The expression of aspect in Sesotho

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The expression of aspect in Sesotho within the framework of the principles,properties and mechanisms of three different components of grammar, i.e. thesyntactic, morphological and semantic components, has been established in abroader context. The application of the terms aspect and tense in the existinggrammatical descriptions of the Sesotho verbs, however, has proved to beproblematic. This is largely owing to the fact that these categories are established inSesotho on the basis of notional distinctions. This study aims to examinecomprehensively, firstly, the morphosyntactic system of Sesotho, in order todetermine the range of categories that express grammatical aspect, which includesthe Perfective and Imperfective aspects in Sesotho. The perfective-imperfectiveopposition is a particular area of focus in this study, and comprises the differenttenses which are involved in the meaning of the situation types (activities,achievements, accomplishments and states). In this regard, questions relating to thedistinctive properties of tense and aspect in Sesotho, namely: (i) the aspectcategories that occur in the full range of tenses in Sesotho, (ii) the aspect categoriesthat occur in deficient verb constructions, and (iii) the theoretical treatment of therelationship between aspect and the aspectual classes of verbs (activities,achievements, accomplishments and states) in Sesotho, undergo detailedexamination and investigation in this study.Secondly, the study both defines and explores the theoretical frameworks pertainingto the analysis of: (i) the correlation between the Sesotho aspect system and therelationship between situation types and grammatical aspects in Sesotho, (ii) thedistribution of aspectual classes of verbs with respect to grammatical aspect andtemporal adjunct (for- adverbial and in- adverbial) categories in Sesotho, and (iii), theeffect on telicity of certain complement categories on the inner temporal structure ofaspectual verb classes. The study establishes the premise that the syntacticevidence for telic events in Sesotho usually turns on the feature of completion whichinvolves the interaction of duration and a change of state. Therefore, this study aimsto demonstrate that the existence and application of the durative adverbial providessyntactic evidence for atelic events. The argument for the causes and dynamics ofthe telic/atelic dichotomy, as approached in this study, is based on crucial shiftswhich are triggered by either completive or durative adverbials when appearing withsituation types.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University