Mental Grammar. Russian Aspect and Related issues

267 Pages·9.883 MB·English

by  Durst-Andersen Per.

Mental Grammar
Russian Aspect and Related Issues
by
Per Durst-Andersen
Slavica Publishers, Inc.
Columbus, Ohio
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Copyright © 1992 by Per Durst-Andersen. All rights reserved.
All statements of fact or opinion are those of the authors and do
not necessarily agree with those of the publisher, which takes no
responsibility for them.
Text set by Anne Mette Nielsen.
Printed in the United States of America.
To Henning Andersen
my teacher and friend

CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 11
List of symbols, abbreviations and illustrations 12
PART ONE BACKGROUND
1. VERB CLASSIFICATION
1.0. Introductory remarks 17
1.1. The Vendlerian typology 17
1.2. Lyons' proposal 19
1.3. The Aristotelian typology in its diversity 20
1.4. Critique 21
1.4.1. On the stativity vs. non-stativity distinction 21
1.4.2. On the lack of distinctions between levels 23
1.5. Russian linguistics and verb classes 24
2. PREVIOUS GRAMMARS OF RUSSIAN ASPECT
2.0. Introductory remarks 29
2.1. The single-feature based theories 29
2.1.1. The perfective aspect denotes a completed action 29
2.1.2. The perfective verb expresses the result 29
2.1.3. The perfective aspect denotes a punctual action 30
2.1.4. The perfective aspect denotes an action in its totality 30
2.1.5. The perfective marks the limit of the action 31
2.1.6. The perfective aspect denotes a qualitative leap 32
2.2. The multiple-feature based theories 33
2.3. The non-feature based theories 35
3. EVALUATION OF THE PREVIOUS THEORIES
3.1. Reading a theory - its comprehensibility 39
3.2. Using a theory - its applicability 41
3.2.1. The interpretive power of a theory 41
3.2.2. The predictive power of a theory 43
3.3. Justifying a theory - its scope 45
3.4. Concluding remarks 46
PART TWO THE DEEP SEMANTICS OF VERBS
4. DEEP SEMANTICS: GROUND-SITUATIONS AND
GROUND-PROPOSITIONS
4.0. Introducing some basic notions 51
4.1. A verb model of states 54
4.2. A verb model of activities 56
4.3. A verb model of actions 59
4.4. Feature assignments to the three verb classes 63
5. ON THE ACTION VS. NON-ACTION DISTINCTION
5.0. Preliminary remarks 67
5.1. Prefixation and transitivity 67
5.2. Referential ambiguity 70
5.3. Some evidence from borrowing 73
5.4. Summing up 75
PART THREE LANGUAGE, REALITY, AND MIND
6. THE STRUCTURE OF MIND
6.0. Introducing the event vs. process distinction 81
6.1. Mental models 82
6.1.0. Preliminary remarks 82
6.1.1. The event model 83
6.1.2. The process model 85
6.1.3. Two-models-in-one 87
6.2. Background knowledge of actions 88
6.2.0. Preliminary remarks 88
6.2.1. The action schema 89
6.2.2. The action frame 91
6.3. The past and present world stores 92
6.3.0. Introduction 92
6.3.1. From need to satisfaction 93
6.3.2. The two stores 94
6.4. Concluding remarks 95
7. RUSSIAN ASPECT AND TAM-SYSTEMS
7.1. Where do linguistic models come from? 97
7.2. The grammatical meaning of the two aspectual forms 100
7.3. Russian tense, aspect, mood and their contribution
to the utterance 102
7.4. From a hierarchical to a linear representation 105
8. RUSSIAN ASPECT AS DIFFERENT STATEMENT MODELS
8.0. Introducing the practice to be followed 109
8.1. The perfective statement model 111
8.2. The imperfective standard statement model 113
8.3. Conclusions 115
PART FOUR INSIDE THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE
9. HARMONIC VS. NON-HARMONIC UTTERANCES
9.0. Preliminary remarks 121
9.1. Phaseal verbs and their incompatibility with per-
fective infinitives 122
9.2. Why 'Until' and 'Almost' involve negation 124
9.3. Time and manner adverbials 129
10. COHERENT VS. NON-COHERENT UTTERANCES
10.0. Preliminary remarks 135
10.1. Introducing contradictory vs. non-contra-
dictory statements 135
10.2. On the double answer technique 138
10.3. Aspect and modality in connection with
infinitives 140
10.3.0. Introduction 140
10.3.1. Alethic vs. deontic modality 141
10.3.2. Deontic and alethic sources 144
10.3.3. Concluding remarks 148
11. PUNCTUAL, IMPLEMENTATION, AND ATTAINMENT VERBS
11.0. Introduction 153
11.1. Punctual verbs 155
11.2. Introducing attainment and implementation verbs 156
11.3. Implementations and attainments as two
groups of actions 157
11.4. The discourse functions of implementation verbs 160
11.5. Concluding remarks 164
PART FIVE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
12. SEMIOTICS: TRANSPARENCY, MARKING AND SIGNALING
12.0. Introductory remarks 169
12.1. Signaling vs. non-signaling in relation to
Russian verbs 170
12.2. Transparency and lack of signalization 171
12.3. The semiotics of prefixation and suffixation 172
12.4. Procedurals (Aktionsarten) revisited 175
12.5. Summing up 176
13. PRAGMATICS: IMPERATIVE FRAMES AND MODALITY
13.1. On the Russian imperative and aspect 179
13.2. Prescription vs. description 182
13.2.0. Preliminary remarks 182
13.2.1. PennissionP vs. possibility 183
13.2.2. When the preconditions are not satisfied 185
13.2.3. ObligationP vs. necessity 187
13.2.4. Prohibition1'/non-obligationP vs. possibility 189
13.3. The layered structure of the imperative 192
13.3.0. Preliminary remarks 192
13.3.1. The imperative frame: preconditions, request,
postconditions 193
13.3.2. Directives as prescriptives and conditionals 197
13.3.3. Indirect speech acts 198
14. SYNTACTIC TYPOWGY: THE BASIC SYSTEMS OF ACTIVE,
ERGATIVE AND ACCUSATIVE LANGUAGES
14.0. Preliminary remarks 203
14.1. Previous treatments of active languages as a type 204
14.1.0. Introduction 204
14.1.1. The standard proposals 205
14.1.2. The commonness of these approaches 207
14.2. The [±activity] distinction and active languages 207
14.2.1. Active and inactive sentence constructions 207
14.2.2. Verbs as names of ideas or images 209
14.2.3. Inactive-active constructions 210
14.2.4. Agentless event verbs and inactive constructions 212
14.2.5. Concluding remarks 215
14.3. Previous treatments of ergative languages as a type 216
14.3.0. Introduction 216
14.3.1. The three-way distinction 218
14.3.2. The two-way distinction 219
14.3.3. Other proposals 220
14.3.4. Summary 221
14.4. Active vs. ergative languages 221
14.5. Syntactic representations of events and processes 222
14.6. Effected and affected objects 226
14.7. Antipassives as activities 227
14.8. From ergativity to accusativity 230
CONCLUSIONS 235
REFERENCES 239
SUBJECT INDEX 263
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply indebted to two persons: Henning Andersen and Georg Seppain.
Henning Andersen introduced me to Russian linguistics and inspired me to
work within the fields of general as well as Russian linguistics. His im
portance to me and my work is so great that I have dedicated this book to
him. Georg Seppain taught me Russian and, through his perfectionism, the
virtue of precision. I wish to thank him for having served as an extremely
sharp and critical informant and for all his suggestions and moral support.
I am also particularly indebted to Rita Nrervig Jensen and Viktor Smith,
whose work as informants has inspired and encouraged me to develop
different aspects of the present theory. I should like to express my gratitude
to Michael Herslund and Stig Andur Pedersen, who have given me help and
advice throughout the period of writing, and to Elsebeth Lange and Ole
Nedergaard Thomsen, who have contributed to this work by offering
commments and criticism. I have benefited by their suggestions and wish to
express my special thanks to these four persons.
I would also like to thank Per Flensburg, Alex Klinge, Rie Billow
M~ller, Henning N~lke, Jens N~rgflrd-S~rensen, Poul Rasmussen, Mikkel
Schou, Henrik Sels~ S~rensen, Annie Stabel, William Storm, and K.T.
Thomsen for having supported me either morally or practically and helped
me with advice. In this connection I wish to express my gratitude to Anne
Mette Nielsen, who helped me in a critical moment of time.
Finally I am extremely grateful to my wife, Malgorzata, for her help and
understanding during the writing of this book; and to my daughter, Sara, and
especially to my son, Daniel, who in fact inspired me to develop the present
theory.
List of relevant symbols
p : Activity
q : State
p-and-q : Action
/Ix// : Deep phonological fonn
p-7 q : p implies q
p -3q : p is sufficient for q
D : Necessity (box)
0 : Possibility (diamond)
...,
: negation
r; : Change
* : Ungrammaticality
t : Unacceptability
©
: Appropriateness
= : Equality
:::: : Coherence
+ : Non-coherence
3 : Membership
List of abbreviations
A : Accusative
ABS : Absolutive
ACT : Active
ANTIPAS : Antipassive
CL : Classifier
D : Dative
DIR EX : Direct experience
ERG : Ergative
G : Genitive
I : Instrumental
INA CT : Inactive
INDEX : Indirect experience
ipf : Imperfective
L : Locative
Masc : Masculine
N : Nominative
pf : Perfective
pl : Plural
PRES : Present
PRET : Preterite
sg : Singular