Aspectual features in Role and Reference GrammarA layered proposal

  1. Cortés-Rodríguez, Francisco J.
Revista:
Revista española de lingüística aplicada

ISSN: 0213-2028

Año de publicación: 2014

Volumen: 27

Volumen: 1

Páginas: 23-53

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.1075/RESLA.27.1.02COR DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Otras publicaciones en: Revista española de lingüística aplicada

Resumen

The kernel of the semantic representation of a predicate in Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) is based on its characterization in terms of an Aktionsart typology based on Vendler’s (1957) classes plus some additional elements from Smith (1997) and Dowty (1979). This means that event structures are mainly considered a lexical phenomenon pertaining to predicates, and only occasionally higher predicational structures are considered in event construction. Even though this approach is adequate to a great extent, there are still some problems in the approach taken in RRG. The most significant drawback is that non-lexical aspects appear intermingled with predicate-only features, which leads to misinterpretations and misclassifications of predicates. Consequently, it sees more sensible to bring a functional model of grammar like RRG to a compromise position and, thus, consider in what ways different units identified as belonging to the different layers in RRG’s syntactic projections ‘conspire’ in the final aspectual characterization of events. In this line, this paper will propose a classification of aspectual features in terms of the levels found in the functional projection of the clause as devised in RRG, namely the Predicate Level (the domain of Aktionsart typology), the Nucleus (where morphological aspect has scope) and the Core (the locus for what will be described as ‘aspectuality’ features).

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Francisco José Cortés Rodríguez is Professor of English Language and Linguistics in the Department of English and German Philology, University of La Laguna, Spain. He has been the Head of the Institute for Linguistics ‘Andrés Bello’ and is currently Head of the Master on Linguistics Applied to Language Technologies and Text Management in the University of La Laguna. His areas of research interests are word-formation, lexical structure, the interaction between lexis and grammar within functional and cognitive models, synchronic and diachronic lexicology and computational linguistics. He has over 70 publications on these topics in several academic journals and books. In addition to his published research, Francisco José Cortés Rodríguez has been invited to give doctoral-level courses and colloquia at other universities including the Universities of Las Palmas, UNED (Madrid), University of Leipzig and Pontificia Universidad Católica of Santiago de Chile, among others. He has also been the head of various research projects and is currently leading a research project on the development of lexical and constructional templates in English and Spanish, and their application in multilingual cross-linguistic information retrieval systems, which has been funded by the Spanish Government (grant no. FFI2011-29798-C02-02).

Financiadores

    • FFI2011-29798-C02-02

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