the construction of viewpoint aspect: the imperfective revisited

this paper argues for a constructionist approach to viewpoint aspect by exploring the idea that it does not exert any altering force on the situation-aspect properties of predicates. the proposal is developed by analyzing the syntax and semantics of the imperfective, which has been attributed a coercer role in the literature as a de-telicizer and de-stativizer in the progressive, and as a de-eventivizer in the so-called ability (or attitudinal) and habitual readings. this paper proposes a unified semantics for the imperfective, preserving the properties of eventualities throughout the derivation. the paper argues that the semantics of viewpoint aspect is encoded in a series of functional heads containing interval-ordering predicates and quantifiers.