Are there prototypical associations between time frames and aspectual values? Evidence from Greek aphasia and healthy ageing

ABSTRACT

Time reference, which has been found to be selectively impaired in agrammatic aphasia, is often interwoven with grammatical aspect. A recent study on Russian aphasia found that time reference and aspect interact: Past reference was less impaired when tested within a perfective aspect context (compared to when tested within an imperfective aspect context), and reference to the non-past was less impaired when tested within an imperfective aspect context (compared to when tested within a perfective aspect context). To explain this pattern, the authors argued that there are prototypical associations between time frames and aspectual values. The present study explores the relationship between time reference and aspect focusing on Greek aphasia and healthy ageing and using a sentence completion task that crosses time reference and aspect. The findings do not support prototypical matches between different time frames and aspectual values. Building on relevant studies, we propose that patterns of performance of healthy or language-impaired speakers on constrained tasks tapping different combinations of time frames with aspectual values should reflect the relative frequency of these combinations in a given language. The analysis of the results at the individual level revealed a double dissociation, which indicates that a given time frame–aspectual value combination may be relatively easy to process for some persons with aphasia but demanding for some others.

KEYWORDS:

• Time reference/tense
• aspect
• aphasia
• prototypical associations
• Greek

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all individuals who participated in this study. We also thank two anonymous reviewers and the audience of the 55th Academy of Aphasia Annual Meeting (Baltimore, USA, 2017) for their useful comments and suggestions.

Declaration of Interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Notes

¹ These semantic reasons also seem to be reflected in language acquisition data as well as in data from children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). For instance, in Greek, a language that encodes the perfective vs. imperfective aspectual distinction in the verb, both typically developing children and children with SLI acquire perfective past earlier than imperfective past (e.g. Konstantzou, 2014; Konstantzou, van Hout, Varlokosta, & Vlassopoulos, 2013).

² We thank Artemis Alexiadou for discussing with us the status of ‘controversial’ verbs (personal communication on the 4th of March, 2018).

³ The name of these levels may be misleading in the case of the time reference datasets. In fact, in both time reference datasets, the model compared ‘time reference performance’ in two different aspectual contexts keeping the time frame constant. In the dataset of the past reference sub-condition of the time reference condition, the dependent variable was accuracy on past reference within a perfective aspect context and on past reference within an imperfective aspect context. Likewise, in the dataset of the future reference sub-condition of the time reference condition, the dependent variable was accuracy on future reference within a perfective aspect context and on future reference within an imperfective aspect context.

⁴ Note that in Greek the comparison ‘past perfective vs. past imperfective’ involves monolectic verb forms only, and the comparison ‘future perfective vs. future imperfective’ involves periphrastic verb forms only.

⁵ One could argue that, in proposition (1), the verb éxasan ‘lost’ does not refer to an accomplishment, because the adverb amésos ‘immediately’, which precedes the verb, prevents the event from being seen as incremental or gradual. However, it is clear that the event of ‘losing interest’ has an endpoint (which is the very moment of completely losing interest in something) and is also incremental or gradual. There is across-subject variation in the speed of losing interest in a given topic. The adverb amésos ‘immediately’ does not have a literal meaning in proposition (1); its use implies that the students lost interest in the topic very quickly.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship (awarded to V. Fyndanis) within the 7th European Community Framework Programme [project reference 329795], by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme [project number 223265], and by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond – The Swedish Foundation for Humanities & Social Sciences, through the grant agreement no: NHS 14-1761:1.