ASPECT AND CHARACTER OF THE VERB

The problem of aspect is intimately connected with a lexicological problem, which we shall therefore have to touch upon here. It may be well illustrated by the following series of examples. If we have, for example, the sentence, A young man sat in the corner of the room, we can say, instead, A young man was sitting in the corner of the room, without affecting the basic meaning of the sentence. The same situation may be described in both ways, the only difference between them being that of stylistic colouring: the variant with the common aspect form is more matter-of-fact and "dry", whereas the one with the continuous aspect form is more descriptive.

The absence of any actual difference in meaning in such a case is brought out in the following passage from a modern novel: Mr Bodiham was sitting in his study at the Rectory. The nineteenth-century Gothic windows, narrow and pointed, admitted the light grudgingly; in spite of the brilliant July weather, the room was sombre. Brown varnished bookshelves lined the walls, filled with row upon row of those thick, heavy theological works which the second-hand booksellers generally sell by weight. The mantelpiece, the overmantel, a towering structure of spindly pillars and little shelves, were brown and varnished. The writing-desk was brown and varnished. So were the chairs, so was the door. A dark red-brown carpet with patterns covered the floor. Everything was brown in the room, and

¹H. Sweet, A New English Grammar, Part I, § 288.

84 The Verb: Aspect

there was a curious brownish smell. In the midst of this brown gloom Mr Bodiham sat at his desk. (HUXLEY)

By comparing the first and the last sentence of this passage it will be seen that they tell of the same situation, but in different ways. The first sentence is clearly descriptive, and it opens a rather lengthy description of Mr Bodiham's room, its furniture, books, etc. The last sentence of the passage, on the other hand, confirms the fact that Mr Bodiham sat in his study, as if summing up the situation. So the same fact is told a second time and the difference in the stylistic qualities of the continuous and the common aspect is well brought out.

On the other hand, if we have the sentence He brought her some flowers and if we substitute was bringing for brought and say, He was bringing her some flowers, the meaning will be affected and the two facts will be different. With the common aspect form brought the sentence means that the flowers actually reached her, whereas the continuous aspect form means that he had the flowers with him but something prevented him from giving them to her. We might then say that he sat = he was sitting, whereas he brought ≠ he was bringing. What is the cause of this difference? Here we shall have to touch on a lexicological problem, without which the treatment of the continuous aspect cannot be complete. The verb sit differs from the verb bring in an important way: the verb sit denotes an action which can go on indefinitely without necessarily reaching a point where it has to stop, whereas the verb bring denotes an action which must come to an end owing to its very nature. It has now been customary for some time to call verbs of the sit type cursive, or durative, and verbs of the bring type terminative. We may then say that with cursive, or durative verbs, the difference between the common and the continuous aspect may be neutralised whereas with terminative verbs it cannot be neutralised, so that the form of the common aspect cannot be substituted for the form of the continuous aspect, and vice versa, without materially changing the meaning of the sentence. '

A final note is necessary here on the relation between the aspects of the English verb and those of the Russian verb.

¹ The theory of durative and terminative verbs with reference to the English language was propounded by Prof. G. Vorontsova (see Г. Н. Воронцова, О лексическом характере глагола в английском языке. Иностранные языки в школе, 1948, № 1) and it was adopted, with some modifications, by other authors. Prof. I. Ivanova considers durativeness and terminative-ness to be grammatical characteristics of the verb (see И. П. Иванова, Вид и время в современном английском языке, стр. 63 сл.). We need not go into this question any further here. It should only by noted that a verb which is durative in its chief meaning may be terminative in a secondary meaning, and vice versa. Thus, the verb sit would be terminative in its secondary meaning 'sit down'.

Aspect and Character of the Verb

Without going into details, we may assume that the Russian verb has two aspects, the perfective and the imperfective. All other varieties of aspectual meanings are to be considered within the framework of the two basic aspects. ¹ It is obvious at once that there is no direct correspondence between English and Russian aspects; for instance, the English continuous aspect is not identical with the Russian imperfective. The relation between the two systems is not so simple as all that. On the one hand, the English common aspect may correspond not only to the Russian perfective but also to the Russian imperfective aspect; thus, he wrote may correspond both to написал and to писал. On the other hand, the Russian imperfective aspect may correspond not only to the continuous but also to the common aspect in English; thus, писал may correspond both to was writing and to wrote. It follows from this that the relation between the English and the Russian aspects may be represented by the following diagram:

On this question see В. В. Виноградов, Русский язык, 1947, стр. 493 сл.

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