Sean Allison LING 7430 Sept 25, 2007Review of: Dahl, Östen. 1995. “The marking of the episodic/generic distinction in Tense-Aspect systems”, in G. Carlson and F.J. Pelletier (eds.), The Generic Book, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.IntroductionRecognizing the distinction between episodic and generic sentences as represented in examples like:Episodic: The sun rose in the East.I am smoking a pipe right now.I smoked a pipe yesterday after dinner.Generic: The sun rises in the East.Cats meow.I smoke a pipe.Dahl seeks to examine to what extent the generic/episodic distinction is reflected in the tense-aspect systems of individual languages. He chooses to define generic in ‘the widest possible sense’, including habituals like: John walks to school.Dahl’s main concern in the article is to scrutinize the following two claims:(1) There are some languages in which genericity is relevant to grammar.(2) In those languages, the generic interpretation is the “marked” case relative to the episodic one.DatabaseFor his analysis, Dahl draws on data from 65 languages. The database was developed out of responses to a questionnaire containing about 200 sentences. The questionnaire was not expressly designed to address the generic/episodic distinction but it did contain examples of generic sentences.Dahl proposes to look at:(1) the ways in which these sentences are marked grammatically (i.e., with grammatical constructions and/or morphemes (called grams)) in the languages, and1(2) what the distribution of each of the relevant grammatical markings is (i.e., in what other contexts are they used - e.g. with statives, performatives, ‘reportive present’).Minimal Marking TendencyIn examining English examples of generic sentences, Dahl notes that they do not contain any overt tense-aspect markings, or alternatively, that they employ the least marked tense-aspect choice in the language. This leads him to propose a minimal marking tendency for generic sentences. He links this lack of marking (of tense, at least) with the lack of specific time reference in generic sentences.Generics and ImperfectivesDahl explains that one of the most frequent paths of grammaticalization among tense-aspect grams is that (present) progressives develop into presents or imperfectives. Languages where this is the case constitute one of the main kinds of exceptions to Dahl’s minimal marking generalization for generic sentences (since they would still be marked with the formerly progressive marker, now reinterpreted as an imperfective marker).However, in looking at languages which have followed or are following this path of grammaticalization, Dahl hopes to find an intermediate form which may be used more or less exclusively for generic contexts.He examines Turkish, Tamil and Cebuano in this regard and concludes that what appears to be a grammatical distinction between episodic and generic sentences is really a case where the generic reading of a given form is one of the more salient remaining interpretations of a gram which is in the process of yielding its territory to an expanding one.Though Dahl states that there is a fairly strong tendency for generics to go with imperfective aspect, he also notes that it is possible to use the perfective aspect for generics when referring to a ‘bounded’ event, particularly in Slavic languages.He concludes the section in noting that aspectual distinctions tend to be neutralized in generics.Generics from HabitualsDahl examines grams that mark habituality and notes that habitual markers in general exhibit a low degree of grammaticalization. They are, however, of interest as possible sources of a grammaticalization path yielding potential candidates for a gram that systematically marks genericity.He then looks at four languages which appear to have a generic marker - that is, one that occurs not only in habitual contexts but also in prototypical generic contexts. Three of the2languages (Isekiri, Wolof, Maori) use periphrastic constructions, while the fourth (West Greenlandic Eskimo) uses morphological means to mark genericity. This language along with a marginal fifth, Seneca, appears to use the marker to express iterativity. In this twocases, genericity may be subsumed under the more general label of iterativity.Dahl makes the statement that prototypical generics concern regularities, norms, or habits that either hold independent of time or during a period of time including the time of speech. This said though, he recognizes that using the term generic in a wider sense would include generic examples in the past tense and future tense, as well as ‘habitual past’ grams like the English used-to construction.ConclusionIn conclusion, Dahl reiterates that prototypical generic statements are (generally) minimally marked with respect to tense and aspect. Exceptions are found: (1) in languages where the imperfective is a marked form, (2) in languages where (a process of grammaticalization is in progress and) the generic is being expressed by a receding nonprogressive, and (3) in languages with an overt marker of genericity.Dahl admits that it is not easy to find clear examples of grammatical distinctions that coincide with the episodic/generic distinction in semantics.Finally, he notes an interesting parallel between the scarcity of grams that specifically mark verbs in generic sentences and the way in which NPs are marked.Critical reviewAs Michaelis notes in her Tense and Aspect: Preliminaries paper, ‘present tense is most highly correlated with generic meaning’, particularly with regard to prototypical generic statements. She gives the reason for this in her Time and Tense article: ‘present tense sentences are intrinsically state sentences, and for this reason the present tense is … strongly correlated with the generic construal’. I believe Dahl misses this point in his paper and instead of identifying the expression of (prototypical) generic statements with present tense, he links generics with a minimal marking tendency. I see this tendency as incidental, valid only for those languages where the (simple) present tense is minimally marked or not marked at all.InfelicitiesPage 419, Footnote 4, line 11: I do not know of any clear such cases …Page 420, line 10: aspectual distinction - in particular that between imperfective and perfective aspect - tend