Interactions Between Lexical and Aspectual Meanings in Albanian

Abstract

In this paper, part of a more wide study, we introduce and analyze some elements of aspect with its typical interactions with lexical verb classes in Standard Albanian. The grammatical meaning of the verbal aspect interacts with the lexical meaning of a given verb in group-specific ways, so that the kind of interaction in the case of a given aspect opposition can be used in order to classify verbs. The main criterion for the classification is the temporal dynamics expressed by the verbs in question, i. e. the probability according to which a given action or a particular state may change over time. In the specific case of the perfective aspect (aorist), the relationship between the operator and operandum consists in the action carried out with the presence, or less, of a result, or in the beginning of the action, or simply in the limited duration of verbal action. On the other hand, the imperfective (imperfect - synthetic and analytical forms) can be combined, in principle, with all verbs, but also in this case, with the typical effects according to their verbal action. One particularly efficacious method for underlining similar syntactic irregularities consists in the analysis of the degree of coincidence between each given verbal class and a selected set, as with a time complement or with aspectual verbs. As regards particular problems, in some cases, we have also investigated the subject and the object in the sentence. The study of these questions and the semantic-syntactical analyses have made it possible to present the particularities of the verbal classes according to the verbal action of the Albanian language.