Russian verbal aspect and the activation of event knowledge: Processing typical and atypical location adverbials in perfective and imperfective sentences

Clasmeier, Christina; Zeller, Jan Patrick

Abstract

Processing sentences is modulated by the grammatical aspect of the predicate. Previous studies have indicated that the English progressive and Farsi imperfective are associated with a stronger mental activation of the components or circumstances of the situation, such as instruments or locations. This study deals with the processing of sentences in Russian, a language with a perfective vs. imperfective aspectual distinction. In a self-paced reading experiment with 48 respondents, sentences were presented with (mostly) atelic verbs in either imperfective or perfective aspects and locative adverbials that were typical or atypical for the situation. We expected atypical locatives to slow down reaction times and that this effect would be the strongest in imperfective contexts because of greater mental activation of the situation. Contrary to our expectations, the perfective aspect was associated with longer reaction times for atypical locative adverbials. We interpret this as an effect of the higher functional complexity of the Russian perfective, especially in the case of the perfectives of the (mostly) atelic verbs used in our experiment.

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