Aspectual Pairing in Polish

Aspectual Pairing in Polish
The received view on Slavic aspect is that it is intrinsically complex, and that
there is little hope of discerning any substantial regularity. We argue that this
view is mistaken. We argue that the vast majority of Polish verbs really do
come in aspectual pairs and that far from being a mysterious process,
aspectual pairing in Polish is simple and regular. We introduce a classification
of Polish verbs that pins down the mechanism of aspectual pairing in Polish.
Our classification is formationally-driven: we divide Polish verbs into basic five
classes on the basis of the patterns of aspectual affixation they enter into (we
call affixes used for aspectual purposes ‘formants’). But in spite of its
essentially formal nature, our aspectual classification reveals considerable
semantic regularity in the Polish verb system. Indeed, the classification
induces temporal distinctions on Polish verbs, distinctions that look rather like
Vendler-style distinctions. We formalise the distinctions with the tools of
modal semantics.
We describe the evolution of the Polish aspectual system, and show how our
classification could have emerged diachronically. We present the history of the
study of aspect and Aktionsart and locate where the approach to Polish verb
pairs introduced in this thesis differs from what the reader will find in the
various literatures on aspect. We also relate the ideas of this thesis to the ideas
the reader can find in the modern approaches to Slavic aspect written in the
post-Chomskian tradition.
We hope that the work presented in this thesis will be useful to researchers
interested in aspect from both the Germanic and Slavic traditions.