완결성의 관점에서 본 시제와 상에 관한 연구

Abstract

This paper is intended to analyze the tense and aspect of the English verbs from the viewpoint of ‘perfectivity’ proposed by Langacker(1981:85) under the framework of Cognitive Grammar. Perfectivity is a basis on which a process that a verb profiles is classified into two groups: a perfective process and an imperfective process. A perfective process is a process where the boundary of an event, i.e. the starting and end point of an event is clear. An imperfective process is a process where this boundary is not clear, i.e. the beginning and end point of an event is not well-defined. The organization of this thesis is as follows: in Chapter 1, the introductory part, the objective of this paper is clarified, and several basic concepts of Cognitive Grammar are introduced. In Chapter 2, two previous studies Park(2001) and Kim(2013) are analyzed in depth. Park(2001) claims that a verb denotes ‘complete aspect’, if the procedures of what the verb describes has ended and it is a ‘imcomplete aspect’, if the procedures have not completely ended. Kim(2013) explains tense and aspect by incorporating the claims and discussions of various scholars with no definite claim of his own. Some comments are given about these previous studies at the end of this chapter. Chapter 3 is the main discussion about tense in terms of perfectivity. Langacker(1991) classifies the nouns with clear region as count nouns and the ones without clear region as mass nouns. Applying this criterion I have explained the verbs in terms of ‘perfectivity’ which is analogous to ‘boundedness’ in nouns. The topics analyzed were present and past tense of English verbs. In Chapter 4, ‘aspect’ is analyzed in terms of perfectivity. The core features of ‘aspect’ was discussed from the standpoint of ‘progressive’, and ‘perfect’. The progressive is one of the basic features of a perfective process, since it is claimed by Langacker(1991) to freeze the ongoing event. The so-called ‘perfect aspect(have+pp)’, which is assumed to denote four different meanings of a certain process ‘completion, result, experience, and continuation’ were analyzed in terms of ‘perfectivity’.