The Aspectual Architecture of the Slavic Verb: Analogies in Different Languages and Other Grammatical Domains

A special issue of Languages (ISSN 2226-471X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 November 2024) | Viewed by 2764

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Slavic Studies, Universität Leipzig, 04109 Leipzig, Germany
Interests: semantics and pragmatics of aspect; clausal embedding

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Slavic Studies, Universität Leipzig, 04109 Leipzig, Germany
Interests: syntax; morphosyntax; aspect; information structure; prepositions; adverbials

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is devoted to “The Aspectual Architecture of the Slavic Verb: Analogies in Different  Languages and Other Grammatical Domains” workshop that was held between the 6th and 8th of November 2023 at the Universität Leipzig.

We invite contributions related to the above topic. We welcome research on both Slavic and non-Slavic languages. Besides addressing the ‘typical’ (taking it from the Slavic perspective) marking of aspectual distinctions in verbs, we welcome contributions that aim to include other grammatical domains relevant to the expression of aspectual distinctions. The following topics are of high relevance:

- Aspectual composition in Slavic and/or non-Slavic languages;

- Aspectual markers in Slavic and/or non-Slavic languages;

- Experimental methods in investigating aspectual meanings;

- Aspectual analogies between verbs and nouns and between verbal and non-verbal categories in general;

- Aspectual meanings in language comparison;

- Verbal affixes and clausal complementation.

Tentative Completion Schedule 
Abstract Submission Deadline: 20 February 2024
Notification of Abstract Acceptance: 20 March 2024
Full Manuscript Deadline: 20 November 2024

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editors (karolina.zuchewicz@uni-leipzig.de, biskup@rz.uni-leipzig.de, reichau@uni-leipzig.de) or to the Languages Editorial Office (languages@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purpose of ensuring proper fit within the scope of this Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo a double-blind peer review process.

Prof. Dr. Karolina Zuchewicz
Dr. Petr Biskup
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • aspectual composition
  • aspectual markers
  • aspectual analogies
  • aspect and clausal embedding
  • experimental methods

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (6 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

29 pages, 532 KiB  
Article
Aspect Architecture in Bulgarian: Morphology and Semantics
by Hagen Pitsch
Languages 2025, 10(5), 91; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages10050091 - 24 Apr 2025
Viewed by 254
Abstract
The present paper addresses the aspectual categories of modern Bulgarian: viewpoint aspect (imperfective vs. perfective), temporal aspect (imperfect vs. aorist), and perfect aspect. More precisely, it concerns their morphological encoding, hierarchical relation, semantic contributions, and interaction. Within a compositional interval-relational framework, the study [...] Read more.
The present paper addresses the aspectual categories of modern Bulgarian: viewpoint aspect (imperfective vs. perfective), temporal aspect (imperfect vs. aorist), and perfect aspect. More precisely, it concerns their morphological encoding, hierarchical relation, semantic contributions, and interaction. Within a compositional interval-relational framework, the study puts forward a synthesis of existing accounts so as to capture the Bulgarian aspect system as a whole. Among other things, it reveals that ‘aorist’ is a largely illusional grammatical entity, and demonstrates how an interval-relational analysis of the perfect can solve some puzzles associated with the so-called evidential moods. Full article
Show Figures

Scheme 1

21 pages, 2829 KiB  
Article
Aspectual Variation in Negated Past Tense Contexts Across Slavic
by Dorota Klimek-Jankowska, Alberto Frasson and Piotr Gulgowski
Languages 2025, 10(4), 78; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages10040078 - 8 Apr 2025
Viewed by 307
Abstract
This study examines variation in the use and interpretation of the perfective (pfv) aspect in negated past tense contexts across East Slavic and selected West and Southwest Slavic languages. Unlike West and Southwest Slavic, where the pfv + neg in past [...] Read more.
This study examines variation in the use and interpretation of the perfective (pfv) aspect in negated past tense contexts across East Slavic and selected West and Southwest Slavic languages. Unlike West and Southwest Slavic, where the pfv + neg in past tense contexts allows for an interpretation denying the existence of the event at any past time, East Slavic uniquely interprets the pfv aspect in these contexts as indicating that the agent either planned but failed to realize the event or initiated it but failed to complete it. We account for this by assuming that negation operates either high (¬TP), as sentential negation, or low (¬vP), over the event domain. In East Slavic, the interaction of the pfv aspect with the past tense prevents high negation and enforces low negation, resulting in inhibited event reading. This reading implies that the event was expected or initiated but ultimately unrealized. We argue that the semantics of the pfv aspect in East Slavic parallels the semantics of specific indefinites in the nominal domain. The aspect head introduces a temporal variable t, which, via a choice function, restricts the domain of existential quantification over t to a singleton set, presupposing the existence of t, which cannot be canceled by high negation. Consequently, in negated pfv past tense contexts in East Slavic, negation scopes over the event domain giving rise to special interpretative constraints in past tense perfective contexts with negation. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

37 pages, 458 KiB  
Article
The Role of German Preverbs in Clausal Selection Properties
by Barbara Stiebels
Languages 2025, 10(4), 74; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages10040074 - 2 Apr 2025
Viewed by 256
Abstract
One aspect of clausal embedding that has not received any specific attention in the literature is the question of whether and how derivational morphology may affect clausal selection properties of the respective bases. In this paper, I will focus on the role of [...] Read more.
One aspect of clausal embedding that has not received any specific attention in the literature is the question of whether and how derivational morphology may affect clausal selection properties of the respective bases. In this paper, I will focus on the role of German preverbs for clausal embedding. I will show that any parameter of clausal embedding can be affected by a preverb, though sometimes in a non-compositional way. Preverbs may affect presuppositions and entailments of their base verb, their selectional behavior with respect to clause types, their status as control or raising predicate and their potential for restructuring. Furthermore, preverbs may license or block neg-raising. The first part of the paper is dedicated to the demonstration of these effects with no specific preverb in mind. The second part discusses three specific preverb patterns with zu- ‘to’, ein- ‘in’ and er-, showing their specific clausal complementation properties. Preverbs influence clausal complementation by their impact on the argument structure/realization (in the case of control and restructuring) and on the lexical aspect of the base (in the case of certain interrogative complements and neg-raising). Full article
26 pages, 412 KiB  
Article
Simplex Perfectives in Russian Verb Formation
by Olav Mueller-Reichau
Languages 2025, 10(4), 60; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages10040060 - 26 Mar 2025
Viewed by 318
Abstract
This paper investigates the role of simplex perfectives in the Russian aspectual system, which are known to display a number of characteristics that seem to escape a proper theoretical treatment. It is proposed that simplex perfective roots (like reš- or bros-) share [...] Read more.
This paper investigates the role of simplex perfectives in the Russian aspectual system, which are known to display a number of characteristics that seem to escape a proper theoretical treatment. It is proposed that simplex perfective roots (like reš- or bros-) share with internally prefixed base predicates (like napis- or pročit-) a maximal path in their event descriptions. The two classes of predicates differ from each other, however, in that only the latter require their events to realise the path up to its limit. The underspecification of so-called simplex perfectives with respect to event maximality is resolved by the choice of the different theme vowels -a or -i. A theoretical model is developed that derives the actual verb forms in accordance with their aspectual values. It implements two different morphological cycles, with theme vowel insertion demarkating the end of the first one. Early (internal) and late (external) prefixation are defined relative to this. Full article
17 pages, 337 KiB  
Article
The Welsh Verbal Noun
by Sabine Asmus
Languages 2025, 10(3), 43; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages10030043 - 27 Feb 2025
Viewed by 451
Abstract
The verbal noun in the modern, currently spoken p-Celtic language Welsh is of a different nature than any other word class known in Standard Average European Languages (SAEs), to which the Insular Celtic tongues do not belong. This subject has occasionally attracted attention. [...] Read more.
The verbal noun in the modern, currently spoken p-Celtic language Welsh is of a different nature than any other word class known in Standard Average European Languages (SAEs), to which the Insular Celtic tongues do not belong. This subject has occasionally attracted attention. Welsh language grammars clearly identify a berfenw ‘verb noun’, which Thomas (1996, p. 28) calls a citation form with no specific person or time allocation. However, non-Welsh descriptions of the verbal noun tend to trigger confusion by allocating varied SAE terms to it, like ‘verb noun infinitives’ (Myhill, 1985), ‘verbal noun infinitives’ (Carnie & Guilfoyle, 2000, p. 10), ‘infinitives’ (Borsley et al., 2007, p. 70), and ‘non-finite verb(al) forms’ (Sackmann, 2022, p. 2), most of them belittling the prominent nominal functions of this word class. Coming from a historical perspective, Scherschel et al. (2018) call the Welsh verbal noun an ‘event noun’, which seems more appropriate, as is shown in this paper, in which a detailed analysis of the major features of this Welsh word class is carried out. Full article
18 pages, 356 KiB  
Article
Aspectual Restriction on Sorting in Czech and Slovak
by Mojmír Dočekal, Michaela Hulmanová and Aviv Schoenfeld
Languages 2025, 10(3), 40; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages10030040 - 26 Feb 2025
Viewed by 313
Abstract
This article is about the cross-linguistic universality of the so-called Universal Sorter, where a noun N means ‘kind of N’. We discuss two restrictions in two Slavic languages which are absent from English, pertaining to perfective verbs and numerically modified count nouns. We [...] Read more.
This article is about the cross-linguistic universality of the so-called Universal Sorter, where a noun N means ‘kind of N’. We discuss two restrictions in two Slavic languages which are absent from English, pertaining to perfective verbs and numerically modified count nouns. We establish, first with introspective judgments (for Czech) and then experimentally (for Slovak), that both restrictions are present in a way which supports our analysis of the first restriction as stemming from Slavic, unlike English, having perfective verbs which force a completive reading of an incremental theme. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop