Tense-Aspect, Transitivity and Causativity

This collection of 16 articles exploring the structural interdependence between tense, mood and aspect in a diverse variety of (mostly Eurasian) languages is appropriately dedicated as a Festschrift to the Russian linguist Vladimir Nedyalkov, one of the most important Soviet specialists in the typological study of aspect and valence categories. A listing of Nedyalkov's main publications appears on pp. xix–xxxiii. Most are in Russian and not accessible to the majority of Western linguists, though note Nedyalkov (1988). The list reveals that many of the volume's contributions deal with the same Eurasian languages that served as the scholar's main focus of interest. There is little additional information on Nedyalkov's fruitful career; instead, the editors point the interested reader to Litvinov and Nedyalkov (1995). The editors' introduction (pp. xi–xviii) focusses briefly on the general history of the typological study of TAM (tense-aspect-mood) categories and highlights the contents of the volume, which is divided thematically into three parts. Important recent precursors to the descriptive/functional approach taken by the contributing articles include Hopper (1982), Dahl (1985), Bybee (1985), Thieroff and Ballweg (1994), and Thieroff (1995). Many of the articles also make recourse to the concise definitions of concepts found in Bernard Comrie's lucid overviews of tense (1985) and aspect (1976). A third key influence derives from EUROTYPE, an ongoing typology-oriented project aimed at providing a comprehensive structural description of European languages.

Part I is entitled "Transitivity, causativity and tense-aspect: Interdependencies". "Aspect and transitivity of iterative constructions inWarrungu" (pp. 3–19), by Tasaku Tsunoda, reveals a typological connection between intransitivity and the imperfective in a language of northeast Australia the author describes as "virtually extinct" (p. 3). Leonid Kulikov's "Split causativity: Remarks on correlations between transitivity, aspect, and tense" (pp. 21–42) deals with the early Vedic verb system. Kulikov demonstrates an unexpected dependence between present tense and transitivity, on the one hand, and intransitivity and perfect forms, on the other. He notes that a similar interdependence has been detected in Yukaghir (northeast Siberia) and Aleut. "Conceptualization and aspect in some Asian languages" (pp. 43–62), by Kazuyuki Kiryu, investigates periphrastic progressive aspect constructions in Japanese, Korean, and Newari (Tibeto-Burman) from a conceptual perspective, contrasting them with the cognitive type of tense/aspect systems prevalent in European languages. In "Evidentiality, transitivity and split ergativity: Evidence from Svan" (pp. 63–95), Nina Sumbatova demonstrates a correlation between evidentiality and transitivity by examining case-marking in Svan, a language closely related to Georgian. The last article in Part I, "On the semantics of some Russian causative constructions: Aspect, control, and types of causation" (pp. 97–113), by Tatiana v. Bulygina and Alexei D. Shmelev, shows that the concept of volition (control by a sentient subject) must be considered an intrinsic semantic component of imperfective causatives that convey conative meaning.

Part II, entitled "The trade-off between aspect and tense as typological parameters", turns to the examination of the relative prominence of tense, mood, and aspect—the topic of the previous volume in the same series as the present monograph (Bhat 1999). "Some notes on the Georgian resultative" (pp. 117–139), by Winfried Boeder, shows that Modern Georgian possessive resultatives (a periphrastic construction consisting of a helping verb plus past passive participle) are related to participial compounds with incorporated terms. "Preterites and imperfects in the languages of Europe" (pp. 141–161), by Rolf Thieroff, argues that the imperfect (rather than the imperfective past) is the default past tense. "The qualitative meaning of Russian imperfective verbs in passive constructions" (pp. 163–170), by Youri Poupynin, argues that such sentences as Takie zadachi s trudom reshajutsja 'Such problems are solved (only) with difficulty', which contain imperfective reflexive verbs, closely resemble true passive constructions. In "Typological notes on aspect and actionality in Kipchak Turkic" (pp. 171–184), Lars Johanson examines viewpoint categories in northwestern Turkic languages. "Distributivity: More than aspect" (pp. 185–205), by Inga B. Dolinina, argues that distributive verb forms are characterized by "event plurality", a category broader than aspect itself. "The past perfect in Armenian" (pp. 207–221), by Natalia A. Kozintseva, is a diachronic semantic analysis of the development of one verb form from Old Armenian. Finally, "Aspects of aspect in Korean psych-predicates: Implications for psych-predicates in general" (pp. 223–249), by Chungmin Lee, provides semantic analysis of mental state verbs in Korean, explaining why these verbs take progressive forms.

Part III, called "Events and their componentiality," turns to the issue of sub-aspect or Aktsionsart. In "How descending is ascending German? On the deep interrelations between tense, aspect, pronominality, and ergativity" (pp. 253–292),Werner Abraham examines how closely German tense and aspect categories are correlated in the verbal predicate; the discussion includes many typological comparisons to other Indo-European languages. Georgij Silnitsky's "Verbal temporalization in Russian and English" (pp. 293–309) provides a comparative componential analysis of what the author calls the "'chronostructural" model of verbal meaning. "A typology of phrasal meanings" (pp. 311–321), by Vladimir A. Plungian, investigates inchoactive, terminative and continuative verb forms cross-linguistically. "Degrees of focality in Kalmyk imperfectives" (pp. 323–339), by Karen Ebert, is an innovative semantic analysis of present and imperfect verb forms in Europe's only Mongolic language. The final article, "Aspectual classification of nouns: A case study of Russian" (pp. 341–350), by Ekaterina V. Rakhilina, turns to the notion of whether verbal nouns express the category of aspect. A subject index (pp. 351–359) closes the volume.

Although many of the articles were translated into English for inclusion in the volume, the editors are to be commended for the uniformly high stylistic quality of the finished product. Many other languages or topics might have easily been added to make the book far longer, and the conclusions of some articles are better substantiated than others. Overall, however, this book is important for the many interdependencies it reveals between TAM categories cross-linguistically, and for extending enquiry regarding this important topic into new geographic and typological territory.