Tense, Relevance, Aspect, and Voice
Linguistics 322
Intermediate Syntax
The grammatical
category of tense in English is a bipolar relation based on the
feature [±Past]. [+Past] (the so-called present tense)
refers to any eventuality that occurs before the speech event
(the moment of speaking) and [-Past] to any other eventuality.
The present tense includes eventualities which may happen in the
future. In English, future is not a grammatical category (tense).
Certain modal auxiliaries such as will
and shall point to the future, but they do not
constitute tense.
What constitutes
aspect is a matter of definition. Most linguists call the progressive
from in English aspect. The progressive is formed with the auxiliary
verb be and the ending -ing:
(!) Henry is reading a book.
In a bipolar feature system, the progressive is [+Prog], and the non-progressive is [-Prog]. The non-progressive is unmarked:
(2) Henry reads a book.
Not all linguists
agree that the perfect is an aspect. The perfect construction
is formed with the auxiliary verb have and a set of endings
which are most frequently -ed
,-t,
-d, or -en:
(3) Henry has read a book.
(4) Henry has written an article.
(5) Henry has burned his manuscript.
The function of the perfect is to relate a past action as relevant to the present or to another eventuality.
Voice is distinct
from tense and aspect. Voice is the most complex construction
conceptually. English has two voices: the active and the passive.
In bipolar terms: [±passive]. Only transitive verbs can
be marked in the passive voice. All verbs with the exception of
a few idioms occur in the active voice. The passive voice is marked
with the auxiliary verb be and the ending -ed
,-t:,
-d, or -en::
(6) The book was read by Henry.
(7) The book was written by Henry.
(8) Henry's manuscript was burned.
Tense, relevance,
aspect, and voice are logical modifiers of the verb. Formally,
they function as operators. Operators have special properties
which may cause features to be copied from a source node to a
target node. (See transformational
processes). There are two types of operators: strong and non-strong
(weak). Strong operators contain the feature [+Strong] which blocks
feature copying downwards (extraction of features). In English
tense operators are non-strong and do not block feature copying
In languages like German, they are strong The question operator
(see sense and reference.htm)
is nearly always strong in English.
Go to question
operator to read about questions in English.
The underlying
from of tense is based on the head T (tense). T may take a VP
as its complement as in sentence (2) repeated here as (9):
Up until the late 80's the (surface) subject occurred a specifier of T. Later we considered it adjoined to T. We now consider the subject to be the head of the subject node (S for Subject) (see Subject: Head of SP). The features of the subject NP are copied from their underlying position within VP (see 322.Raising):
Note that there is no phonological (morphological) form assigned to to T:[-Past] because [-Past] needs a verbal host. When this happens, the original position of T is spelled out as NULL. This formed cannot be determined until T is adjoined to V. It is the host that determines which class of tense and aspect operators will be adjoined to them. What follows now is very controversial. We could claim that T is lowered to the closest acceptable host for tense, which in this case is V. However, we will claim that the grammatical features of T are copied to V, which T must govern. V must function as a host for the grammatical features of tense. Neither NP, N, AP, A, PP nor P can function as a host for tense in English:
Chomsky rants and raves against lowering, although he had adopted it in 1989. His solution requires more machinery that I am prepared to introduced at this point. At S-structure (surface structure) T is a trace. This is illegal. A trace cannot c-command its antecedent. It is here where the problem of lowering occurs. In 1989 Chomsky found a way go get around this. It involves raising in Logical Form (LF). Raising in LF is to be covered later. Chomsky, however, has not explicitly addressed the issue of copying features downward, which we will do here.
The features of aspect, perfect, and voice are similarly copied. They too leave illegal traces. The only problem left is ordering. In English, tense dominates relevance which dominates progressive which dominates passive:
(10). Tense > Perfect > Progressive > Passive.
This hierarchy determines the word order in such a sentence as:
(11). The students have been being tested for an hour now.
Tense consists
of a binary pair: [±Past]. [+Past] refers to an eventuality
that occurred before the speech event. [-Past] includes the present
and the future as they do not occur before the speech event.
There is one true aspect in English: the progressive aspect. It consists of a binary pair: [±Prog]. [+Prog] is always spelled out with the suffix '-ing'. [-Prog] has no form. If a sentence does not contain the auxiliary verb be plus a verb with the suffix '-ing' it is [-Prog]. [+Prog] indicates that an eventuality is in progress; it is taking place. It has not been completed. [-Prog] marks nothing but usually indicates an eventuality that is not currently taking place.
The perfect is binary as well: [±Perf]. [+Perf] marks one event as relevant to another event:
[+Perf] is marked by the non-progressive morpheme and the auxiliary verb have. [-Perf] is not marked in English. The lack of the perfect construction signals an eventuality that is not relevant to any particular point in time (as far as the speaker is concerned).
Voice is binary also: [±Pass]. [+Pass] is the feature we use to designate the passive voice, [-Pass] to designate the active voice. [+Pass] is marked by the non-progressive morpheme and the auxiliary verb be. Only transitive verbs may occur in the passive voice. All verbs occur in the active voice.
Relevance
Relevance is grammatical category of English that marks from the speaker's point of view whether a targeted clause is relevant to the speech event or to some other event either prior to or after the speech event. Relavance is marked by the suffix set {-en, ed, d, t, [NULL]}. Probably more charfacteristic of this construction the insertion of the dummy verb HAVE. The binary feature pair of relevance is [±Perf]:
(14) John ate dinner.
(15) John has eaten dinner.
(14) is [-Perf]. and (15) is [+Perf]. IOn (15) the speaker is indicating that the eventualtiy of John eating dinner is relevant to the speech event. If a point in time marks when John ate dinner, then the speech event cannot be seen as the target of relevance:
(16) *John has eaten dinner at 8.
(17) John ate dinner at 8.
Tense and [+Rel]
All sentences are marked for tense. We shall claim that all sentences are marked for relevance, as well. The features of an operator are binary. [-Rel] means that the referential eventuality is not seen by the speaker as relevant to the speech event or some other eventuality. In this case [-Rel] requires no host and is spelled-out as [NULL]. As we have seen above [+Rel] requires a verbal host. Consider (13) above again. The tense of the eventuality is [-Past] which requires a verbal host as does [+Rel].
English contains a parameter that only one inflectional affix may be added to a stem. Consider the following diagram:
(19)
Since [+Rel] requires a verbal host, the feature is copied to the verb. But wh hwat happens to T which also requires a verbal host? The oarameter block it from being copied to the verb. In this case, there exist a last restort strategy. The last resort is to insert a dummy verb, called an auxiliary verb. As the word implies, a last resort is used only if other options fail as in this case.
There are three dummy (auxiliary) verbs in English: do, have, be. One of these is inserted; here have is selected. Before we cover the selection process another problems remains. The order of applying the rules that satisfy the need for a verbal host. If we start from the bottom (the verb) and go up, the feature [+Rel] is copied first thus blocking the verb.
However, for reasons that we will cover later, rules must apply from the first operator and proceed to each complement of the operator and then to the operator in the complement if one exists. Assuming this to be the case, the host feature tense must be satisfied first. Theoretically, this could go through Relevance and be copied to the verb, thus blocking the copying of the feture [+Past] to the verb. But this is what does not happen:
(15). I [-Past] [+Rel] finish it.
(16). *I had finish it.
The correct form is:
(17). I have finihsed it.
(18) The copying of host features
The features of A are coied to B iff
a) A requires B as a host,
b) A c-commands B, and
c) there is no intervening node C such that C requires B as a host.
The
non-progressive morpheme is a set of allomorphs that have a double
function. It is used to from the passive voice or the perfect.
In the former the auxiliary verb be
is used; in the latter the auxiliary verb have
is used:
Sentence (16) is marked with both the perfect and the passive voice. The forms in red are perfect, the forms in blue are passive.
Chains
If the tail of link A is the head of link B, then the two links form a chain. Information (features) is passed through chains. Information does not normally pass beyond a chain. However, it may become necessary to link two or more chain together. In such a case we get an extended chain.
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