THE PERIPHERIES OF THE VERB ASPECT

A hundred years ago Sigurd Agrell described the verb aspect in Polish and so in Slavonic language. It is a good occasion to describe systematically this domain of Polish. The article deals with three classes of verbs, peripheral for the category of aspect: 'imperfectiva tantum' (only imperfective), 'perfectiva tantum' (only perfective) and so called 'ambiaspektowe' (biaspectual - one form has imperfective and perfective meaning). They were thoroughly analysed and their list has been compiled basing on the biggest Polish dictionary (INDEKS, 1973) and the monograph by Saloni (2001). During the study it was necessary to define precisely such notions as: an aspect doublet and a meaning function of aspect. It concerned especially delimitative verbs (jezdzic : pojezdzic) and distributive verbs (przepisac : poprzepisywac) because if such forms were not treated as aspect doublets the categories of 'imperfectiva' and 'perfectiva tantum' would have become too large. And so determinative forms were treated as aspect doublets of their simple derivative bases, and distributive forms as secondary perfective variants. The last are connected with their imperfective bases in one of their potential meanings (multiplicative, nonprogressive). As a result the study indicates that Slavonic languages grammaticize English aspect on the level of a derivative nest. The conclusion of the study, regarding 'imperfectiva' and 'perfectiva tantum', is similar to the one reached by two linguists who analysed aspect from the point of view of cognitive linguistics. These classes represent extremely prototypical imperfectives and perfectives and in the sense they constitute systemic peripheries of aspect. In the centre of the aspect category we find prototypical doublets, in closer peripheries - verbs secondarily imperfective (spotykac się) or secondarily perfective (posiedziec). Biaspectual verbs are outside aspectual system and constitute periphery only in lexical sense; they are systematically eliminated as they adapt to a system of Slavonic language.