A note on epistemic and effective meanings of the Polish perfective and imperfective

Agata Kochańska

doi:10.15388/sbol.2021.10

Abstract

The paper offers an analysis of selected uses of the Polish perfective and imperfective in the non-past indicative and in the imperative construction. In uses under consideration, both the perfective and the imperfective refer to a single complete occurrence of a telic process and, hence, the semantic contrast between them is not a matter of distinctions such as boundedness/unboundedness, completion/non-completion, telicity/atelicity, punctuality/durativity, etc. The paper presents a qualitative analysis of selected corpus examples which is aimed at elucidating the nature of the relevant contrast. The claim advocated in the course of the discussion is that the perfective/imperfective contrast may play a role in the system of clausal grounding in Polish, as it may convey the idea of, respectively, epistemic and/or effective non-immediacy/immediacy of the profiled process relative to the ground.

Highlights

The aim of the present paper is to offer an analysis of selected uses of the Polish perfective and imperfective
The role of the perfective/imperfective contrast in non-past indicative sentences The present discussion of the perfective/imperfective contrast in non-past indicative sentences follows the lines of the analysis proposed in Kochańska (2002)
Concluding remarks The present paper has been concerned with investigating the role that the perfective and the imperfective aspect supposedly play in the system of clausal grounding in Polish

Summary

Introduction

The aim of the present paper is to offer an analysis of selected uses of the Polish perfective and imperfective. In these uses, the two aspectual variants do not exhibit their prototypical aspectual meanings characterizable in terms of contrasts such as e.g. boundedness/unboundedness, completion/non-completion, telicity/atelicity, punctuality/durativity, etc. 1; Forsyth 1970, 8; Holvoet 1991; Jakobson 1957; see a discussion in Dickey 2000, 15–27 or in Janda 2004, 477–482). The two aspectual variants do not exhibit their prototypical aspectual meanings characterizable in terms of contrasts such as e.g. boundedness/unboundedness, completion/non-completion, telicity/atelicity, punctuality/durativity, etc. Za kilka miesięcy idę sg. non-past indicat. imperf. na emeryturę. (NCP) ‘In a few months I’m going into [my] retirement.’

Objectives

Conclusion