Slavic-style aspect: An areal-typological approach
Institute of Slavic Studies
Slavic aspect based on derivational perfectivizing prefixation stands out both as a paradigm example and as a very special type of aspectual system. In my lecture I introduce the major typological peculiarities of Slavic aspect and presents the results of a multivariate areal-typological study of prefixal perfectivization in Slavic, Baltic, Yiddish, Hungarian, Ossetic and Kartvelian languages based on a uniform set of morphological and functional-semantic parameters. It is shown that there are two clusters of prefixal perfectivization, i.e. Slavic and Caucasian, while other languages display significant degree of difference both from each other and from the two clusters. It is further argued on the basis of existing evidence that the development and distribution of the current “landscape” of preverb-based aspectual systems in the languages of Central and Eastern Europe and the Caucasus has been shaped by a complex interplay of genetic, typological and contact factors.