45th International Philological Research Conference

Aorist used to express the future in old Croatian language sources

Amir Kapetanović
Докладчик
профессор
Institute of Croatian language and Linguistics (Zagreb)

Греческий институт
2016-03-16
13:30 - 14:00

Ключевые слова, аннотация

The paper analyses the use of aorist to express the future in old Croatian written sources. This relative use of aorist is also possible in modern Croatian, however it is rare and limited. The goal of this paper is to analyse the usage and meaning of aorist future forms in the Croatian language in the past, especially the structural characteristics (often in conditional sentences) and communicational situations in which that kind of aorist was used and the meaning of such aorist forms, which could also prove useful to future Slavic and Balkan morphosyntactic research.

Тезисы

The aorist in the Croatian language is used mainly to express actions, states, or events in the past, and so aorist is mainly formed from perfective verbs. In the past, croatian aorist could be formed from both perfective and imperfective verbs. When it was formed from imperfective verbs, it had the semantic dimension of «determined imperfectiveness», since it was used to indicate an action of limited length (Hercigonja 1983). Aorist has disappeared from many modern Croatian dialects, and its usage in the modern Croatian standard language is limited and often stylistic, although it has been noted that it has returned to use in some communicational situations (text messaging). Modern Croatian grammars register its relative usage (e.g. Katičić 1991; Barić et al. 1995; Raguž 1997, Silić,  Pranjković 2005), and explain how aorist is also used for «recent actions and for imminent and planned future actions», or «in recent past and immediate future contexts» (Stanojević-Geld 2011). In Croatian language in the past, aorist was also used to express future action, e. g. «Ako se izbavih ja muk ovih, tu ću t’ želju ja odneti» (Hektorović 1568). The usage of aorist in conditional sentences is especially apparent, and has been noted by some researchers to date (Zima, Malić). Some research points to this type of usage in some Štokavian dialects (Pavlović 2006), however examples from old Croatian texts confirm that this usage also existed in Čakavian sources.
The goal of this paper is to analyse the usage and meaning of the aorist future forms in Croatian language in the past, especially the structural characteristics (often in conditional sentences) and communicational situations in which the aorist was used in this manner and the meaning of such aorist forms, which could also prove useful to future Slavic and Balkan morphosyntactic research.

References
Barić at al. 1995. Hrvatska gramatika. Zagreb.
Hercigonja, E. 1983. Nad iskonom hrvatske knjige. Zagreb.
Katičić, R. 1991. Sintaksa hrvatskoga književnoga jezika. Zagreb.
Malić, D. 1992–1993. Izricanje budućnosti u Žićima svetih otaca, Filologija, 20–21, 283–292.
Raguž, D. 1997. Praktična hrvatska gramatika. Zagreb.
Silić, J.; Pranjković, I. 2005. Gramatika hrvatskog jezika za gimnazije i visoka učilišta. Zagreb.
Stanojević, M.-M.; Geld, R. 2011. New current relevance in Croatian: epistemic immediacy and the aorist. In: Patard, A., Brisard, F. (eds.) Cognitive Approaches to Tense, Aspect, and Epistemic Modality. Amsterdam, Philadelphia, 159–180.
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