Expressions of habituality in Polish

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-184
Author(s):  
Lea Sawicki
Keyword(s):  

Abstract In this article, I discuss the strategies employed in Polish for expressing habituality in various contexts. It is also for Polish that I define habituality as a summarized presentation of similar events in the ‘actual world’ (or the ‘narrated world’) which occur over a relatively long stretch of time, on several separate occasions, with the number of occurrences not specified explicitly and with a clear interval between the occasions. Thus defined, habituality may be denoted in Polish by imperfective verb forms, specialized derived imperfective verb forms, periphrasis with the verb zwyknąć ‘to be in a habit of’, and reflexive habitual forms.

2020 ◽  
pp. 167-188
Author(s):  
Timothy Williamson

This chapter argues that the difference between indicative and counterfactual conditionals traces to the overt difference in verb forms and not to any alleged covert ambiguity or context-dependence in ‘if’. ‘Would’ has a life beyond conditionals; the best hypothesis is that it is a necessity modal restricted to contextually relevant worlds. In standard counterfactual conditionals, ‘would’ scopes over ‘if’; given the invariant truth-functional semantics of ‘if’, the compositional semantics then makes counterfactual conditionals contextually restricted strict conditionals. The chapter explores the consequences of this for the logic of counterfactuals: principles such as transitivity, contraposition, and strengthening the antecedent hold, with appearances to the contrary being explained by context-shifting caused by the application of the suppositional heuristic. However, modus ponens fails because the contextual restriction may exclude the actual world.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 167-192
Author(s):  
Lea Sawicki

The article deals with the use of simplex and compound (prefixed) verbs in narrative text. Main clauses comprising finite verb forms in the past and in the past habitual tense are examined in an attempt to establish to what extent simplex and compound verbs exhibit aspect oppositions, and whether a correlation exists between the occurrence of simplex vs. compound verbs and distinct textual units. The investigation shows that although simple and compound verbs in Lithuanian are not in direct aspect opposition to each other, in the background text portions most of the verbs are prefixless past tense forms or habitual forms, whereas in the plot-advancing text portions, the vast majority of verbs are compound verbs in the simple past tense.  


2016 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 177-188
Author(s):  
Aleksey Andronov
Keyword(s):  

This remark addresses the article by Nicole Nau and Peter Arkadiev "Towards a standard of glossing Baltic languages: The Salos Glossing Rules" published in the 6th volume of Baltic Linguistics.


2019 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-87
Author(s):  
Sergei A. Karpukhin

This article describes the connection between perfect verb forms and the typical lexical meanings of generating imperfectives using the example of a prefix model in the Russian language. The research is based on a fundamentally new approach, i.e. the means of “fixing” action in the objective time. The relevance of combining the action and the situational background to the lexical-semantic groups of verbs is established. In the course of the research, the materials of the Bolshoi Akademichescky Slovar (Big Academic Dictionary) were used.


2020 ◽  
pp. 301-323
Author(s):  
Natalya I. Kikilo ◽  

In the Macedonian literary language the analytic da-construction used in an independent clause has a wide range of possible modal meanings, the most common of which are imperative and optative. The present article offers a detailed analysis of the semantics and functions of the Macedonian optative da-construction based on fiction and journalistic texts. The first part of the article deals with the specificities of the optative as a category which primarily considers the subject of a wish. In accordance with the semantic characteristics of this category, optative constructions are used in those discourse text types where the speakers are explicitly designated (the most natural context for the optative is the dialogue). The analysis of the Macedonian material includes instances of atypical usage of the optative da-construction, in which the wish of the subject is not apparent and thereby produces new emotional tonalities perceptible to the reader of a fiction/journalistic text. The study describes Macedonian constructions involving two different verb forms: 1) present tense form (da + praes) and 2) imperfective form (da + impf). These constructions formally designate the hypothetical and counterfactual status of the optative situation, respectively. Thus, the examples in the analysis are ordered according to two types of constructions, which reflect the speaker’s view on the probability of the realisation of his/her wish. Unrealistic wishes can be communicated through the present da-construction, while the imperfective construction denotes situations in which the wish can be realised in the future. The second part of the article is devoted to performative optative da-constructions, which express formulas of speech etiquette, wishes and curses. The analysis demonstrates that these constructions lose their magical functions, when used outside of the ritual context, and begin to function as interjections.


2019 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 139-164
Author(s):  
Carsten Peust

“On the Augment of Late Egyptian Verb Forms” -- It is shown that the augment which is characteristic of certain nominal verb forms of Late Egyptian – and survives in a few traces up until Coptic – contains none of those vowels that were regularly admitted at the beginning of Egyptian words. Rather, it must continue a wordinternal vowel /ǝ/ that moved into the initial position by a misdivision of the proclitic definite article, which frequently preceded participles and relative forms in speech. The same vowel [ǝ] occurred as an epenthetic sound before the preposition ‹r› /r/ ~ [ǝr], from which only ǝ remained after its consonantal body got lost. These phonetic insights prove that the Late Egyptian augment cannot derive from the Old Egyptian augment, as has been contended, but is a genuine innovation of Late Egyptian. Finally, the rise of unetymological initial vowels in various other nouns such as ⲉϭⲱϣ (“Nubian”) and ⲉϩⲟⲟⲩ (Bohairic for “day”) is explained.


Author(s):  
Yujin Nagasawa
Keyword(s):  

This chapter considers existing arguments against perfect being theism, classifying them into three types: (i) arguments that purport to show the internal incoherence of God’s individual properties, (ii) arguments that purport to show the mutual inconsistency between God’s properties, and (iii) arguments that purport to show the mutual inconsistency between the set of God’s properties and a certain fact about the actual world. The chapter then develops a radically new and economical defence of perfect being theism, a defence that appeals to the maximal concept of God. This defence, it is argued, undercuts nearly all the arguments of the three types at once.


Over roughly the last decade, there has been a notable rise in new research on historical German syntax in a generative perspective. This volume presents a state-of-the-art survey of this thriving new line of research by leading scholars in the field, combining it with new insights into the syntax of historical German. It is the first comprehensive and concise generative historical syntax of German covering numerous central aspects of clause structure and word order, tracing them throughout various historical stages. Each chapter combines a solid empirical basis and valid descriptive generalizations with reference also to the more traditional topological model of the German clause with a detailed discussion of theoretical analyses couched in the generative framework. The volume is divided into three parts according to the main parts of the clause: the left periphery dealing with verbal placement and the filling of the prefield (verb second, verb first, verb third orders) as well as adverbial connectives; the middle field including discussion of pronominal syntax, order of full NPs and the history of negation; and the right periphery with chapters on basic word order (OV/VO), prosodic and information-structural factors, and the verbal complex including the development of periphrastic verb forms and the phenomena of IPP (infinitivus pro participio) and ACI (accusativus cum infinitivo). This book thus provides a convenient overview of current research on the major issues concerning historical German clause structure both for scholars interested in more traditional description and for those interested in formal accounts of diachronic syntax.


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