Summary
In this article a parallel is drawn between certain functions of irrealis and imperfective in evaluating contexts in Russian and Polish. The functions of irrealis in complementation are twofold: while in propositional complements it reflects irreality, in state-of-affairs complements it reflects temporal and situational unanchoring. This unanchoring function manifests itself also in complements of evaluative (commentative) predicates, where it extracts an event from its situational setting for the purpose of evaluating its intrinsic properties – intrinsic likelihood or desirability. It is argued that the representation of event tokens as event types by means of imperfective verbs in Slavonic performs a similar unanchoring function in evaluative contexts. The data of Slavonic languages, where both unanchoring devices cooccur, enable a coherent explanation of certain hitherto not fully understood phenomena in the domains of mood and aspect and shed a new light on the long-standing problem of the Romance so-called “factive” subjunctive.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- “Every fox praises its own tail”. Jan Blahoslav (1523–1571) on Slavic dialects
- Das sei ferne!
- Irrealis, aspect, and unanchoring in Slavonic and beyond
- Die rechtlich-religiöse Ideenwelt in Lesja Ukraïnkas dramatischer Dichtung Rechtsanwalt Martian (1911)
- The Social Background of the Enlightenment in Russia in a Comparative Perspective
- What is good work? Nikolai Leskov’s Zapechatlennyi angel
- Rezensionsaufsatz
- Zum 100. Geburtstag von Igor’ Cholin: Die Werkauswahl der Edition Aspei (Bochum) zwischen Avantgarde und Konzeptualismus
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- “Every fox praises its own tail”. Jan Blahoslav (1523–1571) on Slavic dialects
- Das sei ferne!
- Irrealis, aspect, and unanchoring in Slavonic and beyond
- Die rechtlich-religiöse Ideenwelt in Lesja Ukraïnkas dramatischer Dichtung Rechtsanwalt Martian (1911)
- The Social Background of the Enlightenment in Russia in a Comparative Perspective
- What is good work? Nikolai Leskov’s Zapechatlennyi angel
- Rezensionsaufsatz
- Zum 100. Geburtstag von Igor’ Cholin: Die Werkauswahl der Edition Aspei (Bochum) zwischen Avantgarde und Konzeptualismus