What is it about?
This monograph analyzes the historical and prehistorical evolution of the verbal systems of the main branches of the Indo-European family of languages, concentrating primarily on the subsystems of tense and aspect. It consists of 19 chapters covering the languages with ancient documentation (Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Latin, Hittite, Armenian, Gothic, Old English, Old Church Slavic) and the languages whose historical data are from a more recent date ( Hindi, Persian, Modern Greek, Lithuanian, Latvian, Czech, Russian, French, German and English). The last chapter is devoted to practical and theoretical conclusions of the work.
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Why is it important?
This monograph presents a general picture of the evolution of Indo-European verbal systems within a coherent cognitive framework. Unlike more traditional studies of 'tense' (quite often not distinguishing carefully 'tense' from 'grammatical and 'lexical' aspect) both tense and aspect are related to underlying cognitive processes. It is shown that verbal systems have a staged development of time representations (chronogenesis). The authors view linguistic change as systemic and trace the evolution of the earlier tense/aspect systems by (a) aspectual split and (b) aspectual merger from the aspectual contrasts of Proto-Indo-European. The evidence for these systemic changes is seen clearly in the paradigmatic morphology of the daughter languages.
Perspectives
New venues for further research have been opened by this monograph. Among them is the issue of the priority of tripartite aspectual configuration (Imperfective - Perfective - Retrospective/Perfect) of Proto-Indo-European, determined primarily by Indo-Iranian, Hellenic and Old Slavic; on the other side Hittite, Armenian and Germanic display binary systems based on the opposition of tense. The priority of aspect over tense contrasts is usually seen in the evolution of the PIE participial systems in the maximal systems of Indo-Iranian and Hellenic (with a double binary contrast of Imperfective vs. Perfective vs. Retrospective vs. Prospective in both voices Active and Mediopassive) but arguably they could be considered an expansion from a simpler system of Imperfective versus Perfective/Retrospective. Another pertinent issue is the role of early analytic aspectual formations (perfects in Vedic and Hittite) whose emergence must have constituted a significant innovation with far-reaching consequences for the later morpho-syntactic systems of individual languages.
Dr Vit M. Bubenik
Memorial University of Newfoundland
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This page is a summary of: Tense and Aspect in Indo-European Languages, March 1997, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/cilt.145.
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