scholarly journals On the imperfective and perfective aspect in Estonian and Latvian

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-261
Author(s):  
Ilze Tālberga ◽  
Aive Mandel
Keyword(s):  
Direct Object ◽  
General Context ◽  
Text Corpus ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Lexical Meaning ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Transitive Verbs

This article presents a brief overview and comparison of the imperfective and perfective aspect in Estonian and Latvian. The main means of expressing the perfective and imperfective aspect in Estonian are the case opposition of the direct object (the nominative/genitive or the partitive), the use of verb particles, and the general context. In Latvian, the opposition of the perfective and imperfective aspect is mainly expressed by existence or absence of verb prefixes, adverbs, and also the context. In Latvian, verb prefixes, besides perfectivity, may also add or modify the lexical meaning of the verb. We compare how the perfective and imperfective aspect are expressed in both languages in the case of transitive verbs, based on the correspondences found in a text corpus of literary works and their translations.Kokkuvõte. Ilze Tālberga, Aive Mandel: Imperfektiivsest ja perfektiivsest aspektist eesti ja läti keeles. Artiklis uuritakse imperfektiivse ja perfektiivse aspekti vastandust võrdlevalt eesti ja läti keeles. Selleks kasutatavad näited pärinevad eesti ja läti ilukirjandusteostest ning nende vastastikustest tõlgetest. Käesolevas analüüsis on keskendutud transitiivsetele verbidele, mis nõuavad objekti. Edaspidises uurimistöös loodetakse võtta vaatluse alla ka intransitiivsed verbid. Eesti keeles on keskseks perfektiivsuse markeerimise vahendiks objektikääne. Perfektiivsust väljendab totaalobjekt (ainsuse või mitmuse nominatiiv, ainsuse genitiiv). Läti keeles väljendatakse perfektiivsust esmajoones verbiprefiksite abil, mida on kokku 11 ning mis kõik võivad (aga ei pruugi) lisaks perfektiivsusele anda verbile ka mõne muu (ruumilise, kvantitatiivse või kvalitatiivse) lisatähenduse. Kõrvutasime näitematerjali abil esmalt neid olukordi, kus eesti täisobjekti vasteks on läti keelde tõlkimisel prefiksverb, ning vaatlesime sama olukorda ka vastupidisel tõlkesuunal. Ilukirjandusnäidete põhjal tuleb neist näidetest lisaks perfektiivsuse vastavusele hästi välja ka läti prefiksi lisatähendus. Teiseks toimivad eesti keeles perfektiivsuse väljendamise vahendina ka verbipartiklid (nt ära), mis võivad kas aidata totaalobjektis juba kajastuvat perfektiivsust kinnitada või on teatud juhtudel ka obligatoorsed. See mehhanism aitab kompenseerida eesti keeles ajalooliste muutuste tõttu vähem eristuvaks muutunud objektikäänete ebaselgust võrreldes nt soome keelega, kus eesti keelest sagedamini piisab perfektiivsuse väljendamiseks pelgalt objektikäändest. Tõlkekõrvutuste põhjal järeldub, et eesti verbipartiklit saab läti keeles väljendada verbiprefiksiga, milles võib avalduda lisaks perfektiivsusele ka lisatähendus (aiz- – ‘kinni’). Lisatähendus võib ka puududa (iz-mazgāt – ‘ära pesema’), viimasel juhul väljendatakse nii partikli kui ka prefiksiga vaid perfektiivsust. Eesti verbipartiklit võidakse aga läti keeles väljendada ka prefiksverbiga, millele lisandub samatähenduslik adverb. Kuna sellist adverbikasutust ei peeta läti keeles aspekti osaks, sest perfektiivsus väljendub juba prefiksis, siis võib neid tõlgendada ruumilist suunda rõhutavatena. Mõlemal tõlkesuunal on näha, et kui prefiksverb on juba olemas, siis sellele läti keeles lisatud adverb eestikeelset vastet ei mõjuta – eesti keeles esineb siis samasugune vaste, nagu oleks adverbita prefiksverbi puhul, kuna ka prefiksverbis on sama ruumilisus juba esindatud. Mõlemad keeled kasutavad siis sel juhul paralleelselt adverbe.Imperfektiivsust saab eesti keeles väljendada osaobjektiga (partitiiv), mis aga võib sõltuvalt kontekstist kanda ka perfektiivset tähendust. Läti keeles on imperfektiivse tõlgendusega osaobjekti vasteks prefiksita verb, mis ilmneb mõlemal keelesuunal ka tõlkematerjalis. Lisaks on läti keeles võimalik imperfektiivsust väljendada konstruktsiooniga prefiksita verb + adverb, milles esinev adverb on prefiksiga samatähenduslik. Nii on konstruktsioonis perfektiivsust väljendav prefiks asendatud samasisulise adverbiga, saavutades imperfektiivse tähenduse. Ka selle konstruktsiooni puhul võib näha tõlkenäidetes eesti vastena osaobjekti partitiivis, mille tõlkevastena võib omakorda eesti-läti tõlkesuunal leida osaobjekti. Läti keele imperfektiivsete (prefiksita verb) lausenäidete vastena võib mõnel harval juhul leida eesti keeles ka progressiivtarindi.Käesolev uurimus tõi perfektiivsuse ja imperfektiivsuse väljendamisel eesti ja läti keeles välja rea omavahelisi paralleele, erinevusi ja ka sarnasusi. Artikkel on mõeldud esmase sissejuhatusena väga laia teemasse, mille käsitlemisel oleks edaspidi tarvilik nii märksa avaram vaatepunkt (nt kaasata intransitiivsed verbid ja laiendada aspekti käsitlust) kui ka põhjalikum ja mitmekülgsem uurimismaterjal.Märksõnad: aspekt; imperfektiivsus; perfektiivsus; verbid; prefiksverbid; adverbid; läti keel; eesti keel

scholarly journals Acquisition of aspect and aktionsart by children in Croatian and French

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 133-148
Author(s):  
Claire Martinot ◽  
Maja Andel ◽  
Sunil Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Trend ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Lexical Meaning ◽  
Imperfective Aspect

Our results indicate some differences in the use of aspect between French and Croatian speaking children. In Croatian language children always manage to keep the appropriate aspect, unlike French children. However, the imperfective aspect seems to be better acquired in French children than the perfective aspect. The perfective aspect, the marked form both in French as well as in Croatian, is related to the lexical meaning of the verbs. The acquisition of the Aktionsart in both languages seems to be more a matter of semantics than of morphology. Furthermore, our data suggest the existence of a specific developmental trend in the use of Aktionsart (intensive, iterative and inchoative), which is similar for children speaking Slavic and Romanic languages.  

scholarly journals Does the acquisition of aspect have anything to do with aspectual pairs?

2004 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 39-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Vladimirovna Gagarina
Keyword(s):  
Strong Preference ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Lexical Meaning ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Speech Time ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
The Moment

The purpose of this research was to trace the developmental steps in the acquisition of aspectual oppositions in Russian and to examine the validity of the 'aspect before tense' hypothesis for L1-speaking children. Imperfective/perfective verbs and their inflections, as well as aspectual pairs, were analysed in the first five months of verb production (and the respective months in the input) in three children. Additionally, the first four months of verb production were investigated in one boy with less data. Verb forms marked for the past and for the present occur simultaneously in all children. These early forms relate to 'here and now' situations: verbs marked for the past denote 'resultative' events that are perceived by the children as occurring during the speech time or immediately before it, while verbs marked for the present typically denote on-going events. Thus, with early tense oppositions (or tense morphology) children mark aspectual contrasts in the moment of speech: evidence in favour of the 'aspect before tense' hypothesis. A strong preference in using the perfective aspect for the past and the imperfective aspect for the present events has been found in both adults and children. Further, only very few aspectual pairs were documented within the analysed period (from the onset of verb production to the period when children produce rule-driven inflectional forms). The productive use of the finite forms of perfective and imperfective verbs doesn't concord with the ability of the productive use of the contrastive forms of one lemma. Data suggest that children (start to) learn aspectual forms in an item-based manner. The acquisition of aspectual oppositions (aspectual pairs) is lexically dependent and is guided by the contextual 'thesaurus'. Aspectual pairs are learned in a peace-meal way during much longer, than observed for this article, period of time. Generally, aspect is not learned as a rule, also because there are no (uniform) rules of forming of aspectual pairs, but as the 'satellite' of the inherent lexical meaning of verbs of diverse Aktionsarten. The issues addressed here are relevant for other Slavic languages, exhibiting the morphological category of aspect.  

Indirect object in Manchu-Tungus languages: structural and semantic aspect (in the Orok language)

2020 ◽  
pp. 243-260
Author(s):  
L. V. Ozolinya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Direct Object ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Indirect Object ◽  
Functional Aspects ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Object Composition ◽  
The Subject ◽  
First Time ◽  
Semantic Aspect ◽  
Trivalent Verbs

For the first time, the paper provides the analysis of the Oroc language object as a syntactic unit combining the semantic and functional aspects of transitive or non-transitive verbs. In the Manchu-Tungus languages, the object is found to be expressed in the morphological forms of the case: direct – in the accusative case and the possessive forms of the designative case, indirect – in the forms of oblique cases. Constructions with indirect objects, the positions of which are filled with case forms of nouns, designate the objects on which the action is aimed, objects from which the action is sent or evaded, objects-addresses, objectsinstruments, etc. Both transitive or non-transitive verbs can take the position of the predicate. The necessary (direct object) and permissible (indirect object) composition of objects in the verb is determined by its valences: bivalent verbs open subjective (subject) and objective (direct object) valences; trivalent verbs reveal subjective, subjective-objective (part of the subject or indirect subject) and objective (indirect object) valences.

scholarly journals Aspects of the Indo-European Aorist and Imperfect

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Hollenbaugh
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Imperfective Aspect

Abstract The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) tense-aspect system has been reconstructed since the time of Delbrück (1897) as containing a fundamental opposition between two aspect-denoting stems: An Aorist stem, denoting perfective aspect, and a Present stem, denoting imperfective aspect. This reconstruction is, for practical reasons, based almost entirely on Greek and Vedic. Re-examining the Homeric and R̥gvedic data, I argue on semantic grounds against this century-old understanding of the tense-aspect system of PIE. In its place, I reconstruct the “Aorist” indicative as denoting perfect aspect (not perfective), and the “Imperfect” indicative as a simple past tense (not imperfective). Evidence for this reconstruction is based on the consistent usage in the R̥gveda of the Aorist in the meaning ‘have done X’ (with present reference) and the Imperfect in the meaning ‘did X’ (especially in narrative contexts)—a distribution which frequently has a precise match in Homer.

The Maturation of Grammatical Principles: Evidence from Russian Unaccusatives

2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Babyonyshev ◽  
Jennifer Ganger ◽  
David Pesetsky ◽  
Kenneth Wexler
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Chain Formation ◽  
Unaccusative Verbs ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Direct Objects ◽  
A Chain ◽  
Genitive Case

This article tests the hypothesis that young children have a maturational difficulty with A-chain formation that makes them unable to represent unaccusative verbs in an adultlike fashion. We report the results of a test of children's performance on the genitive-of-negation construction in Russian, which, for adults, is an “unaccusativity diagnostic,” since genitive case is allowed to appear on the underlying direct object argument of unaccusatives as well as on direct objects of standard transitive verbs within the scope of negation. We show that although, Russian children know the properties of the construction, they have notable difficulty using it with unaccusative verbs. Since the input evidence for genitive of negation with unaccusative verbs is quite robust, we interpret our results as support for the hypothesis.

A cross-linguistic investigation of the combinational possibilities of the ‘for X time’ adverbial with different aspectual verb classes

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-231
Author(s):  
Athina Sioupi
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Information ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Verb Classes ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Viewpoint Aspect

The paper observes that the Vendler classification is not sufficient as a classification of verbs, since it cannot explain why some telic verbs, such as change of state (COS) verbs and degree achievements (DAs) appear with the durational adverbial (d-adverbial) ‘for X time’ in Greek, in English and in German, while some atelics like semelfactives appear with the frame adverbial (f-adverbial) se X ora (‘in X time’) in Greek. In the spirit of Iatridou et al. (2003) it is proposed that the d-adverbial ‘for X time’ tests not only for (a)telicity but also for (im)perfectivity. It also argues that the two d-adverbials in Greek ja X ora and epi X ora (‘for X time’) are to be found with different grammatical (viewpoint) aspect: the former with perfective aspect and the latter with imperfective aspect. This is due to the fact that the ja X ora gives not only durative temporal information but also a lexical aspectual one, while the epi X ora gives only a durative temporal.

scholarly journals ASPEK PERFEKTIF DALAM AL-QUR’AN

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-39
Author(s):  
Rezky Feryansyah Setiawan ◽  
Anwar Sanusi
Keyword(s):  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Purposive Sampling ◽  
Past Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Qualitative Descriptive ◽  
Descriptive Approach

The perfective in Arabic is indicated by a form of māḍi verb used to indicate the past time. In the Qur'an there are often verses that describe the future (imperfective) but are contained in the māḍi verb. The research using this qualitative descriptive approach aims to know the meaning contained in the verses contained in the form of the māḍi verb but in the future context. The sample of this study using purposive sampling in the form of verses that contain māḍi verb in it that perpektive and imperfective aspect. The perfective aspect of the verses is inseparable from the influence of the letters that associated with the māḍi verbs and also has implications for meaning and time.

Smashing new results on aspectual framing

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 699-720 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teenie Matlock ◽  
David Sparks ◽  
Justin L. Matthews ◽  
Jeremy Hunter ◽  
Stephanie Huette
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
The Body ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Perfective Aspect ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Cognitive Experience ◽  
Linguistic Aspect ◽  
The Way

How do people describe events they have witnessed? What role does linguistic aspect play in this process? To provide answers to these questions, we conducted an experiment on aspectual framing. In our task, people were asked to view videotaped vehicular accidents and to describe what happened (perfective framing) or what was happening (imperfective framing). Our analyses of speech and gesture in retellings show that the form of aspect used in the question differentially influenced the way people conceptualized and described actions. Questions framed with imperfective aspect resulted in more motion verbs (e.g. driving), more reckless language (e.g. speeding), and more iconic gestures (e.g. path gesture away from the body to show travel direction) than did questions framed with perfective aspect. Our research contributes novel insights on aspect and the construal of events, and on the semantic potency of aspect in leading questions. The findings are consistent with core assumptions in cognitive linguistics, including the proposal that linguistic meaning, including grammatical meaning, is dynamic and grounded in perceptual and cognitive experience.

scholarly journals use of aspect in Czech L2

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 177-194
Author(s):  
Barbara Schmiedtová
Keyword(s):  
English Learners ◽  
English Learner ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Lexical Meaning ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Verbal Prefixes ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Right

The focus of the present paper is on the difference between English and German learners‘ use of perfectivity and imperfectivity. The latter is expressed by means of suffixation (suffix -va-). In contrast, perfectivity is encoded either by suffixation (-nou-) or by prefixation (twenty different prefixes that mostly modify not only aspectual but also lexical properties of the verb). In the native Czech data set, there is no significant difference between the number of imperfectively and perfectively marked verb forms. In the English data, imperfectively and perfectively marked verb forms are equally represented as well. However, German learners use significantly more perfective forms than English learners and Czech natives. When encoding perfectivity in Czech, German learners prefer to use prefixes to suffixes. Overall, English learners in comparison to German learners encode more perfectives by means of suffixation than prefixation. These results suggest that German learners of Czech focus on prefixes expressing aspectual and lexical modification of the verb, while English learners rather pay attention to the aspectual opposition between perfective and imperfective. In a more abstract way, the German learner group focuses on the operations carried out on the left side from the verb stem while the English learner group concentrates on the operations performed on the right side qfrom the verb stem. This sensitivity can be to certain degree motivated by the linguistic devices of the corresponding source languages: English learners of Czech use imperfectives mainly because English has marked fully grammatical form for the expression of imperfective aspect – the progressive -ing form. German learners, on the other hand, pay in Czech more attention to the prefixes, which like in German modify the lexical meaning of the verb. In this manner, Czech prefixes used for perfectivization function similar to the German verbal prefixes (such as ab-, ver-) modifying Aktionsart.  

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