Verbal Prefixation in Russian: A Rebuttal

Abstract

Zaliznjak & Mikaèljan 2014 is a critique of the model of Russian aspect found in Janda 2012 and Janda et al. 2013. In this rebuttal I give a brief overview of my model of Russian aspect and then address the criticisms made by Zaliznjak & Mikaèljan. I begin by examining the four assumptions stated by Zaliznjak & Mikaèljan, which I find to be unnecessary and lacking in theoretical gounding. Their assumption that aspectual correlation is uniformly directed from perfective to imperfective is particularly problematic. I compare Zaliznjak & Mikaèljan’s assumption with the single assumption my work is based on, namely that linguistic cognition is not fundamentally different from general cognition, and present the entailments of this assumption and what they mean for an investigation of Russian aspect. I then present four further problems with Zaliznjak & Mikaèljan’s model of Russian aspect: the alleged transfer of meaning from perfective to imperfective, the criteria for identifying prototypical prefixed perfectives, their claim that overlap and emptiness can be equated, and their postulation of deprefixation.