A cognitive and conceptual approach to tense and aspect markers

This article aims to present the most specific concepts of linguistic temporality (aspectuality and temporal relations) called upon seven intricate notions: (i) the construal of enunciative temporal reference frames associated with any dialogic enunciative act; (ii) aspectualization of a predicative relation (state, event, or process); (iii) conceptualization of the enunciative act through the “enunciator’s present” in the temporal frame of reference; (iv) segmenting a verbalized situation into different phases (Aktionsarten); (v) combining the various temporal reference frames (enunciative, external time, non-actualized situations, reported discourse, hypothetical situations) with the enunciative reference frame; (vi) introducing temporal relations (concomitance, anteriority, posteriority) which provide temporal coordinates for the verbalized situation so as to locate it in relation to a temporal frame of reference; (vii) introducing relations of “disconnection” or synchronization between the various temporal frames of reference.