Bulgarian preverbs: aspect in phrase structure

This paper argues for a syntactic approach to aspectuality, where semantic information about subevent structure is incorporated into the phrase marker. Such an approach would be justified only if aspectual properties present syntactic as well as semantic effects. It is the aim of the paper to present evidence of such syntactic effects. Slavic preverbs have standardly been regarded as perfectivizing (or telicity-marking) morphemes. It will be argued that preverbs are also causative morphemes. As such, they are situated in the upper part of a VP-layer structure, a light verb widely accepted to be reserved for CAUSE. In English, the aspectual interpretation of a terminative or durative event depends on the specified or unspecified cardinality of the object (Verkuyl 1993) and aspect is calculated in a functional projection AspP between the two VP layers (Travis 1991). In Slavic, on the other hand it is the presence of absence of a preverb in the upper verbal head that encodes a terminative ol a durative interpretation. This contrast is explained with the relatively higher structural position of Slavic preverbs with respect to the functional projection AspP in English. Similar scope effects are demonstrated with articles in Russian, with interpretations of Polish and English imperfective sentences, and with manner adverbs in Bulgarian.