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Umeå Studies in the Humanities 134Towards a Semantics of Linguistic TimeExploring Some Basic Time Concepts with Special Reference to English and Krioby Johan Nordlander |
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Pris: SEK 167 + postage.
 beställ! SWEDISH SCIENCE PRESS Box 118 SE-751 04 Uppsala SWEDEN Telefon: +46 (0)18-36 55 66 Fax: +46 (0)18-36 52 77 ISSN 0345-0155 ISBN 91-7191-261-4 |
Using English and the West-African creole language Krio as the objects of investigation, this study proposes an analysis in which verbs and the paradigms pertaining to verbs are conceived of as being the only direct carriers of linguistic time encoding. The fundamental assumption is that nominals encode substance, be it concrete or abstract, and that verbals encode abstract substance with time.
Three different layers of analysis are put forward: (1) the nucleic, which consists of the verbal carrying the meaning core of a situation; (2) the verbal constituency, in which we find all TMA encoding, that is, the tense, mood and aspect of the situation; and (3) the (verbal) situation, which is conceived of as a superordinate, maximum unit of description. It is argued that the dynamicity value of the verbal nucleus to a large extent determines and limits the possible aspecutal, modal and temporal interpretations of the situation.
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