Finding
Forsyth's definition of perfective aspect as "a perfective verb expresses the action as a total event summed up with reference to a single specific juncture" is based on Dostal's theory of markedness, not Maslov's.
Paper
A Grammar of Aspect; Usage and Meaning in the Russian Verb, by J. Forsyth. Cambridge University Press, 1970. Pp. xiii, 386.
Citations: 5
Full text
Semantic ScholarAbstract
THIS BOOK is intended to be both a guide for advanced students of Russian and a contribution to the theoretical study of Russian aspect. To my mind, Forsyth has been successful in achieving both of these aims, and has produced a work that ought to be instructive and stimulating to the two groups of readers that the author has in mind. Forsyth usually takes a firm stand on the many controversial issues involved, and on the main issues I find myself in agreement with him. Right at the beginning, though, he does hedge on the issue as to whether a perfective and imperfective pair having the same lexical meaning are one verb, or two verbs, stating that this is a "controversial question which need not interest us here" (p. 1). In practice, he does treat them as being one verb, and in my opinion it would have been better had he adopted this point of view explicitly. The author adheres to the view that Slavic aspect is a privative opposition, and that the perfective is the marked member. The arguments in favour of this view, set out clearly and convincingly on pp. 2-8, though not new, are formulated very clearly by Forsyth. His definition of the perfective aspect: "a perfective verb expresses the action as a total event summed up with reference to a single specific juncture" is presented as a modification of the definition given in Maslov (1959:309). Forsyth points out that Maslov acknowledges that the definition stems back to an 1891 article by Rasmusen. However, Maslov (1959:310) goes on to say that this definition was first linked with the theory of markedness in Dostal (1954:15). Thus Dostal, and not Maslov is the modern source of Forsyth's definition. In the course of some introductory remarks concerning the contextual meanings of the two aspects, Forsyth presents two arguments in favour of the term "single specific juncture" (pp. 12-13). In, for instance,
Authors
D. Huntley
Journal
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique