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“What Makes Russian Bi-Aspectual Verbs Special” Laura A. Janda, University of North Carolina To appear in: Dagmar Divjak and Agata Kochanska (eds.). Slavic Perspectives on Cognitive Linguistics. Ms. to be submitted to “Cognitive Linguistics Research”, published by Mouton de Gruyter (Berlin – New York) (working title). Russian is famous for its aspectual distinction between Perfective (the marked value, signaled by a superscript “p”) and Imperfective aspect (signaled by a superscript “i”), which is obligatorily expressed by all verb forms. All Russian verbs are unambiguously encoded by their morphology as either Perfective or Imperfective, with one class of exceptions: the “biaspectual” verbs, which lack this morphological distinction. This article will identify and explain an unusual property of the biaspectual verbs, namely the fact that they fail to participate in Aktionsart/actionality phenomena that are characteristic of the Russian verb system as a whole. This unusual behavior of biaspectual verbs can be accounted for by examining the interaction of lexical semantics, aspectual semantics, and construal. This article will also shed light on an enduring mystery of Russian linguistics: the association between biaspectual verbs and lexical borrowing. Although the vast majority of biaspectual verbs are foreign borrowings (nearly 95% according to statistics collected by Anderson 2002 based on Zaliznjak 1977), not all borrowed verbs are biaspectuals, but no one has ever tried to explain why some verbs are borrowed as biaspectuals and others are not. I will show that the lexical semantics of the verb can be used to predict whether a borrowed verb enters the Russian lexicon as a biaspectual or as a monoaspectual base verb. The concept of the “aspectual pair” (consisting of one Perfective and one Imperfective verb with the same denotation) is entrenched and pervasive in Russian linguistics (cf. Vinogradov 1938, Šaxmatov 1941, Bondarko 1983, Čertkova 1996, Zaliznjak & Šmelev 2000). Under the traditional “aspectual pair” interpretation, the biaspectual verbs are merely syncretic. Thus a biaspectual verb like likvidirovat’p/i [liquidatep/i] ‘liquidatep/i’ expresses both Perfective and Imperfective aspect, which is disambiguated in context (as asserted by Čertkova 1996: 100-109, Galton 1976: 294, Zaliznjak & Šmelev 2000: 10), just as number is disambiguated when English fish is used in context. This result is not particularly interesting, but it is based on a model, that of the “pair”, that suppresses much of the actual complexity of the Russian aspectual system. I have proposed an alternative model, of aspectual clusters (Janda forthcoming). While the cluster model acknowledges the existence of aspectual partnerships, it also recognizes that such partnerships are usually embedded in larger clusters of aspectually related verbs and that there are not one, but four distinct types of Perfective verbs in Russian: 1) Natural Perfectives which describe the logical completion of the corresponding Imperfective Activity, illustrated by napisat’p [on-writei] ‘writep’ (as the completion of pisat’i [writei] ‘writei’); 2) Specialized Perfectives which provide enough new semantic content to motivate the further derivation of corresponding Imperfectives, as illustrated by perepisat’p [re-writei] ‘rewritep’ (and the derived Imperfective perepisyvat’i [re-writeiImpf] ‘rewritei’); 3) Complex Acts (often known as Aktionsarten), which consist of an Activity combined with a limit, forming verbs that describe temporally limited actions, as illustrated by popisat’p [awhile-writei] ‘writep (for a while)’ (which is a complex of ‘write’ + an arbitrary time limit); and 4) Single Acts, which isolate a single cycle of a repeated Activity, as in the case of čixnut’p [sneezei-once] ‘sneezep (once)’ (cf. čixat’i [sneezei] ‘sneezei’). In Janda forthcoming I have shown that the following implicational hierarchy predicts all and only the aspectual clusters observed in survey of several thousand Russian verbs (items to the left of the “>” are included in a cluster prior to items on the right, and where the items in parentheses are optional and unordered): Activity > (Natural Perfective/Specialized Perfective) > Complex Act > Single Act Given the cluster model, the biaspectual verbs are conspicuous because although there are thirteen cluster structures observed among Russian verbs, the biaspectual verbs use only two of the attested cluster structures, namely: Activity + Natural Perfective and Activity + Natural Perfective + Specialized Perfective. In other words, the biaspectual verbs specifically avoid forming Complex Act and Single Act Perfectives. In more concrete terms, a biaspectual verb like likvidirovat’p/i [liquidatep/i] ‘liquidatep/i’ is unlike a verb such as gryzt’i [gnawi] ‘gnawi’, but like a verb such as krepnut’i [strengtheni] ‘get strongeri’, as shown in the table: Complex Act likvidirovat’p/i [liquidatep/i] ‘liquidatep/i’ likvidirovat’p/i [liquidatep/i] ‘liquidatep/i’ (not attested) Single Act (not attested) Activity Natural Perfective gryzt’i [gnawi] ‘gnawi’ razgryzt’p [apartgnawi] ‘gnawp up’ pogryzt’p [awhilegnawi] ‘gnawp (for a while)’ gryznut’p [gnawionce] ‘gnawp (once)’ krepnut’i [strengtheni] ‘get strongeri’ okrepnut’p [aroundstrengtheni] ‘get strongerp’ (not attested) (not attested) In Janda forthcoming I have developed a semantic map for Russian aspect (following the models set forth by Haspelmath 2003, 1997a, 1997b, van der Auwera & Plungjan 1998, van der Auwera & Dobrushina & Goussev 2004, van der Auwera & Malchukov in press, van der Auwera & Temurcu in press, Croft 2001, 2003, Croft & Cruse 2004, Anderson 1982, and Kemmer (1993). I argue that Complex Act and Single Act Perfectives are associated with a semantic characteristic designated “Completability” This characteristic is variously referred to as “telic vs. atelic” (cf. Dahl 1985, Smith 1991, Bertinetto & Delfitto 2000, Tatevosov 2002, Tournadre 2004), “completion” vs. “termination” (Smith 1991: 45-49), “transformative” vs. “non-transformative” (Mehlig (1994, 1997, in press), “directed activity” vs. “undirected activity” (Croft in preparation). Basically, an action is Completable if it leads to a natural conclusion, as in play a song. An action is Non-Completable if it does not lead to a natural conclusion, as in work. Notice that many verbs can be interpreted as both Completable and Non-Completable (cf. play a sonata as Completable vs. play the piano as Non-Completable, equivalent to work). One simple rule of thumb is that if a verb has a Non-Completable interpretation, it is possible for someone to engage in the activity for a while without necessarily progressing toward a conclusion, as in work for a while, play the piano for a while. It appears that Russian biaspectual verbs are associated exclusively with Completability and cannot have an interpretation of Non-Completability. In this article I will argue that the difference between biaspectual borrowed verbs like likvidirovat p/i [liquidatep/i] ‘liquidatep/i’ and other, non-biaspectual borrowed verbs like improvizirovat’i [improvizei] ‘improvizei’, is precisely that the biaspectual verbs lack a Non-Completable interpretation. So liquidating is not something that one can easily imagine doing for a while, whereas improvising is. As a result, improvizirovat’i [improvizei] ‘improvizei’ looks a lot like the native Russian verb igrat’i [playi] ‘playi’, which, like English play, can be interpreted as Non-Completable, as in igrat’ na rojale ‘play the piano’, or as Completable, as in (s)ygrat’ pesnju ‘play a song’ and (s)ymprovizirovat’ pesnju ‘improvize a song’, in which case we get derived Natural Perfectives. Likvidirovat’p/i [liquidatep/i] ‘liquidatep/i’ describes a very goal-oriented action, which is why the bare verb (without a perfectivizing prefix) can also designate the Natural Perfective, and why it lacks the option of signaling Non-Completability. In this article I will examine a sample of biaspectual borrowed verbs and compare them with a sample of non-biaspectual borrowed verbs in Russian. I will provide evidence for the pattern described above, and also consider any counterexamples, as well as the fact that most biaspectual verbs are also “growing” new derived Natural Perfectives and Imperfectives (cf. Korba in progress). Bibliography (includes only works cited above; the article will have a fuller list of citations) Anderson, Cori. 2002. Biaspectual Verbs in Russian and their Implications on the Category of Aspect. Honors Thesis, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Anderson, Lloyd. 1982. The ‘Perfect’ as a universal and as a language particular category. Tense and Aspect: Between semantics and pragmatics, ed. by Paul Hopper, 227-264. Amsterdam, John Benjamins [Typological Studies in Language 1]. Bertinetto, Pier Marco and Denis Delfitto. 2000. Aspect vs. actionality: Why they should be kept apart. Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe. Dahl, Östen (ed.), 189-225, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Bondarko, Aleksandr V. 1983. Principy funkcional’noj grammatiki i voprosy aspektologii (Principles of functional grammar and questions of aspectology). Leningrad: Nauka. Čertkova, Marina Ju. 1996. Grammatičeskaja kategorija vida v sovremennom russkom jazyke (The grammatical category of aspect in contemporary Russian). Moscow: Moscow State University. Croft, William. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Croft, William. 2003. Typology and Universals, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Croft, William. In preparation. Verbs: Aspect and argument structure. Croft, William and D. Alan Cruse. 2004. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dahl, Östen. 1985. Tense and aspect systems. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Galton, Herbert. 1976. The main functions of the Slavic verbal aspect. Skopje: Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Haspelmath, Martin. 1997a. Indefinite pronouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press [Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory]. Haspelmath, Martin. 1997b. From Space to Time: Temporal Adverbials in the World’s Languages. Munich: LINCOM EUROPA. Haspelmath, Martin. 2003. The geometry of grammatical meaning: semantic maps and cross-linguistic comparison. The new psychology of language 2: 211-42. Janda, Laura A. Forthcoming. “Aspectual clusters of Russian verbs”, in Studies in Language. Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. The Middle Voice. Amsterdam, John Benjamins [Typological Studies in Language 23]. Korba, John. In progress. “TBA” (a case study of Russian biaspectual verbs that are gaining aspectual morphology). Masters Thesis, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Mehlig, Hans Robert. 1994. Gomogennost’ i geterogennost’ v prostranstve i vremeni (Homogeneity and heterogeneity in space and time). Revue des etudes Slaves 66: 595-606. Mehlig, Hans Robert. 1997. Nekotorye zamečanija po povodu opisanija katergorii vida v russkom jazyke (Some comments on the description of the category of aspect in Russian). Russian Linguistics 21: 177-193. Mehlig, Hans Robert. In press. Glagol’nyj vid i vtoričnaja gomogenizacija oboznačaemoj situacii posredstvom kvantifikacii: K upotrebleniju delimitativnogo sposoba dejstvija v russkom jazyke (Verbal aspect and the secondary homogenization of a described situation by means of quantification: Use of the delimitative Aktionsart in Russian). Semantika i struktura slavjanskogo vida. Sbornik materialov konferencii “Slavjanskij vid i leksikografija” (The semantics and structure of Slavic aspect. Collected papers from the conference “Slavic aspect and lexicography”). Slavolinguistica 5. Smith, Carlota S. 1991. The Parameter of Aspect. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Šaxmatov, A. A. 1941. Sintaksis russkogo jayzka (Russian syntax). Leningrad. Učpedgiz. Tatevosov, Sergej (2002). ‘The parameter of actionality.’ Linguistic Typology 6, 317-401. Tournadre, Nicolas. 2004. “Typologie des aspects verbaux et intégration à une théorie du TAM”. Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris 99, 7-68. Van der Auwera, Johan and Vladimir A. Plungjan. 1998. Modality’s semantic map. Linguistic Typology 2: 79-124. Van der Auwera, Johan, Nina Dobrushina and Valentin Goussev. 2004. A semantic map for imperative-hortatives. Contrastive Analysis in Language. Identifying Linguistic Units of Comparison, D. Willems et al. (eds.), 44-66. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Van der Auwera, Johan and Andrej Malchukov. In press. A semantic map for depictive adjectivals. Depictive Predications, E. Schulze-Bernd and N. P. Himmelmann (eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van der Auwera, Johan and Ceyhan Temurcu. In press. Semantic maps. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier. Vinogradov, V. V. 1938. Sovremennyj russkij jazyk. Grammatičeskoe učenie o slove (Modern Russian. Grammatical analysis of the word). Moscow: Učpedgiz. Zaliznjak, A. A. 1977. Grammatičeskij slovar’ russkogo jazyka (Grammatical dictionary of Russian). Moscow: Russkij jazyk. Zaliznjak, Anna A. and Aleksej D. Šmelev. 2000. Vvedenie v russkuju aspektologiju (Inroduction to Russian aspectology). Moscow: Jazyki russkoj kul’tury.