L'aspetto verbale slavo fra tipologia e diacronia

The history of aspect in the Slavic languages has captured scholars’ attention for many years. The problem of interpreting genesis and development of this complex category has been tackled from different perspectives, relating the Slavic aspect to the Proto-Indo-European reconstructed system or giving precedence to an inner Slavic comparison. In attempting a historical study of aspect, however, it is useful to go beyond the boundaries of the Slavic linguistic material, taking into account typologically similar (non necessarily related) languages, like for example Georgian and Ossetic (and to a lesser extent Hungarian), in which actional and aspectual values are regularly conveyed by preverbs. Georgian, in particular, having a well-documented written tradition, allows us to follow the diachronic change from the old system (with an aspectual opposition of the INTRAterminality type, i.e. a distinction between Imperfect and Aorist in the Past) to the new one (ADterminality type), whereas in the oldest recorded Slavic language, namely Old Church Slavic, the aspect already seems to exhibit a certain degree of grammaticalization. Data from languages like Georgian and Ossetic provide us with relevant material for comparison and point out the fact that the secondary derivation of imperfective forms from prefixed verbs, like sobirat’ < sobrat’), does not need, typologically speaking, to be considered the starting point of the grammaticalization process of the Slavic aspectual system.