Book
Tense, aspect, modality and finiteness in East Caucasian languages
Based on selected presentations given at the conference “Morphosyntax of Caucasian Languages” held in December 2006 at the Collège de France (Paris).
Optative is an inflected verb form dedicated to the expression of the wish of the speaker. Caucasian languages tend to have morphologically specialized forms to convey this meaning. The purpose of this paper is to explore the volitional domain basing on an analysis of the Optatives in 16 Caucasian languages, including 15 East Caucasian languages and one Turkic language of Daghestan (Kumyk). The paper provides typological arguments for distinguishing between two different kinds of optatives. Performative Optative is dedicated to the expression of blessings and curses, while Desiderative Optative expresses a Џpowerless wishђ of the speaker (his/her dreams, longings etc.).
This paper discusses those finite verb forms found in the Lezgic languages whose main function is to express present or future time reference. As a rule, such forms are built on imperfective non-finite forms and include a present copula. The following source patterns which usually give rise to Presents and Futures in these languages are analysed in detail: the Infinitive Pattern (“Infinitive + Copula”), the Locative Pattern (“Imperfective Converb + Locative Copula”), the Imperfective Converb Pattern (“Imperfective Converb + Copula”), and the Participle Pattern (“Imperfective Participle + Copula”). The grammaticalization paths of these patterns have much in common, in particular the semantic development from ‘present’ to ‘future’.
In the paper I consider the causative constructions in Russian. I examine the use of tense and aspect in constructions with the verbs zastavit’ / zastavljat’ ‘make’ and pozvolit’ / pozvoljat’ ‘let, allow’. I also include the verb delat’ / sdelat ‘make’ in my analysis, though this verb has special syntactic and semantic characteristics.
The striking feature of the causative constructions with eventive subjects is that the tensed forms and temporal adverbs in these constructions do not obligatorily refer to the causing situation. The tensed forms and adverbials sometimes refer only to the caused situation.
I assume that it is the nature of events vs. participants that is responsible for these distinctions. Each dynamic event is associated with some result. I have shown that in some cases what the tense of the causative verb and temporal adverbials refer to is the result of the causing event, and not the causing event in the narrow sense.
The book is a yearly almanach on Daghestanian linguistics and philology.
Mehweb Dargwa features a particle gwa, a peculiar element which is basically used for emphasizing the assertion. The paper explores some grammatical characteristics of this particle. It is shown that, in both verbal and non-verbal clauses, gwa serves as a predicative marker forming a complete predication and is an equivalent of a copula (even though, unlike the neutral copula in Mehweb, it lacks inflection). Similarly to typical East Caucasian predicative markers, gwa may occur in different positions, though its place is syntactically constrained (e.g., it cannot be embedded within syntactic islands). Still, Mehweb speakers allow gwa not to be adjoined to either the predicate or the focus. This makes the distribution of the particle surprising as compared with similar predicative markers in well-described East Caucasian languages, where they may either occur on the predicate or immediately follow the focused element.
After an introductory chapter that provides an overview to theoretical issues in tense, aspect, modality and evidentiality, this volume presents a variety of original contributions that are firmly empirically-grounded based on elicited or corpus data, while adopting different theoretical frameworks. Thus, some chapters rely on large diachronic corpora and provide new qualitative insight on the evolution of TAM systems through quantitative methods, while others carry out a collostructional analysis of past-tensed verbs using inferential statistics to explore the lexical grammar of verbs. A common goal is to uncover semantic regularities and variation in the TAM systems of the languages under study by taking a close look at context. Such a fine-grained approach contributes to our understanding of the TAM systems from a typological perspective. The focus on well-known Indo-European languages (e.g. French, German, English, Spanish) and also on less commonly studied languages (e.g. Hungarian, Estonian, Avar, Andi, Tagalog) provides a valuable cross-linguistic perspective.
The article deals with the problem of the author as the subject of consciousness expressed through the text in its entirety. Special emphasis is laid on modality revealed in the author’s evaluation of events, characters and the world in general.
The paper is focused on the study of reaction of italian literature critics on the publication of the Boris Pasternak's novel "Doctor Jivago". The analysys of the book ""Doctor Jivago", Pasternak, 1958, Italy" (published in Russian language in "Reka vremen", 2012, in Moscow) is given. The papers of italian writers, critics and historians of literature, who reacted immediately upon the publication of the novel (A. Moravia, I. Calvino, F.Fortini, C. Cassola, C. Salinari ecc.) are studied and analised.
In the article the patterns of the realization of emotional utterances in dialogic and monologic speech are described. The author pays special attention to the characteristic features of the speech of a speaker feeling psychic tension and to the compositional-pragmatic peculiarities of dialogic and monologic text.