The Meaning of Pluperfect: Lexical and Grammatical Semantics

Abstract

The paper is aimed at the analysis of expressing the meaning ‘long ago’ or the meaning of pluperfect. In the meaning of ‘long ago’ the Russian word davno is the focus of a sentence. Meanwhile, if an event began long ago and is taking place at the time of reference (for instance, at the moment of speech), such context does not require davno to function as the focus. At present, the hypothesis was verified on the spoken corpora material. The key to the analysis is the prosody of the focus. On the whole, the hypothesis appeared to be true. At the same time, it acquired some substantial corrections. If earlier it was presumed that the context of pluperfect arises from the combination of davno and the aspectual forms of a verb, at present, the corpus analysis has revealed the third factor: it is the lexical semantics of the verb. The corpus analysis shows that the verbs of information transfer and the verbs in the negative can recover the connection of the past events with the point of reference. This meaning, in its turn, can cause the loss of the invariable focal function of davno in the context of the general factual in the past.