Syntax of Aspect

This book investigates the way grammar deals with the representation of aspectual (aktionsart) concepts, focussing on issues of the lexicon-syntax interface. The authors' innovative analyses of this interface significantly advance our understanding of the role that syntax plays in determining verbal meaning, aspectual interpretation, and thematic information. Various theories are developed in this collection, including those that take as their starting point the lexical-syntactic framework of Hale and Keyser, prominent among which is the chapter by Hale and Keyser themselves. By examining different phenomena in a cross-linguistic perspective, this book develops insights into the general theoretical question of universal grammar and acquisition as well as into the specific nature of the lexicon-syntax interface. It is a major contribution to modern syntactic theory.

important contribution to the literature on aspect, argument mapping and interpretation, and the interface between the lexicon and the syntax., an important contribution to the literature on aspect, argument mapping and interpretation, and the interface between the lexicon and the syntax ... this volume offers important insights into the structural and semantic underpinnings of the temporal and thematic properties of predicates, which take into account and are founded on a wealth of data from a range of languages.

Nomi Erteschik-Shir is Associate Professor in the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. Her publications include The Dynamics of Focus Structure (1997). She is writing The Syntax-Discourse Interface: Information Structure (forthcoming in Oxford Surveys in Syntax and Morphology).Tova Rapoport is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. She is currently working on a theory of syntax-driven interpretation, including a book with Nomi Erteschik-Shir on the lexicon-syntax interface, The Atoms of Meaning.