Aktionsart

Definition

Aktionsart is a property of (mostly verbal) predicates. It concerns the internal temporal constituency of a (type of) situation denoted by a given predicate (cf. Bache 1985: 10). The (originally German) term aktionsart is approx. equivalent to the English terms lexical aspect and kind of action.

Historical comments

The concept of aktionsart' has a long standing history. Its origins are often traced back to Aristotle’s Metaphysics IX. Aristotle distinguishes between enérgeia (incomplete movement, process) and kíne:sis (complete movement, actuality), which designate the two basic types of situation found in our natural environment (cf. Verkuyl 1993: 43). Lexical aspect and its difference from grammatical aspect has been prominentl y investigate in Slavonic linguistics. The linguistic term aktionsart was coined later in Germanic linguistics.

Relation between tense, aspect and aktionsart

Aktionsart is to be distinguished from aspect (more precisely, grammatical aspect), even though the difference between the two concepts is non-trivial (cf. Tôbîn 1993: 3). Grammatical aspect concerns the viewpoint from which a situation is viewed. Aktionsart, by contrast, relates to the inherent temporal structure of a situation as determined by the predicate and the context. The category of tense describes the temporal situation of an action relative to the moment of utterance or some other temporal point of orientation.

The three basic verbal concepts of tense, aspect and aktionsart are closely interrelated. For example, the progressive aspect is distributioanlly restricted to predicats with specific kinds of aktionsart (see: progressive aspect).

Classification (types of situations)

The most influential classification of aktionsarten to date has been provided by Vendler (1957) (“the quadripartition at the lexical level”; cf. Verkuyl 1993: 33). He distinguishes four types of possible situations: states, achievements, activities and accomplishments. Achievements, activity and accomplishments can be subsumed under the term occurrence.

Literature

• Bache, Carl. 1985. Verbal Aspect: A General Theory and Its Application to Present-Day English. Odense: Odense University Press.
• Bache, Carl. 1995. The Study of Aspect, Tense and Action: Towards a Theory of the Semantics of Grammatical Categories. Frankfurt am Main: Lang.
• Binnick, Robert. 1991. Time and the Verb: A Guide to Tense and Aspect. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Borik, Olga. 2006. Aspect and Reference Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Dowty, David R. 1979. Word Meaning and Montague Grammar: The Semantics of Verbs and Times in Generative Semantics and in Montague’s PTQ. Dordrecht: Reidel.
• Huddleston, Rodney D. 2002. 'The Verb.' In: Huddleston, R. & G. Pullum (eds.), The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 71-212.
• Leech, Geoffrey N. 1971. Meaning and the English Verb. London: Longman.
• Rothstein, Björn. 2007. Tempus. Heidelberg: Winter.
• Tôbîn, Yišay. 1993. Aspect in the English Verb: Process and Result in Language. London: Longman.
• Trautwein, Martin. 2005. The Time Window of Language: The Interaction between Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Knowledge in the Temporal Interpretation of German and English Texts. Berlin: De Gruyter.
• Verkuyl, Henk J. 1993. A Theory of Aspectuality: The Interaction between Temporal and Atemporal Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Ziegeler, Debra. 2006. Interfaces with English Aspect: Diachronic and Empirical Studies. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

External link

 Wikipedia: Aktionsart (English)