The interaction of achievement verbs and grammatical aspect in Persian

Abstract

This paper studies the interaction of achievement predicates with grammatical aspects based on Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). RRG has proven to be a very practical framework for the description of aspectual classes. It proposes a linear and layered conception of syntactic organization without placing any underlying forms or movement rules. The Semantic structure RRG provides a clear system of lexical decomposition that is an Aktionsart-based method of representing the semantics of predicates and their arguments. A predicate is identified as a member of a particular classification depending on some grammatical tests that have been established for English and other languages. The semantic representation is linked to the syntactic structure by means of an algorithm and the semantic roles of arguments are correlated with macroroles. In RRG a sentence is composed of at least one clause and clause of at least one core. Within the clause core are the nuclear predicating element and its arguments. Adverbs modifying the nucleus are not core elements but are placed positions preceding or following the nucleus called peripheries. In Role and Reference Grammar, verbs are divided to four classes including: states, activity, achievements and accomplishments (Vendler, 1957). Based on some specific- language tests, each of these classes are distinguished from each other. States are homogenous and involve no action and no final point. Activity verbs, despite states, represent actions and have continuous feature. Achievements occur a moment and don’t have continuous feature. Accomplishments are change of state verbs but occur a longer time comparison with achievements. Among these classes, achievements are change of state verbs; the beginning and end of these verbs are so short that can be neglected. They have final point and since they are considered durationless, they can't not be used with adverbs such as vigorously and seriously. Regarding the grammatical aspect, four main categories can be distinguished; perfect, imperfective, perfective and prospective aspect. Perfective indicates a situation as a single whole, whereas the imperfective looks at the situation from inside and the focus is on the internal structure of the event. The perfect is retrospective which establishes a relation between an event at one time and a situation at an earlier time. In prospective aspect, the event is related to some subsequent situation, for example when some event is about to be done (Comrie, 1976). The main aim of this study is to describe different readings of achievement predicates along with grammatical aspects Persian. For this purpose, achievement verbs, two subdivisions named culminations and events, were selected different contexts and their functions were analyzed different grammatical aspects. Data were collected from different Persian sites on the Internet, newspapers, books and daily conversations. What is presented this study is based on the analysis of sentences collected from written and spoken resources, from which some sentences were extracted to be analyzed. Data shows that culminations and events predicates Persian can occur with perfect aspect; since these verbs involve final point, the occurrence of them with perfect aspect shows that the verb has reached its end and finished. As achievement predicates describe instantaneous changes from one state to another, the adage that achievements lack progressive tenses is well-known, but the data show that achievements progressive forms can have five readings based on pragmatic context, including: preliminary process reading, slow-motion (camera) reading, iterative reading, future progressive reading and commentary reading. Culmination-achievements can occur on preliminary process reading that focus on the process before reaching the final phase of the verb. On slow-motion reading, an event described by the achievement predicate, which is regarded as durationless, acts as durative eventualities, that is, we zoom in to view it as an extended event. This reading is available to predicates which describe events that are not instantaneous, but take some small amount of time. The iterative reading is most natural with semelfactives. The future reading has prospective interpretation. The last reading, commentary reading, is available when the speaker is conveying the happenings to someone else; this reading is used when the exactly timing the utterance is not important. Achievement verbs perfective aspect can represent some functions such as experiential, universal and hot news. Achievement predicates perfect, imperfect and perfective aspect can represent some prospective interpretation depending on pragmatic context and existence of some definite future adverb group the sentence. Evidentiality is another function of applying achievements perfective structure. Key words: Achievement verbs, Lexical Aspect, Grammatical Aspect, Role and Reference Grammar, Persian.