The manifestation of viewpoint aspect in Inuktitut*

• Published in: Studia Linguistica
• Main Author: Clarke, Sarah
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2009
• Subjects: inuktitut
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9582.2009.01163.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1467-9582.2009.01163.x; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-9582.2009.01163.x

Abstract. This article refutes the claim ( Swift and Bohnemeyer 2004 ) that viewpoint aspect in Inuktitut is determined wholly by telicity. We claim that, in fact, Inuktitut lacks default viewpoint aspect altogether. This article follows Cowper (2005) and Kyriakaki (2006) in assuming that viewpoint aspect can be encoded with the morphosyntactic features Interval (imperfective aspect) and Moment (perfective aspect), which are possible dependents of the feature Event. We show that, while English has two past tense constructions, one of which is infelicitous with states because it spells out Interval, the dependent feature of Event, Inuktitut has only one. There is no tense construction in Inuktitut that is felicitous only with events, indicating that there is none that spells out a dependent of the feature Event. Other tests for perfectivity and imperfectivity prove inconclusive in Inuktitut; there is no evidence of a feature Interval or Moment. Thus, we conclude that no such feature exists. Therefore, all Inuktitut clauses are neither perfective nor imperfective, but simply unmarked with respect to viewpoint aspect. We further show that the locus of all aspectual variation in Inuktitut is little v, and that this variation relates to lexical aspect only, not viewpoint aspect.