ASPECT SHIFT AND COERCION

This paper develops an analysis of aspect shift and applies it to Fren ch and English. The Progressive, the Perfect/Parfait, and duration adv erbials introduced by in or for are interpreted as aspectual operators which modify eventuality descriptions. The French past tenses are sen sitive to aspect, but they do not change the aspectual class of the ev entuality description themselves. Instead, they presuppose that the ev entuality description they operate on is of the right aspectual type: the Passe Simple and Imparfait are tense operators which locate respec tively events and states in the past. Free aspectual transitions may b e triggered by coercion in order to satisfy the aspectual requirements on aspectual and temporal operators. The analysis is formulated withi n the framework of Discourse Representation Theory (DRT).