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<Paper uid="P95-1052">
  <Title>Aspect and Discourse Structure: Is a Neutral Viewpoint Required?*</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="326" end_page="326" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
2 Discourse Structure
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> We investigate here which viewpoint is appropriate for the German Preterite. B~uerle (1988:131), for instance, claims that this tense in German is ambiguous w.r.t, the perfective/imperfective view on a situation and gives the following evidence for it: (1) a. Der Angeklagte fuhr nach Hause. Dort trank er ein Glas Trollinger.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The defendant drove home. There he drank a glass of Trollinger.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> b. Der Angeklagte fuhr nach Hause. Am Lustnauer Tor hatte er einen schweren Unfall und musste ins Krankenhaus eingeliefert werden.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> The defendant was driving home. At the Lustnauer tower he had a serious accident and had to be admitted to the hospital.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> In (la) the VP fuhr nach Hause refers to a completed event and therefore contains an end point. In (lb) this end point is denied by the second sentence. Note that the English translation of (lb) is therefore only correct if an imperfective view is used.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> This data shows that the use of the Preterite in German does not commit the speaker to saying anything about the end point. Every inference regarding the ending of a situation is due to the context or our world knowledge.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> It may be concluded from (1) that we cannot assume a perfective viewpoint, because this view includes the end point of a situation. The following discourse will furthermore show that also the imperfective view is not applicable to the German Preterite.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> It is commonly supposed that the imperfective viewpoint which refers to the middle of a situation omitting the initial as well as the final point can be used for describing a background within a discourse (cf. Smith, 1991:130):  (2) The defendant had an accident. He was driving home (at this time).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8"> 3FoUowing Smith (1991) we applied two tests to German data regarding the temporal properties of the end point of a situation which are discussed in Schilder (1995). A direct German translation, however, expresses two subsequent events. At first the defendant had an accident and then he drove home: (3) Der Angeklagte hatte einen Unfall. Er fuhr  nach Hause (??zu der Zeit).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9"> Adding the PP zu der Zeit ('at this time') the sentence functions as a background for the event described by the first sentence, but this discourse sounds awkward and the continuation with a state in (4) is clearly preferred. 4 (4) Er war auf dem Weg nach Hause.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10"> Discourse (3) shows that for the German Preterite the initial point is focussed by the viewpoint. This observation proves therefore that this tense is not ambiguous w.r.t the progressive and the simple aspect as B~uerle (1988) claims.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="11"> To sum up, these two discourses can be seen to show that the German aspect system for the Preterite offers only a neutral view on every situation. null Moreover, this data disproves B/~uerle's explanation of (1), clarifies Smith's definition of a viewpoint and motivates the need for a neutral viewpoint in German.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="12"> It is obviously a shortcoming of Smith's description to define the viewpoint merely as a focus on parts or on the whole situation. It emerged from the discourse examples that a crucial function of the viewpoint is the commitment the speaker gives as to whether the end point has been reached or not. In English, the perfective view sets the end point 5 and no cancellation is allowed afterwards. A neutral view on a situation gives only a confirmation of the initial point. It leaves open whether the end has been reached or not. Only the temporal knowledge derived from the situation aspect can provide further information which, however, may be overridden by the context.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="5" start_page="326" end_page="327" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3 A Situation-theoretic
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> scribe types of eventualities is currently being investigated. Note that the standard definition of DRT does not provide any description of types or other abstract entities.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1">  Unlike DRT, STDRT (Cooper, 1992) has the notion of an event type which can be used for the information given by the situation aspect. Note that this event type does not have to be instantiated with a situation of this type; it will therefore not be introduced like a discourse referent in a discourse representation structure. 7  The first sentence of (1) refers to a situation s,, where sn is of a type C/. Type C/ can be seen as the part of an episode of the complete event type C/ which is focussed by the neutral viewpoint. We have therefore to define the initial point and the first stage.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> &lt;3i,itial ~ iff: Ve, e'\[\[e : ^ e' : e &lt;3 e'A \[Ve&amp;quot;\[e&amp;quot; e' _ e&amp;quot;\] t {BEFORE, MEETS} t&amp;quot;\]\] O~ &lt;3first_stage ~ iff: Ve, e',e&amp;quot;\[\[e : a A e' : j3 A e&amp;quot; : 7 A 7 &lt;3initial fl\] &amp;quot;+ e &lt;3 e' A t&amp;quot; {MEETS} t\] t, t ~, t&amp;quot; are the occurrence times of e, e ~ and e H respectively, &lt;3 is the PART-OF relation between situations and BEFORE and MEETS are Allen's intervalrelations as defined in Allen (1984).</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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