New current relevance in Croatian
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Mateusz-Milan Stanojević
Abstract
Croatian grammarians make conflicting claims about the Croatian aorist. Some consider it a general past tense used with perfective verbs denoting completed past while others believe that it denotes a recent past action. Both accounts focus on one of aorist uses, failing to explain some others, notably future reference. Based on a corpus study and speaker judgments, we claim that the Croatian aorist has a dual role as an aspectual and tense phenomenon expressing epistemic immediacy. We propose an analysis that contrasts an epistemically immediate virtual plane (which includes the aorist) and an epistemically distant virtual plane (which includes the Croatian perfect tense), offering a unified explanation of all aorist uses and fitting in with other Croatian and cross-Slavic data.
Abstract
Croatian grammarians make conflicting claims about the Croatian aorist. Some consider it a general past tense used with perfective verbs denoting completed past while others believe that it denotes a recent past action. Both accounts focus on one of aorist uses, failing to explain some others, notably future reference. Based on a corpus study and speaker judgments, we claim that the Croatian aorist has a dual role as an aspectual and tense phenomenon expressing epistemic immediacy. We propose an analysis that contrasts an epistemically immediate virtual plane (which includes the aorist) and an epistemically distant virtual plane (which includes the Croatian perfect tense), offering a unified explanation of all aorist uses and fitting in with other Croatian and cross-Slavic data.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Acknowledgments ix
- Introduction 1
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Part I. Theoretical foundations
- The definition of modality 21
- The English present 45
- The organization of the German clausal grounding system 87
- Grounding in terms of anchoring relations 109
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Part II. Descriptive application
- Some remarks on the role of the reference point in the construal configuration of “more” and “less” grounding predications 137
- New current relevance in Croatian 159
- Aspect as a scanning device in natural language processing 181
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Part III. Descriptive application
- Imperfective aspect and epistemic modality 217
- Communicating about the past through modality in English and Thai 249
- The epistemic uses of the English simple past and the French imparfait 279
- Name Index 311
- Subject Index 315
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Acknowledgments ix
- Introduction 1
-
Part I. Theoretical foundations
- The definition of modality 21
- The English present 45
- The organization of the German clausal grounding system 87
- Grounding in terms of anchoring relations 109
-
Part II. Descriptive application
- Some remarks on the role of the reference point in the construal configuration of “more” and “less” grounding predications 137
- New current relevance in Croatian 159
- Aspect as a scanning device in natural language processing 181
-
Part III. Descriptive application
- Imperfective aspect and epistemic modality 217
- Communicating about the past through modality in English and Thai 249
- The epistemic uses of the English simple past and the French imparfait 279
- Name Index 311
- Subject Index 315
