アスペクトと反復副詞 : スロヴェニア語の動詞の体についての再検討

Abstract

The opposition of the Perfective and Imperfective Aspects is one of the main features of Slovene and other Slavic languages : Aspect (glagolski vid in Slovene) as a grammatical category is assigned to each verb, just as grammatical gender is assigned to each noun. The basic meaning of Aspects in Slovene is the same as in other Slavic languages : the Perfective describes the situation as something completed or terminated, and the Imperfective describes the situation without expressing such completedness. It is therefore natural to expect the Imperfective verb to be used in an iterative expression, for a situation where one and the same event is repeated is usually conceptualized as continuing, non-completed. Indeed the Imperfective is required in order to express the Iterative as long as the situation is unmarked, i.e. the verbal predicate has neutral tense meaning and no modifier is added to change the aspect meaning. This constraint might seem to hold true also for the situation in which an iterative adverb is included. The fact is, however, that Perfective verbs can co-occur with iterative adverbs to express the iterative situation. In (Mitani, 1998) the author examined the usage of Aspect in Hiša Marije Pomočnice (The House of Mary the Helper), a novel written by Slovene writer Ivan Cankar, paying special attention to the iterative situation. This novel is characteristic in that the iterative adverb časih "sometimes, now and then" is used with relatively high frequency, 39 times in total, and 35 of them are used with the past tense form of Perfective verbs. Based on this observation the present paper reexamines the feature of Slovene Aspect and interprets how and why Slovene Perfective verbs co-occur with iterative adverbs in terms of syntactic structure. According to the standard X-bar theory, which assumes that a V' feature is projected to its maximal projection VP and the projected feature should be properly shared by other components within VP, AdvP with the aspect feature of [+ITR] could not occur under VP when V is featured [+PF], for [+PF] is incompatible with [+ITR] in essence. In Slovene, however, the Perfective verb co-occurs with an iterative adverb, the aspect feature of which is [+ITR]. In order to explain this, the author proposes that certain aspect adverbs should occupy the position outside VP, namely, in the functional category of AspP which is immediately above the VP. The feature conflict can be avoided if we maintain that in Slovene the grammatical feature of VP is allowed to remain unprojected to the upper functional categories, so that the AspP and VP each may carry the aspect feature separately. Russian is different in that the co-occurrence of the Perfective and iterative adverbs like izredka, inogda, the counterparts of Slovene časih, is eliminated in unmarked situations. This can be interpreted in terms of the difference of projection constraint : Russian is a language in which VP' feature is automatically projected to the upper functional categories, presumably up to IP, so that the feature of AspP must be consonant with the VP feature.