Abstract
The book contains a mixture of descriptive and generative methodology; this review article deals only with the descriptive parts. Schoorlemmer presents an explanation of why the participial passive in Russian is restricted to perfective verbs only, not imperfective. The explanation given is that the participial passive has a perfect-like meaning of resultant state, which requires telic aspectuality, i.e. the presence of an end-point. Perfective verbs, but not imperfective verbs, are telic. I welcome this account, which is close to and in some respects refines my own analysis, presented in Beedham (1982), as discussed by Schoorlemmer. However, unfortunately Schoorlemmer adopts the active-passive relationship alongside her perfect observations, and fails to see that a perfect-style analysis of the passive explains the patient role of the subject, thus rendering the active-passive relationship otiose.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 79-94 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Lingua |
| Volume | 105 |
| Issue number | 1-2 |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 1998 |
Keywords
- passive
- perfect
- Russian
- aspect
- ENGLISH
- GERMAN