The Category of Aspect in English. Aspective Subclasses of verbs in Russian and in English.
Every action is characterised not only by the time of its occurrence but also by the manner of its performance. The grammatical category describing the manner of the action is called the aspect. The aspect shows whether the action is represented as process, result, whether it was in duration for a certain period of time (from the point of view of its progress & completion).
It can be expressed by lexical means (subclasses of verbs): groups of limitive&unlimitive verbs (terminative & durative) and the perfective & the imperfective (in Russian).
MIND the cross-language difference:
1) In MEANING: Limitive verbs denote an action implying a certain limit. Unlimitive dont imply any such limit.
to find to search
to look to see
Perfective verbs denote actions that that are viewed as having reached its limit (). Imperfective actions that might be limitive but still in development () or unlimitive ().
2) In Russian the two aspects are rigidly opposed and obligatory realized. In English there are no such clear-cut distinctions.
According to aspective characteristics English verbs can be:
Limitive verbs present a process as potentially limited, unlike the term terminative suggests!!!
arrive, come, leave, find, start, stop, conclude
Unlimitive verbs (durative) imply no limit in their semantics (move, continue, live, sleep, work, behave).
Verbs of double aspective nature (understand, ) - meaning depends on the context.
English lexical aspect expresses a potentially limited or unlimited process, whereas the Russian aspect expresses the actual conclusion (the perfective, or terminative aspect) or non-conclusion (the imperfective, or non-terminative aspect) of the process in question.
Unlike their Russian absolutely rigid counterparts, are but loosely distinguished and easily reducible.
instantaneous (momentary),
ingressive (starting),
supercompleted (developed to the extent of superfluity),
undercompleted (not developed to its full extent)
Generally acpective verbal classes express the relation of the verbal semantics to the idea of a processual limit.
In English unlike Russian aspect is inseparately connected with the tense form (conjugated categories). It is a morphological category, while in Russian it is a lexico-grammatic category.
Traditionally there are 4 aspects:
The Perfect aspect
The Continuous aspect
The Perfect Continuous aspect
4) the Indefinite or the Simple aspect. Some scholars say that the Indefinite aspect has the zero meaning of the aspect because it only indicates the time of an action. For this reason this aspect is called Indefinite or Simple Tenses.
In modern linguistics within oppositional theory
Continuous aspect vs. the Non-Continuous aspect (common aspect à unmarked (weak) member).
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the peculiar marker - discontinuous morpheme be + -ing.
the difference in meaning:
Continuous aspect is defined as an action in progress, developing at a given moment;
Common aspect doesnt express duration.
Language Means used to Express and Identify the Theme and the Rheme.
The sentence is the immediate integral unit of speech built up of words according to a definite syntactic pattern and distinguished by a contextually relevant communicative purpose. It is the main object of syntax as part of the grammatical theory.
The Utterance and its Informative Structure:
The utterance is a unit of speech and in every case it is adapted to the needs of peculiar speech situation. In some parts of the situation the sentence may coincide with the utterance. Every utterance is characterized not only by semantic and syntactic structures, but also by the structure of its own as a message that is it has its informative structure.
Speaking of the actual division of the sentence, we can state that its purpose is to is to reveal the correlative significance of the sentence parts from the point of view of their actual informative role in an utterance, i.e. from the point of view of the immediate semantic contribution they make to the total information conveyed by the sentence in the context of connected speech. In other words, the actual division of the sentence in fact exposes its informative perspective. The main components of the actual division of the sentence are the theme and the rheme. (the Given & the New, the Topic & the Comment).
The theme (the topic) expresses the starting point of the communication, i.e. it denotes an object or a phenomenon about which something is reported. So, it contains the information already known to the speakers called presupposition. It is familiar either from life experience of speakers or it is mentioned in the previous context.
The rheme (the comment) contains a new piece of information; the purpose of the utterance is to onvey it. Between the theme and the rheme are positioned intermediary, transitional parts of the actual division of various degrees of informative value (these parts are sometimes called "transition").
The theme of the actual division of the sentence may or may not coincide with the subject of the sentence. The rheme of the actual division, in its turn, may or may not coincide with the predicate of the sentence-either with the whole predicate group or its part, such as the predicative, the object, the adverbial (in both English and Russian).
Michael Alexander Halliday: the topic (theme) of the sentence is the peg upon which message, i.e. new information is hung.
Classically in two-member s-ces the syntactic subject is its Theme or Topic and the predicate group its Rheme.
In one-member s-ces usually only the comment or the Rheme is given.
But at the same time there are asymmetrical interrelations between syntactic and informative structures. In Eng. 2-member sentences (with it) are treated as consisting of the comment only. → Its early.
