no / In two experiments, we investigated whether 4- to 5-year-old children's ability to demonstrate their understanding of aspectuality was influenced by how the test question was phrased. In Experiment 1, 60 children chose whether to look or feel to gain information about a hidden object (identifiable by sight or touch). Test questions referred either to the perceptual aspect of the hidden object (e.g., whether it was red or blue), the modality dimension (e.g., what colour it was), or the object's identity (e.g., which one it was). Children who heard the identity question performed worse than those who heard the aspect or dimension question. Further investigation in Experiment 2 (N= 23) established that children's difficulty with the identity question was not due to a problem recalling the objects. We discuss how the results of these methodological investigations impact on researchers’ assessment of the development of aspectuality understanding.

no / We investigated whether 6-year-olds’ understanding of perceptual aspectuality was sufficiently robust to deal with the presence of irrelevant information. A total of 32 children chose whether to look or feel to locate a specific object (identifiable by sight or touch) from four objects that were hidden. In half of the trials, the objects were different on only one modality (e.g., four objects that felt different but were the same color). In the remainder of the trials, the objects also differed (partially) on one irrelevant modality (e.g., four objects that felt different, two red and two blue, where the goal was to locate the soft object). Performance was worse on the latter trials. We discuss children’s difficulty in dealing with irrelevant information.

Ce travail offre une nouvelle perspective sur l’analyse de l’imperfectivité dans la presse espagnole. Le point de départ pour cette analyse est la catégorie sémantico-fonctionnelle de l’aspectualité qui peut être exprimée en espagnol par l’aspect, aktionsart, des adverbes, des périphrases verbales, etc. Sur la base de l’imperfectivité comme une catégorie sémantico-fonctionnelle, qui comprend tous les moyens possibles pour exprimer l’indétermination sémantique comme l’imparfait(cantaba), le présent (canta), ESTAR+GERUNDIO, etc., il est possible d’établir un lien sémantique avec d’autres catégories sémantiques comme la temporalité, la modalité et l’évidentialité où le point central de ce chevauchement est constitué par la perspective du locuteur, à partir de laquelle il formule son énoncé, ce qui est associé à sa subjectivité dans le choix, par exemple, d’une forme verbale imperfective(cantaba) dans des contextes où devrait apparaître une forme verbale perfective(cantó) : El valor total […] ascendía a unos 5.950 euros.Bien que, dans certains contextes, cette décision puisse être expliquée de façon grammaticale, dans d’autres contextes (textes journalistiques) cela ne semble pas être le cas parce que le locuteur se sert de l’indétermination sémantique exprimée par le pretérito imperfecto pour exprimer ses énoncés avec une intention,par exemple, pour signaler une distanciation, une reprise d’énoncés, etc.À cause de son indétermination sémantique, l’imperfectivité se rapproche d’autres fonctions sémantiques comme la modalité épistémique et l’évidentialité indirecte qui permettent de donner à une situation un caractère ‘ouvert’ ou ‘indéterminé’ pour exprimer par exemple une supposition, la reprise d’une citation ou la distanciation du locuteur face à ce qui a dit. / The aim of this study is to analyse the use of imperfectivity in the Spanishpress. The point of departure for this analysis is the semantic-functional category ofaspectuality which can be expressed in Spanish by diverse linguistic means likegrammatical aspect, Aktionsarten, adverbs, verbal periphrases, etc. By consideringimperfectivity as a semantic-functional category, which comprises all the possiblelinguistic means to express semantic indeterminacy like the Spanish imperfecto(cantaba), presente (canta), ESTAR+GERUNDIO, etc., a semantic relation to othercategories such as temporality, modality and evidentiality can be made. Thesecategories interplay with the speaker’s stance in expressing an utterance, which isassociated with subjectivity. For example, an imperfective verb form (cantaba) maybe chosen in contexts where the perfective verb form (cantó) is expected to appear:El valor total […] ascendía a unos 5.950 euros (‘The total value […] rose (imperfecto)to some 5.950 euros’).Although in some contexts the use of the imperfective verb form isgrammatically motivated, there are other contexts where this is not the case, e.g. injournalistic texts. The speaker takes advantage of the semantic indeterminacy of theSpanish imperfecto cantaba with a specific intention like showing distance from theutterance or reproducing an utterance made by third parties, etc.Thus imperfectivity, due to its semantic indeterminacy, relates to othersemantic functions like epistemic modality and indirect evidentiality by which asituation is presented as open and undetermined, e.g. the expression of asupposition, or a quotation, or a speaker’s distance from his utterance.

No / In two experiments, we investigated whether having prior experience of objects influenced young children's ability to solve a metacognitive search task, based on the objects' perceptual properties. In Experiment 1, 100 children (mean age 77months) chose whether to look or feel to locate one of two hidden balls (identifiable by sight or touch). Before choosing, children were told about the balls' perceptual properties (i.e. their colour and feel'), and/or saw and touched them, or had no pre-trial experience of them at all. Children who only had self-directed contact with the balls performed best, but children who heard the objects described by an adult performed relatively poorly. In Experiment 2, 116 children (mean age 72months) either heard only relevant, relevant and irrelevant, or no information about the objects before completing the task. Verbal descriptions of the balls (whether or not they contained irrelevant information) caused children difficulties.

Using English and the West-African creole language Krio as the objects of investigation, this study proposes an analysis in which verbs and the paradigms pertaining to verbs are conceived of as being the only direct carriers of linguistic time encoding. The fundamental assumption is that nominals encode substance, be it concrete or abstract, and that verbals encode abstract substance with time.The theoretical backdrop is provided by Derek Bickerton's Roots of Language (1981) and "The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis" (1984) in which he proposes a set of conceptually fundamental distinctions. These distinctions: the state/process; the durative/punctual; the realis/irrealis; and the anterior/non-anterior; are discussed in relation to four dynamicity values of verbal nuclei: stative; processive; eventive; and telic. These are proposed by the present author, but draw on Bernard Comrie's aspectual analysis in Aspect (1976).Three different layers of analysis are put forward: (1) the nucleic, which consists of the verbal carrying the meaning core of a situation; (2) the verbal constituency, in which we find all TMA encoding, that is, the tense, mood and aspect of the situation; and (3) the (verbal) situation, which is conceived of as a superordinate, maximum unit of description.It is argued that the dynamicity value of the verbal nucleus to a large extent determines and limits the possible aspectual, modal and temporal interpretations of the situation. / digitalisering@umu

Mluvčí typologicky odlišných jazyků volí různé strategie při popisu stejné události v závislosti na dostupných jazykově-specifických gramatických prostředcích. Tyto strategie se projevují např. různými způsoby konceptualizace událostních rámců bě- hem jazykového vyjádření, ale v nejazykové kognici. Jedním z jevů, které byly v této souvislosti zaznemány, jsou jazykově specifické způsoby gestikulace doprovázející mluvené popisy událostí, které reflektují (či manifestují) tělesně ukotvená konceptuál- ní schémata, na nichž naše vnímání událostí stojí. Tématem této práce je multimodální konstruování (construal) událostí v češtině a v angličtině. Konkrétně se práce zaměřuje na spojitosti mezi formálními rysy gest (způsob pohybu a jeho zakončení) a sémantické rysy, které konstituují tzv. aspektuální kontury událostí (konstruování časového a kvalitativního průběhu události). První část prezentovaného výzkumu tvoří analýza materiálu z českého a anglického multimodální korpusu. Oba použité korpusy obsahují nahrávky spontánních pro- jevů v interakcích zachycených během pracovních jednání v akademickém prostředí. Kvantitativní analýzy (metoda tzv. klasifikačních stromů a náhodných lesů) ukázala, že a) v angličtině je významným prediktorem výskytu gest s rysem ukončenosti aktion- sartová kategorie achievement...

The dissertation deals with semantic relations between adjectives and deadjectival verbs in Czech. It focuses on the question how the property scale conveyed by adjectives is encoded in the semantics of deadjectival verbs. After the first chapter which presents the topic of the dissertation, in the second chapter, I describe the theoretical and methodological context of contemporary linguistics from a broader perspective in order to relate the theoretical and methodological procedures present in this paper to the current linguistic development. The third chapter pursues the semantics of adjectives in Czech and various approaches to their classification. It presents a scalar classification of adjectives according to which adjectives denote a scale of some property, i.e. an ordered set of degrees along a dimension. With support of empirical research (based on a questionnaire survey and corpus data) I show that it is possible to implement the scalar model into the description of Czech adjectives. This approach states that adjectives are one of many means in language that serve to express measurement (and attribute it to objects and individuals). At the end of the chapter, I propose a classification of Czech adjectives and generalize prototypical semantics of adjectival classes by vector constructions...