VERBAL ASPECT AND STATIVE CONSTRUAL IN CZECH

• Authors: Starý Kořánová [e-mail] Ilona
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The present article deals with the category of aspect in Czech and with some theoretical ramifications for aspect in general. So-called perfective verbs may be part of an imperfectively interpreted language expression, and vice versa. To address these situations terminologically, the distinction is made between morphological aspect (given by the morphological make-up of the verb) and aspectual construal. Thus, aspect appears not as an inherent quality of the verb as a lexical unit, but rather as a matter of verb use. Particular focus is given to the opposition ‘process’ and ‘state’. This opposition is examined in terms of the transition ‘process –> state’. Relevant factors in this transition include the specificity/concreteness of the language expression construal, the ongoingness of the referred event: ongoing event (aktuální událost) and non-ongoing event (neaktuální událost), the tense, and modality, and the adverbial temporal complements. The conclusions are supported by two corpus-based analyses, one examining capacities and the other ‘t + MP’ constructions (where ‘t’ is a temporal adverb with durative meaning, and ‘MP’ is a morphologically perfective verb). The latter analysis results in a classification of states into eleven semantic domains, the majority of which are modal states (about 35 % of the identified stative construals).

Keywords

EN

VERBAL ASPECT; STATE; STATIVE CONSTRUAL; PROCESS; DYNAMIC CONSTRUAL; CAPACITIVE VERB; CZECH

• Publisher: Ludovit Stur Institute of Linguistics, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovenská reč (Slovak Language)
• Year: 2025
• Volume: 90
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 152 – 183

Contributors

author

Starý Kořánová [e-mail] Ilona

• Charles University, Faculty of Arts, Na Příkopě 29, 110 00, Praha 1, Czech Republic

• https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5835-9233

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/slovrec.2025.2.8