Workshop Description
A simple solution would be the following: a VP ,the "lexical content" in Klein's terms,
is embedded by aspect, aspect is embedded by tense.
Furthermore, each tense and each aspect has one stable, invariant meaning.
Accordingly, the Russian perfective (as well as the Roman perfect),
typically encodes the requirement for the time of situation to be completely
included in the time of reference (cf. Klein´s time-relational analysis of aspect).
But - what is the meaning of the Russian imperfective aspect?
And exactly that is the problem: the imperfective morphology does not have an
invariant meaning. Attempts to summarize all of its functions under one single
semantic invariant have all proved to be unsucessful. The only way imperfective
verbs can be defined is as the negative counterpart of the perfective aspect -
they simply represent the unmarked case (Jakobson 1932). But in some contexts,
morphologically imperfective verbs may semantically have a perfective meaning:
the general-factual meaning.
The descriptive problem now is to find out, what interpretation we are dealing
with in a given context (cf. Forsyth 1970).
Recently, Paslawska / von Stechow
proposed an analysis of tense-aspect-systems in syntactic and semantic terms:
instead of assigning one invariant meaning to every morphological aspect,
they establish a catalogue of aspectual and temporal functions
("semantic aspects" and "semantic tenses"), whose cross-classification
results in a T/A-typology: particular languages differ in the temporal and
aspectual morphological means expressing these semantic tense-aspect combinations.
A one-to-one correspondence between a morphosytactic and a semantic category does
not always exist. Therefore, the German morphological form for the perfect,
as well as that for the imperfect, both express the semantic tense-aspect combination
IMPERFECTIVE/PAST. An example for the opposite case of 'one form - different
functions' is the Russian morphological imperfective aspect, which may express
"at least six" (Paslawska / von Stechow) semantic tense-aspect combinations.
One advantage of the model lies in its crosslinguistic applicability:
"[T]his framework enables us to describe linguistic variation through time and
languages within a stable underlying universal grammar" (Paslawska / von Stechow).
Note that the idea to start from a set of autonomous aspectual meanings
("language-independent semantic characterisations", Comrie 1976: 10),
every one of which may, but must not necessarily, manifest itself morphologically,
was already inherent to Comrie´s classical monograph on aspect:
"In the present book we shall speak of aspectual distinctions, such as
that between perfective and imperfective meaning, irrespective of whether
they are grammaticalised or lexicalised in individual languages" (Comrie 1976: 67).
The aim of the workshop is to discuss questions that are related to the proposal made
by Paslawska / von Stechow:
What are the criteria for establishing a certain meaning as belonging to the catalogue
of "semantic tenses" or "semantic aspects"? Should any meaning identified in
the tense-aspect-system of a particular language be included?
How about generic meanings? On the one hand, it is beyond doubt that the imperfective
form in Russian is used to express habitual meanings. On the other hand,
researchers like Filip / Carlson (1997:15) are led to the following conclusion:
"In general, we do not see any necessary formal connection between genericity and
aspect".
How does the suggested model account for the well known interaction between lexical
and grammatical aspect? Whereas accomplishments regularly contrast two inflectional
forms with each other (they build so-called aspectual pairs), activities are
imperfectiva tantum from which perfective accomplishments can be constructed by
derivational means.
An especially interesting question seems to be the aspectual status of
"non-temporary states" (Filip) (also often called "individual-level predicates" or
"0-state-contents" in the terminology of Klein): "0-state contents [...] are not
directly relevant to the problem of Russian aspect" (Klein 1995: 682). How comes?
Steube 1997 has claimed that the aspectual distinction in Russian operates on the
event argument carried by the verb. So maybe individual-level predicates lack an event
argument (in line with the proposal of Kratzer 1995)?
References:
Paslawska, A.; A. von Stechow, Perfect Readings in Russian. ms
Paslawska, A.; A. von Stechow, Relative Past in Russian and Ukrainian: The Past-over-Perfective Principle. ms 2001
Comrie, B., Aspect. Cambridge 1976
Klein, W., Time in Language. London, New York 1994
Klein, W., "A time-relational analysis of Russian Aspect". Language 71,4 (1995), 669-695
Kratzer, A., "Stage-level and Individual-level Predicates". Carlson, G.; F. Pelletier (eds.): The Generic Book. University of Chicago Press (1995), 125-175
Filip, H.; G. Carlson, "Sui Generis Genericity". Penn Working Papers in Linguistics, 4 (1997), 91-110
Forsyth, J., A Grammar of Aspect, Usage and Meaning in the Russian Verb. Cambridge 1970
Jakobson, R., "Zur Struktur des Russischen Verbums". Charistia Guglielmo Mathesio oblata. Prague 1932, 74-84
Steube, A., "Der russische Aspekt und die Ereignisrolle des Verbs". Junghanns, U.; G. Zybatow (eds.): Formale Slavistik. Frankfurt a.M.: Vervuert (1997), 213-228
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