In recent times, German as a language with a well-functioning tense system is developing a special progressive form, marking actions and processes which are continual and not yet terminated. There is a variety of forms like beim Arbeiten or gerade im Begriff sein zu arbeiten, but most usual and by far most grammaticalised is the am-progressive (er ist am Arbeiten, “he is working”). In this paper the restrictions which still exist are discussed. They are limited, but although they are not entirely accepted in standard German, the range of these constructions is extensive. In spite of this fact, the German language does not tend to develop general aspectual markers. A comparison with English shows this clearly. However, in its early periods the German language had overt aspectual characteristics. Especially constructions with the present participle and the auxiliary verbs sein and warden could function as aspect partners. These constructions gradually disappeared at the end of Middle High German. Thus, modern German has only very few aspectual markers, which are restricted to progressive constructions verbalizing actions and processes in actual situations.
The article deals with (or rather begins with) Czech biaspectual verbs. Although biaspectuals (sometimes referred to as aspectual homonyms) distinguish between perfective vs. imperfective meaning, there is nothing in their morphological makeup to signal this meaning distinction. To determine the aspect of a biaspectual, i.e. to disambiguate its aspectual homonymy, biaspectuals are sometimes synonymously substituted by verbs whose morphological makeup does signal their aspect; the biaspectuals are then considered perfective or imperfective (used perfectively vs. imperfectively) depending on the aspect of their substituents. The article demonstrates that this method is deficient: it is not necessarily conclusive. To demonstrate this, the following observations were made and conclusions drawn on Czech aspect and aspect in general. i. Despite the fact that aspect is thought of as an obligatory verbal category in Czech, it is not a matter of the verb alone, but rather of a larger linguistic expression. The mutual morphological makeup of the verb is only one of the many factors/exponents which (“in cooperation”) determine the aspectual interpretation of the respective linguistic expression. Some of these factors are identifiable as aspectual exponents in the expression itself (for example tense, verb complements, adverbial verb complements among them), others are beyond its scope, i.e. they are part of the (situational) context in which the expression is used. ii. Linguistic expression can be interpreted as perfective, imperfective, aspectually unspecific or the aspectual distinction can be irrelevant for it — despite that, aspect is considered to be an obligatory category. iii. Furthermore, the morphological imperfective can be used to co-express perfectivity, and the morphological perfective can be used to refer to an imperfectively conceived process/event. Therefore, due to this and points i. and ii. above, the verb IS NOT inherently perfective or imperfective, it is USED perfectively, imperfectively, or in an aspectually unspecific way.
This paper describes the complex tense and aspect morphology in Nama, a previously undocumented Papuan language of southern New Guinea. Tense/aspect suffixes followed by agent/actor referencing suffixes occur in combination with one of two sets of patient referencing prefixes. Most of the tense/aspect suffixes mark two possible tenses, and the choice of a prefix from a particular set determines the appropriate interpretation. The distinction between imperfective and perfective aspect is central to the Nama tense/aspect system, and the forms of the perfectivity markers depend on the number category of the grammatical arguments: dual versus non-dual, which encompasses both singular and plural (i.e. more than two). At the same time, the agent/actor suffixes and patient referencing prefixes generally index two different number categories: singular versus non-singular. Each of the two basic aspects has three different tenses, with some other aspectual distinctions occurring only with singular arguments. A combination of imperfective and perfective marking is also used.
The article represents Laura Yanda’s aspectological conception. Her conclusions prove that each polisemantic verb may be an aspect cluster. Reflections on this scholar’s ideas about the material of imperfective genre pairs leads us to the conclusion that every polysemous verb is potentially a genre cluster. An aspectual cluster consists of two segments: genre and action. The aspect segment has three main manifestations, the specificity of which makes it possible to distinguish four types of clusters. The first is a polycategorical cluster as an integration of imperfectives-correlative and imperfectives-isolative. Second, a polyprefix cluster as an integration of imperfectives-correlative and multi-prefix perfective-correlative. The third is a bi-imperfective cluster as an integration of non-prefixed and prefixed imperfective-correlatives with a common perfective-correlative (traditional species triplets). Type four is a combined cluster as an integration of two or more of the above clusters. The action segment of an aspectual cluster is represented by a combination of at least three lexical-semantic variants: one imperfective and two or more perfectives belonging to different actional subclasses.
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W artykule rozwinięta zostaje aspektologiczna koncepcja Laury Jandy. Refleksja idei tej uczonej o materiale imperfektywnych par gatunkowych prowadzi do wniosku, iż każdy czasownik polisemiczny jest potencjalnie klastrem gatunkowym. Klaster aspektowy składa się z dwóch segmentów: gatunkowego i czynnościowego. Segment gatunkowy ma trzy główne przejawy, których specyfika pozwala wyróżnić cztery rodzaje klastrów: 1) klaster polikategorialny jako integracja korelatywnych i izolatywnych imperfektywów; 2) klaster poliprefiksowy jako integracja korelatywnych i różnie prefiksowanych korelatywnych imperfektywów; 3) bi-implicative klaster jako integracja bezprefiksowego i prefiksowego imperfektywu-korelatywu ze wspólnym perfektywno-korelatywnym (tradycyjne trójki gatunkowe); 4) klaster kombinowany jako integracja dwóch lub więcej z wyżej wymienionych klastrów. Segment czynnościowy klastra aspektowego jest reprezentowany przez kombinację co najmniej trzech wariantów leksykalnych i semantycznych: jednego imperfektywu i dwóch lub więcej perfektywów należących do różnych podklas czynnościowych.
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