Progressive forms and meanings: the curious case of Capeverdean

Article Sidebar

PDF
Published: 01-08-2018

Main Article Content

Fernanda Pratas
Universidade de Lisboa
Portugal
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5749-0600
Biography
Vol 10 (2018), Pescuda, pages 103-128
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15304/elg.10.5045
Submitted: 07-04-2018 Accepted: 24-07-2018 Published: 01-08-2018
Copyright How to Cite

Abstract

The progressive may be described as a periphrastic construction (auxiliary + non-finite verb; for instance, in English: be + V-ing) which denotes an ongoing situation at a given time, be it an instant or an interval. This general picture, however, has faced two descriptive challenges: (i) those same forms may also appear associated with other temporal readings; (ii) the progressive meaning may also be obtained through other grammatical forms. The current paper approaches these apparent mismatches from the perspective of two varieties of Capeverdean, whose arrangements between forms and meanings of the progressive may provide a crucial insight to this cross-linguistic puzzle. The description and discussion of novel data support the two steps in a brand-new proposal for this Portuguese-based Creole: (a) the superficially different morphemes that mark the progressive have a unique diachronic path, involving the preverbal marker ta and a complete progressive cycle; (b) if we frame the temporal meaning of the progressive somewhat differently, considering the existence, under specific pragmatic conditions, of a precursory stage, at least one of the mentioned mismatches will be resolved. An additional contribution of the current discussion concerns the expression of time reference in natural language, namely that past, present or future meanings do not necessarily depend on dedicated tense morphemes

Keywords:

Capeverdean, functional morphology, variation, progressive, time reference
Cited by

Article Details

References

ALUPEC: Alfabeto Unificado para a Escrita do Cabo-verdiano. Decreto-Lei No. 8/2009, Boletim Oficial da República de Cabo Verde, Praia 19.03.2009, I Série No.11, 74-76.

Adger, David / Jennifer Smith (2010): "Variation in agreement: A lexical feature-based approach", Lingua 120, 1109-1134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2008.05.007

Arche, María J. (2014): "The construction of viewpoint aspect: the imperfective revisited", Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 32, 791-831. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-013-9209-5

Arche, María J. (2018): "A solution to the durative puzzle: a progressive syntax for parts and iteration". London: University of Greenwich, Ms.

Bach, Emmond (1986): "The algebra of events", Linguistics and Philosophy 9(1), 5-16.

Baker, Mark (2008): "The macroparameter in a microparametric world", in Theresa Biberauer (ed.), The limits of Syntactic Variation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 351-374. https://doi.org/10.1075/la.132.16bak

Baptista, Marlyse (2002): The Syntax of Cape Verdean Creole, the Sotavento varieties. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/la.54

Bertinetto, Pier Marco (2000): "The progressive in Romance, as compared with English", in Östen Dahl (ed.), Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 559-603.

Bertinetto, Pier Marco / Karen H. Ebert / Casper De Groot (2000): "The progressive in Europe", in Östen Dahl (ed.), Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 517-558.

Borer, Hagit (1984): Parametric Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.

Brüser, Martina / André dos Reis Santos, with the contribution of Ekkehard Dengler and Andreas Blum, under the direction of Jürgen Lang (2012): Dicionário do Crioulo da Ilha de Santiago (Cabo Verde) com equivalentes de tradução em alemão e português. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.

Bybee, Joan L. / Östen Dahl (1989): "The Creation of Tense and Aspect Systems in the Languages of the World", Studies in Language 13, 51-103. https://www.unm.edu/~jbybee/downloads/BybeeDahl1989TenseAspectSystems.pdf

Bybee, Joan L./ Revere Perkins / William Pagliuca (1994): The evolution of grammar. Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Carreira, António (1982): O Crioulo de Cabo Verde, Surto e Expansão. Mem Martins: Europam.

Chomsky, Noam (2001): "Derivation by phase", in Michael Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken Hale: A life in language. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1-52.

Cipria, Alicia / Craige Roberts (2000): "Spanish Imperfecto and Pretérito: truth conditions and Aktionsart effects in a situation semantics", Natural Language Semantics 8(4), 297-347.

Comrie, Bernard (1976): Aspect. An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Comrie, Bernard (1985): Tense. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Culicover, Peter W. / Ray Jackendoff (1997): "Semantic subordination despite syntactic coordination", Linguistic Inquiry 28(2), 195-217. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199271092.003.0013

Dahl, Östen (1985/Reprinted 1987): Tense and Aspect Systems. Oxford: Blackwell.

Dahl, Östen (ed.) (2000): Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Dahl, Östen / Viveka Velupillai (2005): "Tense and Aspect", in Martin Haspelmath et al. (eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 266-281.

Demirdache, Hamida / Myriam Uribe-Etxebarría (2000): "The primitives of temporal relations", in Roger Martin / David Michaels / Juan Uriagereka (eds.), Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik. Cambridge: MIT Press, 157-186.

Deo, Ashwini (2015): "The semantic and pragmatic underpinnings of grammaticalization paths: the progressive to imperfective shift", Semantics & Pragmatics 8, 1-52. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.14

Dowty, David (1977): "Towards a Semantic Analysis of Verb Aspect and the English 'Imperfective' Progressive", Linguistics and Philosophy 1: 45-78. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25000028

Dowty, David (1979): Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Fábregas, Antonio / Jaume Mateu / Michael T. Putnam (2015): "'Parameters' in linguistic theory: What, where, and how", in Antonio Fábregas / Jaume Mateu / Michael T. Putnam (eds.), Contemporary Linguistic Parameters. London/New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 3-24

van Gijn, Rik / Sonja Gipper (2009): "Irrealis in Yurakaré and other languages: On the cross-linguistic consistency of an elusive category", in Lotte Hogeweg / Helen de Hoop / Andrej L. Malchukov (eds.), Cross-linguistic Semantics of Tense, Aspect, and Modality. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 155-178. https://doi.org/10.1075/la.148.07gij

Givón, Talmy (1994) “Irrealis and the subjunctive”, Studies in Language 18(2), 265-37. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.18.2.02giv

Hagemeijer, Tjerk / John Holm (2008): "Schuchardt, Hugo. On the Creole Portuguese of São Tomé (West Africa). Annotated translation from the German of 'Ueber das Negerportugiesische von S. Thomé (Westafrika)' Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Wien 101(2): 889-917 [1882]", in John Holm / Susanne Michaelis (eds.), Contact Languages: Critical Concepts in Linguistics. London/New York: Routledge, 131-156.

Iatridou, Sabine (2000): "The grammatical ingredients of counterfactuality", Linguistic Inquiry 31, 231-270.

Jacobs, Bart (2010): "Upper Guinea Creole: evidence in favor of a Santiago birth", Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 25(2), 289-343. https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.25.2.04jac

Jacobs, Bart (2011): "Cape Verdean ta in its role as a progressive aspect marker", Papia 21(2), 315-334. htp://media.leidenuniv.nl/legacy/jacobs-2011-capeverdean-ta-as-progressive-marker.pdf

Kihm, Alain (1994): Kriyol Syntax: the Portuguese-based creole language of Guinea-Bissau. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Klein, Wolfgang (1994): Time in language. London: Routledge.

Klein, Wolfgang (2009): "How time is encoded", in Wolfgang Klein / Ping Li (eds.), The expression of time. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 39-82.

Klein, Wolfgang (2014): "Is aspect time-relational? Commentary on the paper by Jürgen Bohnemeyer", Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 32(3), 955-971. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-014-9240-1

Kranich, Svenja (2010): The Progressive in Modern English: a Corpus-Based Study of Grammaticalization and Related Changes. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789042031449

Landman, Fred (1992): "The progressive", Natural Language Semantics 1, 1-32.

Ljung, Magnus (1980): Reflections on the English Progressive. Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.

Martins, Ana Maria (2016): "Introdução: O português numa perspetiva diacrónica e comparativa", in Ana Maria Martins / Ernestina Carrilho (eds.), Manual de Linguística Portuguesa. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter MRL Series, 1-39.

Matthewson, Lisa (2004): "On the methodology of semantic fieldwork", International Journal of American Linguistics 70, 369-415. https://doi.org/10.1086/429207

Matthewson, Lisa (2010): "Cross-linguistic variation in modality systems: the role of mood", Semantics & Pragmatics (3) Article 9, 1-74. https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.3.9

ter Meulen, Alice (1985): "Progressives without possible worlds.", in William Eilfort / Paul Kroeber / Karen Peterson (eds.), The Proceedings of Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 21(1), 408-423.

Moens, Marc, / Mark Steedman (1988): "Temporal ontology and temporal reference", Computational Linguistics 14(2), 15-28. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/J88-2003

Palmer, Frank (2006): Mood and modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.2277/0521804795

Parsons, Terence (1990): Events in the Semantics of English. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Portner, Paul (1998) "The progressive in modal semantics", Language 74, 760-787.

Portner, Paul (2011): "Perfect and progressive", in Claudia Maienborn / Klaus von Heusinger / Paul Portner (eds.), Semantics: An international hand-book of natural language meaning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1217-1261. https://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/jlmMTE0M/Portner-perfect-progressive-HSK-draft.pdf

Pratas, Fernanda (2007): Tense Features and Argument Structure in Capeverdean Predicates. PhD Dissertation, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. http://www.clul.ulisboa.pt/files/fernanda_pratas/pratas_PhD.pdf

Pratas, Fernanda (2010): "States and temporal interpretation in Capeverdean", in Reineke Bok-Bennema / Brigitte Kampers-Manhe / Bart Hollebrandse (eds.), Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2008 - Selected papers from 'Going Romance' Groningen 2008. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 215-231. https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.2.12pra

Pratas, Fernanda (2012a): "'I know the answer': a Perfect State in Capeverdean", in Irene Franco / Sara Lusini / Andrés Saab (eds.), Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2010 - Selected papers from 'Going Romance 24' Leiden 2010. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 65-86. https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.4.04pra

Pratas, Fernanda (2012b): CV Words: oral data from Cape Verde (with Helderyse Rendall). http://cvwords.org/

Pratas, Fernanda (2014): "The Perfective, the Progressive and the (dis)closure of situations: comment on the paper by María J. Arche", Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 32(3), 833-853. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-014-9236-x

Ramchand, Gillian Catriona (2018): Situations and Syntactic Structures: Rethinking Auxiliaries and Order in English. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Ritter, Elizabeth / Martina Wiltschko (2014): "The composition of INFL: an exploration of tense, tenseless languages, and tenseless constructions", Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 32, 1331-1386. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-014-9248-6

Silva, Izione Santos (1985): Variation and Change in the Verbal System of Capeverdean Crioulo. Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, Ann Arbor.

Silva, Izione Santos (1990): "Tense and Aspect in Capeverdean Crioulo", in John Victor Singler (ed.), Pidgin and Creole Tense-Mood-Aspect Systems. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 143-168. https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.6

Smith, Carlota (1991): The Parameter of Aspect. New York: Kluwer.

Smith, Carlota (1997): The Parameter of Aspect. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Smith, Carlota (2007): "Tense and temporal interpretation", Lingua 117, 419-436.

Stowell, Tim (2014): "Capturing simultaneity: a commentary on the paper by Hamida Demirdache and Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria", Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 32(3), 897-915. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-014-9241-0

Suzuki, Miki (1994): "The markers in Cape Verdean CP." Unpublished manuscript, CUNY.

Swolkien, Dominika (2014): The Cape Verdean Creole of São Vicente: its genesis and structure. Ph.D. dissertation, Universidade de Coimbra. https://estudogeral.sib.uc.pt/jspui/bitstream/10316/27018/1/The%20Cape%20Verdean%20Creole.pdf

Szabó, Zoltán (2008): "Things in progress", Philosophical Perspectives 22, 499-525.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1520-8583.2008.00155.x

Veiga, Manuel (1995): O Crioulo de Cabo Verde: Introdução a Gramática. Praia: Instituto Nacional do Livro e do Disco, Instituto Nacional da Cultura.

Vendler, Zeno (1957): "Verbs and times", The Philosophical Review 66(2), 143-160. http://semantics.uchicago.edu/scalarchange/vendler57.pdf

Verkuyl, Henk J (1999): "Tense, aspect, and aspectual composition", in Mila Dimitrova-Vulchanova / Lars Hellan (eds.), Topics in south Slavic syntax and semantics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 125-162.

Vlach, Frank (1981): "The semantics of the progressive", in Philip Tedeschi / Annie Zaenen (eds.), Syntax and semantics 14: Tense and aspect. New York: Academic Press, 271-292.