Tense-Aspect, Transitivity and Causativity (review)

Abstract

This collection of 16 articles exploring the structural interdependence between tense, moodand aspect in a diverse variety of (mostly Eurasian) languages is appropriately dedicatedas a Festschrift to the Russian linguist Vladimir Nedyalkov, one of the most importantSoviet specialists in the typological study of aspect and valence categories. A listing ofNedyalkov’s main publications appears on pp. xix–xxxiii. Most are in Russian and notaccessible to the majority of Western linguists, though note Nedyalkov (1988). The listreveals that many of the volume’s contributions deal with the same Eurasian languagesthat served as the scholar’s main focus of interest. There is little additional information onNedyalkov’s fruitful career; instead, the editors point the interested reader to Litvinov andNedyalkov (1995). The editors’ introduction (pp. xi–xviii) focusses briefly on the generalhistory of the typological study of TAM (tense-aspect-mood) categories and highlights thecontents of the volume, which is divided thematically into three parts. Important recentprecursors to the descriptive/functional approach taken by the contributing articles includeHopper (1982), Dahl (1985), Bybee (1985), Thieroff and Ballweg (1994), and Thieroff(1995). Many of the articles also make recourse to the concise definitions of conceptsfound in Bernard Comrie’s lucid overviews of tense (1985) and aspect (1976). A thirdkey influence derives from EUROTYPE, an ongoing typology-oriented project aimed atproviding a comprehensive structural description of European languages.Part I is entitled “Transitivity, causativity and tense-aspect: Interdependencies”. “As-pect and transitivityof iterativeconstructions inWarrungu” (pp.3–19), by Tasaku Tsunoda,revealsatypologicalconnection betweenintransitivityandtheimperfectiveinalanguage ofnortheastAustraliatheauthordescribesas“virtuallyextinct”(p.3). LeonidKulikov’s“Splitcausativity: Remarks on correlations between transitivity, aspect, and tense” (pp. 21–42)deals with the early Vedic verb system. Kulikov demonstrates an unexpected dependencebetween present tense and transitivity, on the one hand, and intransitivity and perfectforms, on the other. He notes that a similar interdependence has been detected in Yukaghir(northeast Siberia) and Aleut. “Conceptualization and aspect in some Asian languages”(pp. 43–62), by Kazuyuki Kiryu, investigates periphrastic progressive aspect constructionsin Japanese, Korean, and Newari (Tibeto-Burman) from a conceptual perspective, contrast-ing them with the cognitive type of tense/aspect systems prevalent in European languages.In “Evidentiality, transitivity and split ergativity: Evidence from Svan” (pp. 63–95), NinaSumbatova demonstrates a correlation between evidentiality and transitivity by examiningcase-marking in Svan, a language closely related to Georgian. The last article in Part I,“On the semantics of some Russian causative constructions: Aspect, control, and types ofcausation” (pp. 97–113), by Tatiana v. Bulygina and Alexei D. Shmelev, shows that the