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A corpus-based two-level model of situation aspect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2004

ZHONGHUA XIAO
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
ANTHONY McENERY
Affiliation:
Lancaster University

Abstract

In this paper we will extend Smith's (1997) two-component aspect theory to develop a two-level model of situation aspect in which situation aspect is modelled as verb classes at the lexical level and as situation types at the sentential level. Situation types are the composite result of the rule-based interaction between verb classes and complements, arguments, peripheral adjuncts and viewpoint aspect at the nucleus, core and clause levels. With a framework consisting of a lexicon, a layered clause structure and a set of rules mapping verb classes onto situation types, the model is developed and tested using an English corpus and a Chinese corpus.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2004 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

We are obliged to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for funding some of the work presented in this paper (Grant reference No. RES-000-220128). We would also like to thank the anonymous referees of the Journal of Linguistics, as well as Jim Miller, for kindly commenting on an earlier version of this paper. An earlier, shorter version of this paper was presented at the 5th Chronos Colloquium on Tense and Aspect, held in Groningen in June 2002, and a rudimentary version of our two-level aspect model was published in Journal of Universal Language3.2, pp. 139–177.