HOMEOSTASIS AND COMPENSATION AS LINGUISTIC PHENOMENA (COMPETITION OF ASPECT AND TENSE ON THE EXAMPLE OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES WITH SPECIAL REGARD TO POLISH)

Abstract

The present paper deals with two universal linguistic phenomena, homeostasis and compensation. The author examines their function in relation to two categories, aspect and tense in the history of the Slavic languages. It is beyond doubt that one of the most important categories of the Slavic verb is aspect the origin of which may lie in the Proto-Indo-European language. The effects of its emergence as a verbal category were far-reaching and can be well traced in the history of the most Slavic languages. Taking a close look to the linguistic data, it seems quite obvious that the category of tense and aspect were closely related and did interact, creating different patterns in modern Slavic languages. A certain competition between the category of aspect and that of tense can already be observed in Old Slavic and also in Old Russian and Old Polish where tenses like the aorist and the imperfect were becoming increasingly obsolete. The perfect, on the contrary, has gained ground, while the pluperfect has almost completely fallen into disuse. In the further development, the aspectual opposition also extended to the future tenses thereby affecting the entire tense system. This scenario took place everywhere in the East and West Slavic languages with some nuanced differences. Consequently, in the aspect-tense system of the modern East and West Slavic languages the tendency of the category of aspect to prevail over the category of tense together with the gradual decline in the number of tenses seems to be quite clear. The South Slavic languages, however, have taken a slightly different path showing perhaps the most complex picture. Although the Serbian and Croatian languages have preserved the old tenses, their use is rather limited. In terms of their aspectual development, these languages are getting closer and closer to the Eastern and Western Slavic language groups. In contrast, in Bulgarian and Macedonian one can see an intricate interplay of the aspectual system and the developed tense system. In the case of the change of the different Slavic languages, the phenomenon of linguistic compensation can be observed in all cases on the example of aspect and tense categories as the main means of striving to maintain linguistic homeostasis. Keywords: linguistic homeostasis, compensation, aspect, tense, Old Slavic, Slavic languages, Polish