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 volume presents several papers on Mehweb, a one-village language spoken in the central part of Daghestan, a republic of the Russian Federation.
In Standard Average European (SAE), addressees of speech verbs are marked with dative or, in languages lacking cases, with dative-like prepositions. This merger is commonly explained through a metaphor: the information transferred in a speech act is said to be construed as the object being transferred, or Theme, and the addressee as its Recipient. This status of the addressee as a derived concept, a metaphor of the Recipient, and its dative marking in many languages rather than in SAE alone, is the reason why the addressee is usually not considered to be a separate semantic role. Based on data from East Caucasian languages that use different marking for Recipients and addressees of speech, I argue that speech addressees constitute a separate semantic role, also an animate Goal, but not a metaphor of the Recipient. Focusing on case marking assigned by the main speech verb, speech acts are shown to be construed in East Caucasian as spatial configurations: the crucial component is their directedness towards the addressee. In the conclusion, I come back to SAE and question the status of the dative addressees. Taking into account that the dative often develops from lative markers, it is suggested that, in the languages with dative addressees, one should also consider an alternative to the conventional explanation: merging the Recipient and the addressee in one marking may result not from a metaphorical extension but from formal under-specification of two different animate Goals.
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.