The Grammaticalization of Verb Tense and Aspect in Languages with Different Structures

Abstract

 In this article, the grammaticalization of verb tense and aspect in languages with different structures is studied. The languages include Russian (synthetic inflectional), English (analytic inflectional), and Japanese (agglutinative). The analysis is carried out with respect to the degree of grammaticalization, i.e. the ratio of analytical and synthetic structures, the grammaticalization of particular verbs, and the existence of particular aspect and tense categories. During the anal  ysis it has been discovered that the Russian language has few structures and a high degree of their syntheticity, as well as a low variety of categories and grammaticalized lexical items, while the English and Japanese languages have an opposite tendency with a high number of structures and a high degree of their analyticity on the one hand and a high variety of categories and lexical items on the other. At the same time, it has been discovered that the similarities between the English and Japanese languages are quantitative rather than qualitative. Based on our findings we came to the conclusion that the grammaticalization of verb aspect and tense in the Russian language can be characterized as intensive and in the English and Japanese languages – as extensive, and that these differences are the result of the morphosyntax of these languages.