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本論文藉由分析三十二位主修英語的研究生所寫的克漏字測驗以及引導寫作來探討其使用完成式的情形。文中的討論主要涵蓋了三個面向：語言形式和語意之間的連結，語法體(grammatical aspect)與情狀體(lexical aspect)之間的關聯，以及語法體與篇章組織(discourse organization)之間的關係。本篇研究發現，進階學習者能將完成式的語言形式正確使用，但是似乎仍未能達到高度的適當使用(appropriate use)。此外，研究發現學習者有使用完成式的動詞似乎偏向於其語意中帶有終點(endpoint)或結果狀態(result state)的類別，此項發現並支持之前文獻的研究結果。最後，結果亦顯示學習者在篇章中所使用的完成式似乎具有情景建立的功能(scene-setting function)，幫助他們在文章的開頭建立起背景。 / This study aims to explore the advanced learners’ use of the perfect aspect from the perspectives of form-meaning matching, lexical aspect influence and discourse organization influence. Thirty-two English-majored graduate students participated in the present study and they had to complete two tasks: a cloze test and a composition. With a careful examination over the collected data, these advanced learners’ use of the perfect aspect could be summarized as the following. First of all, they showed better formal accuracy than appropriate use of the perfect aspect. Although they presented more underuse in the task of cloze, they had more overuse in their compositions. Secondly, it was found that the perfect aspect was closely related to the verbs involving a semantic endpoint. These verbs, according to Vendler’s classification, are ACCOMPLISHMENTS and ACHIEVEMENTS. Finally, the learners in the present study showed a tendency of using the perfect aspect as the scene-setting function in the opening paragraph of their compositions.

This dissertation explores the interaction between modality and aspect in Makkan Arabic (MA). There is some consensus in the semantic literature regarding the treatment of modal expressions that may obtain various flavours, such as epistemic, deontic, bouletic, ability, necessity or teleological. These various modal flavours can be captured by a unified lexical entry, and are identified by contextual factors Kratzer (1977, 1981, 1991, 2012). There is some debate regarding the structural location of modal elements, some of which have been argued to be high (the case of epistemic modals) and others low (the case of root modals) (e.g. Cinque (1999)). The relative scope of modals has been subject of much recent work on modality, in particular in relation to their interaction with temporal categories such as aspect. This thesis investigates this topic on the basis of novel data from MA. I observe that the flavour of modality can change depending on how it is inflected with different types of aspect in MA. This observation is in line of Hacquard; Hacquard; Hacquard’s (2006; 2009; 2014) proposal for French and Italian. In MA, when the root modal \gdr\ “can” is inflected with the perfective, the combination yields entailments that have come to be known in the literature as ‘actuality entailments’ (AEs) (see Bhatt (1999, 2006)). In this case, the speaker gives rise to the inference that the proposition expressed by the complement holds in the actual world (instead of merely in some possible but not actual world). My thesis integrates the case of \gdr\ to current cross-linguistic debates on this topic. Building on Hacquard’s work, I argue that AEs are generated when perfective aspect scopes over root modals. Perfective aspect links events to the actual world. Imperfective aspect scoping over the modal fails to generate AEs. My thesis ex- ii tends the investigation of AEs to non-perfective cases. I argue that in addition to the contrast between perfective and imperfective, MA also distinguishes perfect aspect (e.g. an auxiliary plus a modal participle like gaadir). I suggest that the perfect in MA has several shapes, including the choice between two auxiliaries: kaan and saar. I link the different shapes of the perfect to the different types of interpretation identified by Portner (2000, 2003) for the English perfect. I suggest that in MA, different forms of the perfect are linked to distinct interpretations (which in English are grouped together under one form). In addition I show that, contrary to what has been argued by Hacquard for French, the perfect in MA can give rise to AEs in the case of the saar auxiliary. I develop an analysis of the saar perfect that is inspired by Hacquard’s proposal for perfective: in the case of saar, contrary to kaan, the perfect links the eventuality to the actual world. While the discussion of AEs in relation to the modal \gdr\ are linked to the proposal that aspect scopes over the modal, I also examine the case of a modal expression that scopes over aspect: qad “might”. I show that in spite of the fact that aspect scopes below the modal, the contrast between perfective and imperfective in the embedded clause can still give rise to differences in the generation of AEs. This case is interesting because much previous literature on AEs has focused on languages in which aspect scopes over the modal. MA qad provides an example where the modal scopes over aspect, and it is still the case that AEs appear to be generated. In spite of the structural differences with \gdr\, my analysis of qad builds on Hacquard’s proposal for AEs with the perfective, appealing to her proposal for the ‘preservation of event description’ to account for the fact that properties of eventualities can remain stable across worlds. The structure of the thesis is as follows: Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the empirical domain, situating aspect and modality in the description of MA; in addition it iii provides an introduction to key theoretical concepts to be used in later chapters. Chapter 2 discusses AEs in the case of the root modal \gdr\, comparing perfective and imperfective. Chapter 3 extends the discussion of the modal to examples with the perfect, distinguishing between the kaan- and saar- perfects. Chapter 4 investigates the behaviour of qad and its interaction with perfective and imperfective complements. Chapter 5 offers a brief summary and concluding remarks.