[PLing] Online talk by Maarten Bogaards (Leiden) on 17 June, 15:00

[Iva Kovač]

Dear PLing members,

I would like to invite you to the upcoming online talk by Maarten 
Bogaards (Leiden University) titled "Where does Viewpoint Aspect Merge? 
Evidence from Aspectual Coercion" (see below for the abstract), taking 
place on Monday, 17 June 2024, at 15:00h, in the scope of the FWF 
project Implicational hierarchies in clausal complementation (PI Susi 
Wurmbrand).

To attend the talk, please use the following link: 
https://univienna.zoom.us/j/63604210351?pwd=uIe62srG3NaF9Ujzd6jLh3WYFOpdPV.1

I/we look forward to seeing many of you there!

Best,
Iva Kovač

***

Where does Viewpoint Aspect Merge? Evidence from Aspectual Coercion
Maarten Bogaards (Leiden University)

One major question in Comparative Syntax is how functional projections 
articulating TAME distinctions are distributed over the clausal spine 
(i.a., Cinque 1999; Laca 2004; Ramchand & Svenonius 2014; Yan & Yuan 
2024). For instance, Fukuda (2012) identified two positions for 
aspectual verbs in Japanese--one above and one below little _v_/Voice. 
And for English, Harwood (2015) and Ramchand (2018) have argued that the 
Progressive and Perfect merge, respectively, within and outside of the 
_v_/Voice domain.

Focusing on viewpoint aspect (progressive, continuative, prospective, 
etc.), this talk discusses a previously unnoticed phenomenon involving 
aspectual coercion, which I'll argue sheds some light on the 'big 
question' above. Aspectual coercion--a.k.a. aspect shift--occurs when 
there's a mismatch between a viewpoint aspect construction and its input 
(de Swart 1998). Take continuative aspect (e.g., English [_keep 
_V-_ing_] in (1a), [V _on_] in (1b)), which has a durative selectional 
restriction. Embedding a non-durative (i.e., Achievement) verb such as 
_arrive_ results in a mismatch which can normally be repaired via 
iterative coercion: (2a) necessarily denotes repeated 'arriving' events. 
However, despite ostensibly having the same meaning, continuative _on 
_in (2b) blocks aspectual coercion. For ease of reference, I term the 
type of contrast illustrated by (2a-b) Aspectual Coercion Blocking (ACB) 
effects.

(1)
a. The tourists _kept talking_.
b. The tourists _talked on_.

(2)
a. The tourists _kept arriving_.
b. *The tourists _arrived on_.

ACB effects are not restricted to English, nor to continuative aspect; I 
observe that they're also found in Mandarin Chinese and in Dutch, and 
across various types of viewpoint aspect--including progressive, 
ingressive and prospective aspect. The proposal outlined in this talk 
holds that ACB effects fall out naturally from a particular style of 
verbal decomposition (i.a., Travis 2010; Lu et al. 2019; Sybesma 2021). 
Drawing on evidence from distribution, licensing and intervention 
effects, I argue that ACB effects are a reflex of merge _within_ the 
articulation of big VP, when the syntactic correlates of inner aspect 
are still being built up. A general consequence of this proposal is that 
viewpoint aspect markers are distributed over not two but three distinct 
clausal zones: not just (i) above _v/_Voice and (ii) below _v_/Voice (as 
commonly assumed), but also (iii) within the direct extension of VP, 
responsible for the computation of inner aspect.
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