Modality and Aspect: interaction of constructional meaning and aspectual meaning in the dative-infinitive construction in Russianстатья из журнала
Аннотация: In the literature on modality there has been an increasing interest for the interaction and relation between aspect and modality in Slavic (for example Paducheva 2006; Rappaport 1985; Trnavac 2006; Wiemer 2001). Most of these studies proceed from cross-linguistically defined notions of modality, or even more abstract cross-linguistic notions (e. g. Trnavac 2006, who deals with the notion of subjectivity), and try to determine whether a correlation can be established between these modal notions, and the aspectual use of a form or construction. In many of these analyses, the dative infinitive construction in Russian (henceforth DI) plays an important part, primarily because the aspect of the infinitive is an important factor in the specific modality type associated with this construction. The general pattern observed in the literature on the DI is that (im)possibility is correlated with the perfective aspect, whereas the imperfective aspect is typical of necessity (see Bricyn 1990; Fortuin 2000; Maurice 1995, 1996 and Timofeev 1950). The correlation between epistemic modality and aspect seems a matter of some debate. Some argue that it is correlated with the perfective aspect (e. g. Wiemer 2001, 201), in line with the general association between epistemic modality and the perfective aspect in Russian (Wiemer 2001, 217), whereas others see a relation with the imperfective aspect (e. g. Fortuin 2000). Analyses of the aspectual usage of specific forms such as the DI which proceed from cross-linguistically modality types can provide a deeper understanding of the relation between aspect and modality cross-linguistically (see Van der Auwera and Plungian 1998 for a state of the art overview of such modality types). It is, however, important to accompany such studies with analyses that focus on the specific semantics of forms, and the internal logic of aspect of these forms. In this paper, I will provide such an analysis. As I will show, the aspectual usage of the DI differs considerably from other modal forms. This is foremost due to the fact that the modality of the DI is syntactically derived, and not expressed by one specific form. This is not to say though, that the aspectual use of the DI is an idiosyncratic phenomenon of the DI. Similar aspectual patterns can be found with other syntactic expressions of modality, and other non-modal constructions. This means that the aspectual
Год издания: 2007
Авторы: Egbert Fortuin
Издательство: Springer Science+Business Media
Источник: Russian Linguistics
Ключевые слова: Linguistics and language evolution, Lexicography and Language Studies, Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity
Открытый доступ: hybrid
Том: 31
Выпуск: 3