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Infectum and Perfectum. Two faces of tense selection in Romance languages

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Abstract

This paper investigates the semantics of tense and aspect in Romance languages. Its goal is to develop a compositional, model-theoretic semantics for tense and temporal adverbs which is sensitive to aspectual distinctions. I will consider durative adverbial distributions and aspectual contrasts across different morphological tense forms. I will examine tense selection under habitual meanings, generic meanings and state of result constructions. In order to account for these facts I will argue that temporal homogeneity plays a fundamental role in tense selection in Romance languages.

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  1. Università degli Studi di Milano–Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Fabrizio Arosio

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  1. Fabrizio Arosio
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Arosio, F. Infectum and Perfectum. Two faces of tense selection in Romance languages. Linguist and Philos 33, 171–214 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-010-9078-x

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