Remarks on layering 283For example, qualificational aspect requires the perception of an SoA
and its actual state of development, no more and no less. Quantificational
aspect already requires repeated perceptions of SoAs and a generalization
over them, e.g. in terms of the uniqueness of one perceived SoA relative to
others, or the similarity of different perceived SoAs such that this ‘type’ of
SoA can be characterized as having a certain frequency, or as being ge-
neric, etc. ‘Situation in time’ requires linking the perception of an SoA to
the (in itself very complex) perception of natural cycles of the sun and the
moon and/or the even more abstract estimation of numbers of such cycles
using conventional, hence completely abstract, definitions of time (e.g. the
calendar). (Situation in space is similar: determining that one is ‘in Paris’,
for example, goes far beyond mere immediate perception of one’s where-
abouts.) And epistemic modality is not at all a matter of direct perception
of an SoA any more, but of abstract deductive reasoning from perceptions
of other SoAs, or generalizations over them, to the tentative postulation of
a possible, hypothetical SoA (which should be accessible to perception if
the hypothesis is to be verified, of course).
Obviously, the fact that the system of layering of qualifications ties in
with such very basic features of human perception and information proc-
essing lends strong further support to our assumption that we are dealing
here with a basic conceptual phenomenon, not with a specifically linguistic
one.^11
4.2. Stacks in the system
The foregoing, however, does not mean that the FG concept of ‘stacks’ in
the layered system is completely inaccurate, even at the conceptual level.
In fact it is possible to distinguish, superimposed upon the gradual hierar-
chy, groups of qualifications which share certain semantic properties
(although the groups do not fully correspond to those in the FG system).
One distinction corresponds perfectly to that between the predicate-level
and predication-level qualifications in FG: in the system in (4), this line
should be drawn between quantificational and qualificational aspect. Quali-
fications below it further specify the internal structure of the SoA:
qualificational aspect, for instance, concerns the state of development of
the SoA (and manner of action – cf. note 10 – could be characterized in a
similar way). Above this line, qualifications no longer affect the internal
structure of the SoA, but situate the SoA as a whole in the world: this ap-
plies to quantificational aspect, which concerns the frequency of the SoA,
and it applies even more clearly to temporal (and spatial) situation. Another