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Time out of tense: Russian aspect in the imperative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2020

STEPHEN M. DICKEY Open the ORCID record for STEPHEN M. DICKEY [Opens in a new window]
STEPHEN M. DICKEY*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
*
Author’s address: University of Kansas, Wescoe Hall, Room 2133, 1445 Jayhawk Boulevard, Lawrence, KS 66045-7594, USAsmd@ku.edu
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Abstract

This article analyzes Russian aspectual usage in the imperative by combining Šatunovskij’s (2009) approach with Dickey’s (2018) cognitive linguistic theory of Russian aspect. It argues that the contrasting use of perfective and imperfective imperatives in mands for the completion of a single action can be explained in terms of the pragmatic mechanisms proposed by Šatunovskij (2009): perfective imperatives signal a request on the part of the speaker for the listener to make the decision to carry out the action, whereas imperfective imperatives make no such signal, because the decision has already been made. The latter occurs when the speaker knows or infers that the listener has already made the decision (or will do so if given the chance), or when the speaker has suspended the listener’s decision-making role and has gone ahead and made the decision. Various contextual uses of affirmative and negated imperatives and analyzes them in terms of the request or lack thereof for the listener to make the decision to carry out the action. The functions of the perfective and imperfective aspects in imperatives are argued to be instantiations of temporal definiteness and temporal indefiniteness (respectively). Inasmuch as this is true, Russian aspect codes alternative construals of time in non-finite usage as well as finite usage.

Keywords

imperativespolitenessRussianverbal aspect
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 56 , Issue 3: Aspect beyond time , 01 August 2020 , pp. 541 - 576
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Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I would like thank Pavlo Popov, Anna Karpusheva and Dr. Oleksandra Wallo for their comments on some of the Russian data presented here, as well as three anonymous Journal of Linguistics referees, whose comments improved the analysis presented here. All errors contained herein are mine alone.

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