The Evolution of Slavic Aspect

The Evolution of Slavic Aspect examines the development of the Slavic aspectual systems in the historical era. The investigation focuses on developments that helped create the current east-west aspectual division of the Slavic languages. It documents not only how a group of eastern languages (East Slavic, Bulgarian and to a lesser extent Polish) have changed their systems through innovations in aspectual morphology and usage, but also why a group of western languages (Czech, Slovak, Sorbian, Slovene and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian) have largely failed to do so. The division is the result of several phenomena, including: different fates of the Common Slavic tense system; differing productive models of perfectivizing prefixation in the individual languages; differing roles played by the reflexes of the Common Slavic nasal suffix -n?- in the derivation of perfective verbs; varying systems of nominal definiteness and their likely effect on the expression of verbal determination; finally, varying levels of German and Romance language contact in the western and eastern languages. It develops a Cognitive Grammar approach to the relevant historical processes and the grammaticalization of the category, including the issue of language contact.

Stephen M. Dickey, University of Kansas, USA.