The Metaphysics of Russian Aspect.

Many of the papers in Verbal Aspect in Discourse (1990, ed. Nils B. Thelin) look worth investigating:

In the light of growing insights into the universal temporal-semantic nature of aspectual distinctions, today’s aspectology has broadened its attention from restrictedly event-defining functions of aspect on the sentence level towards its primary perspectival functions on the discourse/situation level. Hereby it attempts to relate these functions to each other in ways that stimulate consistently language processing on a more solid perceptual-conceptual and pragmatic basis. Reflecting in various ways this general tendency. The 13 papers collected in this volume are oriented to four fields of research: (1) Developmental properties of aspect and tense; (2) Ideo-pragmatic and conceptual-semantic correlates of aspect and the perspectival organisation of discourse; (3) Aspect, case and discourse; (4) and Aspect in literary discourse. The editor’s Introduction gives a comprehensive survey of contemporary aspectology and its development towards a proper integration of discourse/situation conditions. Besides cross-linguistic considerations (including English), the languages analyzed specifically are Russian, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, French and Finnish.

But I was immediately attracted to “Notes on the ‘Metaphysics’ of Russian Aspect” because it’s by Boris Gasparov, whose book on Ferdinand de Saussure I raved about here; I thought his analysis was interesting enough to quote in extenso, and I hope those of my readers who know Russian (or just have thoughts about aspect) will weigh in. Gasparov begins:

1. The past two decades have been marked by significant progress in the study of the meaning of the aspectual forms of the Russian verb. Throughout several decades, linguists were aiming at finding a common basis by which to unite the infinite variety of concrete meanings taken by the forms of perfective and imperfective aspect (Perf. and Imp.) in various specific cases. Striving for the attainment of this end, linguists have appealed to the ever broader and more abstract semantic categories in order to formulate in a more generalized and more coherent way a strategy which speakers of Russian follow in their use of aspectual forms. Each time, however, that research reached a more generalized level, it appeared that even at this level there existed a variety of relevant factors which had not been previously noticed. Consequently, the picture of the use of aspect at this new level split again into a series of particular cases which, in their turn, suggested the necessity of a new, still more generalized and abstract approach.

He summarizes the history of such attempts (structural studies, functional studies, and the narrative approach), then moves on to his own:

2. The goal of this article is to introduce an even broader perspective for describing the meaning of aspect. My hypothesis, which will serve as a starting point for subsequent discussion, is that the invariable distinction between the two aspectual forms lies not in any particular speech situation (be it a single situation described by an utterance, or the content of a whole narrative), but rather in two different world outlooks constituting two opposite modi of presentation of reality in language. The opposition of Perf. and Imp. is one of the most powerful tools (although by no means the only one) by which these two modi are expressed in the Russian language. In the framework of a proposed hypothesis, the meaning of Perfective and Imperfective aspect is related to two different models of the world (two “Weltanschauungen“) in whose formation the category of aspect, together with many other components of linguistic structure, takes its part. This abstract, “metaphysical” distinction between the meaning of Perf. and Imp. turns into a variety of concrete meanings, as the use of the aspectual forms is being adapted to different types of discourse, different functions in the narrative, and to the specific features of various situations described by single utterances.

As is well known, the meaning of Perf. is connected with a concept of the ‘integrity’ (or ‘compactness,’ or ‘closeness’) of the described situation. This general interpretation of the invariable meaning of Perf. is expressedin such concurrent linguistic concepts as that of the ‘limitation’ of the process (predel’nost’; Maslov 1948), or of potential limitation: the ‘telicity’ (Vendler 1967). In the framework of a proposed “metaphysical” approach this feature could be interpreted as the imposition of a particular world outlook according to which the process of life is viewed as a chain of successive events; the choice of Perf. for a certain utterance presents the situation described in it as a discrete “link” in this chain. The ensuing effect is as if the situation were enclosed into a “frame” which singled it out as a discrete event. The speaker views the situation as something “completed,” or at least having a potential limitation (‘telicity’), no matter what the actual matter-of-fact content of the situation might be. The relevant factor in viewing the situation from the perspective suggested by the Perf. form is not the limited nature of the described process, but rather, the very fact that the given situation has been perceived as a discrete event and thus singled out from the continuous flow of time.

With the use of Perf., the speaker assumes an external (objective) perspective in his view of the situation. He separates himself from immediate participation in the situation (hence the impossibility of Present tense with Perf.) and views it from the outside, as a “narrator.” Because of this, the speaker is able to comprehend the situation as an integral phenomenon.

Thus, the use of Perf. projects a world view according to which a person assumes the position of an external observer who is not immediately involved in the processes he describes in his message, although his actual experience is inextricable from the continuous stream of time in which all these processes are developing. By approaching the reality from this position, the speaker achieves a segmentation of his continuous experience; he singles out from his experience certain entities which become the integral objects of his observation and his description — in other words, become “events” in the framework of his message.

On the other hand, by choosing Imp., the speaker places himself, as it were, inside the very course of the described process. The external boundaries of the process are lost from this perspective. Such an outlook misses the “frame” of the situation; it is unable to single out the situation from the continuity of time flow. Consequently, the situation would not be perceived as a discrete event. Attention is concentrated on the very course of the process, on its flow and development, rather than on the essence of “what happened.”

In this case, the speaker assumes an internal (subjective) perspective in his view of the situation. Such a position projects an “existential” view of the world; it views life as a continuous experience into which every person (including the speaker) is inextricably immersed. Whatever portion of this continuous process (from the present, past, or future) comes into the speaker’s attention, his position in regard to it would be that of a co-experiencer, rather than that of an external observer and “narrator.” No matter what part (if any) the speaker actually took in the described action, he identifies his perception of it with the very process of its continuous unfolding. Because of this, the situation is perceived (and presented) not as an “event,” but rather as a part of a continuous “experience.”

He describes his theory in considerable detail and applies it, rather convincingly in my view, to three Bunin miniatures from 1930: Идол (The idol), with only one perfective verb, запомнились ‘they remembered,’ which “sets the perspective of the entire story for the reader”; Канун (The eve), with no perfectives (“This text achieves the status of narrative due to the implied reference to the impending disaster of the revolution which is to occur very shortly thereafter”); and Небо над стеной ‘The sky above the wall,’ which also has no perfectives:

The reader, in his effort to make sense of the story, has to come to a realization of the fact that the only narrative focus of the story consists in the very absence of any explicit eventual focus. In this case, the story can be interpreted as a narrative about the “flow of life,” about being as an existential, non-discrete process. The meaning of the story is focused on an understanding that life as a continuous experience is “greater,” and more significant, than any occurrences in the realm of “events,” and that therefore the author/narrator refuses to place the descriptive part of his experience in the framework of a conventional “story.”

Here’s his conclusion:

6. To sum up, it is necessary to emphasize once again that the principal, most basic difference in the meanings of Perf. and Imp. consists neither in the character of the situations represented with their help, nor in the content of the narrative story as such, but rather in two fundamentally different world views projected onto the content of what is said, be it a single statement or a story. The category of aspect offers to the speaker a formal instrument with the help of which the speaker is able to place two fundamentally different and mutually complementary points of view onto human experience. These two Weltanschauungen present the world as consisting either of events or of existential experiences.

The use of Perf. suggests the interpretation of the entire process of existence as consisting of discrete events. Each of these events appears as a single, compact whole, looked at in its entirety, as if from an external (objective) point of view. The perception of the flow of time, in which each of these events occurs, either remains implicit, or is segmented into individual quantums, each of which coincides with the borders of each individual event; in the latter case, the flow of time is simply equated with the sequence of events. By contrast, the choice of Imp. encourages the interpretation of being as a non-discrete temporal flow — a state of continuous evolvement experienced by the subject. The action as such is dissolved in the temporal flow, the borders of the action as an individual event erode. The message in this case is focused not on action in a strict sense, but rather on conditions experienced by the subject in the process of producing these actions. Such a perspective offers a picture of the world presented in a passive modus. The world is viewed as a total experience, in which, in essence, nothing “new” can happen, no “event,” in the strict sense of the word, can occur; within this modus of presentation, everything which happens proves to be only a development of the total process of existence, continuous and limitless in its flow.

The “metaphysical” nature of verbal aspect in Russian may be compared with the way in which the category of definiteness functions in languages which have articles. The choice of the definite or the indefinite article allows the speaker to present all objects in two fundamentally different “metaphysical” dimensions. Generally speaking, the determinate form gives an actual description of the object, viewing it as a component of a situation, while the indeterminate form gives a classificational description of the object, viewing it as a representative of a certain conceptual class. Thus, the whole domain of objects can be alternatively treated within an “operational” or “conceptual” mode of presentation.

This fundamental alternative in the presentation of objects is lacking in Russian; however, a similar phenomenon arises in Russian in the domain of processes, due to the category of aspect. The necessity of employing one or another aspectual form compels the Russian speaker to continually make a choice between two alternative points of view on the processes, in a way not unlike that in which the necessity of using articles makes the speaker of one of the Germanic or Romance languages choose between two different points of view on objects.

In speaking of the similarity between articles and aspect, we should bear in mind that what is meant here is a general, “metaphysical” similarity of the principles according to which the world experience is presented and organized in language, rather than an actual resemblance between the meaning of the two categories. What is common among the two categories is the presen[c]e of alternative perspectives under which certain facts of life (objects in one case, processes in another) can be presented.

The form of Imp. serves as the most powerful and the most regular means by which the existential picture of the world, as an alternative to the modus of actions/events, is formed in the Russian language. However, there are many other highly effective means for the expression of the existential meaning in Russian: such as, for instance, impersonal constructions, or certain variants of word order (the reverse word order “Predicate — Subject”). On the whole, grammatical devices aimed at expressing existential meaning are extremely well represented in the Russian language.

Obviously this is no more the last word on the subject than the previous approaches, but it seems useful to me, and I’m curious how it strikes others.