Biaspectual verbs as polysemes: On homonymy, aspectual neutrality, and the conative reading

The paper starts from the question whether biaspectual verbs like Russian ispolʹzovatʹ ‘to use (ipfv/pfv)’ or motivirovatʹ ‘to motivate (ipfv/pfv)’ are homonymous pairs of a perfective and an imperfective verb or just one aspectually neutral verb that receives its aspectual meaning from the context. If they are homonyms, they ought to have all the meanings of non-homonymous verbs, including the so-called conative reading of attempt and success, as in On sdaval_ipfv, no ne sdal_pfv ėkzamen ‘He took the test but did not pass’. If they are aspectually neutral, sentences given out of the blue without context ought to be read as perfective or as imperfective with equal probabilities. A small corpus analysis and an online survey with 1295 native speakers test these hypotheses. The results show that biaspectual verbs are neither homonyms (since they cannot have the conative reading) nor aspectually neutral (since they all show a clear tendency towards either a perfective or an imperfective interpretation). Consequently, they must be viewed as polysemous, with an α-meaning according to their lexical-actional function and a β-meaning achieved by recategorization where the context demands it.

Translated from “Biaspektuelle Verben als Polyseme: Über Homonymie, Aspektneutralität und die konative Lesart” in Die Welt der Slaven 58(1) (2013). 36–53. DOI: 10.18716/bun/2asp.