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Biaspectual Verbs: A Marginal Category?

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Logic, Language, and Computation (TbiLLC 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8984))

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Abstract

The hallmark property of the Russian verbal system is taken to be the bipartite perfective/imperfective distinction in the domain of grammatical aspect. In this paper we show that there is a substantial and productive class of morphologically complex verbs that do not clearly pattern as either perfective or imperfective on standard formal (distributional) tests for perfectivity versus imperfectivity. Such verbs also pose problems for contemporary syntactic approaches to Russian complex verbs. The main innovation we propose is a new positive test for perfectivity which, along with the standard formal (distributional) tests, allows us to provide empirical evidence for the existence of a class of verbs that exhibit a variable grammatical aspect behavior, i.e., behave like perfective or imperfective verbs in dependence on context. Apart from shedding a new light on the standard tests for the aspectual membership of Russian verbs, the main empirical outcome seems to suggest that a third–biaspectual–class of verbs which cannot be neatly aligned with either the perfective or imperfective class must be recognized. This immediately raises the question about its status with respect to the traditional bipartite perfective/imperfective distinction.

We would like to thank the organizers, audiences and anonymous reviewers of the Tenth International Tbilisi Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation and the 10th European Conference on Formal Description of Slavic Languages. Separate thanks to Daniel Altshuler and Stephen Dickey for personal discussions of the topic.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this scheme all the components are crucial: those verbs that contain do- as the outermost prefix, but do not contain the imperfective suffix, are clearly perfective and those verbs where the only prefix is do- and the imperfective suffix is present are imperfective.

  2. 2.

    The past tense verbal form itself does not specify the person, only gender and number, so the information about the person comes from the context.

  3. 3.

    For example, in Russian Grammar (1952) it is only stated that na-, pere-, pod-, pri- and po- are productive as second verbal prefixes and that po- can also be used as a third prefix.

  4. 4.

    Pere- has a variety of meanings (e.g. Švedova 1982 distinguishes between 10 different meanings) including spatial, temporal, comparative, iterative, crossing the boundary, distributive and pere- of excess.

  5. 5.

    One exception is a modification of Tatevosov (2009) proposed in Tatevosov (2013) that seems to implicitly react on problematic examples first mentioned in the work by Zinova (2012). Tatevosov (2013) proposes that the completive prefix do- (for a certain group of Russian speakers) does not have any restrictions on its attachment. If, however, such modification is adopted without further restrictions, the class of biaspectual verbs turns out to be too large. This problem seems to be solvable, although no solution is offered by the author. For a bit more details on this point and the data that remains problematic after such modification see Zinova and Filip (2014). Another conceptual problem is that the class of superlexical prefixes then contains 4 subclasses, two of which are inhabited by only one prefix.

  6. 6.

    ‘Corresponding’ is understood as the imperfective verb that constitutes the aspectual pair with the original perfective verb.

  7. 7.

    Mikaeljan et al. (2007, p. 2) write that “rather than a tool for establishing aspectual pairs, the Maslov criterion should be taken as a definition and raison d’être of the aspectual correlation.”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Yulia Zinova & Hana Filip

Authors
  1. Yulia Zinova
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  2. Hana Filip
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Correspondence to Hana Filip .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Martin Aher

  2. Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Daniel Hole

  3. Institute of Mathematics, AS CR, Prague, Czech Republic

    Emil Jeřábek

  4. University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom

    Clemens Kupke

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Zinova, Y., Filip, H. (2015). Biaspectual Verbs: A Marginal Category?. In: Aher, M., Hole, D., Jeřábek, E., Kupke, C. (eds) Logic, Language, and Computation. TbiLLC 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8984. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46906-4_18

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