Volume 74, Issue 3-4 - Special Issue: The role of the lexicon in actionality; Issue Editors: Thera Marie Crane, Johanna Nichols and Bastian Persohn

Actionality (also referred to by labels such as “lexical aspect” or “aktionsart”) is the semantic dimension that encodes the constituent phases and boundaries of situations. Despite its central role in aspectual interpretation, careful language-specific descriptions and typological surveys of actional systems have been rare thus far. In this introduction, we describe the steps that lead to the compilation of the present special issue. We discuss several theoretical and methodological challenges that both field linguists and typologists face when investigating actional systems in the languages of the world and we point out some of the important insights to be gained from such endeavors. We then proceed to give an overview of the individual and varied contributions that make up this issue.

The interaction of lexical actionality with grammatical aspect is explained in a comprehensive system, based on the “degree of temporal dynamics” of simple and complex actional classes and of the various functions, expressed by aspect grammemes (extended ILA model, focus aspect). Then a new conceptualization of less frequent aspect phenomena is presented. A novelty is the differentiation of focus aspect from status aspect, characterized by habitualization and the transformation of telic events into atelic activities. Argument structures are claimed to be responsible for class changes, especially with respect to the incorporative (INCO) class, combining activity, telicity and a subsequent state.

This paper documents the properties and realizations of the actional (aspectual, Aktionsart ) class of two-phase verbs, with a particular focus on languages with inflectional (obligatory) grammatical aspect. The paper adopts a descriptive (non-formal) and typological perspective. Two-phase verbs are defined, for the purposes of the paper, as verbs whose inflectional (obligatory) aspect grams (e.g., imperfective, progressive, etc.) can express both the durative phase of the situation leading up to the culmination, as well as the durative phase resulting from that culmination. The realizations of the class in perfective-imperfective languages are compared to realizations in two languages with idiosyncratic aspect systems, Belhare and Nyakyusa.

The framework proposed in the works of Robert Botne and Tiffany Kershner has been widely used to classify verbs in Bantu languages. In this framework, verbs encode events which consist of maximally three phases: onset (represents the coming-to-be phase), nucleus (represents the state change itself; can also be represented as a coming-to-be phase if the verb lacks an onset) and coda (represents the result-state phase). Hence, verbs are defined depending on which phases they encode and whether particular phases are punctual or durative. The phasal structures of verbs can be diagnosed using various tests. The application of these diagnostics to Nyamwezi (a Tanzanian Bantu language, [nym]) produces three significant variations. First, Botne and Kershner’s conception of statives as events with no phasal structure is not tenable in Nyamwezi. The tests show that in Nyamwezi, statives have structure. Second, some classes described in Botne and Kershner do not occur in Nyamwezi. Third, in Botne and Kershner’s works, classes are described depending on whether particular phases are punctual or durative. In addition to this characteristic, the classes in Nyamwezi can also be described depending on whether particular phases are dynamic or static, and whether the result state is permanent or reversible.

Temporal/aspectual morphology often serves as a diagnostic for actional classes. Bantu languages are known for their highly developed tense, aspect (and mood) systems. The East Ruvu Bantu languages of Tanzania are unusual in that they exhibit a decidedly reduced set of temporal/aspectual morphemes. This paper contributes to the growing body of research on Bantu actionality in showing that despite not being encoded overtly, perfective distinguishes between at least two actional classes. We suggest, however, that imperfective, morphologically encoded by present and non-past tense morphology, does not clearly delineate between the two verb classes. This discussion highlights the complex interaction between tense and aspect.

This paper explores the verbal system of Tundra Nenets and offers a partition of the entire set of derivationally minimal verbs into actional classes, which include stative, process, inceptive-stative, ingressive-atelic, durative and punctual telic, durative and punctual ingressive, and bi-telic verbs. This classification is established in a bottom-up manner, starting from the lowest level of actional interpretations of individual subparadigms of a verb. As a result, 18 subparadigmatic classes are established. At the next stage, an actional characteristic is assigned to the entire paradigm and the 18 subparadigmatic classes are reduced to seven actional macroclasses. However, at the paradigmatic level, one discovers that for certain types of verbs actional information available paradigm-internally does not suffice. To recover the missing information, one needs to examine derivationally related lexical items that realize semantic configurations unavailable paradigm-internally. This paradigm-external perspective leads to the recognition of cross-paradigmatic actional characteristics assigned to groups of derivationally related verbs.

This paper describes the aspectual classes in Abui, a Papuan language of the Timor-Alor-Pantar family. Abui innovated a system of aspectual stem pairing, realized by consonant mutation, vowel grading, and rime mutation. Although stem pairing is widespread (about 61% of the verbs alternate), about 38% of our 1,330 verb sample are unpaired and immutable. Abui verbal stems combine with aspectual affixes, adverbs and auxiliary verbs, whose distribution is used here together with the stem types to describe aspectual classes, which are understood as lexicalizations of transitional possibilities of lexical items (e.g. inchoative-stative vs. inchoative-gradual.inchoative-stative). The paper takes the bidimensional approach to aspect distinguishing between properties associated with the perfective-imperfective system and other aspectual marking (cf. Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 2002. Recent activity in the theory of aspect: accomplishments, achievements, or just non-progressive state? Linguistic Typology 6(2). 199–271). Combining the features of both types of aspectual marking, we construct in a bottom-up fashion the aspectual classes in Abui and also show that these may be further refined if contextual features such as valency or degree of change (affectedness) were included. A characteristic feature of the Abui system is the elaborate system of stative-inchoative verbs sensitive to scalar and change properties (e.g. instant vs. gradual). Abui telic verbs show sensitivity to the properties of the resulting state and are formally associated with stem alternation.