Aspectual Pairing in Polish Published by LOT Phone: +31 30 253 6006 Trans 10 fax: +31 30 253 6000 3512 JK Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://wwwlot.let.uu.nl/ Cover illustration: Gert Jan Verhoog’s adaptation of the cover illustration of the Sa- boreando... Salsa Dura en el Bronx CD by Wayne Gorbea and Salsa Picante (the original illustration by Tatjana Krizmanic). ISBN 90-76864-48-9 NUR 632 Copyright c 2004 Młynarczyk. All rights reserved. Aspectual Pairing in Polish Aspectuele Paarvorming in het Pools (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands, en een samenvatting in het Pools) Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, Prof. Dr. W. H. Gispen Ingevolge het besluit van het College voor Promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op 12 maart 2004 des ochtends te 10.30 uur door Anna Katarzyna Młynarczyk geboren op 22 december 1973 te Da¸browa Gornicza´ Promotores: Prof. dr. H.E. de Swart Prof. dr. H.J. Verkuyl Prof. dr. P.R. Blackburn Objawienie rozlewała sie na stole Zbigniew Herbert usiadłem nieruchomo dwa moze˙ trzy z załzawionymi oczami razy wypełniony pustka¸ byłem pewny to znaczy poza¸daniem˙ ze˙ dotkne¸istote¸rzeczy jesli zdarzy mi sie¸to raz jeszcze i be¸de¸wiedział nie ruszy mnie ani dzwonek listonosza tkanka mojej formuły ani wrzask aniołow´ z aluzji jak w Fedonie miała takze˙ scisło´ s´c´ be¸de¸siedział rownania´ Heisenberga nieruchomy zapatrzony siedziałem nieruchomo w serce rzeczy z załzawionymi oczami czułem jak stos pacierzowy martwa¸gwiazde¸ wypełnia trzezwa´ pewnos´c´ czarna¸krople¸nieskonczono´ sci´ ziemia stane¸ła niebo stane¸ło moja nieruchomos´c´ była prawie doskonała zadzwonił listonosz musiałem wylac´ brudna¸wode¸ nastawic´ herbate¸ Sziwa podniosł´ palec sprze¸ty nieba i ziemi zacze¸ły wirowac´ wrociłem´ do pokoju gdziez˙ ten pokoj´ doskonały idea szklanki Revelation the idea of glass by Zbigniew Herbert was being spilled all over the table two perhaps three times I sat down immobile I was sure with watery eyes I would touch the essence filled with emptiness and would know that is with desire the tissue of my formula If it happenes to me once more made of the allusions as in I shall be moved neither by the Phaedo the postman’s bell had also the rigour nor by the shouting of angels of Heisenberg’s equation I shall sit I was sitting immobile immobile with watery eyes my eyes fixed I felt my backbone upon the heart of things fill with sober certainty a dead star earth stood still a black drop of infinity heaven stood still my immobility was nearly perfect the postman rang I had to pour out the dirty wa- ter put on the tea Siva lifted his finger the furniture of heaven and earth started to whirl again I returned to my room where is that perfect peace Contents Acknowledgements ix 1 A little Polish Lesson 1 1.1 Aspect in contemporary Polish . 1 1.2 The evolution of Polish aspect . 11 1.2.1 Aspect in Proto Indo-European . 12 1.2.2 Aspect in Proto Slavic . 14 1.2.3 Aspect in Old Polish . 25 1.2.4 Aspect in Middle and New Polish . 26 1.2.5 Summary . 31 1.3 Overview of the thesis . 32 2 Aspect and Aktionsart: some History 33 2.1 The origins of ‘aspect’ and ‘Aktionsart’ . 34 2.2 Germanic aspectology . 38 2.3 The Slavic concept of aspect . 44 2.3.1 Aspectual pairs . 45 2.3.2 Issues concerning prefixisation . 47 2.3.3 Testing for aspectual pairs . 51 2.3.4 Suffixisation . 52 2.4 The Slavic concept of Aktionsart . 55 2.5 Aspect and Aktionsart in contemporary linguistics . 64 2.6 Summary . 67 3 Parallelism-Based Approaches 69 3.1 Introduction . 69 3.2 The parallelism idea . 70 3.3 The theory of Verkuyl . 72 3.3.1 General introduction to Verkuyl . 72 3.3.2 Verkuyl on Slavic . 75 3.3.3 Data and interpretation . 76 3.3.4 Empirical problems . 78 3.3.5 Summary . 79 3.4 The theory of Schoorlemmer . 80 3.4.1 General introduction to Schoorlemmer . 80 3.4.2 Testing the null hypothesis . 82 3.4.3 A Verkuylian analysis in Russian . 85 3.4.4 Empirical problems with a Verkuylian analysis . 86 3.4.5 Summary . 88 3.5 The theory of Krifka . 88 3.5.1 General introduction to Krifka . 88 3.5.2 Data and interpretation . 90 3.5.3 Empirical problems . 91 3.5.4 Summary . 93 3.6 The theory of Filip . 93 3.6.1 General introduction to Filip . 93 3.6.2 Proving the Incremental Theme Hypothesis for Slavic . 95 3.6.3 Filip on a Krifka-style analysis of Slavic . 97 3.6.4 Empirical problems . 99 3.6.5 Summary . 100 3.7 The empirical basis of the parallelism-based approaches . 100 3.7.1 Reconsidering the data . 101 3.7.2 Some more data . 103 3.7.3 Summary . 107 4 An Aspectual Classification of Polish Verbs 109 4.1 Introduction . 109 4.2 A Verb Classification . 110 4.3 Methodological remarks . 114 4.4 Induced semantic distinctions . 121 4.4.1 Class5 verbs are culminations . 122 4.4.2 Class4 verbs are unitisable processes . 124 4.4.3 Class3 verbs are culminating processes . 127 4.4.4 Class2 verbs are processes . 129 4.4.5 Class1 verbs are states or gradual transitions . 129 4.5 Can we extend the classification? . 132 4.5.1 Distinguishing states from gradual transitions . 132 4.5.2 Morphonological change in Polish . 136 4.6 Summary . 139 5 A Closer Look at the Classification 141 5.1 Coverage . 142 5.1.1 Modals, habituals, and suppletive pairs . 142 5.1.2 Other verbs . 143 5.2 In praise of empty prefixes . 146 5.2.1 Filip on empty prefixisation . 147 5.2.2 Other writers on empty prefixisation . 151 5.3 Formal semantics . 158 5.3.1 The models . 159 5.3.2 The interpretations . 166 5.3.3 Discussion . 174 5.4 Remarks on adverbials . 177 5.5 A diachronic perspective on the classification . 181 5.6 Concluding remarks . 184 References 193 Samenvatting in het Nederlands 201 Streszczenie w je¸zyku polskim 207 Curriculum vitae 208 Acknowledgments I am grateful to several people for helping, in one way or other, with the writing of this thesis. I would like to express my gratitude to all of them, realizing that those whom I owe the most I cannot thank enough, and that the things for which I am most grateful, I cannot put into words. I am very happy to have the opportunity to express my deep gratitude to my pro- motor prof. Henriette¨ de Swart for her supervision during the last two years of my PhD. It would be hard to overstate how much I benefited from her deep insight, her invariably correct intuitions, and her unwavering support. I can’t thank her adequately for all the effort she made to understand me and to bring out the best in me. I thank her for valuable suggestions and comments on the manuscript; in particular, I owe her very special thanks for the help she gave me with Chapter 3. She worked through several very different versions of this chapter, helping me to order and organize the material. I am also extremely grateful to her for letting me give a lecture on Slavic aspect two years ago, and for then insisting that the lecture notes be used in my thesis — the lecture notes were the seed that eventually grew into Chapter 2. I would like to thank my promotor prof. Henk Verkuyl for his supervision during the first and the second year of my PhD. I will always be indebted to him for intro- ducing me to the field of modern linguistics and for inviting me to write a Masters and then a Doctoral thesis on aspect. I still remember the excitement of working on my MA, and then turning it into a paper with him; this was my first introduction to re- search. I also would like to thank him for reading and commenting on the manuscript, and in particular, for his comments on Chapter 3. I would like to thank my promotor prof. Patrick Blackburn — though I realize that I will never really be able to thank him properly. Above all, I would like to thank him for his own work, which has shaped my thinking since the first moment I came in touch with it, and which I hope will shape my thinking more as time goes on. And furthermore, I am grateful to Patrick for two remarkable years of collaboration, and for teaching me, guiding me, and supporting me. He helped me to understand what my ideas really were. Warmest thanks to Patrick for his extensive help with Chapters 1 and 2. Chapters 4 and 5 are based on joint work with Patrick. I am deeply indebted to prof. Zofia Klimaszewska for promoting me almost from the very beginning of my undergraduate studies in Warsaw. She took a very special care of me as an undergraduate and then as a graduate student, and she gave me a lot of freedom at the same time. I am grateful to prof. Michael Moortgat for his kind interest in my work and for introducing me to categorial grammar, which was important in my later development. I owe a lot to prof. Denis Delfitto whose work has helped me to understand certain linguistic issues.