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On the Morphosyntax of Russian Verbal Aspect
- Journal of Slavic Linguistics
- Slavica Publishers
- Volume 27, Number 2, Summer-Fall 2019
- pp. 137-160
- 10.1353/jsl.2019.0008
- Article
- Additional Information
Abstract:
Aspect is a syntactic feature of the sentence predicate, the Infl head of which is generated +Pfv or –Pfv and +Past or –Past. Verb forms comply with these features or are Inflected for them. Prefix-verb compounds are not stored in the lexicon but are base-generated in the sentence. They provide the environment for the Secondary Imperfective Rule, which assigns the feature +Iter to V when it contains a prefix. This feature governs the introduction of themes between the verb root and the ending. The +Iter feature can also be generated with the verb independently of the SIR, thus yielding the so-called procedurals. With unprefixed verbs aspectual patterning is a matter of their form (thematization) and their meaning. Those that are grammatical in +Pfv predicates are +Telic (have a telos or goal). This depends on their formal and semantic properties and ultimately on the intention of the speaker.