Grammatical aspect in Polish and the perception of event duration

Earlier research showed that the progressive aspect in Dutch extends duration estimations for short events and shortens the perception of inherently medium and long events. In the study reported here, we conducted an experiment examining whether the same effect can be observed in Polish, a language...

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Main Author: Wojciech Milczarski
Format: Article
Language:deu
Published: Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT 2021-12-01
Series:Beiträge zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft
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Online Access:https://beitraege-contributions.pl/articles/10/04_milczarski.pdf
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author Wojciech Milczarski
author_facet Wojciech Milczarski
author_sort Wojciech Milczarski
collection DOAJ
description Earlier research showed that the progressive aspect in Dutch extends duration estimations for short events and shortens the perception of inherently medium and long events. In the study reported here, we conducted an experiment examining whether the same effect can be observed in Polish, a language with a morphologically realised perfective vs. imperfective distinction. We confronted two views on grammatical aspect. The first one postulates that English simple past tense verbs of telic predicates introduce a silent PERF operator and that the Polish imperfective is equivalent to the English progressive. According to the second view, there is no PERF operator in simple past clauses in Dutch (and by analogy also in English), while perfective eventualities in Polish should be perceived as shorter than imperfective events which view the event from the inside without imposing any boundaries on its runtime. The results of this study show that the second view is more plausible, suggesting that languages vary in the interpretation of event duration depending on whether they have a clear grammatical aspect or whether such distinctions are less articulated.
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institution Kabale University
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publishDate 2021-12-01
publisher Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT
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series Beiträge zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft
spelling doaj-art-eb8f7801a4f04ed69568b450b6b5b5f22025-01-20T11:25:34ZdeuOficyna Wydawnicza ATUTBeiträge zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft2299-41222657-47992021-12-0110719610.23817/bzspr.10-4Grammatical aspect in Polish and the perception of event duration Wojciech Milczarski0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8215-5190Uniwersytet WrocławskiEarlier research showed that the progressive aspect in Dutch extends duration estimations for short events and shortens the perception of inherently medium and long events. In the study reported here, we conducted an experiment examining whether the same effect can be observed in Polish, a language with a morphologically realised perfective vs. imperfective distinction. We confronted two views on grammatical aspect. The first one postulates that English simple past tense verbs of telic predicates introduce a silent PERF operator and that the Polish imperfective is equivalent to the English progressive. According to the second view, there is no PERF operator in simple past clauses in Dutch (and by analogy also in English), while perfective eventualities in Polish should be perceived as shorter than imperfective events which view the event from the inside without imposing any boundaries on its runtime. The results of this study show that the second view is more plausible, suggesting that languages vary in the interpretation of event duration depending on whether they have a clear grammatical aspect or whether such distinctions are less articulated.https://beitraege-contributions.pl/articles/10/04_milczarski.pdfpolish grammatical aspectevent durationsemantics
spellingShingle Wojciech Milczarski
Grammatical aspect in Polish and the perception of event duration
Beiträge zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft
polish grammatical aspect
event duration
semantics
title Grammatical aspect in Polish and the perception of event duration
title_full Grammatical aspect in Polish and the perception of event duration
title_fullStr Grammatical aspect in Polish and the perception of event duration
title_full_unstemmed Grammatical aspect in Polish and the perception of event duration
title_short Grammatical aspect in Polish and the perception of event duration
title_sort grammatical aspect in polish and the perception of event duration
topic polish grammatical aspect
event duration
semantics
url https://beitraege-contributions.pl/articles/10/04_milczarski.pdf
work_keys_str_mv AT wojciechmilczarski grammaticalaspectinpolishandtheperceptionofeventduration