On the so-called 'aspectual pairs': From a new viewpoint

Abstract

Pointing to the significant disagreement in general linguistics as to the theoretical status of the aspectual pairs of Slavic verbs (the question is do they represent two different lexical units or are they just two different aspectual forms of a single lexical item?), the author focuses on the Serbian aspectual pairs (1) prati i oprati and (2) razvoditi se i razvesti se giving by the results of her analysis full support to those who claim that this theoretical problem is indeed a very difficult one. In case (1) she brings to evidence the role played by the so-called lexicalized implicature in differentiating semantically oprati from prati, whereas in case (2) she calls attention to three hitherto unnoticed differences in meaning that arise between razvoditi se and razvesti se under particular syntactic conditions of their use as sentence predicate.

Posle osvrta na postojeću nesaglasnost u jezičkoj nauci oko toga kakav teorijski status treba dodeljivati tzv. 'vidskim parnjacima' (pitanje tu glasi radi li se u takvom slučaju o dve ili samo o jednoj leksičkoj jedinici, ali otelotvorenoj u dve aspektualne verzije?) ukazuje se na fenomen 'parnjaštva' koji je oličen u odnosima srpskih glagola (1) pra-ti/oprati, s jedne strane i (2) razvoditi se i razvesti se, s druge, pa se ti odnosi podvrgavaju osvetljavanju iz nekih novih uglova gledanja na stvari. Rezultati izvršene analize samo potvrđuju koliko je u pravu onaj deo stručne javnosti koji posebno naglašava težinu pitanja o kojem je reč.