Verifying the morpho-semantics of aspect via typological homogeneity

Abstract

This article investigates grammatical aspect in Slavic and non-Slavic languages, starting from Slavic languages, by providing crosslinguistic evidence for the presence of the so-called concept-dependent default aspect. This line of research builds on and extends accounts that draw a parallel between the structure and semantics of aspect. I show that structural simplicity (relating to whether the imperfective or the perfective is the derivation base for the respective reverse form) corresponds to prominence in meaning. More precisely, I assume that (im)perfective basic morphological or syntactic representations are indicators for primary interpretations. By building upon existing studies in typology, I introduce typological homogeneity as a criterion for the establishment of a form-meaning (in Slavic morpho-semantic) relationship within (im)perfective realizations of a particular verbal concept. This criterion complements high frequency and preferred choice in associative experiments as properties of aspectual alpha-verbs. In this paper, I discuss typological homogeneity by using the primary example of verbs of evidence collection, also called reveal-type predicates, and by additionally discussing manner-of-speaking and speech act verbs. These novel data provide evidence of typological homogeneity in the aspectual representation.