Programa:4 ACT COMUNES A LOS PROG 18,19,20 Y
UNIDAD RESPONSABLE: DIRECCIÓN GENERAL DE LICENCIAS
Our proposal on the extension of vP into AspP reformulates in terms of phasehood a number of previous discussions about the properties of Slavic aspect (see Babko-Malaya 1999, 2003; Borik 2002, 2006, 2008; Borik & Reinhart 2004; Svenonius 2004a,c,d; Ramchand 2004 and many others). As is well-known, in Slavic languages, aspectual differences are encoded in verbal morphology, particularly, in a large number of aspectual prefixes.
For instance, Russian has a fairly simple system of tense and a quite complex system of aspect, in the sense that interpretation of the former is mostly determined by the latter. Consider the following examples:
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(44) a. Ivan čitaet knigu. Present (Russian)
Ivan read.PRES.3SG book
‘Ivan reads/is reading a book’
b. Ivan čital knigu. Past (imperfective)
Ivan read.PAST.3SG.MASC book
‘Ivan read/was reading a book’
c. Ivan pro-čital knigu. Past (perfective)
Ivan PF.read.PAST.3SG.MASC book
‘Ivan has read a book’
d. Ivan pro-čitaet knigu. Future (perfective, synthetic)
Ivan PF.read.PRES.3SG book ‘Ivan will read a book’
e. Ivan budet čitat’ knigu. Future (imperfective, analytic)
Ivan FUT.3SG read.INF book
‘Ivan will read a book’
As the reader may observe, on the one hand, both tense and aspect systems in Russian are instantiated by a binary opposition: past vs. non-past opposition in the temporal domain ((44b,c) vs. (44a,d,e)) and perfective vs. imperfective opposition in the aspectual domain ((44c,d) vs. (44a,b,e)). Importantly, however, the whole tense system in Russian is aspectually constrained, in the sense that the aspectual prefixation affects the mechanisms of temporal interpretation (for discussion, see Borik 2002, 2008; Borik & Reinhart 2004). This point is illustrated in the table below:
(45) Temporal/aspectual system in Russian
Tense/Aspect Imperfective Perfective
past čita-l read-SG.MASC pro-čita-l PF-read-SG.MASC non-past čita-et read-3SG bud-et čitat’ be-3SG read.INF
pro-čita-et
PF-read-3SG
[from Borik & Reinhart 2004:14] As illustrated in (45), Russian verbal morphology exhibits only one opposition in the temporal domain: past tense vs. non-past (unlike, for instance, in Romance languages, where past, present and future tenses are clearly distinguished from
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each other through inflection). Interestingly, imperfective aspect allows for two non-past tense forms, a simple (čitaet) and a periphrastic (budet čitat’), while in the perfective aspect only one non-past tense form (pročitaet) can be derived.
Moreover, aspect not only determines the tense forms, but also restricts their interpretation. Namely, non-past imperfective forms allow for both present and future interpretations (čitaet and budet čitat’ respectively), whereas non-past perfective forms (pročitaet) obligatorily trigger future interpretation. This is illustrated in (46): only the imperfective aspectual form can be used as a response to ‘What are you doing now?’ in (46a). This question requires an interpretation in present tense. So only (46b), with the imperfective verb form, is felicitous, whereas the perfective form results unacceptable in this context, as in (46c):
(46) a. Čto ty sejčas delaeš’? (Russian)
what.ACC you.NOM now do.IMP.PRES.3SG
‘What are you doing now?’
b. Čitaju knigu.
read.IMP.PRES.1SG book ‘I am reading a book’ c. * Pročitaju knigu.
PF-read.PRES.1SG book
‘I will read a book’ [from Borik & Reinhart 2004:14]
We can capture the “poorness” of Russian tense and “richness” of the aspectual morphology, in syntactic terms, as well as the fact that aspect constraints temporal interpretations. Namely, I propose that, unlike in Romance, Russian verb is inflected for Aspect and undergo v-to-Asp movement. Interestingly, Svenonius (2004c:6) reaches a similar conclusion, although on independent grounds, suggesting that the verb “remains relatively low” and “cannot move as high as T in Russian, nor in Slavic in general”.
Svenonius (2004a,c) presents a different kind of evidence in favor of v-to-Asp movement in Slavic, focusing on the structural location of aspectual prefixes. As is well-known, aspectual prefixes in Slavic do not form a homogeneous class and are traditionally divided into two types: lexical (LP) and superlexical (SLP) (see Babko-Malaya 1999, 2003; Romanova 2004; Ramchand 2004, Svenonius 2004a,c). Both types of prefixes confer perfective aspect on imperfective verbs to which they attach. However, LPs and SLPs behave differently in several respects (here I restrict my attention to four of them).
First, LPs contribute spatial or idiosyncratic lexical meanings to the resulting verb, (47), whereas SLPs change the meaning of the resulting predicate
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in a predictable way, similarly to quantizing adverbs (e.g. one by one, for a while,
a lot, etc.) or aspectual verbs (e.g. start, finish, etc.), (48):
(47) a. iz-gnat’
LP-chase
‘drive away’ b. iz-ložit’
LP-put
‘put into words’ c. iz-dat’
LP-give
‘publish’ [adopted from Svenonius 2004a:232]
(48) a. pere-kidat’
SLPDSTR-throw
‘throw one by one’ b. pere-kusat’
SLPDSTR-bite
‘bite one by one’ c. pere-bit’
SLPDSTR-beat
‘beat one by one’ [adopted from Svenonius 2004a:232]
Second, LPs can change the argument structure of a verb they attach to, as shown in (49). The LP prefix pro- ‘about’, when attached to the intransitive verb
ležat’ ‘lay’, forces it to take a direct object. In contrast, SLPs leave the argument
structure unchanged, as shown in (50): (49) a. Sobaka ležala (*odejalo).
dog lay blanket ‘The dog lay (*the blanket)’ b. Sobaka pro-ležala *(odejalo).
dog LP-lay blanket
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(50) a. Ivan čital (knigu). Ivan read book ‘Ivan read (a book)’ b. Ivan po-čital (knigu).
Ivan SLPDELIM-read book
‘Ivan read (a book) for a while’
Third, only LPs allow for formation of secondary imperfectives by attaching an imperfective suffix -a-/-yva- to a perfective form and turning it into imperfective, (51), whereas verbs modified with SLPs cannot form secondary imperfectives, (52): (51) a. iz-brat’ / iz-bir-a-t’
LP-take
‘elect’ (perfective/imperfective) b. za-verit’ / za-verj-a-t’
LP-trust
‘confirm’ (perfective/imperfective) [adopted from Svenonius 2004c:3]
(52) a. za-igrat’ /*za-igr-yva-t’ SLPINCEP-play
‘start to play’ (perfective) b. po-guljat’ / *po-gul-iva-t’
SLPDELIM-walk
‘walk for a while’ (perfective) [adopted from Svenonius 2004c:3]
Finally, SLPs can co-occur with LPs, in which case the former must precede the later:
(53) a. po-vy-brasyvat’ / *vy-po-brasyvat’ SLPDSTR-LP-throw
‘throw out one by one’ [adopted from Svenonius 2004a:207]
b. na-vy-dumyvat’ / *vy-na-dumyvat’ SLPCUM-LP-think
‘invent a lot’
These and other syntactic and semantic differences between the two classes of aspectual prefixes are captured by postulating that each type of prefixes is introduced in different levels of syntactic structure. It is widely-assumed in the literature that LPs originate VP-internally and are structurally lower than SLPs,
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which attach to the verb at higher positions, i.e., outside VP (see Babko-Malaya 1999; Ramchand 2004; Svenonius 2004a,c; among others). The hypothesis of the VP-internal merge of LPs explains why such prefixes contribute idiosyncratic meanings, given the assumption that the VP domain is proper for idiom assignment (since Marantz 1984). The analysis also predicts the ability of LPs to change the argument structure of the verb. On the other hand, SLPs are taken to originate outside VP, within a domain relevant for quantification over the event, which explains their systematic adverb-like behavior.
Here I follow Svenonius’ (2004a,c) analysis of Slavic prefixation, under which the locus of perfectivity is AspP, in the sense that Slavic prefixes add telicity and perfectivity to the constructions by being located within the AspP domain, either via internal or external Merge. According to Svenonius, LPs originate VP-internally and then undergo internal Merge to the left of the verb, namely to Spec,AspP. From that position LPs can take scope over the verb and contribute perfective meaning. In contrast, SLPs are generated outside VP, namely, at the outer Spec,AspP. This view captures the fact that SLPs always precede LPs when the two types of prefixes co-occur, as seen in (53).
Formation of secondary imperfective forms is an additional piece of evidence of hierarchical order between the aspectual prefixes. According to Svenonius, the head Asp can be optionally realized by the secondary imperfective suffix. However, the secondary imperfective cannot combine with imperfective stems (e.g. čitat’
‘read.IMP’ > *čit-yva-t’). Since LPs originate below the secondary imperfective
head Asp (i.e., inside VP), the suffix can attach to a perfective stem without running into conflict, (51). In contrast, combination of SLPs and the secondary imperfective is disallowed, (52), because the former prefixes are generated too high as to prevent the combination of the secondary imperfective with an imperfective stem.
A sample derivation for the verb povybrasyvat’ ‘throw out one by one’, with one SLP (po-) and one LP (vy-), plus the secondary imperfective suffix -yva-, is represented in (54):
118 (54) AspPDSTR po- AspP PP AspP vy- Asp vP -yva- v VP V RP -bras- R tPP
In (54), RP (Result Phrase) introduces resultative meaning (cf. Ramchand 2004). First, the LP vy- ‘out’ is merged VP-internally (namely, it is a PP complement to R). This prefix, apart from adding perfectivity to the imperfective stem -bras-, changes the meaning of the verb from ‘throw’ to ‘throw out’. Next, the Asp head containing the secondary imperfective suffix -yva- is introduced into the derivation. The aspectual head selects the perfective stem and turns it into imperfective (vybrasyvat’). Then the prefixal LP undergoes phrasal movement to Spec,AspP, after which the SLP po- is merged at the outer Spec,AspP. The latter turns the imperfective form into perfective (povybrasyvat’) and adds cumulative adverb-like meaning to the resulting verb.
The derivation in (54) correctly predicts the scopal relations between the affixes (SLP > secondary imperfective > LP) and accounts for the semantics of the resulting verb. The structure also captures the final linear order of the affixes (SLP > LP > secondary imperfective).
Although Svenonius (2004a) does not explicitly argue that Slavic verb undergoes V-to-v-to-Asp head movement, such scenario is implied by the logic of the analysis in (54). On the one hand, the verb has to get into the domain of the aspectual operators and, on the other, it needs to form a morphological word with the affixes. The resulting V-to-v-to-Asp movement is indicated by arrows in (54).
Interestingly for our purposes, Svenonius (2004c:7) considers the following scenario: “the verb moves as high as Asp, where it is preceded by the superlexical prefix. Then T attaches to the verb by the postlexical lowering operation, morphological merger” (for discussion of the latter mechanism, see Halle & Marantz 1993; Embick & Noyer 2001). It brings us again to the idea that the Slavic verb does not move to T, unlike in Romance, but rather stays lower, in Asp, a view that captures the observation that tense is aspectually constrained in Slavic.
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Before we turn to the next section, a word is in order concerning a correlation between adverb placement and verb movement in Russian. As shown in Sliossar (2007), manner adverbs such as xorošo ‘well’, medlenno ‘slowly’ and
polnost’ju ‘completely’ always precede the verb in neutral contexts:
(55) a. On bystro pročital (??bystro) knigu. (Russian)
he quickly read book
‘He quickly read the book’
b. Maša gromko pojot (??gromko) pesni.
Masha loudly sings songs ‘Masha loudly sings the songs’
In principle, assuming Cinque’s (1999) Universal Adverb Hierarchy, sketched in (56), and Pollock’s (1989) Split IP-Hypothesis, this fact could be taken as evidence that Russian lacks verb movement (see Bailyn 1995b; Erechko 2002; Kallestinova 2007; Slioussar 2007), similarly to languages like English and unlike Romance.
(56) Speech act > Evaluative > Evidential > Modal > Time > Aspectual > Voice-related > Manner > Aspectual (event-internal) adverbs
[adopted from Cinque 1999:106] However, in this thesis I follow Svenonius (2002a) and Dyakonova (2009) and assume that adverbs are merged into the structure on semantic grounds (see also Ernst 2002). On this view, the adverb cannot be merged lower than the domain that it has to scope over. In principle, the adverb can attach higher, as far as its meaning does not conflict with the semantics of the node. Interestingly, even verbs modified with LPs and SLPs cannot be followed by adverbs:
(57) On bystro na-vy-dum-yva-l (??/*bystro) vsjakix nebylic. (Russian)
he quickly SLPCUM-LP-thought-2IMPF.MASC various tales
‘He quickly thought out (a lot of) various tales’ [from Dyakonova 2009:32]
Given the ‘adverb > verb’ order in (57), there seems to be a conflict between the assumption that manner adverbs are universally generated inside vP and the logic of Svenonius’ (2004a,c) analysis of Russian aspectual prefixes outlined above. However, adopting Dyakonova’s (2009) argumentation, I assume that the fact that in Russian adverbs precede verbs does not mean that there is no v-to-Asp
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movement. Rather, it suggests that manner adverbs are generated high in Russian, namely on top of AspP.
In effect, if we assume that manner adverbs take events as their arguments (see Parsons 1990; Katz 2003, among others) and that events are generated in AspP (by adding perfective aspectual prefixes), then the ‘adverb > verb’ order in Russian is not a surprise anymore. For instance, observe from (58) that manner adverbs cannot combine with stative verbs, but such combination becomes legitimate once the verb is turned into an eventive predicate, by adding an LP:
(58) a. Saša *vnezapno/*bystro ljubit Veru. (Russian)
Sasha suddenly quickly loves Vera
‘Sasha loves Vera *loudly/*suddenly/*quickly.’
b. Saša vnezapno/bystro po-ljubil Veru.
Sasha suddenly quickly LP-loved Vera
‘Sasha suddenly/quickly fell in love with Vera’
[from Dyakonova 2009:33,35]
To conclude, the assumption about a high merge of manner adverbs in Russian captures the fixed ‘adverb > verb’ word order. Such view does not contradict the claim of v-to-Asp verb movement in Slavic.