A database of Russian verbal aspect

Olga Borik,Maarten Janssen

doi:10.5617/osla.169

Abstract

This paper describes a pilot project for a database of Russian verbal aspect. All prefixed verbs in the database are linked to their base form. Independently of this, all the verbs are classified as either perfective, imperfective or biaspectual, and the members of a perfective/imperfective opposition with the same derivational base are linked to each other. The linked members can further be classified into aspectual (perfective/imperfective) pairs. To keep the database as theory independent as possible, we establish the relation between the members of an aspectual pair for the largest part semi-automatically, on the basis of the information provided in their dictionary definitions. The databse is not meant as a model by itself, but it intended to provide empirical grounds for data generalizations which, in turn, can be used to support theoretical explanations. After the description of the database itself, we discuss a number of general claim about Russian aspect, and verify them against the database. Amongst other things, we show that not all prefixed verbs are perfective, and that there is no relation between the meaning of a prefixed за- verb and the presence or absence of a direct object.

Highlights

When dealing with verbal aspect in Russian, it is not uncommon to find generic statements such as: all perfective verbs in Russian are morphologically complex, and all prefixed verbs in Russian are perfective (e.g., Ramchand 2004; Filip & Rothstein 2006)
This paper describes a pilot project which aims to provide a morphologically oriented database of aspectual forms in Russian, which should be of great practical help for the numerous theoretical studies of Russian verbal aspect
[1] there have been databases which provide derivational information for Russian, e.g. Russian Derivational Morphology Database which was pointed out to us by an anonymous reviewer, they do not focus on the aspectual information like our database does

Summary

Introduction

When dealing with verbal aspect in Russian, it is not uncommon to find generic statements such as: all perfective verbs in Russian are morphologically complex, and all prefixed verbs in Russian are perfective (e.g., Ramchand 2004; Filip & Rothstein 2006). All prefixed verbs in the database will be linked to their base form. Section [4] illustrates this: the database provides a list of за- verbs with the relevant morphological information (i.e. base verb for prefixed verbs, aspectual value, etc.) and is successfully used for the case study we present, even though this study still needs to be supplemented with additional information about the inchoative vs resultative meaning of за- for each particular verb.

Results

Conclusion