This paper deals with the Upper Sorbian aspect categories. While the traditional inflectional opposition imperfect vs. aorist is still widely used in the standard variety, it has almost disappeared from the colloquial variety used in the Catholic area of Upper Lusatia in Eastern Germany. By contrast, the derivational opposition of perfectivity formally persists in this area but has undergone some changes which are very specific to this variety. In particular, this aspect opposition, expressed by means of prefixes and suffixes has been radically restructured, such that its functional domain has shifted from grammatical aspect to grammatical telicity. It is argued that the starting point of this change is to be sought in an identification of the Sorbian aspect-sensitive grammatical prefixes with the German prefixes which mainly express telicity in processes of word formation. Special usages dealt with in this study are, on the one hand, the expression of habituality through (formally) imperfective verbs and, surprisingly, the expression of ongoing telic processes, but also of the analytical future, by means of their perfective correlates, on the other.
Serbski Institut, Budyšin, Germany - ORCID: 0000-0002-1272-8002
Chapter Title
Der Verbalaspekt in der obersorbischen Umgangssprache im Sprachkontakt
Authors
Lenka Scholze
Language
German
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0184-1.11
Peer Reviewed
Publication Year
2023
Copyright Information
© 2023 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Book Title
L’aspettualità nel contatto linguistico: lingue slave e oltre
Book Subtitle
Resistenza, ristrutturazione ed innovazione dell’aspetto verbale e della sua periferia sotto l’influsso di varietà alloglotte. Atti del 3º Convegno Internazionale Costanza/Hegne, 16-20 giugno 2019
Editors
Walter Breu, Malinka Pila
Peer Reviewed
Number of Pages
346
Publication Year
2023
Copyright Information
© 2023 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0184-1
ISBN Print
979-12-215-0183-4
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0184-1
eISBN (xml)
979-12-215-0185-8
Series Title
Biblioteca di Studi Slavistici
Series ISSN
2612-7687
Series E-ISSN
2612-7679