When (im)perfective is perfect (and when it is not)

The goal of this paper is to discuss some meaning correspondences (and/or clashes) between the perfective/imperfective aspectual contrast in Russian and various interpretations of a perfect in English. While a detailed comparison between perfect and (im)perfective, even in only two specific language...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Borik, Olga|||0000-0003-1255-5962
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:200425
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/200425
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.5565/rev/catjl.246
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Perfect
Perfective
Aspect
Russian
English
Perfet
Perfectiu
Aspecte
Rus
Anglès
Descripción
Sumario:The goal of this paper is to discuss some meaning correspondences (and/or clashes) between the perfective/imperfective aspectual contrast in Russian and various interpretations of a perfect in English. While a detailed comparison between perfect and (im)perfective, even in only two specific languages, is a project that clearly extends beyond all imaginable page limits for a single paper, I hope to demonstrate here some tendencies which might facilitate further (and deeper) theoretical and empirical studies of these two highly debated grammatical categories. In particular, the paper will show that there is a clear split between perfective and imperfective aspect in the non-past tense with respect to expressing perfect meanings and there is also a split between different existential meanings of the perfect in the sense that some of them correspond to the perfective aspect and some of them are only rendered by the imperfective aspect in Russian. Given this empirical picture, one of the theoretical questions that emerges from this study is what kind of repercussions the observed generalizations might have for a (universal) grammatical theory of tense and aspect.