What is it about?
Based on an earlier edition published in 1992 in Bulgarian, this book offers a specific approach to one of the most controversial problems in linguistics. According to it, aspect is the result of a subtle and complex interplay between the referents of verbs and nouns in the sentence. Special attention is paid to the role nouns and noun phrases play in the explication of aspect in English (and similar languages). The grammatical marking of aspect is shown to be a compensatory phenomenon imposed by language structure. Comparisons made using Slavic (mainly Bulgarian) data reveal that compositional aspect is a mirror image of verbal aspect. When explicated compositionally, aspect is also determined by pragmatic factors. Ultimately, it is part of man's cognitive potential.
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This page is a summary of: Aspect in English, January 2000, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-9355-7.
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On the article and aspect in English in view of their interplay and historical development
This is a Power Point presentation made on 21 July, 2018 at the 3rd Old and Middle English Summer School and Conference, Naxos, Greece
An English Grammar: main stumbling blocks for Bulgarians learning English
This book is aimed at all readers with a sincere interest in the English language, practical or theoretical: from the language learner at an intermediate stage (with some preliminary knowledge of grammar – in any language) to the one intrigued in its subtleties; from the school student to the teacher or the scholarly investigator, whatever their native tongues. A book describing facts and rules of English grammar many of which have remained underexplored or inadequately explored for decades, hence misconceived. Defined as stumbling blocks and dealt with in a broader perspective, not just the Slavic one, are five fundamental problem fields of English grammar: word order, the articles, tense, aspect (perfectivity and imperfectivity), voice – some of them interrelated in an extremely subtle manner. Special attention is paid to the “sequence of tenses” rule – and an explanation of its raison d’être is proposed. While this is not a comprehensive grammar of English, it is an ambitious attempt to shed much more light on some of the notoriously most controversial domains. Although specifically written for Bulgarians, this grammar can be used by all learners of English, teachers of English and linguists. Krasimir Kabakčiev is a specialist in theoretical linguistics and has many publications in the field, including a monograph on English aspect and some fundamental cross-language regularities: Aspect in English: a “common-sense” view of the interplay between verbal and nominal referents, 2000: Springer. Here is what Henk Verkuyl, the finder of compositional aspect, had to say in a review of this work: “Kabakčiev made an important contribution to the study of aspectuality [...] His thorough knowledge of English made it possible for him to relate the subtleties of English to those of Bulgarian and by comparing the translations carefully the theoretical spinoff is considerable” (Journal of Semantics, 18: 388-389).
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