نشریه پژوهشهای زبانشناسی (May 2021)
Prospective Aspect and Aktionsart in Persian
Abstract
AbstractAspect refers to different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation. It is divided into grammatical and lexical aspects. The focus of “grammatical aspect” is on the event being completed, in progress, or prospective, while in “lexical aspect”, such characteristics as dynamicity, duration, and telicity are considered based on the inherent meaning of the verb. Predicates referring to future are usually different from those denoting past or present; the events related to the past have happened, those related to the present are in progress, and a prospective event refers to the possibility of its occurrence in future, thus being neither true nor false at the moment of speaking. Speakers talk about the events related to future in various syntactic and morphological forms with different degrees of certainty. The objective of this paper was to analyze the prospective aspect of Aktionsart in Persian based on a functional approach so as to determine which aspectual classes could be used in prospective aspect. The data were collected from the spoken and written sentences used in the websites, mass media, and daily conversations. Considering data showed that most state verbs, due to the non-agentivity of their subject, cannot denote prospective aspect, but in some cases context is determinative in representing prospectivity. The distinction between progression and prospective aspect in activity verbs is mostly context-dependent. Progression in achievement verbs usually refers to the events that will happen imminently, while the possibility of the event to happen imminently or distantly from the present moment can be represented in accomplishments with regard to the context. Therefore, perfective, imperfective, and perfect aspects could represent prospective aspect of Aktionsart in Persian regarding some contextual characteristics.Keywords: Prospective Aspect, Aktionsart, Grammatical Aspect, Functional Approach, Persian IntroductionOne function of language is to represent things that happen in the world and the participants involved in those situations are named reference and predication. The phenomena in the world or “state of affairs” are grouped into 4 basic types: situation, event, process, and action (Van Valin and Lapolla, 1997: 82). Based on these states of affairs, Vendler (1967) classified verbs into 4 main types, including state, activity, achievement, and accomplishment, which are known as “lexical aspect” or “Aktionsart”. These classes are distinguished by characteristics, such as stativity, telicity, and duration. States do not involve action, lack an inherent endpoint, and usually refer to internal feelings, properties, and locations. Activities involve action but have no inherent endpoints. Achievements are instantaneous changes of state that create a new situation, while accomplishments are the changes of state that take place over a longer time (Pavey, 2010:94-98).Grammatical aspect that is expressed by some auxiliaries and inflections (Comrie, 1976: 9) is sometimes called “viewpoint aspect” (Smith, 1997: 126) or “outer aspect” (Travis, 2010: 2). For example, in the sentence “Ali david” (Ali ran), it seems that the speaker is looking at the situation from outside, while in “Ali dārad mi-davad” (Ali is running), the internal structure of the situation is focused on without considering its beginning and end and the sentence “Ali dar Olympic-e 2025 mi-davad" (Ali runs in the Olympic Games in 2025) refers to an event that may happen in future. These sentences have perfective, imperfective, and prospective aspects, respectively. As Dinsmore (1982) has stated, we talk about situations as they happen chronologically. Different structures in Persian, such as simple past, present progressive, and some perfect structures, can represent prospective aspect. This paper investigated prospective aspect of Aktionsart in Persian based on a functional approach in order to determine which aspectual classes could denote prospective aspect. The data were gathered from the written and spoken sources used in the websites, mass media, and daily conversations. The data were classified into different lexical aspects and those having prospective aspect were then investigated. Materials and MethodsTemporal information related to eventualities is stated in various ways in different languages. For instance, tense refers to an event situation regarding other tenses, such as past, present, and future, while aspect refers to internal temporal constituency of that situation; hence, they refer to situation-external time and situation-internal time, respectively (Comrie, 1976: 5). Events referring to future, which are known as prospective as Cheung (2017) has noted, need the two components of futurity and expectancy of the event. According to Coghill (2010), differences in the form and function of prospective construction and future tense reflect different origins and ages of the two mentioned constructions. The difference is that prospective construction refers to the present state that exists before a future situation and may or may not occur. In other words, it does not predict a future situation. Furthermore, prospective forms, which accept inanimate subjects, differ from intention forms (Nevskaya, 2005). According to Rafiei (2017), 4 constructions represent prospective forms of in Persian: present progressive with “dāštan” (to have), “xāstan” (to want), “raftan” (to go), and the idiomatic construction “dar šorof-e” with infinitive and verb “be”. In Persian, some aspectual classes can represent events occurring in future, which was investigated in this paper. Discussion and ConclusionIn the recent grammar books of Persian, the auxiliary “xāstan” (“to want”) that is inflected for person and number, besides implying the past stem of the main verb, is mostly introduced as a future construction (Bateni, 1969; Shafaei, 1984; NatelKhanlari, 1991; Anvari and Givi, 1991; Lazard, 1992; Mahootiyan, 1997), while future can be expressed in other syntactic or morphological forms as well. As Dahl (2000: 313) has stated, there is a preparatory context in prospective aspect that is already in place at the time of speaking and its outcome is an extrapolation, while a state of affair is predicted in a dedicated future tense. For example, the sentence “Goldān dārad mi-oftad” (The vase is falling) refers to an event that may occur imminently despite progression of the achievement verb or in the sentence “Vaghti man residam, zang mi-zanam” (When I arrive, I will call), the achievement verb in perfective aspect refers to an event that may occur after speech time in future. In “Ta fardā, nāme rā nevešte-am” (Till tomorrow, I will have written the letter), the perfect aspect of the accomplishment verb actually refers to the completion of the verb in future. In this sentence, the temporal adverb and positive form of the sentence are the important factors for denoting future. Investigating prospective aspect of Aktionsart in Persian in this study revealed that state verbs could not denote prospective aspect due to non-agentivity of their subjects and their contexts were determinative in most cases. Activity verbs in perfective, imperfective, and perfect aspects could refer to prospective aspect if they had some adverbs denoting future time. Imperfective aspect in achievement verbs usually refers to imminent future as noted by Rezai (2012) and Gyarmathy (2015). Depending on the existence of a future temporal adverb and the positive form of a verb, accomplishment verbs in imperfective and perfect aspects could denote prospective aspect and otherwise, their common function would be understood.
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