Biaspectuals Revisited

Abstract

The article deals with (or rather begins with) Czech biaspectual verbs. Although biaspectuals (sometimes referred to as aspectual homonyms) distinguish between perfective vs. imperfective meaning, there is nothing in their morphological makeup to signal this meaning distinction. To determine the aspect of a biaspectual, i.e. to disambiguate its aspectual homonymy, biaspectuals are sometimes synonymously substituted by verbs whose morphological makeup does signal their aspect; the biaspectuals are then considered perfective or imperfective (used perfectively vs. imperfectively) depending on the aspect of their substituents. The article demonstrates that this method is deficient: it is not necessarily conclusive. To demonstrate this, the following observations were made and conclusions drawn on Czech aspect and aspect in general. i. Despite the fact that aspect is thought of as an obligatory verbal category in Czech, it is not a matter of the verb alone, but rather of a larger linguistic expression. The mutual morphological makeup of the verb is only one of the many factors/exponents which (“in cooperation”) determine the aspectual interpretation of the respective linguistic expression. Some of these factors are identifiable as aspectual exponents in the expression itself (for example tense, verb complements, adverbial verb complements among them), others are beyond its scope, i.e. they are part of the (situational) context in which the expression is used. ii. Linguistic expression can be interpreted as perfective, imperfective, aspectually unspecific or the aspectual distinction can be irrelevant for it — despite that, aspect is considered to be an obligatory category. iii. Furthermore, the morphological imperfective can be used to co-express perfectivity, and the morphological perfective can be used to refer to an imperfectivelyconceived process/event. Therefore, due to this and points i. and ii. above, the verb IS NOT inherentlyperfective or imperfective, it is USED perfectively, imperfectively, or in an aspectually unspecificway.11112