On the semantics of the Aorist in modern Serbo-Croatian
DOI:10.30842/alp230657371716899
Yegorova M. A. O semantike aorista v
sovremennom serbskokhorvatskom yazyke. Acta Linguistica
Petropolitana. 2021. 17(1): 68–99.
The article addresses the semantics of the Aorist in modern Serbo-Croatian. This form, found in only colloquial speech and fiction, is described as an “expressive” preterit. Our investigation is based on texts of fi ction (the second half of the 20th century) and the news subcorpus of the Riznica Croatian Corpus. As our data shows, apart from the predictable combination of perfectivity and past time reference, the aorist can also convey resultative / anterior meanings. Resultative / anterior uses of the Aorist are found in verbs describing events that have relevant results at the time of reference. As the speaker can focus either on the action result (mostly in dialogue) or on the action itself (mostly in the narrative), we cannot make a clear distinction between resultative and anterior meanings in such cases. Cross-linguistically, these meanings correspond to the Perfect and can also be conveyed by the Truncated Perfect in Serbo-Croatian. The main preterit tense in Serbo-Croatian is the Full Perfect (or the “expanded perfect”). The Aorist also frequently marks new or unexpected information, not integrated into the speaker’s / addressee’s worldview. In these cases, the Aorist can mark either the verb describing the unexpected event, a verb of perception / mental activity, or a verb describing another preceding event. It is this peculiarity of the Serbo-Croatian Aorist that precludes applying the term ʻmirativityʼ that would be definitely in order here, otherwise. The paper also argues that, along with the Truncated Perfect, the Aorist can perform the “new perfect” functions in a system with the “expanded perfect” existing in modern Serbo-Croatian.
Keywords
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