Séminaire des linguistes

Juliette Kayenbergh (Université de Leuven), You never saw it coming: the changing aspectual interpretation of perception verb constructions in the history of English

In this talk I will investigate two distinct English perception verb constructions. Both take a perception verb (e.g. see or hear), but where one selects a bare infinitive the other selects an -ing-clause (e.g. I saw them walk vs. I saw them walking). According to the literature, in Present-day English the -ing-clause pattern conveys progressive meaning, while the bare infinitive pattern construes events perfectively. However, these aspectual differences could only have developed over the Modern period, with the rise of the -ing-clause pattern. In order to study the emergence of this semantic contrast, I examine the situation types favoured by each construction: if -ing-clause constructions convey progressive meaning, they should be more compatible with atelic situation types; by contrast, if bare infinitive constructions construe events perfectively, they should favour telic situation types. To chart the semantic development of the two constructions, I analyzed a balanced 3000-hit sample drawn from the EEBO, CLMET and BNC corpora with the matrix verbs SEE and HEAR, with each relevant token coded for the situation type of its complement verb. Findings reveal an asymmetry in the development of the two constructions, likely due to their respective role in the broader system of clausal complementation.

Chris Pinon (STL), see and seeing

The verb see of direct visual perception is illustrated in sentences such as Thomas sees Océane and Thomas sees Océane leave. I'll address the question of how to treat this use of see semantically, which is tied to the question of whether see is extensional or intensional, and if intensional, in what way. I'll argue that a purely extensional account of see is difficult to maintain and that an epistemic component is needed in order to account for the data.