Book Reviews

Abstract

The first volume of Schlegel's two-volume work on Russian verbal aspect is conceived as a textbook and provides the theoretical bases that underlie the practical language exercises contained in the companion volume. It begins with an indispensable index of numerous terminological abbreviations as well as explanations of signs and symbols to which the reader or language learner must constantly refer, if only to justify their role as graphic explanations of the complex relations described in the work. Unfortunately, the abbreviations and explanations are arranged topically rather than alphabetically and are grouped by theoretical concept. The abbreviations-both German and Russian-reflect a very broad spectrum of concepts common to both traditional aspectology (e.g., terminativity/aterminativity, perfective/imperfective aspect, Aktionsarten, and so on) and the particular theory propounded here, including: differential semantic traits; temporal and aspectual reference points; "event," "speech," and "reference" as understood in the framework of Reichenbach's temporal logic; and "state of affairs" (aktionale Situation), i.e., actions, states, and events. Terminativity (telicity) also plays an important role in the application of graphic symbols alongside such concepts as "duration" (Dauer), "iterativity"/"repetition" (Wiederholung), "sequence of actions" (Handlungskette), "parallelism of actions" (Parallelität von Handlungen), "incidence" (Inzidenz), etc. An appendix, which brings together the definitions of the principal aspectological concepts (pp. 307-313), also serves as a doubtless necessary aid to users of this work.The textbook is intended primarily for use at the university level. Given the complexity of the grammatical category of aspect, the book's stated goal is to provide-by means of a "multimodal and multidimensional approach"-a theory with sufficient "explanatory force" for practical language use (p. 17). As presented in chapter 2 (pp. 21-34), the basic mechanisms of aspect use are understood as interactions between verbs and the context(s) in which they occur, verbs being defined basically by actionality (lexical aspect) and "terminativity" (i.e., telicity), with context(s) similarly classified according to "terminativity." The aspectual system is viewed as a projection of the temporal system onto individual time intervals (p. 31), a kind of temporal microsystem whereby any given action is situated relative to an "aspectual reference point," i.e., a point in time to which the speaker refers or at which the speaker mentally situates her/himself (this stands in contrast to tense, whereby any given action is situated relative to the moment of speech).Chapter 3 is devoted to the formal expression of the category of aspect in Russian (pp. 35-98), including Aktionsarten (both in the narrow sense of lexical derivation and in the broader sense of lexical semantics) as well as correlative pairs of verbs of motion and their delineation vis-à-vis aspectual pairs per se. While recognizing as "true" aspectual pairs t...