description modifier, rather than a VP-operator, allows it to take wide scope over the in-adverbial. Thus (176) gets the grammatical structure (t8) and the interpretation in Figure 7. (18) Susan was writing a book in a month, [PAST [PROG [IN a month [Susan write a book]]]] nstx wn Susan (x) sot ee om y book(y) s; | PROG ese amonth(mt) dur(e). [PAST [Cre [Jeanne know the answer}]] ae t x y wn Jeanne(x) Answer(y) ect 5 e) Gye |s: feknow y Fig. LL. Jeanne sut (PS) te réponse. French does not have a morphological marker for inchoativity, but the value INCHO of C,,. may be triggered by the combination of a state and the Passé Simple (35) in the presence of an adverb like soudain ‘suddenly’. The value BOUND is appropriate in (36a), where Jeanne’s life has a definite beginning point and endpoint. The value ADD-PREP adds a preparatory phase and an initial boundary to the process in (36b): (36)a. Jeanne d’Arec fut une sainte. Jeanne d’Are was-PS a saint. b. La machine fonetionna (en cing minutes). The machine worked-PS (in five minutes). In all cases, C,. introduces the necessary event variable ¢ to satisfy the input condition on the Passé Simple. Statives nicely illustrate the differ- ence in the syntax-semantics interface between French and English. The Englich counterparts ta (28) and (36) all use the Simple Past tence (37)a, (Suddenly,) Jeanne knew the answer, b, Jeanne d’Are was a saint. c, The machine worked (in five minutes), English has aspectual operators like the Perfect and the Progressive which ASPECT SHIFT AND COERCION 371 have an Output in tue domain of states. However, there are no grammatical operators which allow us to represent states as events. All aspectual transitions which have an output in the domain of events are implicit and governed by a contextual process ot remterpretation, Such aspectual transitions show up in the presence of an adverb like suddenly or in five minutes, which are restricted to event descriptions, but the reinterpretation of a state as an cvent is not visible in the morphology of the verb. French does not have grammatical operators mapping states onto events either, init it has tense operators which apply only to homogeneous or only to quantized eventualities. Thus there is a difference in the syntax-semantics interface for the two languages: the semantic effects of sentences like (35)/(36) and (37) are the same, and their DRSs are identical, but only French makes the fact that the state is presented as an event visible in the morphology of the verb. Given that French has no Progressive verb form, the transition of an event to the state of the event being in progress is a free transition. A progressive reading may be triggered by the combination of an event description and the Imparfait, as in (38a): (38)a. Jeanne écrivait une lettre. Jeanne wrote-IMP a leuter. b. Jeanne écrivit une lettre. Jeanne wrote-PS a lener. Th event of writing a letter is presented as a (completed) event in (38b), and as an event in progress in (38a). The conflict between the eventuality description and the Imparfait is resolved by the introduction of the co- ercion operator Cen. Thus (38a) has the grammatical structure (39), and the iuterpictation in Figure 12. (39) Jeanne écrivait (IMP) une lettre. PAST [Cen [Jeauue write a leues)j] in hot Jeanne(x) Fig, 12. Jeanne éerivait (IMP) une lettre. 372 HENRIETTE DE SWART The grammatical structure in (39), and the interpretation in Figuie 12 are to be compared with the representation of the English Progressive in (11)/(18) and Figures 5 and 7 above. Figures $ and 7 contain an explicit aspectual operator PROG, which leads to the state of the event/process being in progress, whereas the homogeneous discourse referent in Figure 12 is obtained by coercion. In both cases, we have an (intensional) as- pectual transition, but the aspectual operator PROG labels one particular aspectual transition, whereas the aspectually sensitive tense operator in French in principle allows any mappi a process, For (38a), it is straightforward to strip the event of its culmi- nation point and to describe it as being in progress. In other cases, we may have the choice between a progressive interpretation (as in 29) and a habitual reading (as in 30), depending on the context in which we process the sentence. The ambiguities remains at the level of the DRS, because the value of the coercion operator is not determined until the DRS is embedded into the model. The examples in this section illustrate the aspcctual sensitivity of the French past tenses. They argue against the treatment of the Imparfait and the Passé Simple as aspectual operators, for, unlike the Perfect and the Progressive, they do not specify one particular aspectual transition. All they do is to impose a general aspectual constraint on the eventuality description they apply to, which must be satisfied, if necessary, by means of coercion. The interpretation of the Passé Simple and the Imparfait as aspectully sensitive tenses explains why it is not possible to separate as- pectual and temporal information in the morphology: there simply is no aspectual upetatur invulved, The distinction between temporal and aspectual operators accounts for the differences between the Progressive and the Imparfait in stative contexts by treating them as differences in the syntax-scmantics interface. The Imparfait has a broader meaning than the English Progressive, because there are more frec aspectual transitions that map events onto homogeneous situations than just a progressive reading. The observation that the French past tense operators are sensitive to the homogencous/quantized distinction does not tead us to expect that all tense operators in that langnage are specified alang this dimansinn It is an idiosyncratic feature of certain determiners in English that they are limited to either mass or count nouns, whereas other determiners are not specified along the mass/count dimension. Similarly, it is an isliosyncxatic feature of the French past tenses that they are sensitive to the homogene- ous/quantized distinction, whereas other tenses in this language are as- pectually neutral, Past tenses are more likely than present or tuture tenses to develop such distinctions, because they often have a more fine-grained g, as long, as the result is a state or ASPECT SHIFT AND COERCION 373 semantics than the other teuses (Commie 1976, p. 87), The gencral framework developed here is thus rich enough to provide a fully composi- tional analysis of aspect shift in French and English. 5.4. Duration Adverbials in French Tf we combine the analysis of duration adverbials as eventuality description modifiers with the interpretation of the French past tenses as aspectually sensitive tense operators, we can make some interesting predictions con- cerning the combination of duration adverbials and past tenses in French. Adverbials introduced by pendant have the same selection restrictions as for-advervials in English, aud adverbials induced by ex arc similar to in-adverbials: (40)a. Anne a été malade pendant deux semaines Anne has been ill for two weeks. b. Georges a nagé pendant deux heures. Georges has swum for two hours. c. Evo a chanté la Marscillaise pendant cing minutes. Eve has sung the Marseillaise for five minutes. (41a. #Anne a été malade en cing semaines. Anne has been ill in two weeks. b, #Gcorges a nagé cn deux heures. Georges has swum in two hours. ¢. Eve a chanté la Marseillaise en deux minutes. Eve has sung the Marseillaise in five minutes. En-adverbials map events onto events that culminate within the period of time specified by the temporal noun, Pendant adverbial map states onto events consisting of a bounded state, the duration of which is measured by the temporal noun. If our analysis of the French past tense forms as Tense operators, rather than aspectual operators, 1s correct, we do nol expect to find duration adverbials taking wide scope over Passé Simple and Imparfait. If duration adverbials take narrow scope with respect to these tenses, and if the output of both en- and pendant-adverbials is an event description, we predict that their combination with the Passé Simple will be unmarked. This is indeed what we observe, as the following examples illustrate: (42)a. Anne joua du piano pendant deux heures. Anne played-PS the piano for two hours. [PAST [FOR two hours [Anne play the piano]]] 374 HENRIETTE DE SWART b. Anne écrivit une lettre on une demi heure. Anne wrote-P§ a letter in half an hour. [PAST [IN half an hour [Anne write a letter]]] The Passé Simple sentence (42a) describes a past event which consists of the bounded state of Anne playing the piano for two hours. Similarly, (42b) introduces an event of Anne writing a letter culminating within half an hour. In both cases, the output of the duration adverbial is of the aspectual type required by the Passé Simple, so no special meaning effects arise. The DRS for (42a) is similar to the one given in Figure 6 above for the English for-adverbial. Such a characterization of the sentences in (42) suggests that we can expect special meaning effects to arise if we combine sentences modified by duration adverbials with the Imparfait. This predic- tion is borne out by the sentences in (43): (43)a. Anne jouait du piano pendant deux heures. Anne played-IMP the piano for two hours. {PAST [Co, [FOR two hours [Anne play the piano]]}]] b. Anne €crivait une lettre en une demi-heure. Anne wrote-IMP a letter in half an hour. [PAST [Cen [IN half an hour [Anne write a letter]]]] es) mt e=BOUND(S) Cem | two hours(mt) dur(s)>mt : Lx play y Fig. 13. Anne jouait (MP) du piano pendant deux heures. (43) does not describe one event of Anne playing the piano for two hours, but is typically used to state that this is the habitual duration of her play. (430) typically wouveys thal (almust) every letter Auue writes is finislicd within half an hour. These meaning effects arise from a conflict between ASPECT SHIFT AND COERCION 375 the aspectual nature of the description and the aspectual requirements on the tense operator: the event description is forced to behave like a state of a process in order to be compatible with the semantics of the Imparfait. Such conflicts are resolved by introducing 4 coercion operator imo the DRS, Accordingly, (43a) is represented in Figure 13. An habitual or a progressive reading is the most likely value for the operator C., in Figure 13, but other interpretations are not excluded, depending on the context. 6, EXTENSION TO OTHER LANGUAGES, If we accept the existence of aspectually sensitive tenses along with as- pectual operators, the grammatical structure in (1), repeated here as (44), predicts that the combination of an aspectual operator and an aspectually sensitive tense operator leads tv au interpretation in which the tense operator takes wide scope over the aspectual operator: (44) [Tense [Aspect [eventuality description] An example which confirms this prediction is the combination of pend- ant-adverbials with the Passé Simple and the Imparfait. Another example is provided by the combination of negation and adverbs of quantification with the Progressive in English, and the Passé Simple/Imparfait in French (see De Swart and Molendijk 1996 for an analysis). Further evidence in favor of the system developed here is provided by languages which have both aspectual operators similar to the Progressive in English and aspectu- ally scnsitive tenses similar to the Passé Simple/Imparfait in French, Com- rie (1976, pp. 23-32) discusses several languages which can be fruitfully analyzed along these lines. Spanish and Portuguese optionally express the progressive by the construction be + present participle. In the past tense, there is a distinction between the Simple Past and the Imperfect. The combination of the Simple Past of be with the present participle leads to a perfective progressive: (45)a._ Toda la tarde estuvieron entrando visitas. [Spanish] Alf the afternoon, vistors kept arriving. b. Ele esteve lendo em casa o dia inteiro. [Portuguese] He spent the whole day at home reading. The situation is presented as a single complete whole (hence the Simple Past), but consists of an ongoing action (hence the Progressive). This suggests that the Progressive is au aspevtual uperatui, aud both the Simple Past and the Imperfect are aspectually sensitive tenses, similar to the Passé 376 HENRIETTE DE SWART Simple aud the Tmparfait iu French, Nowe that tie sentences in (45) cannot be used to describe a complete event as being in progress, thereby confirming the hypothesis that the aspectual operator (the Progressive) takes narrow scope with respect to the tense operator (the Simple Past). Similar distinctions can be found in Slavic languages. Bulgarian has a morphological opposition corresponding to the perfective/imperfective distinction. Furthermore, there are two past tenses, the Aorist and the Imperfective. The combination of the Imperfective with the Aorist leads toa meaning effect which is rather different fram the combination of the Perfective with the Imperfect. As Comrie (1976, p. 32) formulates it, “the Imperfective Aorist takes a situation which is described by an imperfective form (Imperfective}, to give oxplicit reference to its internal complexity, and circumscribes the situation by giving it a perfective form (Aorist). (...) The Pertective Imperfect, on the other hand, takes a situation which would in itself be described by a perfective form (Pertective), and then superimposes upon this imperfectivity”, Consider the example in (46): (46) tom puknese zorata, izkarvax as-soon-as broke. 3sg.perf-imp dawn.the drove. 1sg.imp-imp aveite nayin, sheep .the outside As soon as dawn broke, I used to drive the sheep out. The Perfective Imperfect in (46) refers to a habitual situation using the Imperfect, but each individual event is described as a complete whole by the Perfective. The Imperfective Aorist in (47) describes a bounded action which is presented as a single whole by the Aorist, but which has internal complexity referred to by the Imperfective: (47) Pred mnogo ikoni o&te pop Stefan vodi hefare many icons other father Stefan led.%g.imp-anr djada Nedka. old Nedko. Te se spiraxa pred sv. Nikolaj They reff stopped.3pl.imp-aor before St. Nicholas Cudotvorec, ... . pred obrazite na the miracle-worker,... , before images.the of aixaugelitc — Gaviail § — Mixail, archangels.the Gabriel and Michael. ASPECT SHIFT AND COERCION 377 Father Stefan led old Nedko in front of many other icons. They stopped before St. Nicholas the miracle-worker,... , before the images of the archangels Gabriel and Michael There are no scope ambiguities in these cases: (46) gives us the ‘imper- fective of a perfective’, while (47) describes the ‘perfective of the imper- fective’ in Comrie’s terms. In combination with the restriction of the Aorist/Imperfect opposition to the past tense, these observations suggest that Bulgarian (but also Georgian, for instance) has both aspectual oper- ators (the imperfective/perfective} and aspectually sensitive tenses (the Aorist and the Imperfect). Further research on the relation between aspect shift in French and English, other Romance languages such as Spanish and Portuguese, and also Slavic languages like Bulgarian is needed to investigate these issues in more detail. The preliminary data provided here support a general theory of aspect shift in which aspectual information is present at the three different levels of eventuality descriptions, aspectual operators and tense operators. The analysis developed in this paper thus offers new perspectives for a cross-linguistical study of aspect and aspect shift. APPENDIX The appendix introduces the construction rules, the DRS-conditions, the model and a verification procedure necessary to construct and interpret the DRS¢ given in the text, in so far as they are different from the DRSs constructed by Kamp and Royle (1993). A. General Notions «+ The universe of discourse Us. of the DRS K confined to V and R is a sorted domain, This is a set of discourse referents of possibly differ- ent types including: individuals, times, amounts of time, events, pro- ces9es, states, + Cong is the set of DRS-conditions in K confined to a given vocabulary V and a set R of discourse referents. B. DRS-Conditions for Aspectual Operators « Progressive: If d: [y ]is a dynamic description (event or process) then 378 HENRIETTE DE SWART PROG | 7-(¥ is a state description. + Coercion: (i) Ife: [y ]is an event description then ail} Co is the description of a homogeneous situation (a state or a pro- cess). (ii) T£ A: | y | is a description of a homogeneous situation (a state or a process), then e Ge RED is an event description. (iii) If s: [y ]is a state description, then Ga is the description of a dynamic situation (a process or an event). C. Construction Rules + Introduction of discourse referents for sentences modined by an as- pectual operator: (i) For progressive sentences of the form Prog(S): a. Introduce in Ux: a new state discourse referent s b. Introduce in Cong: si [ PROG Ky c. If y is a dynamic description, introduce in Ux, a new discourse referent p or c. d. Introduce in Cong,: p: [y Jor e:[y]- ec. If y is not a dynamic description, so does not satisfy the input ASPECT SHIFT AND COERCION 379 conditions on the Progressive, introduce in Ux,: a new dis- course referent d £, Introduce in Conx,: d: | CcaKo g. Introduce in Ux,: a new discourse referent s h. Introduce in Conx,: ¥ (ii) For state/process sentences which undergo contextual reinterpre- tation Cye(S): a. Introduce in Ux: a new event discourse referent ¢ b. Introduce in Cong: e: | CreKy ¢. Introduce in Ux,: a new discourse referent A d. Introduce in Cony,: A: [| y (iii) For event sentences which undergo contextual reinterpretation Con(5). a. Introduce in Ux: a new homogeneous discourse referent A b. Introduce in Cong: a: Gaks c. Introduce in Ux,: a new discourse referent ¢ d. Introduce in Conx,: e: | ¥ + Duration adverbials (i) For sentences modified hy a for-adverbial of the farm (FOR ¥ time(S)): a, Introduce in Ux: new discourse referents e and mt b. Introduce in Cong: atime (11) ec. If y is a state or a process description, introduce in Cony: dur(s) = mt or dur(p)= mr and e=BOUND(s) or e= BUUND{p) d. If y is an event description, introduce in Cong: te [Con and introduce in Cong: dur(#) = mt and e = BOUND(h) e. Introduce in Us,: a new discourse referent e £. Introduce in Conx,: e: [7] (ii) For sentences modified by an in-adverbial of the form (IN x time(S): a. Introduce new discourse referents e’ and mt b. Introduce in Cong: x-time(mr) 380 HENRIATTE DE SWART c. Introduce in Cong: e’ =e d. If y is an event description, introduce in Cong: dur(e) < mt e. If y is a state ar a process description, intradnee in Cong: e | Grek f. Introduce in Ux,: a new discourse referent s or p g. Introduce in Conx,: s:[y ] or p: Ly Jand continue with ¢ + Tense operators (i) Past tense (English): a. If S is the first sentence of the discourse, introduce in Ux: a new discourse referent n which is identified with the speech time. If S$ is not the first sentence of the discourse, continue with b, b. Introduce in Ux: a new time discourse referent t where r is the location time of the eventuality. c. Introduce in Cong: r< 7 d. If y is a state or a process description, introduce in Cony: soforpot e. If y is an event description, introduce in Conk: eC t (ii) Passé Simple (French) a. If Sis the first sentence of the discourse, introduce in Ux: a new discourse referent n which is identified with the speech time. If S$ is not the first sentence of the discourse, continue with b. Introduce in Ux: a new time discourse referent 1 Introduce in Cong:

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