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Performativity as Tense and Aspect

Performativity as Tense and Aspect <jats:sec><jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Almost all verbs in Slovene have two aspectually different forms, the perfective (PF) and the imperfective (IPF). But in institutional settings or settings strongly marked with social hierarchy only the first, the imperfective form, is used by Slovene speakers in a performative sense.</jats:p> <jats:p>Why is that? And what, in fact, has a Slovene speaker said if (s)he used the imperfective verb in "performative circumstances"? No doubt that (s)he may be <jats:italic>in the process</jats:italic> of accomplishing such an act. But at the same time, having the possibility of choosing between the PF and the IPF form, (s)he may have also indicated that this act hasn't been accomplished (yet): as long as we are only promising (IPF), we have not really promised anything yet, and if we are only promising (IPF), we cannot take anything as having been really promised. That was how Stanislav Škrabec, the 19<jats:sup>th</jats:sup> century Slovene linguist and the central figure of this paper, saw the role of verbal aspect within language use.</jats:p> <jats:p>Being caught in such a dilemma, a question inevitably arises: how to accomplish an act of promise (or any other performative act) in Slovene? at dilemma may seem more than artificial at first, but it was very much alive among Slovene linguists at the end of the 19 th century. And it was that very dilemma – how to use aspects in Slovene – that quite unexpectedly gave rise to the foundations of performativity in Slovene, half a century before Austin!</jats:p> <jats:p>In the present paper, the author tries to shed some light on this controversy that involved different Slovene scholars for about thirty years, and proposes a delocutive hypothesis as a solution for the performative dilemma this controversy unveiled.</jats:p> </jats:sec> http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png International Review of Pragmatics Brill

Performativity as Tense and Aspect

ŽAgar, Igor Ž.
International Review of Pragmatics , Volume 3 (2): 168 – Jan 1, 2011
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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 2011 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
1877-3095
eISSN
1877-3109
DOI
10.1163/187731011X597505
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

<jats:sec><jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Almost all verbs in Slovene have two aspectually different forms, the perfective (PF) and the imperfective (IPF). But in institutional settings or settings strongly marked with social hierarchy only the first, the imperfective form, is used by Slovene speakers in a performative sense.</jats:p> <jats:p>Why is that? And what, in fact, has a Slovene speaker said if (s)he used the imperfective verb in "performative circumstances"? No doubt that (s)he may be <jats:italic>in the process</jats:italic> of accomplishing such an act. But at the same time, having the possibility of choosing between the PF and the IPF form, (s)he may have also indicated that this act hasn't been accomplished (yet): as long as we are only promising (IPF), we have not really promised anything yet, and if we are only promising (IPF), we cannot take anything as having been really promised. That was how Stanislav Škrabec, the 19<jats:sup>th</jats:sup> century Slovene linguist and the central figure of this paper, saw the role of verbal aspect within language use.</jats:p> <jats:p>Being caught in such a dilemma, a question inevitably arises: how to accomplish an act of promise (or any other performative act) in Slovene? at dilemma may seem more than artificial at first, but it was very much alive among Slovene linguists at the end of the 19 th century. And it was that very dilemma – how to use aspects in Slovene – that quite unexpectedly gave rise to the foundations of performativity in Slovene, half a century before Austin!</jats:p> <jats:p>In the present paper, the author tries to shed some light on this controversy that involved different Slovene scholars for about thirty years, and proposes a delocutive hypothesis as a solution for the performative dilemma this controversy unveiled.</jats:p> </jats:sec>

Journal

International Review of Pragmatics – Brill

Published: Jan 1, 2011

Keywords: SLOVENE; ASPECT; PERFORMATIVITY; SLAVIC LANGUAGES; TENSE; DELOCUTIVITY

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