On the History οf Compositional Aspect: Vicissitudes, Issues, Prospects

Abstract

Compositional aspect (CA) is a fundamental language phenomenon discovered in 1972 by the Dutch linguist Henk Verkuyl. It is the mechanism of explication at the level of the sentence of the values of perfectivity and imperfectivity, otherwise found in verbs as lexical entries in Slavic and some similar languages. Its discovery ultimately made a huge breakthrough in linguistics, but the recognition of its significance came after years and decades of misunderstanding and twists and turns in conceptualization. Even today, nearly half a century after the discovery of CA, the theory behind it remains rather misconceived, despite the sea of publications dealing with it. This paper offers an overview – through the eyes of the author, hence inevitably polemical – of some of the history of CA, with its vicissitudes, issues and, most significantly, prospects.