Maria Luisa Rivero, Ana Arregui and Nikolay Slavkov (U of Ottawa)

Grammaticalizing the size of situations: the case of Bulgarian. I. Proposal. Semantic theories building on Kratzer-style situation semantics have appealed to minimal situation ‘size’ to account for phenomena such as adverbial quantification, presupposition projection, etc. [Kratzer 1989, 2011, Berman 1987, Heim 1990, Elbourne 2005, a.o.]. We provide support for the view that ‘big’ situations (in addition to ‘small situations’) also play a fundamental role in interpretation by arguing that they are relevant to the semantics of viewpoint aspect. We propose that in Bulgarian, verbal morphology in restrictor clauses grammaticalizes the distinction between ‘small’ and ‘big’ situations, leading to contrasts in aspectual interpretation that result in a difference between singular/episodic/ongoing readings (‘small’ situations) vs. habitual / generic readings (‘big’ situations). In sum, Bulgarian grammaticalizes the different size of situations behind habitual and ongoing readings of imperfectives. II. Data. Bulgarian verbal morphology encodes complex aspectual relations, including combinations of verbs with imperfective or perfective stems, perfectivizing prefixes (PR), and an inflectional aorist (AOR) vs. imperfect (IMPF) tense contrast. In Bulgarian, both habitual/generic and ongoing readings arise with verbs in the imperfect tense, as in (1-2). This motivates the view that imperfect inflections host a quantificational modal imperfective operator IMPF (Arregui, Rivero & Salanova 2014, Rivero & Slavkov 2014). (1) Predi 20 godini, decata gledaxa po-malko televizija. Habitual Before 20 years, children.the watch.IMPF less television ‘20 years ago, children watched less TV.’ (2) Včera Ivan stroeše pjasăčen zamăk. Ongoing Yesterday Ivan build.IMPF sand castle ‘Yesterday Ivan was building a sand castle.’ When (semantic) imperfective constructions with habitual/generic and ongoing readings are restricted by overt adjunct clauses, the morphology of the restrictor verb discriminates between the two readings in ways without exact parallel elsewhere in Slavic or in Romance: [1] First, iterative or ‘big’ situations conducive to habitual readings are signaled by the layered morphology of the complex forms Comrie (2005) dubbed ‘perfective imperfects’(Perf.IMPF) in (3a-b). These may consist of morphologically perfective (Perf) verb stems with an imperfect tense inflection (IMPF): pro.čete.še ‘would read’ in (3a), or v.leze.še ‘ would enter’ in (3b). With a ‘perfective imperfect’ [Perf.IMPF] in the restrictor, an ongoing interpretation is excluded. (3) a. Kogato Marija pročeteše tazi kniga, tja plačeše. Habitual When Maria PR.read.Perf.IMPF this book, she cry.Impf.IMPF ‘When(ever) Maria would read this book from cover to cover, she would cry.’ b. Kogato majka mi vlezeše v stajata, az (vse) govorex po telefona. Habitual When mother my PR.come.Perf.IMPF in room.the, I (always) talk.Impf.IMPF on phone ‘When(ever) my mother would enter the room, I would (always) be talking on the phone.’ [2] Second, singular / episodic situations associated with ongoing readings are encoded by (usually prefixed) verbs inflected for the aorist, as in (4): v.leze. With a restrictor verb in the (semantically perfective) aorist, a habitual interpretation is excluded: (4) Kogato majka mi vleze v stajata , az *(vse) govorex po telefona. When mother my PR.come.Perf.AOR in room.the , I *(always) talk.Impf.IMPF on phone ‘When my mother entered the room, I was *(always) talking on the phone.’ Episodic The situation depicted in (3a-b) thus leads to the GS hypothesis is (5). (5) Grammaticalizing Size Hypothesis (GS): Perfective imperfects can only be true in ‘big’ situations. ‘Big’ situation size is encoded in syntax and morphology/grammaticalized in Bulgarian. III. The analysis. a. IMPF. Following Arregui, Rivero & Salanova (2014), IMPF in the nuclear/main clause (e.g. (1-2)) is interpreted as a quantificational modal with a ‘flavour’ determined by the accessibility relation identifying its domain of quantification, informally dubbed MB (‘modal base’) in (6) (see also Cipria & Roberts 2000): (6) [[IMPF]]c, g = λP>. λs. ∀s’: MB (s)(s’) = 1, ∃e: P(e)(s’) = 1, defined only if there is a contextually or linguistically determined salient MB of type α. Adopting a restriction-approach to adjunct-clauses, we propose that the adjuncts in (3a-b) restrict the domain of quantification of IMPF. (3a) roughly corresponds to (7), with the role of MBs later specified in (8) and (9). (7) [[IMPF [when λe. Maria read this book (e)] [λe. Maria cried (e)] ]] (stopic) = 1 iff ∀s’: MB (stopic)(s’) = 1 & ∃e: Maria read this book (e)(s’) = 1, ∃e: Maria cried (e)(s’) = 1 α

α

When restricted by an adjunct-clause, IMPF will lead to truth iff all situations in the domain corresponding to the relevant MB in which there is an event of the type in the restrictor clause are also situations in which there is an event of the type in the nuclear scope. Readings in the sentence will thus depend on the MB available to IMPF, and the domain of quantification identified by this operator. b. Adjunct Perfective Imperfects and Generic MBs. Matrix clause IMPF with restrictive adjuncts gives rise to habitual/generic readings when the domain of quantification is established via the habitual/generic MB: (8) MBgeneric = λs.λs’.s’ is a characteristic part of s. Characteristic parts of situations are situations that are ‘normal’ ‘in … a sense given by the meaning of the utterance in question and its context.’ (Cipria & Roberts 2000: 325). A certain granularity or ‘size’ is required for a situation to be characterized as ‘normal’: it must be large enough to include a representative sample of normal eventualities. Only such ‘big’ situations will give rise to habitual/generic readings, and given GS in (5), perfective imperfectives will be restricted to this kind of reading. The domain of quantification will be identified as in (9): (9) Quantification-domain in (3a): ∀s’: s’ is a characteristic part of stop & ∃e: Maria read this book (e)(s’) = 1. d. Imperfective Imperfects and Ongoing MBs. Matrix clause IMPF with restrictive adjuncts gives rise to ongoing readings when the domain of quantification is established via ‘subpart’ (ongoing) MBs: (10) MBongoing = λs. λs’. s’