Remarks on the nature of the verb phase markers in English and Serbian

Abstract

This paper investigates different ways in which the aspectual category of the verb phase is manifested in the English and Serbian languages, aiming to establish the linguistic nature of the different modes of phasal realizations. More specifically, following Hansen and Drobnjaković’s (2010) principles for identifying grammaticalized items, the analysis provides a preliminary account of main phasal properties, investigating whether the phasal realizations in the investigated languages belong in the areas of grammatical or lexical semantics. It has been observed that the principal phasal markers in both languages are phase verbs, while phasal features can also be observed at the morphological level, namely in the aspectual particles of English phrasal verbs and the prefixes with aspectual properties in Serbian derivatives. In both Serbian and English, the investigation has shown that structural and semantic properties of phase verbs point to the presence of grammatical features, while morphological markers of the phase remain within the territory of lexical semantics. The obtained results indicate that phase verbs connect the grammatical and conceptual domains of aspectual systems in both languages, setting the ground for further typological and contrastive studies on the topic.